"Makes sense." I went back to my first search zone and pounded the shovel harder into the ground, in much the same way I would break up winter ice up north.

Within minutes I had success. When the clank came, I knew I had struck pay dirt—then again, maybe I just hit a rock.

Emil's local helpers took over, digging a wide hole to start and slowly going deeper once they had room to work. They uncovered the headstone almost immediately. They picked it up reverently and set it down at my feet. I knelt down and brushed it off, using my fingers to remove the dirt from the grooves of the RIP. The grooves weren't deep to begin with—John hadn't put a lot of work into it. The RIP was almost gone altogether. Once it was wiped off, I moved it away from the dig site.

I had to give John credit. He wasn't lazy. He dug his hole deep. A box about two-feet long, two feet deep, and a foot wide was settled about three feet from the surface. Once the box was cleared of dirt, the two shovelers reached in to pull the box out. Nothing. It wouldn't budge.

"If that's full of gold," said Mario, "it's going to take more than two people to get it out."

It became a group effort. Using branches as levers and group muscle, we tried to extract it from its resting place. Unfortunately, the box was made of a thin metal, and it hadn't stood the test of time. As we moved the box, it began to crumble.

"We'll have to open it in the hole," I said.

I jumped down and, with a fair amount of ease, ripped the top off the box. I stood there staring. Finally, somebody had told the truth. It was packed tightly with gold bars. The bars were dirty, but there was no doubt that they were real.

We had all been holding our collective breath. I could hear the exhales.

"Well that's impressive," said Emil dryly.

"Kinda," I echoed.

We took turns in the hole passing out the bars. When we were done, we had a nice pile. One of the locals had gone for a wagon. I jumped back into the hole for a last look around. No eggs. I looked up at Sabrina. She didn't seem all that disappointed. She reached a hand in to help me up.

"Hey," she whispered. "Don't look so sad. We just solved an amazing mystery. We'll save the eggs for another day."

Then it hit me just how much she was right. What we had just accomplished was nothing short of amazing. However, the joy was short-lived.

The local with the wagon arrived a few minutes later. It was like a garden wagon, but slightly bigger—probably something they had used in the factory. Once it was stacked high with the gold, we began our journey back to Emil's house to figure out what to do with it.