TOM SLADE AT BEAR MOUNTAIN

THE LITTLE CAR DELIVERED A MASTERLY ASSAULT UPON AN OAK TREE.

TOM SLADE

AT BEAR MOUNTAIN

BY

PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH

Author of

THE TOM SLADE BOOKS

THE ROY BLAKELEY BOOKS

THE PEE-WEE HARRIS BOOKS

THE WESTY MARTIN BOOKS

ILLUSTRATED BY

HOWARD L. HASTINGS

Published with the approval of

THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS : : NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1925, by

GROSSET & DUNLAP

TOM SLADE AT BEAR MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER I—Springtime and Aunt Martha

I have often reflected that if it had not been for my long promised visit to my aunt up in Kingston, New York, these very extraordinary events which I purpose to narrate would never have occurred. To be sure, the silent stranger, as we called him, would still have pursued his grim course in the tragic business. But I would have been none the wiser for that. And Tom Slade would not have had the thrilling experience (dear to his adventurous heart) of participating in it.

I have found some amusement in speculating on just what might have happened if I had not stumbled into the prelude of that black drama; or rather, I should say, plunged my young friend headlong into it. For to tell you the truth I was either sitting in my wicker chair on the porch or playing golf while the whole strange affair was unfolding.

More particularly have I derived amusement from thinking how my Aunt Martha was, as one might say, remotely involved in the story. Not that she ever defied an outlaw or dug for buried treasure, for she is one of the mildest and sweetest old ladies that ever lived. But if she had not insisted on my making good the old, neglected promise to visit her in her little cottage in that quaint old city up the Hudson, why there would have been nobody to confront Slick Somers and send him sprawling to the ground. I am fond of telling my Aunt Martha that she was really the one who did that. Then she always lays down her knitting and tries gently to show me how my reasoning is defective.

Well, in any case, I started to spend a quiet, restful week with her, and I landed plunk in the middle of the eighteenth century. For here you shall find outlaws quite as bold as Jesse James or Robin Hood, and treasure too, if those are the kind of things you care about. And it all began with my trip to see Aunt Martha up in Kingston.

So I shall begin the tale of these adventures with a certain fair morning in the springtime when I set forth from my home in New Jersey and drove up the state road past the picturesque old water wheel at Arcola, and so on through Allendale and Ramsey to Suffern, which is just across the New York state line. North of this point the Ramapo Hills close in about the road and soon the highway takes a winding course among rugged mountains. Now the road is shadowed by precipitous heights, now a fair expanse of rolling country unfolds before the eye.

I think it must be in the neighborhood of Sloatsburg that the country to the east thickens into a mountainous wilderness. Beyond that flows the lordly Hudson whose general course I was following. I suppose those intervening wooded heights are what they call the Hudson Highlands. I knew that zigzagging in and out among those dense hills, this way and that, was the freakish boundary line of the Interstate Park, which forever sets a resolute limit against the sneaking advance of civilization.

As I glanced over that way I said to myself, “Master Progress, with all your fine claptrap, you may not enter here.”

For in those magnificent wilds a holy circle has been drawn where trees and trails and wild flowers and all the beauteous furniture of nature are eternally safe. “That is a fine thing in this twentieth century turmoil,” I reflected.

The birds were making a great chorus in the trees as I drove along, and I noticed a hawk poised in air above the woods. I wondered whether he was in fact within the limits of the reservation.

Then, suddenly, the spirit of the spring and the outdoors caught me and I was glad I was off on my visit. I was glad, particularly, because I had decided to drive to my destination. For you know my Aunt Martha had never in her life been in an automobile and I was thinking what an adventure it would be for her to have a ride at thirty miles an hour or so in the fragrant, blooming country.

Little I thought how that trip would mean real adventures—adventures dark and perilous. Little did I dream of the secret which lay hidden among those neighboring hills. Little did I dream of the dark story which the region to which Bear Mountain has given its romantic name, had to tell.

CHAPTER II—Past and Present

There seemed to be no roads crossing the highway I was journeying on which might lead into that mountainous reservation. I knew of the popular entrance to it on the shore of the Hudson. But I wondered whether it might not be entered at some inland point in this neighborhood. The reader who is familiar with this region will bear with me for the sake of those who live at a distance from it.

On making inquiries at Tuxedo I learned that I could enter the tract (I cannot bring myself to call it a park) by a bridge over the Ramapo River several miles north of the village. I was told that this was the only way of entering the reservation, which information I later found to be incorrect. I know now an obscure and unfrequented route into those hills which you shall hear about later.

Soon I was over the bridge, and passing a little log shelter where a couple of state troopers loitered, I knew I was within the precincts of the region dear to scouts. My intention now was to cross the reservation to the Hudson and continue my journey to Kingston along the shore road up the river.

I doubt if there is any drive hereabouts more interesting and picturesque than this Seven Lakes Drive, as they call it, which takes one in and out among those clustering heights and skirts the shores of tranquil waters. Half hidden in the surrounding woodland may be seen camping shacks and cabins whose rustic architecture consorts well with the wild surroundings.

There were men painting rowboats as I drove along, and others repairing picturesquely rough structures by the wayside. The camping season had not yet opened and there was an alluring air of preparation as I drove along.

At Kanawauke Lakes, about a third of the distance to the Hudson, is the Boy Scout Headquarters, from which point, I understand, the various camps are provisioned and supervised. A lonely boy scout in a reefer jacket was lolling here; I did not ask him his business thereabouts so early in the spring; he seemed like the first robin to reach the north.

As I drove along the winding way, up hills and down, I noticed primitive country roads here and there, and I wondered where they could lead to in that hilly wilderness. Clearly they were not incidental to the making of the Park; they had an old country look about them, and I wondered to what remote habitations they might lead.

Not so much as a hamlet is there along that scenic course, but now and again I could see embowered in the woods or standing upon distant hillsides quaint little old-fashioned houses, the humble abodes of old settlers, I supposed. There could never have been any community life in that region, for these primitive abodes were secluded and widely scattered among the mountains.

Who were the hardy folk who had reared their simple homes so near to Nature’s heart—so far removed from civilization? The thought of them suggested pioneers of old. For no cabin of a restless Daniel Boone in the depths of the Kentucky wilderness would seem more remote than these same little ramshackle houses must have been less than a score of years ago, before the dedication of this region to the revival of woods-lore and pathfinding. I wondered whether these original inhabitants or their descendants had been ousted in the interests of the reservation. That would seem a pity, I told myself. They must have been a bold, adventurous race.

It was quite interesting, the contrast between these dwellings as I saw them hidden here and there in the distance, and the consciously primitive architecture of those modern camps. I could not help it, my fancy wandered to the old life of the district, and I conjured up visions of the hardy adventurers who must once have lived there. What did they do for a living? There was no village life. There was one of these houses, two hundred years old I should say, standing a little distance back from the road, and against its unpainted, weather-beaten side rested a motorcycle. I suppose perhaps one of those clanking, decorated paragons of romance, a state trooper, lived there.

Well, I mused, you cannot make modern camping and outdoor life and all that anything like the life of real scouts and pioneers; you can’t do it. The motorcycle sneaks in when you are not looking, they have machinery for making logs correctly rough, and when they are pressed for time they put up cabins in the glare of an arc light. You cannot link up the past with the present. The one is the one thing and the other is quite another, and there you are. But they are both very interesting, and the aggressiveness of one and traces of the other one were to be seen in this wild territory extending in from the Hudson Highlands.

Then suddenly, just as this historic name of Hudson Highlands was in my thoughts, I went rolling down-hill and around sweeping turns till the majestic river opened in full view before me. And soon I was skirting an extensive lawn where games are played, I suppose, and was making a circuitous approach to the picturesque rubble-stone building which is known as the Bear Mountain Inn. This is the neighborhood of Bear Mountain, one of those frowning giants that guards the noble river in its course. In popular usage its name has been used for the whole region through which I had passed.

If I had been truly of the spirit of those hardy folk to whom I was pleased to attach so much romance and tradition I suppose I should have climbed the mountain or done something of that sort. But instead I fell back into the modern way and parking my car in front of the attractive Inn I went inside for a hearty luncheon.

CHAPTER III—A Stranger

There were some scout officials lunching at the Inn; I suppose they had come up from the city. They wore khaki and ate chicken salad and talked about some Council or other; that and a new store-house. Not many others were lunching; it was too early in the season.

On my way out I stopped and asked these gentlemen if they could tell me anything about the history of that region. They expressed regret that they could not, but were able to advise me about the road I should take in continuing my journey northward. I learned that I would pass through West Point and so on over the scenic Storm King Highway up through Cornwall and on to Newburgh.

I was just pondering on how long it would take me to reach Kingston by this unpremeditated route when I noticed standing near my car the strangest looking man I have ever seen in my whole life. He looked queer enough where he stood, amid rural surroundings; how he would have impressed one if met with in the city it was amusing to contemplate.

He was, I think, the tallest man I have ever seen; tall and spare and rawboned. Yet, somehow, tall was not the word for him. Long would be a better word. And I later learned that this word long was commonly prefixed to his already romantic title. Long Buck Sanderson was the name he went by. He was quite old; I would have said seventy years at the least. He wore a fur cap very much the worse for age, and his face was as brown and wrinkled and leathery as an old dried-up cocoanut. Probably his height (though, as I have said, it was an impression rather of length than of height) was not less than six feet seven inches, and even so some of his original stature was lost by age.

He wore a corduroy jacket which might have done duty in pre-revolutionary days. I suppose it was once yellow; it was a sort of drab when I first saw it. I do not know what his dirt-colored trousers were made of, but it was not khaki; he and all that pertained to him were of the pre-khaki era.

He had a pointed nose and even this was deeply wrinkled. Somehow it gave me the impression of a fox, though I do not mean that there was anything suggestive of slyness in his expression. His old eyes were gray and of a shrewdness which only the wilderness can breed. He wore hanging about his neck a discolored old cartridge shell of a considerable size; why I do not know. But I later learned that with the aid of this ancient trophy he could reproduce the voices of birds and beasts at will and fool them with his mimicry.

I could not repress the temptation to inspect rather frankly so strange a figure, and he, on his part, watched me with a kind of easy observation as I felt one of the front tires of my car to make sure that it was hard.

“She’s a-leakin’,” he said.

“No, she isn’t,” I said, “but she needs a little air.”

“She’s a-leakin’,” he repeated, unperturbed by my superior knowledge.

“All right, feel of it,” I laughed. “Come around here and feel of it.”

“I ain’t got no call to feel it,” he drawled; “I can hear it.”

“Standing there?” I laughed. “You must have better ears than I have.”

I went and stood beside him, in front of the car, and heard nothing.

“Hear it?” he asked.

“I certainly don’t,” I told him.

“Them ears o’ yourn is stopped up like a ole ground-hog hole,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, and by way of closing the matter finally I stooped and listened at the tire valve. As sure as life there was a faint hissing there, a slow leak. I dare say at the rate of leakage that was going on the tire might have stood up till I reached Kingston, though I changed it then and there to be on the safe side. What astounded me was that this stranger had heard at ten or twelve feet that all but inaudible hissing which bespoke the slow emission of air out of the tire. It was nothing less than miraculous.

The stranger smiled, which multiplied the wrinkles about his firm old mouth. “Them ears o’ yourn is ’baout’s clear as a ole filled up skunk hole,” he drawled.

“First it was a ground-hog, then it was a skunk,” I complained good-humoredly.

He disregarded me entirely and moved about the car squinting at it as if it did not belong to me at all. I felt quite an outsider, the comrade of skunks and ground-hogs. He seemed to think I would wait till he completed his leisurely inspection.

“If I’d a had all wuz belongin’ ter me,” he observed carelessly, “I might o’ had one o’ them pesky contraptions.”

I answered with that insincere phrase which motorists are so fond of using to the uninitiated. “You’re very lucky not to have one,” I said: “they’re a lot of trouble.” And I smiled inwardly at the thought of his driving one. “You going my way?” I added.

“Yer ain’t goin’ by south road, mebbe?” he asked.

“South road; where is that?” I said.

“Yer know Hawkeye Spoke them youngsters got?”

“I don’t,” I said, “but it’s a bully good name all right. Hawkeye. I’m going north up to Kingston.”

“They got one of them cylums there?” he said.

“Cylums?” I queried.

“Fer youngsters.”

“Oh, asylum,” I said. “Yes, I dare say they have; it’s quite a city.”

He moved out of the way so that I might start, and then I noticed that he limped.

“Is South Hawkeye, or whatever you call it, far?” I asked him.

“Whatcher call far, mebbe no,” he said, which was not altogether enlightening. “Like on ten mile,” he added after a pause.

“Well,” I said, “that’s nothing if we can get there by a road. I can have you there in half an hour. Climb in if you’re going home. Where is South Hawkeye anyway? I’ll shoot you there quicker than you could foot it.”

He climbed in and sat beside me without any polite hesitation or superfluous acknowledgments. He glanced at me with a fixed, shrewd, inquiring gaze. I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was not so astonished at the wonderful speed and convenience of a car as at my use of the word shoot. I think it amused him. He looked me all over and I fancied he was of the opinion that such a person as myself couldn’t possibly shoot. He was right at that, for I never shot anything in my life except a game of pool.

CHAPTER IV—The Obscure Trail

I had seen something of Interstate Park and now I was to have a glimpse of the old life which had been there before the region was set aside; the life and times which had caught my imagination.

Long Buck Sanderson lived in the country south of the road which is the main artery through the reservation. By his advice I returned along this road until we came again to Kanawauke Lakes where the Scout Headquarters are located. Here he directed me into a country road which ran south and we followed this for two or three miles till we came to a sort of hamlet with a tiny primitive schoolhouse and a horrible gasoline station. Of all the atrocities committed by the automobile, the killing of children, the maiming of pedestrians, this was the worst. It would have been the quaintest little hamlet in the world, but for that ungodly gas station. Sandyfield is the name on the schoolhouse.

This place was Buck Sanderson’s market town. He lived in a remote suburb, as one might say, and that was at a place another couple of miles south called Rattlesnake Gulch. To reach Rattlesnake Gulch you must leave your car to the tender mercies of Sandyfield, but you could almost carry Sandyfield away in a Ford. From this sequestered hamlet you have to hit the trail southwest for Rattlesnake Gulch. There is really no visible trail most of the way. And Rattlesnake Gulch has no other habitations except the primitive cabin of Buck Sanderson; or rather, I should say, had none, for even that homely abode is no more.

We had almost reached Sandyfield and I was preparing to part from my chance acquaintance when it jumped into my head to ask him what he had meant by saying that if he had what really belonged to him he might own one of them contraptions—meaning an automobile.

“I reckon three thousand would buy one,” he said.

“It would certainly buy a better one than mine,” I observed. “Did somebody cheat you out of three thousand dollars?” I asked. For I suspected that he might have had some differences with the government in the matter of taking over his property in the public interest, though to be sure his real estate holdings in Rattlesnake Gulch could not have been worth three hundred dollars, to say nothing of three thousand. I should say three dollars would have been a fair price.

“You come ’long daown ter my cabin, mister,” he said, “and I’ll tell yer, an’ show yer. Mebbe yer kin tell me along ’baout my little gal. Guess yer a lawyer, mebbe, huh?”

I told him no, I was an author, but that if he had anything interesting to show or tell me, I would be glad to follow him. He did not vouchsafe me any further information but started down into the woods, and after making sure that my car would be safe I followed him.

I have often wondered why I did this upon such slight provocation and with a destination elsewhere. I suppose there is a little of the spirit of adventure left in me. For one thing the old man captivated me. Perhaps also the name of Rattlesnake Gulch fascinated me. At all events, I was in for it before I knew it and the machinery of the weirdest chain of happenings I have ever heard of was set going.

Our way led down through a dense wood and up a rugged height and through a wild pass between hills. Beyond this he showed me where the White Bar Trail crossed our path, that trail of the Boy Scouts which inscribes an erratic oblong course about the region and is met at intervals by spoke trails, as they are called, which converge in a rambling way toward Scout Headquarters at the lakes. Old Buck did not take the Scouts very seriously.

All the way he was telling me a queer story. “Me’n Mink lived daown here till he got possessed,” the old man said. “Mink, me’n him was pardners.”

“You mean dispossessed—put out?” I suggested.

“They can’t put me outer here nor him neither if he was here,” he said. “I got title ter my place ’long as I live. When I go it re-verts.”

“You mean it’s taken over as part of the reservation?”

“My little gal goes ter the Home then.”

“That’s your⸺”

“She’s my granddaughter, she’s a orphant, she’s my son’s little gal.”

“Well,” I laughed, “I think you’ll live to be a hundred.”

He made no comment upon that, only trudged along ahead of me through the woods, following a sort of path of least resistance, verging here and there the easiest way; one could hardly call it a trail.

“So that’s the way they do with the old settlers, hey?” I said. “Let them stay in their old homes as long as they live⸺”

“We can’t rent or sell though,” he said.

“Well, I shouldn’t think you’d want to,” I observed. “It’s just the idea of home, of the old homes of your people, that the state is thinking about, I suppose. But wouldn’t your granddaughter have the place when—if she were old enough, I mean?”

“She ain’t like ter be old enough,” said he. “Fifteen, that’s all she is.”

“You’re mighty lucky to have her,” I observed. He stopped short, quite disregarding my last remark and appeared to be listening. “Yer hear footsteps?” he asked me.

“No,” I laughed; “you know what you said about my ears. Why, did you hear someone?”

It seemed to me that the silence of the woods was as that of a grave. An unseen bird flitted from one limb to another, causing a quick rustling of leaves as if it had been startled. I could hear a drowsy locust humming his monotonous little solo. He ceased just as I began listening, which is an uncanny way they have.

“I guess nobody but you ever comes through here,” I said.

“Mink, he’s like to come back,” he said as he moved on.

“And how long since Mink went away?”

“That’s long ago; he got possessed—him.”

“Yes, tell me about that.”

CHAPTER V—Rattlesnake Gulch

“Mink Havers, me’n him was pardners,” old Buck said.

I tried to walk alongside him the better to hear his narrative but the way through the tangled thicket was so narrow that I was forced to follow. Now and again he would hold the brush apart so that I might pass through. Occasionally we were able to proceed side by side. He told me that in the fall an old trail was visible here. In the spring and summer when the foliage was thick, he followed it by instinct. He did not go back and forth often enough to make a permanent opening through the brush.

“Yes,” I encouraged, “and he got possessed?”

“Crazy like,” he said.

“Oh, yes.” I caught his meaning then.

“We was trappers and hunters ’round here, me’n Mink was. We got bear and deer aplenty in them days. Me’n him, we didn’t think nothin’ o’ hoofin’ it ter Newburgh in them days. More often I’d hoof it ter Suffern ’n’ go daown ter Noo York on the cars. I ain’t seed a train close by fer twenty year. Ole Haley Corbett, he was engineer them days. Reckon you didn’t guess when yer looked me over I’d ben in Noo York, now, did yer? I seed ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in Fourteenth Street. Them wasn’ real bloodhounds; reckon I know a bloodhound when I see one. Hed two on ’em here jes’ after the war.”

“The Civil War, you mean?”

“Me, I wuz usual the one ter go ter Noo York with furs.”

“And I dare say you had a pretty good time when you went there, eh?”

“Ever ter Barnum’s Museum?” he asked.

“That was before my time,” I said.

“Me’n old Haley we was there nigh on every time I went daown with furs. Ever hear o’ Union Square?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Ever hear o’ Joe Pollock?”

“No, I never did. I suppose probably he’s dead.”

“Him it was I’d fetch furs to. He wouldn’ say nuthin’, I wouldn’ say nuthin’.”

“Why, was there anything wrong in it?” I asked.

“Ony huntin’ outer season, mebbe a few days or so.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Ain’t nuthin’ so wrong in that, I reckon?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” I laughed.

“Watch out fer that poison ivy,” he said, as he pulled a bush aside for me to pass through.

Here, I thought, was a rather attractive picture of old times, refreshing to think of in these days of speeding autos and rushing trains. I pictured this hunter emerging from his wild haunts with his stock of furs and walking to Suffern to get on a train for New York. “Good old Erie Railroad,” I said to myself, “and you have romance and tradition too.” It must have been fine to travel on one of those old-time trains (probably the only train to go in the day) and to hobnob with the engineer and go to Barnum’s Museum with him. I fancied Long Buck Sanderson as rather a gay visitor to the metropolis in those days. The business men of that time were not all too scrupulous either. For how about Joe Pollock, who received furs not always legally procured. Well, well.

I asked him how long ago it was that his partner, Mink Havers, had become possessed. The nearest he could come to it was that it was twenty or thirty years, or perhaps more. He seemed to remember events and places better than dates.

“Well, and what happened to Mink?” I asked him.

“It was a heap o’ years ago leastways,” he said. “I come back from Noo York with three thousand dollars. These scout boy youngsters thinks hunters ain’t never got nuthin’ but their guns. I come back with three thousand dollars—a bit more, even. I wuz always the one ter go ter Noo York ’count o’ bein’ more cityfied; good at the bargaining.”

I smiled inwardly at the thought of his being “cityfied.”

“Yes, and then?” I encouraged.

He continued, “Me’n Mink wuz livin’ in the cabin, same as you’ll see, ’n’ he wuz waitin’ fer me ter come back. Barney Wythe’s gang, they wuz there ter see him—low, sneaky varmints they wuz, every one on ’em. He was the wust. Yer know the likes o’ that tribe—game wardens⸺”

“Oh,” I said.

“They wuz tellin’ him we had a heap o’ prohibit furs. They says they wuz watchin’ on us.”

I was tactful enough to refrain from asking him if this were true.

“They wuz turnin’ the cabin outer winders huntin’ ’n’ pawin’ roun’, ’n’ all the while me comin’ back from Noo York with three thousand dollars. That wuz pay fer three stocks, that wuz; Pollock he weren’t so regular, but honest, I’ll say that. He went ter Europe owin’ us close on a thousand, he did.”

It occurred to me that the enterprising Pollock could ill have afforded to cheat these distant associates.

“Well,” he continued, “they leaves the cabin mad ’n’ pricked up like a ole porkeypine. They says they’d ketch us yet ’n’ hev us behind bars. I comes up from Suffern ’n’ cuts through along Torne Brook, never knowin’! I heads it east up by Conklin Cabin ’n’ aroun’ Pine Meadow Mountain and ’long Woodtown Trail. There wuz Mink a-waitin’ fer me right where the trail goes by Green Swamp. He says, ‘Barney Wythe’s gang wuz ter the cabin ’n’ overhauled us complete; smoked out the place like we wuz woodchucks.’ I says, ‘Well, they didn’ get nuthin’.’ Mink says, ‘No, but they’re comin’ agin ’n’ we ain’t goin’ ter fetch that money ter the cabin, not yet, Buck,’ he says. ‘They’ll want the whole on it, they will, ter leave us free, they will.’

“Well, I told him he was right in that way of it and good he come out like he did ter meet me. ‘But,’ I says, ‘I ain’t goin’ ter leave it roun’ Green Swamp here, yer can lay ter that. We want it near where we can keep a bead on it,’ I says. Wasn’ I right?”

“I guess you were,” I said.

“Well,” he continued, “we talked ’baout different places and I says Conner’s well is the best place—near and safe and all growed over.”

Suddenly he grabbed me by the shoulder with his old, brown hand and for just a second I was a little fearful that he had lured me into a trap for some dark purpose. I suppose it was because the place was so remote and dense. But it was for only a second.

“Look over there,” he said; “there’s Conner’s well. Yer see that ole foundation? That’s Conner’s ole place, that is. That’s my cabin in there among the trees.”

We were emerging from an area of underbrush into the shelter of solemn woods. In my first glance I did not see all that he had pointed out, for my eyes caught sight of a young girl standing in the open door of a log cabin, watching us eagerly as we approached. It was like a shock, withdrawing my thoughts from those old scenes with hunters and game wardens and treasure brought from distant parts so long ago, and presenting in their stead this winsome little maid waiting for her old grandfather and guardian to come home.

CHAPTER VI—Out of the Past

Buck Sanderson did not interrupt his narrative to greet his young granddaughter. Before approaching the cabin he strolled into the woods and I followed him to the old foundation, which was, perhaps, a hundred yards or so from his abode.

A small house had evidently once stood there, though the fallen stonework bore no resemblance now to a foundation. Near-by was a clump of bush and as Buck pulled some of this aside I looked down into a dank, black hole. I can smell the damp earth of the place even now as I write. As I looked in I saw a long, thin, gray something on the masonry a yard or so below the surface. At first I thought it was a snake but it was only one of the myriad tentacles of root from a great elm which stood a few feet distant. I shuddered as I looked down into the darkness of that frightful place.

“So that’s where you hid it, eh?” I commented.

“That’s where Mink fetched it to,” the old man said. “He fetched it there whilst I goes on to our cabin. No sooner I lights a candle ’n’ gets off my city clothes than along comes Barney Wythe—that much of a narrow escape it wuz fur us—just like that. He says, ‘Yer back, Buck? I reckon yer made a passable good sell in Noo York.’ That much of a narrow squeak we had of it with them varmints! He says, ‘Yer got some money, huh?’

“Well, I tells him he can search the cabin; I tells him I wouldn’t talk with the likes o’ him. He asks where Mink is and I says he wuz about his business. Well, then, they must fuss aroun’, turnin’ things about agin. I lights my pipe ’n’ lets ’em search me. I says, ‘It’s a bad season fer game in my pockets, Barney; yer kin see fer yerself.’

“Well, they says they would wait fer Mink. So they waited suspicious like, ’n’ they waited ’n’ they waited ’n’ Mink never come. I knowed he wuz holdin’ off on account of ’em—he smelled ’em. I knowed our money wuz safe in that well. Pretty soon they puts their heads together whisperin’ ’n’ they goes away ’n’ says they’ll come again.”

Old Buck Sanderson looked straight at me with his shrewd old gray eyes and he said, “Pardner, I ain’t never seed them lyin’, thievin’, law hounds since. I ain’t never seed Mink since, leastways not so he could tell me nuthin’. I waited more’n two hours, then I goes out ter look fer Mink. There he wuz, lyin’ like dead, near that there ellum, with a big cut in his forehead. I carries him to our cabin ’n’ he comes to, ’n’ don’t remember nuthin’. After that he was possessed. He was always huntin’ fer the money. He don’t know where he put it, that’s what he says. He was plum, clean gone, crazy as a loon after that. ’Long ’baout a year after that, he wanders away ’n’ I ain’t seed or heerd nuthin’ of him since.”

He ceased and I glanced about the scene, unable for a moment or so to speak. “You searched in the well, of course?” I asked.

“Sure fer certain,” says he. “But ’tweren’t no need, fer them law hounds got it. They knocked Mink’s senses out and got it. They got my pardner and they got our money. I jes’ soon drop a game warden as a skunk. I calls ’em skunks but that ain’t no way ter talk ’baout skunks—hey Junie? That ain’t no way to talk ’baout them nice, little animals what I made yer a purty fur collar out of, now is it?”

The young girl had come running to him as we approached the cabin, and it was pretty to see how she clung to him as they walked.

“Junie ain’t er goin’ ter no Home along while ole Grandpa Buck is ’raoun’, is she now? Junie, she knows more ’baout the woods ’n all them dum’ fool scout boys put tergether. Ain’t she a nice little girl—that’s Junie.”

It was a pretty picture; perhaps it was all the prettier because there was a shadow behind it. For old Buck Sanderson was not going to be in his old hunting ground much longer. He was going to another hunting ground—the Happy Hunting Ground, as the Indians called it. And what about little June Sanderson then?

CHAPTER VII—June and December

It was now mid-afternoon and I could not linger at old Buck’s cabin. But I sat upon the doorstep with him for a few minutes while he performed on that cartridge shell instrument of his. I actually saw him lure one of those noisy bluejays almost within reach of his arm, and I think he would have captured it if his granddaughter had not laughed aloud at my astonishment.

By using the shell in conjunction with a pebble he could reproduce the appalling sound of a rattlesnake. No rattlesnakes appeared, however. The girl assured me it was a “sure enough take off.” I don’t know; I have never heard a rattlesnake. I told her that if I ever heard that sound, even in church, I would run, which seemed greatly to amuse her. “’Fraid cat!” she said, and added that there were “heaps and heaps and heaps” of rattlesnakes around there. I told her one small heap would be enough for me. Her innocent amusement at my tenderfoot quality was very pretty to see. And her buoyancy against the background of her old grandfather’s lazy manner and drawling voice was very attractive.

I suspected she was right about the rattlesnakes. I have always associated rattlesnakes with hollows and gullies and impenetrable depths of thicket. Whenever you visit a neighborhood of weird and haunting wildness you will be told (by people who have not put it to the test) that there are rattlesnakes there. The rattlesnake seems to be a sort of symbol of the dark and forbidding spots in nature—gloomy fastnesses, dank caverns on mountainsides, and the like.

Be that as it might, this spot seemed to me the very ideal habitat of those dreadful reptiles. It derived its name not only from them, but from a small gulch which broke the woods and was all but hidden by a maze of interwoven brush which grew in the depth of that horrid place and luxuriantly overflowed its brink. You might step into this gaping trap of nature without knowing it.

Long Buck told me that once a brook had flowed through that overgrown hollow and that a time had been when he and his primitive neighbor Conner had got their water there. What a company they must have made in those old days—Buck and Mink Havers and Conner! What a life they must have led in that remote wilderness!

Buck’s cabin was upon the brink of this gulch and by following its course (which as I said was now indicated by a ridge of overflowing brush) you came to the area of scattered stone which had once been the foundation of Conner’s cabin. Near to that, and somewhat included in the area of overgrowing thicket, was the black hole which had been Conner’s well. It seemed unlikely that rattlesnakes would miss such a place. It was hard for me to believe that not so far distant the encircling White Bar Trail of the Boy Scouts crossed the invisible private trail of these lusty old settlers. Though to be sure the White Bar Trail is no boulevard.

Old Buck accompanied, or rather guided, me back to the hamlet, and June went along oblivious to crowding brush and prickly brambles. Once she really startled me by calling, “Rattlesnakes!” But she played the trick too much, as children will, and I became a model of courage, heedless of her warnings.

The last I saw of the two of them, they stood near my car where it was parked in a sort of alcove in the country road, and they made a very pretty picture—June and December. As I rode away I saw them return along the trail until their own familiar woodland again closed in about them. Then I was sorry I had not asked old Buck about the story of the girl’s parents. I have never known where they lived nor how and when they died.

I had now, as they say, to go all around the mulberry bush again, or part way at least, and as I drove up what they call the Haverstraw road toward the headquarters lake (as I called it) the thought that was uppermost in my mind was that a lucky chance had put me in the way of meeting, and even visiting, one of the picturesque old settlers of that region.

As sure as I am sitting here writing, old Buck’s rather dubious reminiscence of his former glory and his clashes with the authorities did not greatly interest me. Certainly I was not greatly prejudiced against him because he had circumvented one or another good regulation of the state, goodness knows how many years ago. I have yet to hear anybody denounce Robin Hood for his outlawry; I know that the modern world thinks only of his romance. A few bears or deer or wildcats more or less before I was born are not worrying me now.

But Long Buck Sanderson is one of my treasured memories. I confess that I could not help wondering whether this shrewd, hardy old woodsman had perhaps regarded the laws of civilization rather lightly; that would not necessarily conflict with a sturdy sense of private honor—the fine, crude honor of pioneers. As I drove along part of an old stanza came jumping into my head.

For why? Because the good old rule,

Sufficeth them. The simple plan.

That he shall take who has the power,

And he shall keep who can.

And anyway, the most conspicuous thing about Long Buck Sanderson was his love for his little orphan granddaughter, and his concern for her when she should find herself alone in the world. So I think he could never have been very bad, any way you look at it....

CHAPTER VIII—Tom and Brent

I am now approaching the point of my withdrawal from this narrative to make way for the grand hero, Tom Slade. I think you know him. I take pleasure in setting down here that of all the crack-brained disciples of adventure he is positively the most hopeless. Brent Gaylong is not quite so bad, but bad enough.

I spent two very pleasant weeks with my Aunt Martha in Kingston and I took her driving here and there. I shall never forget the drive around the great Ashokan Reservoir nor the luncheon we had at the picturesque little Watson Hollow Inn. It was restful to be in company of a sweet old-fashioned lady like Aunt Martha. Why in goodness’ name I had neglected her for so many years I can’t imagine.

She told me that the old hunters who had lived back in the Catskills when she was a young girl in that same quaint little house, had been a rather questionable lot. It seemed that many of them carried on banditry as a sort of sideline. It was interesting to hear her talk of those old days and the wild surrounding country. I can’t for the life of me guess why people always turn their thoughts to the Far West when they feel the need of trappers and bandits and such. In the Ramapo Hills south of Central Valley there lived not sixty years ago an outlaw band who robbed stage-coaches and buried their booty in the ground.

Well, the very first evening of my return to Bridgeboro up came Tom Slade and Brent Gaylong (whose folks have lately moved to town) and as we sat on the porch I told them in detail of my pleasant encounter with Long Buck Sanderson. They made a funny picture, those two, as they sat together in the swing seat, Tom in the khaki that he always wears in deference to his official connection with Temple Camp, and Brent, long and lanky, with his steel spectacles halfway down his nose. He placed them that way because I suppose it pleased him to have them thus absurdly adjusted while listening to a thrilling tale of adventure. He looked soberly receptive.

“Proceed with your narrative,” he said.

So I proceeded with my narrative, and when I had finished Tom said, “That’s all pretty good. But let me tell you one thing. I know more about these things than you do. I’ve met in with some shyster hunters in my camp work and I’ve met a lot of game wardens and rangers, too. You’ll find game wardens a pretty decent set of men—straight and clean. If a man’s going to go in for graft he doesn’t hit the woods—you can chalk that up on your score-board. They never took the old codger’s money—no siree!”

“What do you know about game wardens in those old days?” I said. “You’re only twenty-three years old. Those were rough, lawless times. These are the times of daily good turns.”

“And three thousand dollars is a lot of money to come home with,” said Tom.

“It’s more than I ever came home with,” said Brent.

“All right,” said I, waxing interested in the point. “Let’s say that Long Buck was wrong. Let’s say that that gang⸺”

“They were no gang,” Tom shot back at me; “they were there to protect the wild life—for you and for me!”

“For me too,” said Brent.

“All right,” I said, undaunted. “Let’s say that Barney Wythe and his associates didn’t knock Mink Havers on the head and get the money. Where is the money, then? It isn’t there in the well. Where is it? What became of it?”

“Did you look under the Victrola when you were up there?” Brent asked soberly.

“How about Havers?” Tom suggested.

“You mean he put something over on his partner?” I shot back. “Let me tell you, if you can defend your game wardens, I can defend my woodsmen; they weren’t that kind and you can chalk that up on your score-board.”

“Maybe we don’t know the whole story,” Tom said. “Three thousand bucks was a lot⸺”

“Oh, it was payment for much stock and service, I suppose,” I said. “I dare say those old hunters let their accounts run up. You don’t think old Buck was a highwayman, do you? They had a lot of rugged honesty, that old race.”

“Law one, a scout is trustworthy,” said Brent.

“Then, now, and always,” I added more seriously.

So then we all sat in silence, the two of them swinging in the seat.

“So there you are,” I said. “I don’t see that you’ve helped matters any, you’ve simply created a mystery.”

“What could be nicer?” said Brent.

“If the officials didn’t get their fists on the money, and if Mink Havers didn’t get it (which of course he didn’t), why, then, it’s still up there somewhere.”

“We’ll go and get it,” said Brent. “With my share I’m going to get a Ford sedan—don’t try to talk me out of it, I always wanted a Ford sedan.”

“Then, it’s still up there,” I said, with a complacent show of triumph.

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I was sorry I had said them. For there sat Tom Slade staring at me as if seized by a sudden thought.

“Sure it’s up there,” he said. “But it won’t be, not when we get through.”

“Good heavens, you’re not going hunting for buried treasure?” I gasped. “I always knew you were a bug, but I never supposed you’d go in for the Captain Kidd stuff.”

“Have you got a couple of shovels you’re not using?” Brent asked.

“You’ll have to take off those spectacles first,” I said.

CHAPTER IX—End of the Trail

“Anyway, let’s go up and call on the old fellow,” said Tom. “I’d kinder like to see him. We can go in my flivver⸺”

“Speaking of rattles,” said Brent; “that is, rattlesnakes.”

“We don’t have to go way up to Tuxedo,” said Tom. “I’ve got a map of that region. We can shoot in at Sloatsburg. I bet that’ll let us right into the section you’re talking about. They’re building a dam in there; there’s going to be a new lake. I’ve been in that way a mile or so already, it’s a pretty punk road.”

“In that case we’ll go in your flivver,” I said. “That will have the advantage of making it unlikely that we’ll ever get there. I am not in favor of this trip. I’d like to show you my old settler but I don’t want to start anything.”

“Come ahead, we’ll bang up there,” said Tom.

I might have known it.

Now there is a way that you can get into the Interstate Park reservation by turning in at Sloatsburg. It was by some such route that Long Buck had entered that region on his memorable return from New York. But this route is so little known that even a state trooper in that very neighborhood told me he had never seen or heard of it.

That was the way we went in Tom’s flivver. We turned in at Sloatsburg and went in past what they call Burnt Sawmill Bridge. They are building a dam there now to flood the section west of Brundige Mountain, and by the time this chronicle is in your hands there will be a fine new lake there which I am afraid will swallow up the old cave below the mountain.

Pretty soon we hit into a road going southeast and went through about the most unfrequented country that ever a road traversed. Then we came to St Johns, which is a picturesque little church (I can’t imagine who attends it). The rest of the municipal furniture seems to consist of a girl, a house, a turtle, and four cows. Then we came to Sandyfield, approaching it from the west instead of from the north. This obscure route had taken us through about the loneliest section of country that I have ever known within a stone’s throw of civilization.

We parked the flivver exactly where I had parked my car, and I modestly resigned to Tom the task of piloting us through the woods. I was astonished at his skill in doing this. Like old Buck, he seemed to recognize a trail where there was no trail, and at times he would be always looking to right and left trying to discover the path of least resistance. Now and then he asked me questions, and once or twice my memory came to his aid. It is wonderful what a scout and woodsman he is. As for Brent, he moved along soberly. I don’t know whether his soberness is altogether a humorous pose; with his steel spectacles and his intentness on the pathfinding he seemed to me excruciatingly funny.

One familiar thing (trail signs, I think they call them) I did see, and I have thought of it often since. I plucked from a bush a little wisp of gingham that was fluttering like a tiny pennant in the breeze. No doubt it was torn from the simple dress of my little friend June Sanderson, perhaps upon that very trip when she and old Buck accompanied me back to Sandyfield. “We’re on the right track,” I said, waving it at Tom. But in a way we were not exactly upon the right track either.

“Look here, Tomasso,” I said to Tom; “I don’t want you to get into an argument with the old man. I don’t want you to crack up game wardens. Above all, I don’t want you to tell him that those fellows never got his money. He knows they did and that’s enough.”

“If it makes him happy to think they got his money, let him think so,” said Brent. “He might be disappointed if he thought it was safe and secure now.”

“Well, you mind what I say,” I repeated to Tom. “You can never convince or change a person of his age; especially one of his type. We’ll just make a little call. Barney Wythe got the money whether he got it or not and game wardens are varmints.”

“Absolutely,” said Brent.

But, indeed, there was no need to coach Tom in the matter of handling my old chance acquaintance. There was no need of my concern for the old man’s feelings. I need not have troubled myself about respecting his sturdy prejudices. Indeed, there was no need of our following that obscure trail at all. For Long Buck Sanderson’s cabin was closed up tight with a rough board nailed across the door. He had gone where there were no game wardens—or only good game wardens. And it mattered very little where his precious three thousand dollars were after all.

CHAPTER X—The Storm Blows Over

They told us at Sandyfield that old Buck had died of pneumonia and been buried somewhere near Mt. Ivy. As the old hunter had anticipated, and dreaded I think, June had been sent to an orphanage in the neighborhood of Haverstraw.

Sandyfield, it seemed, was independent of the reservation, notwithstanding that it was within its boundaries; it was part of the township of Haverstraw. I suppose that this fact operated in the choice of an asylum for the girl. I had an idea of hunting the place up and going to see her, but you know how it is—good intentions.

I was relieved to learn that old Buck had not been laid to rest in some potter’s field but in a quiet little rural cemetery in the region which he knew so well. He was the last inhabitant of Rattlesnake Gulch.

“So that’s that,” I said, as we drove back down the state road. “I wish now that you could have seen him.”

I don’t suppose I would have gone to see him again myself, but now that I couldn’t I felt that I would miss him.

“Well, there’s one thing,” Tom said. “I’m going up there to camp and hunt for that money.”

“Treasure, you should call it,” said Brent.

“Well, then, treasure,” said Tom.

“And when it comes to using the right words,” I said, “nut is the word to use for a treasure hunter. I’ve known you to do many reckless things, but until now I’ve never known you to make yourself ridiculous!”

He just drove along, lickety split, in his old Ford; I never was so shaken in my life.

“It’s a stirring ride, isn’t it?” said Brent, in his funny way. “Don’t you feel all stirred up?”

“You’re not in with me, then?” Tom asked.

“I? I should hope not! Do you think I want to get my picture into the Pathé News, digging treasure? Do you suppose I want all the boy scouts up that way laughing at me?”

“You coming?” he asked Brent.

“If I thought I’d get into the Pathé News I’d certainly go,” Brent said. “I’ve seen so many airplanes and dirigibles in the Pathé News that it would be a pleasure to dig into the solid earth. What they need in the Pathé News is more underground stuff. I rather think I’ll go.”

“Well,” I said, “all I can say is that I’m sorry I ever told you anything about it—either one of you. Brent, I would say that you at least have too much sense of humor to go hunting for hidden treasure.”

“That’s just what you need, a sense of humor,” said Brent.

“Well, I don’t know but what you’re right,” I added half-disgustedly.

“We’ll go up there,” said Tom, intent upon his breakneck driving, “and we’ll camp right in old Buck’s cabin; I can get permission from the Interstate Park bunch, all right. We won’t have to say what we’re there for. We’ll have the whole summer to hunt.”

“How about Temple Camp?” I asked him.

“I can get leave all right,” he shot at me.

“And what are you going to do with the—the treasure—when you get it, if I may ask?”

“We’re going to turn it over to June Sanderson,” said Tom.

“Then we’re going to marry her and live happily forever after,” said Brent. “With the money from the Pathé News I’m going to get my laundry.”

I said, “Tom, if you ask for leave of absence from Temple Camp to spend the summer in such a fool enterprise you put yourself on a level with freaks and fanatics the country over. You’ll have every boy scout up in that place laughing at you⸺”

“Let ’em laugh,” said Tom decisively.

“Let me ask you,” I continued, “did you ever know of any one finding hidden treasure? Did you ever know any one that knew any one that ever heard of any one who was personally acquainted with anybody that ever really found any hidden treasure—did you?”

Brent said, “That’s rather a long question; let me think a minute.”

“If you could just name me one person,” I said. “Why, there was a young fellow, a millionaire’s son, who fitted up a yacht and went down off the coast of South America fishing for a sunken Spanish galleon. He ended in an insane asylum. There was a man in Massachusetts who had some inside dope on where Captain Kidd bunked some bars of gold and stuff—Baxter, his name was. They wouldn’t take him for service overseas because he was mentally deficient.”

“Thanks muchly,” said Tom. “You don’t have to be connected with this.”

“Heaven forbid,” I said.

“If it’s a question of reason and common sense⸺”’ he began.

“Will you please drive a little slower?” I begged.

“If it’s a question of reason and common sense,” he continued, “where is the money if it isn’t somewhere up there? You think the game wardens cracked Munk or Mink, or whatever his name was, on the head and got it somehow. I don’t believe that; I say those men were on the level—I know the type. All right, then, you say Mink didn’t pull a game on his partner—you know that type. Well, then, Mink left the money somewhere, didn’t he? Do you see anything so ridiculous about that? Where is it?”

“I was wondering,” Brent said; “of course, this is only a suggestion⸺”

“That’s what I want—suggestions,” said Tom.

“I was wondering if the rattlesnakes could have eaten it. No?”

“Tom,” I said, “I’m going to ask you seriously, now before we get to Bridgeboro, don’t fly out of your senses and go hunting for treasure—that’s old stuff. I wouldn’t even put it in a story. The way to get money is to earn it⸺”

“Now you’re making a noise like a papa,” he said.

“You go up to Temple Camp and work on your job and earn your salary,” I told him; “don’t be a quitter. At least don’t be a quitter to go chasing a rainbow. Everybody respects you in town; don’t make a fool of yourself. I’m sorry I told you. If you get a leave of absence from Temple Camp to go treasure hunting, why, Temple Camp is paying for the treasure hunt. If that tastes good in your mouth, all right.”

That got him. I honestly believe that it was the only thing I said that had any weight with him. In any case, weeks went by and I never heard any more about treasure hunting in Rattlesnake Gulch. I saw Tom about town and once he told me that he had been up to Temple Camp and was back in Bridgeboro to see Mr. Temple about something or other. He seemed to be in a hurry, as he usually is, and I assumed that he had come safely through the treasure-hunting peril. Anyway, he did not speak of it.

As for Brent, I don’t think he was disappointed at all. I don’t think it makes much difference to him what he does; he seems always to be whimsically ready for anything. That’s the funny thing about him.

CHAPTER XI—News from Another Quarter

So there you are. I was out of it and I was glad to think that Tom and Brent were out of it. I felt almost as if I had incited a couple of boys to go hunting Indians. Though, to be sure, Tom and Brent are “grown-up fellows,” as boys say. I went in for golf at the North Bridgeboro Country Club and a couple of times I went fishing up the river. And in my work and summer diversions I forgot all about Long Buck Sanderson and his deserted, sequestered home. After all, the episode had loomed large only while it lasted.

Then, all of a sudden, Tom Slade had a fatal relapse. Up he came to my house one evening waving a newspaper in my face. I should tell you that Temple Camp (the big Scout community up in the Catskills) is advertised in newspapers all over the land. Tom attends to these matters along with six million other duties, and I never in my life knew any one so thoroughly well posted on Scout activities the country over as he. He is all the time foraging in western dailies, and this paper with which he now confronted, or rather menaced, me was the St. Louis Star.

“Here’s something to open your eyes,” he said, all excitement. “Now who’s a freak and a bug? Read that!”

The news item which confronted me was headed, SKULL CURE SUBJECT DISAPPEARS, and was as follows. I copy it word for word from the old yellowed clipping with the red stain on it which Tom has carried in his wallet these many months.

The Missouri Institution of Physicians and Surgeons is greatly interested in the case of an inmate of the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane who escaped yesterday. The man was known as John Mink and he had been in the institution for the last fourteen years where he was taken following the failure of a St. Louis jury to convict him of theft upon the ground of insanity. He was pronounced a typical case of aphasia, or amnesia, which is that phase of the former disorder characterized by loss or morbid impairment of the memory.

The man’s history and antecedents were not known to the authorities, and he came to be known as Treasure Jack because he was forever making vague references to a bait-box full of money which he had once put in the ground. He was harmless and amiable and able to work with his hands at making baskets in the institution.

Recently the man was the subject of an experimental operation by Doctors Calloway and Waring which resulted in certain encouraging signs pointing to complete success. A piece of bone which was pressing against the brain was removed. Shortly afterward the old inmate made one or two rational and very interesting references to his boyhood but seemed unable to recall any significant details which might have enlightened his keepers as to his history prior to the time of his arrest.

Following his operation, John Mink was placed in the observation department of the institution where he showed an encouraging inclination to read, something which he had never done before. His case attracted a good deal of attention. He was lately given a copy of Stevenson’s Treasure Island to read in the hope that the title and subject matter dealing with hidden treasure might recall certain episodes in his own life. He did not react to this except to remember that he had been to sea, and he has the tattooed design of an anchor on his arm which he had never before been able to explain.

The apparent convalescence of this interesting subject was interrupted on Monday last by the departure for Europe of the young physician who has been personally caring for him and watching his case. He suffered a nervous attack on the following day, and that evening, evidently under the spell of a delusion that he was pursuing someone, jumped from a second-story window of the institution and has not been seen or heard of since.

His disappearance has been broadcasted by western radio stations and it is hoped that some trace of him may be secured in that way.

“Well,” said Tom, “what do you think of that? Is that Mink Havers or not?”

“Why, it may be,” I answered. “Mink is an unusual name, but this man was known as John Mink.”

“Treasure Jack,” urged Tom. “And let me tell you something,” he added, waxing very excited. “Mink was probably the only name he remembered. When a person who runs foul of the law doesn’t know his name or refuses to give it or gives a name that they know isn’t right, they put him down in the records as John. Public insane asylums are full of Johns. It’s sort of—a name they use like John Doe. Why, anybody with any sense at all would know this was Mink Havers!”

“Well,” I laughed, “I suppose I haven’t any sense, then. I don’t know that this is your unknown friend of long ago, Mink Havers—I tell you frankly. But it may be, for all I know.”

“He talked of treasure and they called him Treasure Jack,” said Tom, conclusively.

“All right, Tomasso,” I laughed, “if we’re going to match facts, the man seems likely to have been a sailor; he had an anchor tattooed on his arm.”

“He might have been a sailor once upon a time,” Tom shot at me.

“Do sailors become hunters?” I ventured.

“Why not?”

“All right, then,” I said, “here’s another. He spoke of money he hid away as being in a bait-box. Bait-boxes, all that I’ve ever seen, are quite large and made of metal. Did old Buck carry his precious money from New York in a metal bait-box and hand that over to his partner? Is that the way you carry your money? You can put three thousand dollars in a wallet.”

“Maybe they had only coin in those days.”

“And maybe they hadn’t,” I laughed. “Look here, Tomasso,” I added, folding the newspaper up and rapping him on the head with it. “If you want to go treasure hunting, go ahead and do it. So far as I can see, the matter stands about as it did a month ago.”