A modern-day fictional story, that happens to be based on historical accounts. If anyone has additional information on the Shelton coins, please contact the author.
Certain grammatical and spelling errors intentionally occur within the body of this piece and reflect Appalachian pronunciation and jargon.
Duck’s Bucks
The phone rang. I was engrossed in the task of assigning variety numbers to a group of Large Cents while Michael finished filling the Morgan Dollar trays. We heard Shelley trying to calm whoever was on the other end of this phone call.
“Slow down, Broyhill” she pleaded.
Broyhill was a fellow we all knew from Yancey County who was a dealer in anything he could make a buck on. From Indian artifacts to pedal cars, he probably knew about it — and if he didn’t he sure pretended like he did to get the deal done.
“What’s a Shelton Dollar anyway?” she asked in a frustrated tone.
Michael and I both looked at each other. We had heard the tale, but no one had actually ever SEEN a Shelton Dollar.
Hanging up the phone, and now with our full attention, Shelley told us that Broyhill had unearthed a mold used to make something called a Shelton Dollar. We knew exactly where we would be heading that evening after the shop closed.
That night the three of us drove to an old barn in Burnsville to meet our friend. Broyhill was already there when our headlights lit up the side of the faded red structure. The air was thick with the smell of tobacco hanging to dry as we exited the car. Intense brightness from the lantern Broyhill held obscured all else, but I could tell there was something in his other hand.
“Well, this is what ya came to see I reckon” he said handing me a dark slender object.
A look of disappointment must have been noticeable as Broyhill sharply barked, “Not what you were expecting, huh?” I didn’t say a word, I just handed it over to Michael to inspect.
Michael said what was on both our minds, “This is only half of a mold — where’s the rest of it?”
Our host gave an indignant huff and came back with “Heck, Ol’ Shelton is probably laughing at us all right now from the great beyond…..You didn’t think he’d keep the thing intact so we could mint his Dollars after he was gone, now did ya?”
Come to think of it, no, it wouldn’t make much sense for him to have left it in one piece. By this time, the object had made its way to Shelley and she was holding it with a pensive look. The instrument itself was pretty crude and simple: a roughly seven-inch plank with two holes for pouring in the silver. It was rumored this Duck Shelton character used to have his own silver mine. Had the Cherokee shown him where to find silver in these hills?
“So, where did you find it?” I asked.
“Frank plowed it up in a potato field over in Madison and he wasn’t sure what to make of it so he brung it to me”
Content with the answer, silence set in. The next few minutes found Shelley, Michael and myself contemplating our next move in our heads. We needed to find the other half so that the mold would be complete. We were already here in the neighboring county and to be in Shelton Laurel would just take another half hour’s drive. But it was the dead of night, what could we possibly find in the dark?
Michael broke the stillness by saying what everyone was thinking, “How far is it to Duck’s place?”
Ha, “Duck’s place!” I thought. Spoken as if he were still among the living. This was getting more ridiculous by the minute, but for some reason we all wanted the adventure.
“Not far, I reckon I could draw ya a map” Broyhill said. “Take ya right up Duckmill Road at the head of the hollar”
“But now I’ll warn ya,” at this point holding the lantern even with his leathery face, “those Sheltons are a skittish bunch…..I play poker with a Shelton boy right up there every Friday night” he said pointing a finger towards the barn’s loft. “They don’t like to talk much and they keep to themselves”
With that the three of us had made up our minds to see what we could find on this mystic night. Shelley asked Broyhill if we could take the partial mold piece with us, saying something about it being a trigger object. It didn’t make much sense at the time, but he obliged. Broyhill must have thought we were half crazy.
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“Where is this place supposed to be anyway?” I asked from behind the wheel.
“Just a little farther” Michael assured me. It seemed as if we had been driving for an hour. Every gravel road looked the same in the glow of our high beams and I could swear we had already been on this stretch just a while ago. We weren’t traveling in circles, were we?
We carried on for five or ten more minutes and the overgrown path that passed for a road was getting more narrow all the while. The radio was silent as all stations were well out of range at this point. Wild brush and limbs could be heard scraping the door of the car and I wasn’t sure how much longer we could drive on our dwindling tank of gas.
The road was steep but at the top began to plateau and we came upon a clearing. Acting as if we knew where we were, I stopped the engine and we all three got out of the car simultaneously.
Under an oak tree was what looked to be a grave marker. The stone was blank. We were very mindful not to step on the area that might have been a gravesite, opting instead to search the surrounding area for any clues.
I happened to notice the distinct smell of pipe tobacco in the thick night air. On top of that, I began to notice the sound of running water from the nearby Duckmill Branch. All of the sudden, a man emerged from the dark woods. Michael instinctively placed a hand on his ever present firearm. The man was in heavy sack clothing and looked as if he belonged in another time period. His straw hat and corncob pipe completed the look and he was encircled by a hazy aura.
“What are you doin’ snoopin’ around here?” He scolded.
“Uh – Well” a stuttering attempt at language was all I could muster. Shelley calmly finished my thought for me.
“We are here to find Duck” she said.
“Well you ain’t gonna find him poking around here at this unholy hour” the mysterious man countered back.
And what did she mean by saying we were here to find Duck. He has been dead for over a century and a half. We were only looking for artifacts – though I wouldn’t want to admit that to this fellow, in case we were on his property.
“…But maybe I knew him, and maybe I could tell ya what ya’ll want to know”
I could scarcely believe he was being so cooperative, or so it seemed. What should we ask him? Where would we begin? Did he know of the legend and the coins?
His attention quickly turned to the object in Shelley’s hands.
“Whatcha got there?!?”
Michael chimed in, “It’s a mold for minting coins”
“Don’t look like much of one” was the answer from our newfound acquaintance. “Looks all busted up”
In fact he was right. It was merely half of the fully operational apparatus. But how on earth did this guy know that?
“You said you’uns was looking for Duck — that’s his resting spot over there but he may not be around here no more”
The old traveler pointed a bony finger towards the stone marker we had seen earlier.
“Why do you say that?” Shelley wanted to know.
“Cuz he had the ends of his coffin left open when they laid him down in the ground. Said he wanted to be able to outrun Old Lucifer if he saw him comin’ for him”
Once again, how would this gristly wanderer know such a specific detail. I was beginning to wonder if, and I cant believe I am saying this, we were actually talking to Duck right here and now!
Shelley seemed surprisingly at ease during this entire exchange. She had a fascination with the paranormal that I had never really understood but maybe, just maybe, there was something to it after all. I was at least ready to consider the possibility as we stood on that cold mound of earth, in a corner of Madison County forgotten by time. It also occurred to me that our humble coin shop was uniquely qualified to take on this assignment with Shelley in our corner.
I believe this gentleman began to suspect our collective revelation that he was our man. To test this I gathered enough courage to ask him, “So did he ever come for ya? Lucifer, I mean”
The man smiled and peered up at us, the brim of his hat partially blocking his eyes, “Nope, never did. How did you kids know I wuz Duck?”
Shelley volunteered an answer, “Your face told the story. You did nothing wrong. You are just watching over your land.”
“You’re darn tootin’ I didn’t do anything wrong!” he said with a growing agitation to his speech. “And I wuz just watching over my land that day when I saw that coach turnt over.”
We just stood there and let him continue his story.
“Those fancy stagecoaches don’t know these mountain trails worth a darn. Turnt up this way at Hickory Nut Turnpike, arount Asheville, and didn’t know what they wuz in for. I found ‘em down in the ravine, both riders deader than dead”
This was amazing! So he never had a silver mine. He went on to tell us that it was an overturned federal stagecoach, delivering silver ore from Cowpens up North. But who else in Duck’s day knew of this accident we all three wanted to know.
“I didn’t tell no-body, I mean no-body! I would leave in the morn with a sack of cornbread slung over my shoulder and they wouldn’t see me for days. Took a differnt path each time in case I wuz follered. All that silver wuz hid in a cave — and before ya ask; No, I ain’t showin’ ya where”
“People just assumed I had struck a mine, and I reckon in a sense I did. It just had PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT wrote on it so I had to get to smelting”
“I’d get it up good and hot and pour it in that there mold and when it all cooled, I had me some coins. Everybody took ‘em. I could spend ‘em freely around here with no questions. People knew they wuz even more pure than the one’s made by the government because I melted out the slag. Phillydelphia and N’awlins wuz puttin’ out 89 percent when mine wuz comin’ in at 100”
In that moment, we knew we needed to return the artifact to Mr. Shelton. Solemnly, Shelley handed it over to him.
“Thank ya kindly” he said, tipping his hat in our direction.
As we stood there the wind began to pick up and we felt a chill. Those mountains had held many a moonshiner’s secret over the years, but perhaps no secret was bigger than the one we discovered that cold night. We had just met the ultimate bootlegger face to face. A tough and industrious old timer who charted his own path. Something that the folks of Appalachia have been doing for as long as can be remembered.
Old Duck faded back into the woods from where he came and on the walk back to the car I was thinking how coin collecting is so much more than grades and mintmarks, and also how ‘dead’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘unaware.’ I am sure any one of us would gladly trade a box full of gold treasure for just one look at a Shelton Dollar.