Four years went by and one afternoon Etta and Minnie stopped in at the old home before going to a bridge party at Emma Ellis’ home. Drucilla told the girls that she was expecting a load of wood to be delivered that afternoon and intended to clean out the old oil house in which to store it. Both daughters told her to wait until the next day and they would come help her, but she told them to go on to the party and leave her alone. Taking her broom she began the cleaning as she had planned. On moving an empty bucket which had once held tar, she saw a heap of rusty cocoa tins lying in a corner. Dropping her broom she began to wring her hands and cry, something she always did when things went wrong. Without needing to look inside, he knew she had found, “Johnny’s gold”!

Drucilla called the daughters and they immediately came home. There were ten cocoa cans filled with $5, $10 and $20 gold pieces. In Etta’s words “It was the most beautiful sight I ever saw, all of those gold pieces heaped on the kitchen table.” The news spread and grew like wildfire. No one knows for sure just how much wealth those cans contained but the exaggerated estimates printed in papers all ever the country brought the family a deluge of mail. Most of the letters were asking for money for every imaginable purpose, to start a business, for schooling, hardluck stories and on and on. Some letters were ugly and threatening and there were countless proposals of marriage, all of which Drucilla ignored and continued to live in Saguache until her death on April 6, 1944.