Читать книгу Pee-wee Harris and the Sunken Treasure - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 9

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It was still early afternoon when the four adventurers set forth on their hike down to the old Gardiner mansion. Pee-wee felt the responsibility that was upon him. Face to face with his adventure he felt that it would be pleasant to have Tom Slade along; Tom Slade who was big enough, and old enough, and certainly heroic enough, to manage the affair. Tom would not be afraid to encounter a couple of hiding burglars.

It would, after all, be thrilling enough to play second fiddle to Tom and Brent Gaylong in such a risky affair. But the girls seemed quite ready for anything and Pee-wee was in for it for better or worse. He had never in his life been so deeply involved with that rival sex. On the way down he regaled them with reminiscences of scout stunts and achievements.

The old Gardiner mansion was one of the landmarks along the lower river. It had always been somewhat a place of mystery. Perhaps this was because it was very old and little was known about the Gardiner family. It was not within the town line of Bridgeboro. Grounds that must once have been very beautiful extended down to the river. The old mansion stood well back from the stream and in the memory of the Bridgeboro boys there had never been any other approach to it. It was not visible from the road which paralleled the river a quarter of a mile or so west of the stream. If it had ever been on a road that road had gone away and deserted it, as indeed everybody connected with it seemed to have done.

It was a neglected and falling relic of ancient glory, home of a family that had accumulated wealth in the old days when coastwise vessels ascended the river for their cargoes of fish and lumber. It stood aloof from the new life and the new order of things and had a touch of spookiness about it. Only those who patronized the river ever saw it. Chugging up the channel which skirted those dark, shaded grounds and seeing the old house with its funny cupola, it was easy to fancy it haunted.

And so, indeed, it was haunted. The ghost of a bygone splendor abided there. As to who else abided there few knew and none cared. The remnant of a fine old stock was petering out in it. And the only way to get to it, unless you trespassed from the river, was by a lane which led to it from the new road west of the river. The boys called the old place haunted and let it go at that. Other people never thought about it at all. Its return to life, so to speak, via Pee-wee’s newspaper, was the only mention of it he had ever heard or seen. They followed the road down and had some difficulty in finding the lane. Indeed, it was not until the master scout had climbed a tree and, closing his eyes, opened them suddenly upon the immediate landscape that the coy trail permitted itself to be discovered. This is a way of taking a trail by assault, as it were; and it was popular with Pee-wee.

“When you get up into the tree,” he said, “you just shut your eyes tight and count ten and then you open them, sudden like that (he gave a thrilling demonstration) and if there’s a place where even there used to be a path centuries ago, you can see it just for a second. And now I know where that path begins,” he added. “It’s right down there past that sixth tree—that’s an oak tree. Do you know how to tell oak trees? You can make dandy soup out of acorns, do you know that? Only it hasn’t go so much taste to it. But anyway, if you get lost in the woods you’re not supposed to have canned soup because you’re supposed to know about eating herbs. Even you can get moss to keep from starving. Gee whiz, do you think I’d ever starve?”

“No, I don’t believe you ever will,” said Dora.

“You bet you I won’t, because I know how to tell sassafras roots and I can make dandy smelling powder out of them only you can’t eat it, because there’s silver polish in it, but you don’t need silver polish because you can shine things by the sun if you know how. Gee whiz, the sun’s your friend all right. If you look cross-eyed when you’re up the tree sometimes you can see a trail even better. I bet you you can’t climb trees. I climb trees because I put up aerials for fifty cents each, I made four dollars that way and I’m going to buy a compass because you can’t trust to squirrels telling you which way is north—they’re crazy—they build their nests on any old side of a tree, but one thing they can tell if it’s going to be a cold winter.”

“We think you’re perfectly wonderful,” Minerva managed to say as Pee-wee paused for air.

“One, two, three, four, five, six trees,” Pee-wee said. “Then we turn into the trail. I bet nobody went on it for years, hey?”

“I’m beginning to feel kind of spooky,” said Dora.

“Don’t you care, I’m with you,” said Pee-wee. “I’m not a-scared of ghosts, because anyway, there aren’t any. Gee whiz, they can’t eat, that’s what Warde Hollister says, and I’m not a-scared of anything that can’t eat.”