Panic in Langley Bottom, an excerpt

.....As I washed it off I realized it was a nail, but when I looked at it closer I shook my head. It's a danged nail; a bent nail, but how did it get in the ground under a little willow tree?

Gosh, as I sat there and looked at that really unusual bent nail, I noticed something. The nail was square with a sharp point, and, like I said, it was bent. Well, I knew a couple of things from hunting arrowheads; Indians didn't have nails or for that matter anything made out of steel. Yeah, that hit me like a lead balloon, and I yelled to John Clayton, “Come here, quick! You are not gonna believe this!”

And then I had another thought. Must have been an old home-place here, and this is a nail from when they were building their house. Then it hit me! It was the wildest thing I could ever think. Naw, Mr. Joe told us that nobody had ever lived anywhere around here—-Could this nail be a Spanish nail— a nail from de Soto’s expedition?

John Clayton walked up about that time, and I handed him the nail. “Take a look at what I found.”

“Humm, it looks like a nail, but it’s bent.”

“Well, yeah, it is a nail. Look at how it’s shaped and look at the sharp point. What you make of that?”

“Heck, it I know. Maybe there’s an old house-place ’round here.”

“Naw, Mr. Joe said that he has the only house in these parts and as far as he knows no one has ever lived back here in the woods.”

“Well, we know several thousand Indians lived right around here.”

“You bet we do, but Indians didn’t have steel knives or anything else. This couldn’t have come from the Indians.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. But who?”

“Just think about it. Somebody was building something, and they bent a nail and threw it away. I found the nail that they threw away.”

“Okay, Shearwood Homes, what else?”

“Well, since the Indians didn’t have nails, then someone staying with the Indians were using nails to build something. Right?”

“That’s right, Shearwood.”

“Okay, we know one thing for durn sure, nobody but Indians has ever lived anywhere around here, right?”

“You’re a hundred percent Shearwood.”

“All right then if it can’t be the Indians and it can’t be somebody’s old house-place, who does that leave it to be?”

“You tell me, Shearwood.”

“Hernando de Soto…”

“You have got to be kidding…”

“No, I’m not, and there’s more.”

“What?”

“Yeah, just guess what the Spanish were building when the man bent the nail?”

“I’ll never guess in a million years, so you tell me Shearwood.”

“A coffin.”

“What? What makes you think the man who bent this nail was building a coffin?”

“Well, Mr. Smartass, you tell me what else could he have been building?”

“Uh, well, maybe. Uh, well I can’t think of anything right now.”

“No you can’t because that’s the logical thing, and who do we know was buried at the winter camp of de Soto?

“El Canto?”.....