Mattie Mitchell Read Online Free

by another, more violent storm. The ship and all hands
were lost.
    Mattie Mitchell knew St. John Island very well. It was a part
of his hunting grounds. He had erected a small shelter there. He
had also been there many times at the request of people hoping
to recover the pirate treasure. Those who paid the small fee for
his services hoped the old woodsman’s eyes would reveal what
so many others had failed to see. But Mattie could find no trace
of the treasure. Eventually, he refused to take any more fortuneseekers there again. Like everyone else, he figured the pirates and
their gold were a myth.
    Then, one cold winter’s day near the end of 1910, while
travelling along his trapline far inland from his home in Bonne
Bay, he met an old man who had a map to the pirate gold.
    Mattie was accompanied by one of his wife’s relatives. The
young boy from the Webb family was learning the ways of the
wild from the best of hunters and trappers. The short winter day
was late and the sun had gone. Night was near, and there was no
warmth upon the land. Suddenly, across their trail, an old man
staggered and abruptly fell. Mattie and his young companion half
dragged, half carried the emaciated man to their camp, which
fortunately was nearby.
    Mattie fed the man with hot caribou broth and, as he grew
stronger, caribou meat. He laid the old man in his own warm
bunk and covered him, where he slept on his back without stirring
for twelve hours. The man’s hair was wild and snow white.
He was balding in front. His exposed brown scalp furrowed a
path through a patch of unruly long hair that fell to his narrow
shoulders, so that the man’s face appeared to be staring out of a
tangled bush. He looked to be very old, but the energy behind his
bright blue eyes contradicted his age.
    For several days Mattie and the young boy nursed their patient
back to health. In all that time they never once asked him how he
had come to be in these northern woods. The man had tremendous
resilience; he soon recovered and appeared to be strong enough to
travel. When Mattie invited him to accompany them to the coast,
he very politely declined. The stranger thanked his two rescuers,
but he said he would be all right now and prepared to leave.
    Standing in the dim light of the small cabin, the old man
produced a faded map. He explained to Mattie that if he followed
the map precisely he would find enough gold to provide not onlyfor him, but his entire family for the rest of their lives. The map
revealed the location of the pirate treasure of St. John Island. The
man handed Mattie the map, shook hands with him and Webb,
and wished them a very Merry Christmas before walking out the
door and disappearing down the snowy trail.
    The very next year, Mattie and a friend made their way up the
Northern Peninsula to Eddies Cove. Tucked safely inside his pack
in a waterproof satchel was the treasure map given to him by the
old man of the hills. Upon reaching the small village of Eddies
Cove late in the evening, Mattie finally persuaded Joe Offrey to
take him and his companion across to St. John Island. They had
enough supplies for an extended stay. This time Mattie—armed
with the old man’s map—figured he would find the fabled pirate
treasure.
    Using the old man’s yellowed map, Mattie found, at low tide,
a small arrow etched into a boulder. He found other marks, but
none of them were easy to find. It took a keen and very observant
eye to follow the aged map.
    But it was not to be. The old woodsman suffered a stroke and,
with the help of his friend, returned home without ever finding
the treasure. He would never return to St. John Island again. The
island with the pirate treasure is still a legend.

    FOR MARIE MITCHELL , THE WINTER NIGHTS when the
men talked their trail talk were openings into the world of her
grandfather, one she would never see with her own eyes. But
inside her head the tales would forever remain as vivid as the
nights when