Free Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1) by Thomas Hollyday

Frank heard the craft rippling the river water as it eased into the channel. The night quiet returned. He stood up and began to walk slowly back to the porch. His exhausted mind tossed with images of orange and black butterflies dancing with yellow witchdoctors as he drifted off to the few hours of sleep he had left before the summer heat began again.
    At six AM the noise of Maggie and Pastor working at the site woke him up. Frank pulled on his shorts and walked over. The Pastor had brought some food, prepared by the people at his church. While he sipped a cup of coffee Frank glanced out at the river. Soldado’s boat was nowhere in sight.
    “Soldado woke me up out here last night,” he said, “The old guy was out by the site, singing and walking around naked carrying dousing rods.”
    The Pastor grinned. “He calls his ritual the song of a thousand men. I’m acquainted with folks who tell me he has talked to their dead family members. Myself, I’ve seen him sit up all night saying his Mexican words,” said the Pastor. “Nobody around here can understand what he’s saying.”
    “His body was painted and he had a cape over his shoulders.”
    “His mother made up that Mexican costume for him. He says it’s from the Yucatan. You’re right. He’s close to naked in that rig. Soldado makes a little money finding water. When a person wants to dig a new well, they get Soldado to come up to their farm and locate the best spot for the well. ‘Course he don’t get painted up for that.”
    “I’ve never seen dousing rods,” said Maggie.
    “Some of our archaeologist colleagues swear by them,” said Frank.
    “How do they work?” asked the Pastor.
    “The dousing rods are supposed to vibrate if they are near water or metal.”
    “Why?”
    “Some people think they work like our electronic finding devices, forming some kind of relationship with metal or magnetism in the ground below the surface. Nobody knows for sure.”
    Maggie inspected the cross marks left by Soldado. She pounded a white stake into the center of each mark. Then she precisely plotted these locations on her site plan.
    “He marked two of my probe areas. Location H and Location Q.”
    “H is the foremast area, isn’t it?” asked Frank. “Q, that’s in front of the mizzenmast, the big cargo area. Interesting. If the dousing works, something metal has probably been identified in those spots. We’ll see.”
    Frank turned to the Pastor. “Pastor, can you dig with us today?”
    “Sure.”
    “If Maggie concurs, you can start test pit M halfway down the port side of the wreck, about twenty feet off the left of the main mast location. I’d like to explore as much as I can about the shape of the hull. If she’s an early wreck, she’ll be in a fish shape, what they used to call codfish and mackerel, wide beam at the bow and narrow at the stern like a fish. That test pit should tell us something if we are lucky. Maggie and I can teach you what you need to know about excavating procedures.”
    “It’s all right with me,” said Maggie.
    “Maggie, why don’t you try Soldado’s location T? That’s near the captain’s quarters which could have many artifacts. I’ll work on Grid I off to the right of the foremast to see if there is more information there about the shape of the bow. We’re looking for a round apple cheek curve to determine if she was built in this fish shape.”
    Frank and Maggie showed the Pastor some of the simpler digging techniques. Frank was working his digging tools into the soft earth of the Pastor’s spot when Maggie laughed. He looked up at her.
    “What?” he said.
    “You’re using the same old trowel you had years ago.”
    “I guess it is.” Frank looked at it. “I never thought about it. It doesn’t seem to wear out as much as the other ones.”
    “This job will finish it off. I think the stink of the marsh is worse this morning,” Maggie said.
    “Yes,” said the Pastor. “It gets that way