THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER.
Having landed his passengers and pocketed his money, Silas Morgan made
his way toward the cabin with so much haste that he again drew the
attention of the boys, who gazed after him with no little surprise and
curiosity. Silas was as lazy as a man ever gets to be, and Joe and Dan
could not imagine what had happened to put so much life into him.
"I knew that something or 'nother had come over pap when he yelled in
that good-natured way to let them fellers on t'other side know that he
was coming," observed Dan, who walked back to his seat on the bank, and
sunned himself there like a turtle on his log, while Joe hauled in the
sweeps and made the flat secure. "He's got another of them money-making
plans into his head, I reckon."
Those who were well acquainted with Silas Morgan knew that he always
had plans of that kind in his head. He was full of schemes for getting
rich without work, some of which, if carried into execution, would
have brought him into serious trouble with the officers of the law;
but the idea that occupied his busy brain on this particular morning
was a little ahead of anything he had ever before thought of. You will
probably laugh at it when you know what it was, but Silas didn't.
Of all the thousand and one plans which he had conjured up and pondered
over, this one, which had come into his possession by the merest
accident, seemed to hold out the brightest promises of success.
"But it wasn't accident, neither," Silas kept saying to himself. "There
isn't a day during the shooting season that them mountings ain't just
covered with hunters, and how did the man that put this letter into my
wood-pile know that I was the one who was to take it out? He didn't
know it. I found it 'cause it was to be so, that's the reason."
The first thing the ferryman did when he reached the cabin was to
close and fasten the door, to prevent interruption, and the next to
draw from his pocket the mysterious letter, which he spread upon the
table before him.
To make himself master of its contents was a work of no little
difficulty. Silas did not know much about books, and, besides, some of
the characters that were intended to represent letters were so badly
printed that it was hard to tell what they were intended for. He read
as follows:
"DECEMBER 15--IN THE MOUNTINGS.
"I write this to inform whoever finds it that I have a secret to
tell you. I was born in Europe, and am now forty years of age. I am
a gentleman, and my father is a rich man and a large land-owner. I
am the second son, and fell in love with a girl when I was twenty
years of age.
"Everything went well till my older brother came home from the war,
and when she found out that I was not entitled to the estates,
she left me, and went to concerts and balls with my brother, and
that was something I could not stand. So I sent her a bottle of
sody-water, with my best wishes, and I put in strickning, and the
next day she was dead. The doctors said she died of heart disease,
but I knew better. So I told my father that I was going to
America. So he gave me five hundred pounds in money--"
"Five hundred pounds of money!" exclaimed Silas, after he had spelled
the words over three times to satisfy himself that he had made no
mistake. "How did he ever make out to carry that heft of greenbacks
clear across the ocean and up into these mountings? If I find it, I'll
have to bring it down on my wagon, won't I? And where'll I put it after
I get it so that it will be safe? That's what's a bothering of me now."
Silas was already beginning to feel the responsibilities that weigh
upon capitalists, one of whom assures us that he finds it harder work
to take care of his money than it was to accumulate it. Silas made a
note of all the good hiding-places which he could recall to mind on the
spur of the moment, and then went on with his reading:
--"and the next day I shipped for New York. I wish I had never done
it. A coming over the ocean, I made the acquaintance of a man who
coaxed me to go to Californy with him, and there we fell in with
two more who were as bad as we was, and we went into a bank there,
and took out seventy thousand dollars. So we went to Canady, and
stayed there till the country got too hot for us, and then we come
to these mountings. So we went along till we come to the old Indian
road. One day my chum dropped his pipe down a crack in the rocks,
and he said he would have it again if he broke his neck a getting
it. So he slid down about twelve feet, and there was as nice a cave
in the rock as you ever see.
"There is a crack in the ground that goes down about twelve feet,
and then you come onto the level, and can go a hundred feet before
you come to the place where a lot of sand and stones has fell in.
The cave has been lived in before, by robbers most likely, 'cause
we found a lot of money and some guns and pistols there, of a kind
that we never see before. I and my chum lived in this cave about
three weeks, and then we started to go to the lake.
"When we got to the top of the Indian road, I refused to go any
farther, and when my chum made as if he were going to shoot me
for being a coward, I give him a shove, and down he went into the
gulf. He's there now, where nobody will ever find him; but his hant
(ghost) comes back to me every day and night, and that's why I am
going to jump into the lake--just to get away from that hant. Now I
must tell you about the money.
"There is twelve thousand in bills, and about three hundred in
gold and silver. It is in a leather satchel in the bottom. It has
a false plate on the bottom, put on with screws. And there you
will find the money. I will and bequeath it to you and your heirs
and assanees forever. I leave this in a wood-pile, and the one who
draws the wood will find it.
"The cave is about a quarter of a mile from the wood-pile, near a
large hemlock tree. There is a rope that goes down into the cave,
and it hangs under the roots of the tree. Look close or you can't
find it. I leave a map of the route from the pile of wood to the
cave in this letter. I hope the hant won't bother you while you are
getting the money, as he has bothered me ever since I have been
writing this letter.
"JULIUS JONES."
Words would fail us, were we to attempt to tell just how Silas felt
after he had finished reading this interesting communication. He hoped
it might be true--that there was a cave with a fortune in it which he
could have for the finding of it--and consequently it was very easy for
him to believe that it _was_ true; but there were one or two things
that ought to have attracted his attention and aroused his suspicions
at once.
In the first place, there was the document itself. It was now the
latter part of August, and if the letter was left in the wood-pile on
the day it purported to be written, it had been exposed for eight long
months to some of the most furious snow and rain storms that had ever
visited that section of the country, and yet the writing looked fresh,
and there was not a single wrinkle or even the suspicion of a stain
upon the envelope. It could not have been cleaner if it had but just
been taken out of the post office.
Another thing, the writer would have found it an exceedingly difficult
task to drown himself in the lake during the month of December, for he
would have been obliged to cut through nearly two feet of ice in order
to reach water.
But the ferryman did not notice these little discrepancies. He gave
his imagination full swing, and worked himself into such a state of
excitement that his nerves were all unstrung; consequently, when hasty
steps sounded outside the cabin, and Dan's heavy hand fumbled with
the latch, it was all Silas could do to repress the cry of alarm that
trembled on his lips as he sprang to his feet.
Finding that the door was fastened on the inside, Dan came around the
corner, and looked in at the window.
"Say, pap," he whispered excitedly, "dog-gone my buttons, what did you
go and lock yourself up for? Think somebody was about to steal all the
gold dishes? Open up, quick! Here's a go--two of 'em."
Although the ferryman heartily wished Dan a thousand miles away, he
complied with this peremptory demand for admission, whereupon the boy
stepped quickly across the threshold and locked the door behind him.
"Say, pap," he continued, in a hurried whisper, "don't it beat the
world how some folks can make money without ever trying? Now, there's
that Joe of our'n. He don't never seem to do much of nothing but just
loaf around in the woods with them city fellers that come up here to
show their fine guns, and yet he's always got money. He takes mighty
good care to keep it hid, too, 'cause I can't never find none of it."
"Is that all you've got to say?" exclaimed Silas impatiently. "I know
it as well as you do."
"Well, it ain't all I've got to say, neither," replied Dan. "I've got
a heap more, if you will only let me tell you. Old man Warren is out
there talking with Joe now. You remember them blue-headed birds you
killed for him last year, don't you?"
"Them English partridges?" said Silas with a grin. "I ain't forgot 'em.
Old man Warren offered me ten dollars a month if I wouldn't shoot over
his grounds, 'cause he wanted them birds pertected till there were lots
of 'em; but I wouldn't agree to nothing of the kind. He brung them
birds from England on purpose to stock his covers with. They cost him
six dollars a pair, and I made more'n forty dollars out of 'em. Well,
what of it? I don't care for such trifling things any more."
"Well," answered Dan, "he's gone and got more of them to take the
place of them you shot--old man Warren has--a hundred pair of 'em--six
hundred dollars worth, and--"
"Ah! that makes it different," said Silas, rubbing his hands and
looking up at his old muzzle-loader, which rested on a couple of
wooden hooks over the door. "It's true that six hundred dollars ain't
no great shakes of money to a man who--hum! But still I am obliged to
old Warren. They won't bring me in no such sum as that, them birds
won't, but they'll be worth a dollar a brace this season easy enough,
and that'll pay me for the trouble I'll have in shooting them. Ain't I
going to make a power of money this winter?"
"No, you ain't," snapped Dan, who had made several ineffectual attempts
to induce his father to stop talking and listen to him. "And you ain't
by no means as smart as you think you be, neither."
"What for?" demanded his father.
"'Cause you keep jawing all the while and won't let me tell you. He's
going to have them birds pertected, the old man is, and you can't shoot
them loose and reckless like you did last winter."
"_That_ for his pertection!" cried the ferryman, snapping his fingers
in the air. "He can't do it, and I won't pay no heed to him if he tries
it."
"Then he'll have the law on you."
"He can't do that, neither, 'cause there ain't no close season for
English partridges. There's no such birds in this country known to the
law. Besides, how is old man Warren going to tell whether it was me or
some of them city sportsmen that shot 'em?"
"He's going to post his land, and put a game-warden up there in the
woods to watch them partridges," observed Dan.
"What kind of a feller is that?" asked Silas. "Is it the same as a
game-constable?"
"Just the same, only the old man will pay him out of his own pocket,
instead of looking to the county to pay him. He's going to have that
there game-warden shoot every dog and 'rest every man who comes on to
the grounds with a gun in his hands, if he don't go off when he's told
to."
"Well, I'd like to see him shoot one of my dogs, and I wouldn't go off,
neither, less'n I felt like it," said Silas, doubling his huge fists
and looking very savage indeed. "Do you know how much he is going to
give him?"
"Fifteen dollars a month from the first of September to the first of
May," answered Dan, "and his grub is throwed in--the best kind of grub,
too."
"Well, that ain't so bad," said Silas, slowly. "Fifteen dollars a month
and grub for eight months--that would be a hundred and twenty dollars,
wouldn't it, Dannie? That's more'n I could make by shooting the birds.
Is old man Warren out there now? If he is, I'll go and tell him that
I'll take the job. You and Joe can run the ferry during the rest of the
summer, and pocket all you can make. I don't care for such trifling
things any more."
"Whoop! Hold me on the ground, somebody!" yelled Dan, jumping up and
knocking his heels together.
This was the expression he always used and the performance he went
through whenever he got mad and became possessed with an insane desire
to smash things.
"Now I'll just tell you what's a fact, pap," continued Dan, spreading
out his feet, and settling his hat firmly on his head. "Me and Joe
won't run the ferry, and neither will you get the chance to grow fat
off good grub this winter, less'n you earn it yourself. Didn't I tell
you the very first word I said that old man Warren had give the job to
Joe?"
"Not our Joe!" exclaimed Silas, who was fairly staggered by this
unexpected piece of news.
"Yes, our Joe--nobody else."
"No, you didn't tell me that," replied his father.
"Then it's 'cause you want to do all the talking yourself, and won't
let me say a word," retorted Dan. "Yes, that Joe of our'n has got the
job. He's going to have a nice house, with a carpet onto the floor, to
live in, and the grub he'll have to eat will be just the same kind that
old man Warren has onto his table at home. Just think of that, pap!
You'll have to look around for some cheap boy to help you run the ferry
from now till winter, 'cause I'm going up there to live with Joe, and
help him keep an eye on them birds."
"Dan!" shouted Mr. Morgan, pushing up his sleeves, and looking about
the room as if he wanted to find some missile to throw at the boy's
head--"Dan, for two cents I'd--"
The ferryman suddenly paused, for he found he was talking to the empty
air.
When he began pushing up his sleeves, Dan jumped for the door, and now
all that Silas could see of him was one of his eyes, which looked at
him through a crack about half an inch wide.
He noticed, however, that Dan held the hook in his hand, and that he
was all ready to fasten the door on the outside in case his father
showed a disposition to follow him.