Читать книгу Tom Slade at Bear Mountain - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 8

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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?