Kitabı oku: «The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove: or, The Missing Chest of Gold», sayfa 10
CHAPTER XXV
ANDY SHANKS, EAVESDROPPER
Suddenly the boys heard two voices raised in what seemed to be an altercation of some kind. The sound appeared to come from behind a board fence a few feet away.
One of the speakers was evidently threatening, while the other was begging off from something that had been demanded of him.
“I tell you, I can’t,” the latter was saying. “I’ve already given you every cent of my allowance and I’ve borrowed from every friend I have in this town. You can’t get blood out of a stone. If gold dollars were selling for fifty cents, I couldn’t buy one.”
“I tell you, you must,” the other said fiercely. “I know well enough you can pawn something. You can get a few plunks on that ring and scarf-pin of yours. I’ve long ago put everything I had in hock. Come now, Sid,” and the voice became more wheedling in tone, “you know well enough this state of things won’t last long. The old man will take me back again and I’ll be rolling in money. Then I can pay back all you’ve let me have.”
Fred and Teddy looked at each other with a conviction that flashed on both of them at the same moment.
“Where have I heard those dulcet tones before?” murmured Fred. “Either I’m going crazy or that’s Andy Shanks.”
“And the other is Sid Wilton,” replied Teddy. “Come to think of it, I heard he lived down this way somewhere. I wonder what all this gab is about.”
“It seems to me that Andy’s father has thrown him out to face life on his own hook,” conjectured Fred.
“And he doesn’t seem to be making a success of it,” judged Bill.
Just then the two debaters emerged from behind the fence and came face to face with their former schoolmates.
The former bully of Rally Hall and his crony started back, and for a moment were so nonplussed that they could do nothing but stare.
“How are you, Sid?” said Fred, breaking a silence that was beginning to be awkward.
Sid made a stammering reply.
Andy had flushed angrily at the sight of the boys and seemed about to indulge in his usual bluster, but a thought appeared to come to him suddenly that made him change his mind.
“How are you, fellows?” he asked, in a way that was meant to be ingratiating, and holding out his hand.
The movement was so wholly unexpected that for an instant the boys hardly knew what to do. They all disliked him heartily, and the Rushton boys in particular had been bitterly wronged by him during their first year at Rally Hall. Still, it would have seemed ungracious to reject the proffered hand, so they took it under protest, mentally resolved to get away from him as soon as possible.
It was a different Andy from the one to whom they had been accustomed. He had formerly been expensively dressed, and had borne himself with the arrogance of the snob and the brutality of the bully. Now he was beginning to look shabby and his eyes had a furtive look very different from the insolent assurance that the boys remembered.
They exchanged a few commonplace remarks, and then, as Andy made no move toward following Sid, who had excused himself and gone on, Bill finally gave him a gentle hint.
“Well, so long, Andy,” he said. “We’ll have to be going.”
Then the motive for Andy’s sudden change of front became apparent.
“Wait just a minute,” he said rather sheepishly. “Will you fellows do me a favor and lend me a five spot? I’m stony broke–not a dime to bless myself with. You know the governor has gone back on me. Says he won’t give me a red cent, and that I’ll have to learn to hoe my own row. I’m up against it for fair, and I know you fellows won’t mind lending me a little something. I’ll pay it back as soon as the old man comes across, which he’s bound to do sooner or later. What do you say?”
Fred, who remembered how the bully had tried to put on him the theft of some examination papers at Rally Hall, hesitated, but Teddy, who noticed how shabby and downcast Andy looked, intervened.
“I guess we might fix it up,” he ventured to say. “Just let me speak to the others for a minute.”
They had a short conference, as a result of which Teddy collected and handed over the five dollars that Andy desired.
Andy’s thanks were profuse, but after having tucked the money safely away in his pocket, something of his old surly manner returned. He took leave of his benefactors with scant ceremony, but the boys were so glad to get rid of him that they hardly noticed this.
“After all,” remarked Bill, as they watched Andy go down the street, “five dollars isn’t so much to pay for getting free from that bird. I’d be willing to lose a lot more than that if I could be sure of never seeing him again.”
The boys made their purchases and took their way to the place that Lester had in mind to eat their lunch. They found themselves on a high sand dune, overgrown with coarse grass. It afforded an excellent view of the sea and also furnished a comfortable place to lean against.
“This is great!” exclaimed Ross. “Let’s get out that grub and pitch in. I could eat a barrel full of brass tacks and never know I had eaten anything.”
“I guess you wouldn’t know anything very long,” laughed Lester, as he proceeded to lay out the provisions.
The eatables vanished with surprising speed, and after the first sharp edge of their hunger had worn off, the conversation turned, as it usually did these days, to their quest for the missing treasure.
A brisk breeze was blowing in from the ocean and the brittle sand grass kept up a constant rustling. This sound served admirably to cover the approach of a stealthy figure that had followed the boys at a distance ever since they had left Bartanet. This figure crept closer and closer to the sand dune, until only a projecting hump concealed it from the five boys on the seaward side.
As it attained this position of vantage, Teddy was addressing a remark to Ross.
“Haven’t you lost a bit of your confidence yet, Ross?” he queried.
“Not a particle,” affirmed Ross stoutly. “We’ll find that treasure, sooner or later, if it ever was actually hidden in the neighborhood of Bartanet Shoals.”
“You bet we will!” declared Fred, “even if we have to import a steam shovel to dig up the whole territory.”
“I hope it will be soon,” interposed Bill. “It’ll be us for Rally Hall, you know, before long, and then what chance will we have?”
“Keep a stiff upper lip,” counseled Lester. “We’ve just begun to fight.”
During the conversation the eavesdropper had lain quietly and listened with the closest attention. Now he edged away cautiously, and when he had reached a sufficient distance rose to his feet and hurried back in the direction of Bartanet.
The boys light-heartedly got into their boat and rowed back to the lighthouse without the slightest suspicion that almost all they had said had been overheard by Andy Shanks.
That rascal hastened back to town, his brain awhirl with dreams of sudden riches. He had heard enough to know that there was treasure buried in or around Bartanet, and he also knew that the boys whom he held in hatred were in search of it. What joy to steal the riches from them and thus gain the twofold advantage of thwarting them and at the same time putting himself in a position to indulge those vices in which he delighted!
Before Andy had gone far, he met one of the village youths whose acquaintance he had recently made. Unfortunately for Andy, this young fellow, who was named Morton, had a strong liking for practical jokes, and after Andy, with his usual boastfulness, had thrown out sly hints about knowing how to “pick up all the money that he wanted,” Morton scented a chance to make a victim.
As Andy was very vague regarding the sources from which he expected to get his wealth, Morton did not hesitate to impart to Andy the slighting opinion that he was “talking through his hat.”
“Not much I’m not,” retorted Andy, stung by the imputation. “I tell you I know there’s oodles of money buried somewhere around here and what’s more, if you’ll help me to find it, I’ll let you in for a share of it.”
His acquaintance, seeing that Andy was in earnest, quickly formed a plan to have some fun at the other’s expense.
“Well, seeing you’re so certain of it, I will help you, then!” he exclaimed. “Shake hands on the bargain.”
CHAPTER XXVI
BADLY FOOLED
Morton gravely extended his hand and Andy shook it.
“Let’s see, now,” said the town youth, pretending to be racking his memory, “whereabouts could that money be hid? It’s probably in some old shack or cave somewhere. Say!” he shouted as though struck by an idea, “I’ll wager I know the identical place where it’s stowed away. Come to think of it, I’m sure I do.”
“Where? Where?” questioned Andy eagerly.
“Well, I know you’re on the square and won’t give me the double cross,” replied Morton, “so I don’t mind telling you what I know.
“There was an old fellow partly tipsy one winter night, who told me a long yarn about knowing where there was a mint of money hidden away. I didn’t pay any attention to him then, because I thought he was just raving, the way those people often do. But now I come to think of it, I remember his speaking of an old hut that was almost buried in a sand dune close to the water. Let’s see now, where is there an old shack that answers to that description?”
Morton pretended to meditate deeply, while Andy waited breathlessly for him to continue.
“I have it!” exclaimed Morton abruptly. “It’s the place old Totten used to have on the beach just north of Bartanet. He kept very close to himself, but he always seemed to have slathers of money. He died two or three years ago, and since then the sand has nearly rolled over his shack. I’ll venture to say that if we dug there we’d find money enough to make us both rich for the rest of our lives.”
“By jinks! but I believe you’re right,” blurted out Andy with an avaricious glitter in his shifty eyes. “Let’s go there to-night and see if we can find it.”
“Oh, we won’t be able to go to-night,” protested Morton. “We’ll have to get picks and shovels, and we’ll have to do it so quietly that nobody will catch on. And I can’t do it to-morrow night, either,” he continued, as though just recalling something. “I’ve got an engagement that I can’t break. But I’ll make it the night after that, if you’re willing.”
“Sure!” assented Andy. “That suits me fine.”
But there was a reluctance to look into Morton’s eyes as Andy spoke, that convinced the joker that his plans would work out as he expected. He knew Andy Shanks pretty well, and he was sure that Andy would not wait till the appointed time to hunt for the treasure. He guessed that Andy would endeavor to cheat him out of his share of the fictitious treasure by getting in before the time agreed upon. And he made no mistake in reckoning on the mean nature of Andy Shanks.
The two arranged the details of the expedition, such as securing shovels and picks and candles. Then they parted, after Morton had exacted an oath of secrecy from the other.
The latter was no sooner left to himself, however, than he began revolving in his mind plans to outwit the friend, who, he thought, had confided in him so completely.
“It’s a lucky thing for me,” thought Andy, “that he can’t be there to-morrow night. I’ll get a pick and shovel somewhere and beat him to it. If he’s such a fool as to tell all he knows, he deserves to lose his share.”
In the meantime, Morton was hugging himself in anticipation. He confided the matter to a few of his friends, who were delighted at the chance of playing a joke on Shanks, who was anything but popular in the town. All volunteered to help Morton, and having secured an old trunk, they armed themselves with spades and sallied forth in the direction of Totten’s old shack.
After shoveling the sand away from before the door, they entered and started to “plant the treasure,” as one of them expressed it. They dug a hole four feet deep and wide enough to contain the trunk. Then they filled the trunk with sand and lowered it into the excavation. This done, they filled the hole up again, replaced the rotting boards that formed the floor and surveyed the completed job with satisfaction.
“I guess that will keep him busy for a while,” remarked Morton, “especially as he won’t know where to look and will have to dig the whole place up, more or less. It’s going to be more fun than a circus.”
“But we want to see him while he’s at it,” objected one of his followers. “How are we going to manage it?”
“That’s so,” agreed Morton. “Guess we’ll have to clear the sand away from the little window there.”
The lads set to work with a will and soon had enough of the sand shoveled away to permit a clear view of the interior of the shack. This accomplished, they closed the door and heaped sand against it, leaving everything as they had found it.
“Well,” declared Morton, “that was considerable work, but it will be worth it. We’ll hustle back to town now and tell the other fellows that everything’s all right. Then we’ll have nothing to do but wait for the fun. I’m as sure as I am that I’m alive that that sneak will try to circumvent me. I could see it in his eye.”
Andy spent a restless night, his mind busied with plans to get the best of Morton. He rose early the next morning and roamed restlessly about town. The great problem confronting him was how to get the pick and shovel without Morton’s getting wind of it. He finally concluded that it would be taking too much of a risk to buy the implements in the village, so he made a trip to a town five miles distant and got the necessary tools.
Night came at last, and the sneak sallied forth and set out for the old cabin, the location of which Morton had been careful to give to him. Throwing down his tools, Andy carefully reconnoitred the surroundings. The jokers had done their work so carefully that he saw nothing amiss, and after satisfying himself that the coast was clear, he started digging in the sand in front of the door.
It did not take him long to gain an entrance, and after getting in he lit two of his candles and took a careful survey of the surroundings. There was nothing in sight to give him a clue. The sole furniture consisted of an old table and a couple of rickety chairs.
Somewhat at a loss where to begin, Andy finally started sounding the rough planking of the floor. When he came to the place where the planks had been ripped up the preceding evening, he saw that they were loose and resolved to take a chance there. He removed the boards, took off his coat and began to dig in earnest.
He made rapid progress at first, but soon his muscles, flabby and unused to such strenuous exercise, began to protest and he was forced to take a breathing spell.
Had he chanced to glance at the little window, his labors might have come to a premature conclusion. Grouped outside were Morton and his friends, almost bursting with smothered laughter. The sight of Andy, whose antipathy to work was well known, sweating away over the hardest kind of labor, amused them immensely.
Wholly unconscious of the amusement he was providing, Andy resumed his task and worked with such good will that it was not long before his spade struck on the edge of the buried trunk. He uttered a shout of delight and scattered the remaining sand in every direction. Before long he had uncovered the top of the trunk. This he tried to lift out of the hole. Finding it too heavy for this, however, and not able to restrain his impatience to see what it contained, he seized the pickax and smashed in the top.
His chagrin may be imagined when instead of the treasure he expected he found that the trunk was filled with sand. On top of this was a sheet of paper which Morton had placed there the previous evening. It contained one word done in heavy capitals:
STUNG!
For a few moments Andy gazed stupidly, unable for the time to understand that he had been made the victim of a hoax. While this was slowly dawning upon him, the door burst open and, with a yell of laughter, the crowd rushed into the hut.
Andy jumped as though he had been shot, and, scrambling out of the hole, stood with open mouth facing the laughing boys. His surprised and discomfited attitude was so ludicrous that their laughter increased tenfold and they fairly shrieked.
“Wh-what’s the big idea, anyway?” gasped Andy at last. “How did you fellows come to be here?”
“Well, you see,” replied Morton, sobering down a little, “I counted on your doing the crooked thing and I wasn’t mistaken.”
“I’ll get even with you some day,” growled Andy. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
“Since you ask me, I must admit I cherish some such idea,” admitted Morton, his eyes twinkling. “The fellows from the city don’t always know everything, you understand.”
“You’ll live to be sorry for this trick,” blustered Andy. “You just see if you don’t.”
He made his way to the door and passed out amid another burst of merriment from those who had witnessed his discomfiture, leaving his implements lying where he had thrown them.
An account of the affair spread quickly over the village and life for Andy became so unbearable that before another twenty-four hours he left the town.
In the natural course of events the story came to the ears of the boys at the lighthouse.
“I’d have given something to be there,” declared Bill. “It must have been worth a year’s allowance to see his face when all those fellows gave him the laugh. He thinks such a lot of himself that it must have been a bitter pill to swallow.”
“Let alone his not finding what he went after,” put in Fred. “It hit him in his pride and his pocketbook, and they’re both sensitive spots with Andy.”
“But how do you suppose he got wind of our being in search of treasure?” queried Teddy.
“I was wondering at that,” replied Lester, “and the only way I could figure it out is that he must have followed us the day we were at Bartanet, and heard what we were talking about when we were eating.”
“Well,” concluded Fred, “he couldn’t have got anything of real value from what we said, or he wouldn’t have gone digging in old Totten’s shack. But it’s up to us to put a padlock on our lips when there’s any chance of being overheard. We may not be so lucky the next time.”
CHAPTER XXVII
A FIGHTING CHANCE
“Only one week more now before we have to go back to Rally Hall,” sighed Teddy one morning, just after they had risen from the breakfast table.
“And nothing done yet in the way of finding that chest of gold,” groaned Fred.
“It’s now or never,” declared Lester with decision.
“I’m afraid it’s never, then,” put in Bill, the skeptical. “Here for days we’ve been blistering our hands and breaking our backs, to say nothing of racking what brains we have, and we’re no nearer finding it than we were at the beginning.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” protested Fred. “We’ve at least explored a lot of places where there were no signs of the peculiar trees and rock shown in that map that Ross told us about. That leaves just so many fewer places to waste our time on, and makes it more likely that the next will be the right one.”
“Not much nourishment in that,” persisted Bill. “I’ll admit that we’ve found plenty of places where the gold isn’t, but that doesn’t get us anywhere. And we’ll be gray-headed before we can explore the whole coast of Maine.”
“Oh, stop your grouching, you old sinner,” exhorted Teddy, clapping him on the back. “This is like football or baseball. The game isn’t over till after the last minute of play.”
“That’s the talk,” cried Lester emphatically. “If we go down, we’ll do it with the guns shotted and the band playing and the flag flying.”
It was not to be wondered at that the lads were all assailed at times by the doubt and discouragement that troubled Bill acutely that morning. They had taken advantage of every day when the sea permitted, and, as Teddy phrased it, had “raked the coast fore and aft.” Their main reliance had been the map that had appeared in the story of the old sailor to Ross, and the first thing they did after entering any bay or cove was to look about them for the clump of two and three trees, with the big rock standing at the right. Once or twice they had found conditions that nearly answered this description, and they had dug and hunted near by, wherever the lay of the land held out any hope of success.
In the absence of anything better, this supposed map was their strongest clue. Yet even this was only supposition. It might not have been anything more than the fanciful sketch of an idle sailor. Or if it indeed were a map of any given locality, it might not refer in the slightest degree to the robbery by the crew of the smuggler.
The knowledge that this might be so had at times a paralyzing effect on the boys. They felt the lack of solid ground beneath their feet. Like the coffin of Mahomet, they were as though suspended between earth and sky.
Still, it was the only clue they had, and there was something in the make-up of these sturdy young Americans that made them desperately unwilling to confess defeat. It was the “die-in-the-last-ditch” spirit that has made America great. Even Bill, although he relieved himself sometimes by grumbling, would not really have given up the search and when the pinch came he dug and hunted as eagerly as the rest.
This morning, they had arranged to set off for a final cruise that might take up all the remaining time of their vacation, which was now drawing rapidly to a close. Their party was complete, with the exception of Ross. He had gone up to Oakland to spend a few days with his mother, who had arrived from Canada, but he had arranged to meet the boys that day at a point agreed on, about fifteen miles up the coast.
As their cruise was expected to be longer than usual, it took them some time before they had everything on board the Ariel and were ready to cast off from the little pier below the lighthouse.
“Well,” said Mr. Lee, who had come down to see them off, “good-by, boys, and luck go with you.”
“Watch us come back with that chest of gold,” called out Teddy gaily.
“I’ll be watching, all right,” grinned the lighthouse keeper, “and I have a sort of hunch that you boys will get there this time. You certainly have earned it, if you do lay your hands on it.”
“And that’s no merry jest, either,” remarked Bill, as he looked at the callous spots on his hands.
“Bill wasn’t made to work,” scoffed Teddy. “He’s made to sit on the box and crack the whip, while we common trash pull and strain in the shafts.”
“Not much,” retorted Bill. “I’m no mule driver.”
“It’s a touching picture, that of Teddy pulling and straining, isn’t it?” laughed Lester, as he pointed to that young gentleman slumped down comfortably in the stern.
With jest and banter, the morning wore away. The day was serene and beautiful, with not a cloud obscuring the sky, while there was just enough wind to make their progress steady and rapid. Almost before they knew it, they had reached the point agreed upon with Ross, and soon after descried the Sleuth coming down to meet them.
They hailed Ross cordially, and his beaming face showed how deep and warm was his feeling for the boys, whom he already seemed to have known for years rather than weeks.
“Some smart navigators, we are, to meet just where we arranged to!” laughed Lester.
“We’re the real thing in the way of sailor men,” assented Ross, throwing out his chest.
“Listen to the mutual admiration society,” jibed the irrepressible Teddy. “Blushing violets aren’t in it with them. Here you let my modest worth pass unnoticed, while you’re handing bouquets to each other. But that’s the way it is in this world. It’s nerve and gall that counts. Now if I–”
But his eloquent peroration was spoiled by a hasty shift to escape a life preserver that Lester hurled at his head, missing him by an inch.
“You’d better let me have Teddy aboard the Sleuth,” laughed Ross. “Then if the engine gives out, I’ll start Teddy wagging his tongue. That will furnish power enough.”
“Not a bit of it,” replied Lester. “I want him here, in case the wind gives out.”
“It’s evident that I’m the most important person here, anyway,” retorted Teddy. “Neither one of you seems to be willing to get along without me.”
“Seven cities claimed Homer, you know,” said Bill sarcastically.
“Yes,” said Teddy complacently, “he and I are in the same class.”
Ross turned his boat around, and the two craft went along side by side.
“The sea’s like a mill pond to-day,” remarked Fred. “How different from the day of the storm, when we watched it from the observation room. Do you remember what your father said?”
“Not especially,” answered Lester. “What particular thing do you mean?”
“Why, when he prophesied that many a good ship would lay her bones on a reef or beach before the storm was over.”
“I suppose he was anxious,” answered Lester gravely, “but I haven’t heard of any ship’s being wrecked on this particular strip of the coast during this storm. The worst time we’ve had around here, as far as I can remember, was about three years ago. That storm kept up for three days and three nights, and when it was over there were at least a dozen wrecks, just on the coast of Maine.
“By the way,” he went on, as a sudden thought struck him, “we’ll have to pass one of those wrecks a few miles from here. It’s a schooner that went ashore in the storm. There’s part of the hull left, and, if you like, we’ll run in and look it over.”
“Was the crew saved?” asked Fred.
“Every soul aboard was drowned,” Lester answered soberly. “They were swept overboard before the life-saving crew could get to them. The masts went over the side, and the hull was driven so hard and deep into the sand that it has been there ever since.”
A half hour more passed, and then Lester gave a twist to the tiller and turned the Ariel inshore.
“There’s the wreck,” he said in response to Fred’s look of inquiry, as he pointed to a dark object near the beach. “We’ll just run in and look her over. But we won’t be able to stay more than a few minutes, for this is to be one of our busy days.”
