“Anyway, let’s go up and call on the old fellow,” said Tom. “I’d kinder
like to see him. We can go in my flivver----”
“Speaking of rattles,” said Brent; “that is, rattlesnakes.”
“We don’t have to go way up to Tuxedo,” said Tom. “I’ve got a map of
that region. We can shoot in at Sloatsburg. I bet that’ll let us right
into the section you’re talking about. They’re building a dam in there;
there’s going to be a new lake. I’ve been in that way a mile or so
already, it’s a pretty punk road.”
“In that case we’ll go in your flivver,” I said. “That will have the
advantage of making it unlikely that we’ll ever get there. I am not in
favor of this trip. I’d like to show you my old settler but I don’t want
to start anything.”
“Come ahead, we’ll bang up there,” said Tom.
I might have known it.
Now there _is_ a way that you can get into the Interstate Park
reservation by turning in at Sloatsburg. It was by some such route that
Long Buck had entered that region on his memorable return from New York.
But this route is so little known that even a state trooper in that very
neighborhood told me he had never seen or heard of it.
That was the way we went in Tom’s flivver. We turned in at Sloatsburg
and went in past what they call Burnt Sawmill Bridge. They are building
a dam there now to flood the section west of Brundige Mountain, and by
the time this chronicle is in your hands there will be a fine new lake
there which I am afraid will swallow up the old cave below the mountain.
Pretty soon we hit into a road going southeast and went through about
the most unfrequented country that ever a road traversed. Then we came
to St Johns, which is a picturesque little church (I can’t imagine who
attends it). The rest of the municipal furniture seems to consist of a
girl, a house, a turtle, and four cows. Then we came to Sandyfield,
approaching it from the west instead of from the north. This obscure
route had taken us through about the loneliest section of country that I
have ever known within a stone’s throw of civilization.
We parked the flivver exactly where I had parked my car, and I modestly
resigned to Tom the task of piloting us through the woods. I was
astonished at his skill in doing this. Like old Buck, he seemed to
recognize a trail where there was no trail, and at times he would be
always looking to right and left trying to discover the path of least
resistance. Now and then he asked me questions, and once or twice my
memory came to his aid. It is wonderful what a scout and woodsman he is.
As for Brent, he moved along soberly. I don’t know whether his soberness
is altogether a humorous pose; with his steel spectacles and his
intentness on the pathfinding he seemed to me excruciatingly funny.
One familiar thing (trail signs, I think they call them) I did see, and
I have thought of it often since. I plucked from a bush a little wisp of
gingham that was fluttering like a tiny pennant in the breeze. No doubt
it was torn from the simple dress of my little friend June Sanderson,
perhaps upon that very trip when she and old Buck accompanied me back to
Sandyfield. “We’re on the right track,” I said, waving it at Tom. But in
a way we were not exactly upon the right track either.
“Look here, Tomasso,” I said to Tom; “I don’t want you to get into an
argument with the old man. I don’t want you to crack up game wardens.
Above all, I don’t want you to tell him that those fellows never got his
money. He knows they did and that’s enough.”
“If it makes him happy to think they got his money, let him think so,”
said Brent. “He might be disappointed if he thought it was safe and
secure now.”
“Well, you mind what I say,” I repeated to Tom. “You can never convince
or change a person of his age; especially one of his type. We’ll just
make a little call. Barney Wythe got the money whether he got it or not
and game wardens are varmints.”
“Absolutely,” said Brent.
But, indeed, there was no need to coach Tom in the matter of handling my
old chance acquaintance. There was no need of my concern for the old
man’s feelings. I need not have troubled myself about respecting his
sturdy prejudices. Indeed, there was no need of our following that
obscure trail at all. For Long Buck Sanderson’s cabin was closed up
tight with a rough board nailed across the door. He had gone where there
were no game wardens--or only good game wardens. And it mattered very
little where his precious three thousand dollars were after all.