When the sheriff dropped me off at home, it was coming on dark. I told Pa and my brothers the news of the day and heard about their day in town after I left them. It surprised me to think about leaving Mom at the funeral parlor. It seemed so long ago, though it was just this morning.
Finally, I told them about the code and showed them the photographs of the coded paper.
“It’s a good thing you know so much about codes, Pa.” I told my father.
“Well, I will tell you something I did not tell the sheriff.” Pa said. “I believe George Nelson was a never a Mason at all. That is why I didn’t hang around him at the pecan tree. He didn’t know anything about the Masonic traditions or stories or degrees. Whenever he ran across a Mason or came to a lodge meeting, he only wanted help decoding that paper. Since none of us in the lodge thought he was a real Mason, none of us helped him with the project. But, it looks like I will get to take a whack at it now.”
“Let’s get started,” I gushed.
“Hey, I want to help, too,” Sam chimed in.
Pa held up both hands like he was stopping a team of bolting mules. “Let’s wait till morning. I find I can think clearer after a night’s sleep, and we won’t have to pay for candles or kerosene in the morning light.” Changing the subject, he added, “Izzy turned that rabbit of yours into a good stew. Tastes like one your Mom would stir up. Are you hungry?”
They had left the stew simmering over the coals so it was still hot. Izzy had added carrots, potatoes and some onions. The little bit of rabbit meat went a lot farther mixed with potatoes. I scraped my bowl to get it all. Pa was right it did taste like Mom’s cooking.
The next morning, we woke up to about 4 inches of snow. You could tell without looking when snow blanketed the cabin because it was so quiet. You could not hear any of the birds or wind noises that usually accompany morning. Izzy had his nose against the glass of the window. “It is still snowing,” Izzy said.
“Looks like kind of a day off.” Pa said. “Pete, why don’t you take the shotgun down to the woods and try your luck? Ike says there is a flock of turkeys in there and one of those would make several meals. Izzy, did you watch your Mom bake enough bread to get that done yourself?”
Both boys answered with a respectful, “Yes, Sir.” to Pa’s suggestions. Izzy was already dressed. He pulled on his coat and went outside to fetch some kindling and fire wood for the stove. Pete was looking for his thick wool socks to make hunting on snowy ground more bearable.
We all had toast and tea for breakfast. Mom always said, “Toast and tea are just bread and water, but a little bit of warmth makes breakfast so much more civilized.” Toast and tea was what Mom would want. “Honey helps too,” I thought to myself. I liked honey on the sour dough toast to take some of the “sour” out of it. I never really liked the sour dough bread Mom made, but it looks like that is how Izzy will make it too. I will keep my eye on the honey jar.
Pa drank the tea out of deference of Mom today. But then he set a pot of coffee on the coals of the fireplace to warm-up. “Coffee will help us with the code, men.” Pa told us.
Pa got us a tablet of paper and some pencils. I pulled out my jack-knife and put a point on the flat pencil Pa handed me. Sam and I worked on copying the photograph numbers and commas onto a sheet of tablet paper. Sam sat beside me trying to get a good look at the photographs and did the same for his worksheet. Pa was counting the instances of each number. Since “e” is the most commonly used letter in English, usually, the number that occurs the most often is equal to the letter “e”. Sometimes, in a simple code, just knowing the frequency of letter use can be used as a key to decipher the code. Pa had a book from the Masons that told secrets like that, though you could get the same information from counting letters in newspapers.
We have a lot of newspapers. None of them are new news because they are old papers. All of us boys and Pa are avid readers (when there is time.) Whenever Pa goes into Hackett or down to Mrs. Corrigan’s, he brings back a stack of papers that various people save for us. Right now, there are two big stacks of newsprint waiting for sunny weather when we can read a little in the evenings. Since it is snowing today, if we get our puzzle solved, we will all get some reading time.
“Hey, Pa.” I said.
He looked at me impatiently. “I am trying to count here,” he said.
“OK, it’ll wait. Sorry.”
He picked up the count where he left off.
After a few more minutes of counting and transcribing, Pa asked me, “OK what is so important?”
“You know this word “aren’t’ on the back of the note? I was thinking. It is really two words with three letters each. It is really ‘ARE NOT.’ What if A=N, R=O, and E=T?”
“Well,” Pa said, “it’s a good idea, but the only way to test it is to try it. See if it decodes anything.”
[Author’s note: It has been many years since I have seen this code. I present the key and the code’s translation only to push the story along. For you code buffs, I am sorry I can’t be more specific.]
“Pa,” I said.”I will tell you something I didn’t tell the sheriff, also. I found this gum wrapper under the back seat of that Packard funeral car. It looks like it might be a key.” I fished the wrapper out of my breast pocket and handed it to Pa. I could tell from his face it would be a lecture for me when he got me alone. It would be a “little wood-shed session,” as he called those times.
Pa counted the two rows of numbers. “Twenty-six numbers by two rows. Yes, I would say you just saved us a deal of work. We will have to talk about how you came to possess it, however.”
Pa began converting the numbers of alphabet positions into two rows. The top row read, “a-q-u-i-c-k-b-w-n-f-x-j-u-m-p-o-v-r-t-h-e-l-z-y-d-g” It was the famous typing test with all repeated characters removed.
a-q-u-i-c-k-b-w-n-f-x-j-m-p-s-o-v-r-t-h-e-l-z-y-d-g
The second line read:
n-p-c-q-r-w-g-e-l-s-y-d-h-a-v-u-i-o-k-b-t-n-f-x-j-s
The decoded message ready to be read in rotary fashion from the inside out, starting at upper left corner "b" and working clockwise around the folds.
The final message with capitals and punctuation added I read aloud, making a hash out of the pronunciation:
“Bokoshe OK. J. Bois D'Arc here. 1789 Jarvis RD. Burning through money. Come soon.”
Pa read it correcting the pronunciation and adding implied words:
"Bo-Ko-Shay Ok[lahoma,] J. Bo Darc here. 1789 Jarvis Road. [He is] burning through [the] money. Come [here] soon.
"Pa smiled and said, "There is a Bokoshe is about 25 miles east of here. No wonder this note remained untranslated. A coded message relies a lot on its mother tongue to provide clues how to decode it. Spaces and punctuation and capital letters are not generally sent coded because you can infer them from the language rules. This short sentence has English, Indian and French words and proper names of a town, a street and a man. No one could crack it without the key you found, Ike. "
"So here is what I know from reading the paper last year. Baby Face - the real Baby Face Nelson, was in jail for robbing rich folks in Chicago. He was found hiding out on Indian land in Wisconsin. That Indian family lit out for parts unknown. My guess Oklahoma is where they went because they could blend in among other natives without arousing too much attention. Baby Face probably sent someone to find them IF he thought the Indian family had his money. I remember Baby Face got an odd sentence - one year to life in prison. That is quite a difference from minimum to maximum. The length of the sentence was to be determined by if Baby Face returned the money. "
"That is where this coded message comes in. The recipient probably had the key, or the key was sent in a different message."
"The rest of this is purely a guess. Baby Face wanted to return the money to get the minimum sentence. The money and the Indian family had already disappeared to Oklahoma."
Just then, Pete came in, stomping his boots to clear the snow. He held up a fine hen turkey by her legs. Her wings were half spread and akimbo. Duke found his spot near the fire. The dog was soaked with melted snow.
"Well," Pete beamed, "with all your talk of turkeys in the woods, we never saw one till today, when I was the hunter." It would have been hard to knock the big grin off his face. "I bow to you superior hunting skill." I did a little bow from the waist with a flourished salute of the right hand across my chest like Errol Flynn does in the movies.
"I could have had the Tom, but I am counting on him to keep the flock together until after we pick our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners from his birds."
"A wise decision," I agreed. "I will get a pot going and we will get those feathers plucked." I went outside with the big stew-pot to fetch some water.
I pulled on my gloves and headed out to the pump. The pump was a miracle of 1933 engineering. It was freeze proof and needed no priming and pulled water up from 35 feet using staged valves. What will they think of next?