THE SUN-DOLLAR
“My word! it’s stamped with a sunburst on one side, on the other with a
ship.”
“Yes, and with a burning mountain an’ a horn thrown in!” Kenjo’s tongue
clicked against the roof of his mouth with excitement as he replied to
the shrieked comment from Miles.
“A sunburst and a ship!” Jessica clasped her hands wildly; she too began
to foot it upon the sandy hillside, to dance, not lightly as a
foam-chicken, but heavily as a very wet and draggled one on the skirts
of the still dripping vegetation. “Oh, _wasn’t_ it queer that I should
be the one to find it, for our Camp Fire Girls’ symbol is the Sun—and I
have always loved _ships_?” She did not mention the source of her
affection for sailing ships in the glamor that surrounded the figure of
her great-grandparent, as she looked eagerly, greedily at the large
silver coin lying on Stack’s brown palm, winking up at a fellow-sunburst
in the sky where fair weather was beginning to reassert itself.
[Illustration: A large, antique silver coin of a size and stamp such as
neither Boy Scout nor Camp Fire Girl had ever seen before.]
But the Eagle Scout showed no inclination to hand over to her the coin.
He only began to gesticulate and explain the situation to Toiney whose
tassel had, forthwith, a bobbing spasm.
“Houp-e-la! Ciel! he fin’ de dolla’—de silvare dolla’—_l’argent blanc_.”
Now it was Toiney’s turn to waltz on the hillside, with his tassel. “He
fin’ _l’argent blanc_! Ain’ he de smarty?” looking excitedly at Stack.
“Ciel! I’ll go forre dig, too, me. Oh!
“Rond! Rond! Rond!
Petit pie pon ton!”
With this wild roundelay, which had no sane meaning whatever, upon his
lip, Toiney turned his clay pipe which had about an inch and a half of
stem—his _petit boucane_, as he called it—upside down between his lips
and fell to clawing at the sands with his swarthy hands as if he would
root the very heart out of this rich sand-hill.
That was the digging signal for the other three!
The Camp Fire Girl forgot that she was wet through and that others must
be anxious about her. Stack forgot that he had ever roosted on one leg
in quicksands. Kenjo forgot that he was Kenjo and possessed a red head.
One and all they clawed with their fingers, dug and scraped with heels
and toes, until the sodden sand-hill looked as if a regiment of
roosters, each with an attendant flock of hens, had pecked and wallowed
there for a week.
“There must—_must_ be more where this coin came from!” Such was their
battle-cry; now and again one or other of them sounded it.
Now and again, too, each one had a lucid interval of demanding to see
the sunburst coin anew, to examine afresh its stamp and half-obliterated
inscription.
Miles—otherwise Stack—would then take it from his vest pocket and turn
it over on his palm; he did not want it to go out of his keeping, which
Jessica privately thought was very mean of him, as she claimed the
distinction of seeing it first and had paid dearly for that initial
glimpse, too.
“And I persuaded myself it was only a piece of glass or a bright shell!”
she exclaimed from time to time, having the feminine trick of reverting
to mistakes. “Can you make out the date on it?” she demanded very
practically after one such reversion.
“No, I can’t!” Stack examined the coin more critically than he had yet
taken the time to do in his frantic eagerness to find more. “The last
figures look like a 3 and an 8. But it might be 1638 or 1838—date’s
partly worn off. Houp-la! wasn’t it somewhere about 1638 that Captain
Kidd was flourishing? My history’s hazy. Gee—if we’re on the track of
some of _his_ buried treasure when other people have been digging for
ages and consulting all sorts of fake fortune-tellers and never even got
upon the trail of a hoard!”
“We consulted the Indian top.” Kenjo’s voice had a thrill of
semi-superstition.
“Yes, but the Kullibígan couldn’t make up its mind which of us would dig
up a fortune from the sands; you came in on it, so did I, so did
Arline—that’s nothing!” Thus Jessica laughed him down. “Wait a minute!”
She caught at Miles’s arm. “I want to see if I can make out more of the
inscription before you put it—the coin—back into your pocket again. You
needn’t be so afraid that some one is going to snap it out of your
hand!” haughtily.
Thus shamed, Stack suspended digging for an age-long interval of a
minute and held the coin on lingering exhibition, right and obverse
sides.
“Oh! isn’t it a dandy sunburst, with stars above it?” So Jessica gloated
over its ancient stamp. “I can partly make out the inscription over the
sunburst, too: it’s REPUB—then something else, and then PERUANA. I can
read that clearly, but not the rest.”
“Underneath the letters look like CUZCO,” spelled out Kenjo. “And—oh!
don’t be stingy, Stack; let’s look at it a minute longer—and in the
middle of the sunburst there are a few black dots that seem to be meant
for the two eyes, the nose and mouth of a face—a queer sun-face! Oh! Ha!
Ha!” Ken’s boyish laugh rang out with a fire that matched his hair.
“Now for the reverse side: the ship is on that,” pleaded Jessica
hungrily.
“Yes, and the volcano and the horn—an’ something like a castle!”
muttered Miles. “But we’re _wasting time_!” The coin vanished again into
his pocket. “It’s me for digging, I tell you—digging hard! If we can
find some more—a hoard of them—our fortune’s made.... I’d be glad to
have _my_ fortune made for me,” he continued, presently, out of the
heart of a sand-spout; “I enter ‘Tech’ in the fall and for the next four
years I’ll have to work all vacation-time in order to push myself
through—help pay college expenses. Oh, goody, if this coin and others
would only lend me a boost!”
“I need a ‘boost,’ as you call it, too; I’ll have to earn my own living
when I graduate from high school, with no one to help me,” quavered
Jessica, shivering all over in her wetness, beginning to realize that,
back of frenzied excitement, she was very clammy and exhausted. “And—and
I can’t earn my living in the way I’d like to do unless I get hold of
some money!” She fell to scratching like a wet hen.
Stack looked at her through the sand-squall which he was raising; this
was the second time that he had seen her and on both occasions her
clothing looked as if she had been dragged through a river, but he
decided that if she were ever dry she’d be pretty, and if, after he
entered Tech, he was duly elected to his chosen fraternity, she should
be his guest during Frat week when the freshmen entertained their
friends.
Here he came out of fairy-land, fortune-land, for a moment, to hear the
distant, strong chug, chug of a motor-boat upon the river above the
Neck.
“If I get rich out of this, I’m going to have a motorcycle,” burst forth
Kenjo, that distant chug shaping _his_ dream.
“Rond! Rond! Rond!”
chanted Toiney; he did not open his heart like the young people, but as
he incessantly clawed and dug, he had dreams, pathetic in their
grandeur, about swaggering back to a rural spot near Quebec, where his
old mother still clattered round in wooden shoes, as one who had made
“_beeg fortune_ on United State’.”
Never before were such silvery air-castles constructed out of so little
metal as that contained in one tarnished coin—a coin of a goodly size,
however, larger than a fifty-cent piece, almost as big as an American
dollar.
Suddenly through the glittering halls of those castles in the air
resounded an earthly shout that, momentarily, shattered them; it was
accompanied by a swish of oars; the chug, chug of the power-boat had
ceased.
“Ahoy there! For heaven’s sake! have you all turned into a _passel_ of
hens?” It was Captain Andy’s amazed shout as he landed from his rowboat
on a point of the sands which experience had taught him to be safe. “I’m
after one hen, to take her back with me!” pointing to the scratching
Jessica. “A nice scare she’s given us all—I found the dory bobbing up
the river. An’ by gracious! my heart’s been in my mouth since. What in
thunder are you diggin’ like that for? Mad as March hares, all of you!”
“Humph! Perhaps we’re not so crazy as you think. Look at that!” With a
lordly air Stack drew out the coin and held it forth in its silver
beauty, stained and worn by long burial, for the captain to see, as he
drew near. “What d’you think of our madness now?” He gulped and gasped.
“Why! Why! It’s one of those old sun-dollars!” Captain Andy, receiving
it upon his own palm and turning it over (Stack was not afraid to trust
it to _him_), looked pleased, highly pleased, and interested, but not
wildly carried away as befitted one who held the first-fruit of a
fortune in his hand.
“One of those old Peruvian sun-dollars from the wreck that took place
here between sixty an’ seventy years ago, when I was a small boy!” he
exclaimed again. “It’s a handsome coin, all right! But if you dig till
all’s blue, I’ll warrant you’ll never find another of ’em, or if you
should, ’twould be only one at a time an’ far between; the river isn’t
giving back enough of them together to make anybody rich; an’ the river
only got _one_ bag of those coins when the old brig went to pieces!”
“Sun-dollar! Wreck! Brig! What wreck?” The challenging cries were hurled
at him by two stiffening, defiant boys and one clucking, scratching
girl. “Come to think of it, that old clam-hunter did mumble something
about a wreck!” added Stack in crestfallen reflection.
“Yes, it’s goin’ on for seventy years ago, now, that a sailing vessel, a
brig from South Peru, which had many bags of these an’ other Peruvian
coins, both gold an’ silver, aboard—was rich in specie, as they say—was
wrecked in the bay, outside the bar. The gale drove her up the river;
I’ve often heard about it; my father was one o’ the men who put off in
rowboats to rescue the crew an’ they did save ’em all, though ’twas
night, and saved most o’ the money-bags, too. But one bag of coins fell
into the river, when they were lowering it in the dark into a boat.
Folks dragged the channel with nets for it afterward, but that
river-channel,” pointing out toward the middle of the heaving tide where
his motor-boat rocked, moored to a stump-buoy, “is so ‘studdled’ up with
hollows an’ gullies that you never can recover anything from it that it
doesn’t give up of its own accord, when wind and tide make it.”
Captain Andy looked from the sunburst coin to the three young
faces—sorry at heart that with his cruel crowbar of truth he must
shatter their castles—and at Toiney digging still, digging patiently on.
“Storm-wind and tide did make the river-bed give up a few of those
coins, three or four, maybe; they were picked up near this spot by a man
I know a long time after the wreck took place. Now! you’ve found
another, but I guess that’s all you’ll find if you dig till Doomsday.
This is a pretty souvenir, though! Who’s to keep it?” Captain Andy
turned the coin over in his hand and looked at Jessica who had
hopelessly given up scratching and was ready to accompany him to the
rowboat, thence out to the waiting motor-boat and from there, in a quick
run, back to the Sugarloaf, her Camp Fire Sisters and Camp
Morning-Glory.
“I saw it first,” proclaimed the girl, eagerly eyeing the sun-dollar.
“I picked it up,” said the boy, with greed in his claiming eye—in spite
of the fact that he was eighteen years old and an Eagle Scout.
He had risked his life for the girl by dashing out among the quicksands
at her cry. He had come very near giving it by sinking altogether when
he refused to be rescued first. And yet he was unwilling that she should
have the treasure trove, the sunburst coin. He took it from Captain
Andy’s hand, from Captain Andy whose code of chivalry, now and always,
might be summed up in three words: “Skirts go ahead;” in land speech,
“Ladies have the preference!”
“I don’t care! _He_ can keep it if he wants to!”
Jessica tossed her head with its loose tangle of wet hair.
So indignant was she at this greed for possession, this covetousness on
the part of an Eagle Scout, or any other Scout, that she marched off
down to the rowboat, ahead of Captain Andy, without thinking of saying
good-bye to Toiney, her rescuer, and without as much as casting a glance
at the miserly Miles who had played the acrobat on one leg amid
quicksands for her sake!
* * * * *
“Well! if he isn’t the Meanest Thing!” So spoke Betty Ayres as she
twirled an egg-beater upon the following morning before a glowing stove
in the kitchen of Camp Morning-Glory. “Eagle Scout, indeed! I’d like to
whip _him_ instead of these yolks.”
“Yes, keeping that beautiful, big old silver coin after you had seen it
first! And he seemed so—so different when he worked over that dumb child
to bring her to!” flamed Sally.
“Oh! you _never_ can tell about boys; you never can understand them,”
sighed Arline, airing the time-worn complaint of each sex about the
other.
“I understand a lot about them; I’ve three brothers and I cured the
Astronomer,” maintained Penelope sturdily. “I doubt if Tenderfoot Tommy
would have acted like that.”
“A letter for somebody! A Scout gave it to me to give to you!” Captain
Andy—otherwise “Standing Tall,” ducked his head through the broad screen
door and handed a thick envelope to Jessica, who looked pale, red-eyed
and snuffled a little, but, beyond that, was none the worse for
yesterday’s experiences. “The chap who gave it to me got up early an’
rowed over from the opposite dunes. There’s something in it, I think!”
added Menokigábo, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Girls! it’s the coin—the silver sunburst coin!” Jessica tore open the
envelope; inside were some hastily written lines, without any
conventional beginning:
“The sun-dollar belongs to you. You saw it first. Sorry I
behaved like a chump yesterday! I have put your initials in a
little monogram under the sunburst and got in the date of this
year, too, when it was found, in tiny figures at the side.
“I found out what the name-letters were from Kenjo who says that
he heard your name in full on the evening that he signaled to us
from your camp.
“A Scout is honorable!
“MILES.”
“Well—if he isn’t splendid!”
“He must be a fine fellow!”
“We want to meet him.”
“So you will when the Camp Fire Girls of the Twin-Light Tribe give that
party at the hotel on the mainland!”
Captain Andy withdrew, smiling to himself at the new feminine flutter,
the abrupt change of tune.
“But if that isn’t just like a boy”—this from Betty—“a boy’s one idea of
owning anything is to carve initials upon it! I believe he’d scratch
them on the pearly gates of heaven if he could only find his way there
and set up a claim for himself or somebody else!”
“Never mind! Isn’t it a beautiful old sunburst coin?” Jessica winked
away a bright drop of moisture as she passed the sun-dollar round for
inspection. “It really was quite too awfully good of him to give it up,
wasn’t it?” with a little catch of delight in her throat.
“I believe that, in his place, I’d have been tempted to think that
possession is nine points of the law,” laughed Olive. “But for a Camp
Fire Girl belonging to a society whose general symbol is the sun, that
silver sunburst coin is the loveliest souvenir of her camping-out
time—so appropriate!”
“So appropriate,” echoed its lucky possessor, smiling like the gayest
morning-glory that ever fluttered in a morning gust which awoke it to
the sun, “so appropriate that do you know what I’m going to do, girls?”
rising on ecstatic tiptoe.
“I know!” nodded fair-haired Betty with the air of a cynic. “You’re
thinking of getting Captain Andy to bore a little hole in it and wearing
it round your neck for a while. ’Fess, now!”
“Ha! Betty means to insinuate that if a boy’s one idea of owning a thing
is to carve a name or initials upon it, a girl’s first thought is to use
it to make her look more ‘fetching’—eh?” Sally pointed an accusing
finger at Betty. “I wouldn’t be sarcastic if I were you, ‘Holly’!”
“But that’s just what I did think of doing with it,” owned
Morning-Glory, subsiding to the soles of her feet again. “With the
exception of my Fire Maker’s bracelet,” holding up her rounded right
arm, “and my fagot ring, I have little or no jewelry, as the rest of you
girls have. If it was only forty or fifty years ago, now, I could wear
that beautiful old miniature of my great-grandfather—it’s set in real
gold. As I can’t, I’d like to wear this,” gloating over the large silver
disc from which Miles had removed the stain of long burial ere he finely
engraved or, rather, scratched the girl-owner’s monogram upon it with
the sharpest blade of his penknife so skilfully that it really did not
mar by incongruity the quaint beauty of the radiating sunburst, having
the queer old sun-face, like a microscopic mask in the center.
“Well, I’d wear it as a pendant if I wanted to! I’ve got a thin little
silver chain, Jess, that I’ll lend you while we’re here,” volunteered
Arline. “Pouf!” blowing scorn on Betty’s sarcastic scruples. “Why! it’s
hardly any bigger than the silver medals which some of the high school
girls wear in the spring in honor of their boy friends, in athletics,
who have won them on the track team or in the high jump or some other
event.”
“To be sure! People will only think that I have a friend who came in
second in the mile or half-mile at ‘interscholastics.’” Morning-Glory
fluttered gaily again upon the highest tendril of joy’s vine. “I paid
dearly for being the first to see the old coin,” with a momentary
shudder. “Now I may have the pleasure of wearing it to that party which
the Twin-Light Tribe is going to give at which we’ll play old-fashioned
games—dance old-fashioned dances—all the girls who don’t belong to our
‘Morning-Glory Tribe’ will just keep guessing and guessing as to what
sort of new-fangled athletic medal it is!”