THE GREAT SECRET
Left to pursue their mining, Nate and the two Ranger boys worked the
remainder of the morning, and mined several handsome specimens.
These Garry had been carrying loose in his pocket, but now they had
become too bulky, and so they were transferred to a canvas bag.
Phil suggested that they be secreted in the tent, and so a hole was
dug and the bag inserted. Then the dirt was replaced, and the boughs
that made one of the bunks thrown back there.
About midafternoon, another rich pocket was unearthed by Garry, and
when this was panned, revealed a score of fine commercial gems.
Phil was detailed to take them to the tent and add them to the
others. This he did, and had barely uncovered the gems and was
putting the latest find with their companions, when he was struck
over the head with a heavy club. His last remembrance, as he floated
away into unconsciousness, was the sound of a mocking laugh that
belonged to none other than their deadly enemy, the halfbreed.
Garry waited several minutes for Phil to return, and when his chum
failed to come back, walked to the tent to see what was delaying
him.
He opened the tent flap and was shocked to see Phil lying
unconscious on the ground. He raised his voice and called to Nate,
who came rushing from the ledge.
“Someone’s knocked Phil out,” he told Nate. “Run and get a pail of
water.”
Nate didn’t stop to ask questions, but hastened to do Garry’s
bidding.
He had hardly gotten outside the tent, however, when Garry called
him back.
“I was so startled I forgot what I was doing for a minute. We don’t
need water. Grab a blanket, Nate, and we’ll roll him up in that. A
person knocked unconscious suffers a bit of a shock. What he needs
now is warmth. There, now he’s covered up. Chafe one of his hands
and arms, Nate, and I’ll take the other. We want to start the
circulation flowing rapidly.”
They worked swiftly for several minutes, and finally Phil’s eyelids
fluttered weakly. Then, as returning consciousness dawned, he
struggled to sit up.
“Lie back there quietly and keep still,” ordered Garry.
“No, I’m all right,” protested Phil weakly. Then he thought of
something.
“The tourmalines,” he gasped. “Look for them.”
Garry ran to the hole made for the canvas bag.
The bag was gone!
But in searching about the tent to see if perchance they had been
misplaced, Nate came upon a piece of paper, weighted down by a
pebble.
“There’s your thief and the man who knocked out Phil,” he said.
There was nothing on the paper but the crude representation of a
bear.
“The Bear,” said Garry disgustedly. “Jean LeBlanc’s nickname. Oh,
Nate, what a lot of fools we’ve been. We should have kept a watch
for him every minute. Now here’s all our time gone, and our valuable
gems. Of course we may get others, but suppose the pockets give out.
All gone.”
Phil said nothing, but Garry knew that he saw his visions of going
to school with his chums in the fall going a-glimmering.
He strove to console Phil, who remained silent.
Finally Phil began to recover fully from the effects of the blow,
and with the recovery his spirits rallied.
“Well, that’s just our hard luck for the present,” he said
philosophically. “It means that we’ll have to get out and hustle a
bit harder to make up. I know that there are more tourmalines there.
I believe we have only just begun on the mine.”
Both Nate and Garry insisted, however, that Phil stay quiet for the
rest of the afternoon, despite his protestations that he was all
right.
“I wouldn’t have gone out that time, if it wasn’t that the club
LeBlanc used hit me on the tender spot that was left from the bump I
got when I fell off the train. That and my game ankle have almost
made a blooming invalid out of me.”
He was insistent about getting up, and it is probable that his
friends would have yielded to his demands, except that at that
moment a shadow darkened the doorway of the tent, and they looked up
to see the figure of their friend, the Hermit.
They would hardly have recognized him except for his clothing, for
he had had his hair cut and his beard shaved off.
They bade him a hearty welcome, and asked how he had found them. He
explained that he had found that they had come to Hobart and had
walked there, taking almost a week to make the trip, and arriving at
Hobart had been directed to Denton, who told where the boys and Nate
might be found.
Garry caught himself gazing at the Hermit all the rest of the
afternoon. There was something puzzling, something that lurked in
his mind that he could not quite uncover. Then a wild thought came.
He went outside the tent, and called Nate out.
“Listen carefully now, please, Nate. I may be crazy, and then again
if I’m right, it may be the biggest thing in life for two people. I
haven’t time to explain now. But on no condition let the Hermit out
of your sight until I can get my father here. Keep him if you have
to tie him to do it.”
Garry dashed away toward the town, which lay some four miles
distant. He arrived at the station and found that it was closed. The
next objective was the hotel, and here he inquired for the residence
of the station agent. To his dismay he was told that the station
agent lived some twenty miles down the road, and had gone there for
a short time. He had taken the last down train, and a relief
operator would come in the morning to take his shift during his time
off.
“You see, there are no trains here after nightfall, and so there’s
no need for a telegrapher or station agent,” explained the hotel
owner.
“But this may be a matter of life and death,” cried Garry. “Look
here, I can send a message myself. Can you suggest any way of
getting into the station?”
“Well, young man, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. There isn’t any chief
of police or the like of that here, but I’m a Justice of the Peace,
and maybe that will give me authority to bust a window in the
station and let you in.”
“That will be the ticket,” said Garry.
The hotel man got his hat and a screwdriver, and they repaired to
the station. Here the hotel man stuck the screwdriver under the
window latch, and with a quick snap forced it open.
“Guess I could qualify for a good burglar after this, and I’ll
probably catch merry blazes in the morning, but I’ll take a chance,”
he said.
He boosted Garry in through the window and followed himself. Once at
the instrument, Garry opened the key and began calling for any
station. Stations have each a particular letter combination, and
there is, in addition, a code combination that calls the nearest man
on the line to answer. In a few seconds he got a reply and ticked an
explanation that he was at Chester and desired to send an urgent
message.
“Who are you, you’re not Campbell,” ticked the man at the other
station.
Telegraph operators who are acquainted with each other, can tell the
“send” of a telegrapher as easily as a person can recognize the
handwriting of a close friend.
Garry explained that he was only an amateur and that he had to get
off this emergency message. The explanation evidently satisfied the
man, who told him to “shoot” his message, promising to relay it
promptly to Colfax.
Here is what Garry sent to his father:
“Come to Chester at once. Most urgent. Please let nothing delay you.
Matter of grave importance. Answer immediately.”
He signed his name to it, and then inquired how long the other
operator would be on duty. He learned to his gratification that the
man would be there until midnight, and promised to relay immediately
any answer that would come.
The hotel proprietor, Graves by name, when he saw Garry’s
familiarity with the telegraph, was convinced that everything was
all right, and agreed to let him remain and see if a message would
come in answer.
Garry fretted and fumed with impatience for nearly two hours, and
then the ticker started, and he got the following message:
“Am in Bangor. Mother ’phoned me about message. Don’t understand
your wire, but will start in morning and arrive Chester tomorrow
evening. Meet me.”
With a sigh of relief Garry ticked his thanks to the other operator
and prepared to go. He insisted on paying Graves something for his
trouble, and after consulting a rate book that hung on a nail over
the telegraph instrument, left the costs of the telegram on the
table.
It was almost eleven o’clock when he came back to the tent. The
hermit was asleep on a bough bed that he had fixed, and did not wake
when Garry entered, as did Phil and Nate. He whispered to them to
come outside, and they did.
“Now,” said Nate, “what’s all the shooin’ for?”
“Not so loud,” cautioned Garry. “Here’s the answer.”
Then he bent closer and whispered something. It made them utter
surprised exclamations which they immediately muffled after a
warning nudge from Garry.
“So, now,” concluded the Ranger leader, “all we can do is wait until
Dad gets here tomorrow night.”
For Nate and the two boys the next day passed on leaden feet. They
went about their mining, as usual, and were aided by the hermit, who
displayed a remarkable knowledge of geology, and when told that they
were mining for tourmalines, told them something of the early
history of the stones,—astrekkers or “ashdrawers” as the Dutch
called them, because of their magnetic property in picking up bits
of straw or ashes. The boys learned for the first time how they had
been discovered on Mount Apatite in Paris, Maine, by two boys who
were out hunting.
About half-past three Garry departed for Chester to meet his father
on the five o’clock train. He arrived several minutes before train
time, and chatted with the agent and explained what he had done the
night before.
When the train arrived, Mr. Boone was the first to alight, and Garry
rushed forward to meet him. After they had shaken hands, Mr. Boone
demanded to know if anyone had been hurt.
“No, everyone’s all right. Dick is away in the woods doing a Joe
Knowles, but what we wanted is to find that I’m right on the biggest
hunch I ever had, or else crazy as a loon. Now I’m not going to say
anything more till we get to camp, for I want to see your reaction
to what I’m going to show you without having influenced you.”
They reached the tent, and Garry called out:
“Oh, Hermit, come out just a minute.”
The hermit parted the flap and stepped outside. He looked blankly at
Mr. Boone and bowed.
Mr. Boone stared at the hermit, however, as though he were looking
at a spirit from the world beyond. Then he cried:
“Great Heavens! It’s Dick’s father!”
“Hurrah,” shouted Garry, and he was joined in his jubilation by
Phil. Even Nate shared in the exuberance.
All this time the hermit looked puzzled at the uproar. Finally Mr.
Boone turned to him, and stretching out his hand, advanced and said:
“Don’t you know me, Richard?”
“No, sir; I don’t think I ever saw you before.”
Garry looked significantly at his father and, unobserved by the
hermit, slightly tapped his forehead.
“You know young Dick, don’t you?” pursued Mr. Boone.
“Of course I know Dick; he’s a fine young man, too,” answered the
hermit, who we will now call Prof. Wallace.
“Well, you are Professor Richard Wallace and Dick is your son.”
A look of wonder spread over the professor’s face.
“Perhaps you are right. I don’t know who I am or where I came from
years ago. All I know is that I have lived in the forest for many
years.”
Very slowly and gently Mr. Boone explained about the previous
accident and the escape from the hospital before the operation. When
he had concluded, the professor asked:
“You say there was to have been an operation? Is there anything to
prevent that being done now?”
“No, we will take you back in the morning to Boston and have the
best surgeons there do it.”
So the matter was arranged. However, knowing the peculiarity of the
Hermit, as they still thought of him, Garry and Phil alternated in
keeping watch that night. They figured that his talk with Mr. Boone
might have been during a particularly lucid moment, and that the old
trouble would come back on him, and he would disappear as he had
done on so many other occasions.
However, nothing happened, and the next morning Mr. Boone took him
to Chester to board the train that would eventually take them to
Boston. It was agreed that Dick should not be told of the visit of
the hermit, and that the matter should be kept a secret to be sprung
on him after the operation.
“And believe me, Nate and Phil,” declared Garry, “Dick will be the
happiest boy in the world, when he learns he has found his father.”