THE TREASURE OF LAS GOLONDRINAS
Two mornings after Patsy’s amazing discovery of what she believed to
be the place where Sir John Holden had buried the treasure box, an
interested but not entirely credulous delegation set out for the jungle.
It consisted of the Wayfarers, Dolores, Mr. and Miss Carroll, Uncle
Jemmy and two negro laborers. These last were laden with picks and
shovels. It had taken lengthy and insistent pleading on Patsy’s part to
bring about this much-desired state of affairs.
Despite the fact that she had been soundly taken to task by her aunt
and her father for disobedience of orders, her reiterated plea was:
“You may scold me as much as you like, Dad, if only you’ll send
somebody to dig up the earth around Dragon Rock.” Thus Patsy had named
the big boulder. She was firmly convinced that her theory concerning
the location of the treasure would prove correct, if investigated
thoroughly.
Demurring at first, the fascination of treasure hunting had finally
laid sufficient hold on Mr. Carroll to the point of consenting to humor
Patsy’s belief. Hence the party that, guided by Dolores, was now on its
way to Dragon Rock.
To the Wayfarers it was the great hour of their young lives. They
regarded the expedition as the very height of adventure. Miss Martha
was also rather stirred up over it, though she maintained her usual
lofty attitude of pretending she was not. Dolores was solemnly
superstitious lest evil might overtake the whole party. Mr. Carroll
was frankly sceptical. As for the darkies, they had no inkling of what
it was all about. Neither were they in the least concerned. Sufficient
that Massa Carroll “wanted dem woods dug up.”
Finally arrived at Dragon Rock, Patsy constituted herself master of
ceremonies, gravely escorting her father to the top of the boulder to
show him the dragon’s head. Mabel and Eleanor also clambered up to see
and were duly impressed. Miss Martha, however, had too much dignity for
rock climbing.
[Illustration: “Look!” Patsy pointed a shaking finger downward. “Can’t
you see it?”]
“Well, Patsy, I guess the boys might as well start digging,” was Mr.
Carroll’s opinion after a brief inspection of the ground around the
boulder. “Better stand well back, all of you. I’m going to have a
circular ditch dug around the rock, say about four feet wide and four
deep. If there is really a box buried there, it is probably buried
close to the rock. That’s the theory I’m going to proceed on.”
With this, Mr. Carroll left her and went over to where Uncle Jemmy and
his two assistants stood leaning on their picks, indolently awaiting
his orders. Instructing them as to the width and depth of the ditch he
purposed they should dig, he set them to work and stood watching them
for a moment, a half-amused smile on his face.
“We never thought we’d ever go treasure-hunting, did we, Martha?” he
remarked as he joined the interested group of spectators, drawn up a
little to the left of the rock. “It takes me back to the days when we
were youngsters and read dozens of treasure stories and wondered if we
should ever be lucky enough to stumble upon a real treasure.”
“Judging from appearances, I should say our ideas haven’t changed
much,” dryly returned his sister. “We are as deep in the mud as Patsy
is in the mire.”
“What are you going to do with this great treasure, when we find it,
Patsy?” humorously questioned her father.
“Give half of it to Dolores, and then we’ll divide the other half among
us,” returned Patsy.
This immediately evoked a chorus of laughing approval on the part of
everyone save Dolores, who protested stoutly against any such division.
Meanwhile the three darkies had proceeded stolidly with their task.
The loose sandy soil made digging comparatively easy and before long a
shallow ditch circled the rock. As they continued to work at deepening
it, conversation among the watchers died out and a curious hush fell
upon the group, broken only by the forest sounds around them and the
dull grating of pick and shovel coming in contact with the sand.
Patsy, however, could not resist going over to the ditch from time to
time for a close-up view of it. She was beginning to feel a keen sense
of disappointment. It looked as though her wonderful treasure theory
was about to tumble down.
“I guess I was away off on my sign of the Dragon,” she ruefully
admitted, as she returned to her friends after a gloomy inspection of
the sandy ditch. “Where Uncle Jemmy’s digging, he’s got down at least
three feet and there’s not a sign of----”
Patsy did not finish. A sudden hail from Uncle Jemmy of: “Ah reckon,
Massa Carroll, dey am suthin’ heah ’sides dirt!” caused her to dash
back to the ditch. Immediately the others hurried after her to the spot.
Standing in the ditch the old man was tapping lightly with his shovel
on a partially uncovered oblong of wood that appeared to form the top
of a box or casket. As nearly as could be seen it was about three feet
long and eighteen inches wide.
“Oh, Uncle Jemmy, do please hurry and dig it out!” implored Patsy,
almost tumbling into the ditch in her excitement. “It’s the treasure
box! It truly is! I was right after all about the sign of the Dragon!”
“Move back, girls,” ordered Mr. Carroll. “Give Jemmy room to get at the
thing. This certainly dashes me.”
Amid a babble of excited comment, the party moved back from the
opening, breathlessly watching Uncle Jemmy as he loosened the earth
around the box. It was so tightly packed as to suggest the labor of
purposeful hands. It needed but a little more effort on the part of the
old man to reveal what was undoubtedly a seaman’s chest, belonging to a
remote period.
Next instant Mr. Carroll had stepped into the ditch beside the old man
and was bending over the old chest. Above, a circle of eager faces
peered down at him. The other two darkies had also dropped shovels and
rushed to the scene, mouths agape with curiosity, eyes wildly rolling.
Grasping one end of the chest with both hands, Mr. Carroll received
a surprise. The lid of the chest moved under his hands. A concerted
murmur came from above as he lifted it free. Then the murmur welled to
a united shout. What the watchers had expected to see, none of them had
been prepared to state. What they really saw was something entirely
different from any idea each might have formed of the lost treasure of
Las Golondrinas.
Following the shout that had ascended, came an instant of silence. It
was Patsy who first spoke.
“Lift the box out of there, Dad,” she said in a rather unsteady tone.
“Let us have it up where we can get a good look at the wonderful
treasure.”
Suddenly she burst into a peal of high, clear laughter which went the
rounds of the amazed treasure-seekers. Amid almost hysterical mirth the
chest was raised from its resting place.
“It’s ready to fall to pieces,” commented Mr. Carroll, as he carefully
set the box on the ground. “It’s made of good tough wood or it wouldn’t
have held together all these years. Well, Patsy, what do you think of
your treasure now?”
“Not much, except that Sir John Holden never put that stuff in there.
It tells its own story, though.”
Kneeling beside the chest she reached into it and fished up a rudely
fashioned tomahawk, the blade of which was merely a sharp stone.
“This, and this,” she again reached down and added a long,
wicked-looking arrow-head to the tomahawk, “tell me that the people who
really found the treasure were the Indians. Don’t you remember that Sir
John wrote in the journal that he didn’t doubt that there were Indians
lurking about in this jungle? They were watching when Sir John and his
men buried the treasure. After they’d gone, the Indians came here and
dug it up.”
“It seems queer that they didn’t just throw the chest away instead of
burying it again with those queer weapons in it,” declared Mabel.
The Wayfarers were now down on their knees in a little circle about the
chest, interestedly lifting and inspecting the few articles it still
contained. There was another tomahawk, a murderous-looking mace and
a number of stone arrow-heads of various sizes. This, then, was the
treasure of Las Golondrinas. For it, one Fereda had taken many lives,
and because of it, his descendants had wasted long years of bitter,
unavailing search.
“It strikes me that the Indians of three hundred years ago liked to
play jokes,” was Mr. Carroll’s opinion. “That seems to be about the
only explanation of this stuff being here in the box. They took the
treasure and decided to leave a grim message for the other fellows if
they ever came back for their valuables. It was their way of saying
‘Stung!’ I guess.”
“We’ve all been _stung_,” giggled Patsy.
“Too bad it wasn’t that wicked old Camillo instead of nice harmless
people like us,” said Bee.
“And we were going to give Dolores half of it,” mourned Patsy. “Now
we’ve nothing to give her except a war-club and a couple of old
tomahawks which she certainly won’t have any use for.”
This raised a laugh in which even Dolores joined. She had looked unduly
solemn since the beginning of the expedition. Now for the first time
her sober face lighted into its wonderful radiant beauty.
“For this I am glad,” she declared earnestly. “To find in this box gold
and jewels would have been the sorrow, because such treasure cost some
lives. So it was surely evil. Now we know all and thus Las Golondrinas
which was always the unlucky place becomes the lucky. So shall good
fortune stay here now, for always.
“I have read in the books the stories of the princesses who, because
they were good and lovely, broke the wicked spells of the bad ones.
So is _querida_ Patsy, the dear princess, who because she would not
give up seeking the treasure, broke the spell and made all good again
here. There is now no more of mystery, so there will be no more of the
unhappiness. _Querida_ princess, I kiss your hand.”
Carried away by her own fanciful comparisons, Dolores caught Patsy’s
hand and kissed it.
“You’re the sweetest old dear alive.” Patsy wound her arms about
Dolores. “Since you will have it that I am a princess, I’ll add a
little more to the tale. Princess Patsy freed a wood nymph from a
wicked witch. Then the wood nymph was so grateful to the princess that
she promised never to go away from her. She said, ‘I will go to the far
North with you and the Señora Martha and the Señor Carroll and live in
your house and become your very own sister.’ Isn’t that what she said,
Dolores?”
A flood of color rushed to Dolores’ cheeks. Her great dark eyes grew
misty. For a moment she stood silent, fighting for self-control. Then
she raised her eyes timidly to Miss Martha’s dignified countenance. It
was a smiling face now and very tender. Next her glance wandered to
Mr. Carroll as though in question. What she saw in his face was also
reassuring.
“Isn’t that what she said, Dolores?” repeated Patsy encouragingly.
“_Si_,” was the soft answer.
And thus the future of Dolores the wood nymph was settled, thereby
proving that for her at least the era of good fortune had begun.
“Dad,” began Patsy that evening at dinner, “when are we going on that
expedition into the Everglades? We’ve only two more weeks’ vacation,
you know.”
“We can go next week, if you like,” amiably responded her father.
“I was in hopes you had forgotten all about that, Patsy,” complained
her aunt. “Haven’t you had enough excitement? Why not settle down
quietly for the rest of the time we are to be here? I can’t say I enjoy
the prospect of such a jaunt.”
“Why, Auntie!” Patsy stared across the table at Miss Martha in beaming
amazement. “Are _you_ really going with us? I thought you said----”
“So I did,” cut off her aunt, “but I have changed my mind. I’ve
discovered that I can walk around in a jungle as well as the rest of
you. In fact, I prefer it to staying alone in this house. I shall never
feel easy until that hobgoblin collection of portraits is cleared out
of the gallery and the whole place renovated.”
“That reminds me, Eulalie never answered our letter,” commented
Beatrice.
“Well, we don’t care now. We solved all the mysteries of Las
Golondrinas for ourselves,” asserted Patsy. “We know all about the
painted cavalier, we captured the ghost, found a secret door, a secret
drawer and the treasure of Las Golondrinas. We’ve got the journal of
Sir John Holden. It’s a perfect jewel in itself, and I’ve found a
foster-sister. Can you beat it?”
She cast a roguish glance at her aunt as she perpetrated this slangy
offense.
“Our vacation’s almost over, but we’ve another one coming next summer,”
she continued. “We’re five Wayfarers now, and we’ll wayfare into
strange lands and find new and curious things. The Wayfarers can’t be
like other people, you know. They just have to do startling things
and live in startling places. They’ve proved that twice--and oh, joy!
Summer’s coming. When it does come and the Wayfarers take the road
again, who knows what wonderful things may happen to them?”
How the Wayfarers spent the summer vacation, to which Patsy was already
looking forward with eager zest, will be told in the third volume of
this series entitled, “PATSY CARROLL IN THE GOLDEN WEST.”
THE END
THE JANE ALLEN COLLEGE SERIES
BY EDITH BANCROFT
_12mo. Illustrated. With cover inlay and jacket in colors_
_Price per volume, $1.00_
[Illustration]
_This series is a decided departure from the stories usually written of
life in the modern college for young women. An authoritative account of
the life of the college girl as it is lived today._
1. JANE ALLEN OF THE SUB TEAM
When Jane Allen left her home in Montana, to go East to Wellington
College, she was sure that she could never learn to endure the
restrictions of college life.
2. JANE ALLEN: RIGHT GUARD
Jane Allen becomes a sophomore at Wellington College, but she has to
face a severe trial that requires all her courage and character. The
result is a triumph for being faithful to an ideal.
3. JANE ALLEN: CENTER
Lovable Jane Allen as Junior experiences delightful days of work and
play. Jane, and her chum, Judith, win leadership in class office,
social and athletic circles of Sophs and Juniors.
4. JANE ALLEN: JUNIOR
Jane Allen’s college experiences, as continued in “Jane Allen, Junior,”
afford the chance for a brilliant story. A rude, country girl forces
her way into Wellington under false pretenses.
5. JANE ALLEN: SENIOR
Jane and Judith undertake Social Service, wherein they find actual
problems more thrilling than were those of the “indoor sports.”
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THE PATSY CARROLL SERIES
BY GRACE GORDON
_12mo. Illustrated. With cover inlay and jacket in colors_
_Price per volume, $1.00_
[Illustration]
_This fascinating series is permeated with the vibrant atmosphere
of the great outdoors. The vacations spent by Patsy Carroll and her
chums, the girl Wayfarers, in the north, east, south and west of the
wonderland of our country, comprise a succession of tales unsurpassed
in plot and action._
PATSY CARROLL AT WILDERNESS LODGE
Patsy Carroll succeeds in coaxing her father to lease one of the
luxurious camps at Lake Placid, for the summer. Established at
Wilderness Lodge, the Wayfarers, as they call themselves, find they are
the center of a mystery which revolves about a missing will. How the
girls solve the mystery makes a splendid story.
PATSY CARROLL UNDER SOUTHERN SKIES
Patsy Carroll and her three chums spend their Easter vacation in an
old mansion in Florida. An exciting mystery develops. It is solved by
a curious acrostic found by Patsy. This leads to very exciting and
satisfactory results, making a capital story.
PATSY CARROLL IN THE GOLDEN WEST
The Wayfarers journey to the dream city of the Movie World in the
Golden West, and there become a part of a famous film drama.
PATSY CARROLL IN OLD NEW ENGLAND
Set in the background of the Tercentenary of the landing of the
Pilgrims, celebrated in the year 1920, the story of Patsy Carroll
in Old New England offers a correct word picture of this historical
event and into it is woven a fascinating tale of the adventures of the
Wayfarers.
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THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES
By MARGARET PENROSE
Author of the highly successful “Dorothy Dale Series”
12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, $1.00 postpaid.
[Illustration]
Since the enormous success of our “Motor Boys Series,” by Clarence
Young, we have been asked to get out a similar series for girls. No
one is better equipped to furnish these tales than Mrs. Penrose, who,
besides being an able writer, is an expert automobilist.
THE MOTOR GIRLS
_or A Mystery of the Road_
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON A TOUR
_or Keeping a Strange Promise_
THE MOTOR GIRLS AT LOOKOUT BEACH
_or In Quest of the Runaways_
THE MOTOR GIRLS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND
_or Held by the Gypsies_
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CEDAR LAKE
_or The Hermit of Fern Island_
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON THE COAST
_or The Waif from the Sea_
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CRYSTAL BAY
_or The Secret of the Red Oar_
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON WATERS BLUE
_or The Strange Cruise of the Tartar_
THE MOTOR GIRLS AT CAMP SURPRISE
_or The Cave in the Mountain_
THE MOTOR GIRLS IN THE MOUNTAINS
_or The Gypsy Girl’s Secret_
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BY MARGARET PENROSE
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_12 mo. Illustrated_
_Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid_
[Illustration]
_Dorothy Dale is the daughter of an old Civil War veteran who is
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one of the most popular series of books for girls ever published._
DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY
DOROTHY DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL
DOROTHY DALE’S GREAT SECRET
DOROTHY DALE AND HER CHUMS
DOROTHY DALE’S QUEER HOLIDAYS
DOROTHY DALE’S CAMPING DAYS
DOROTHY DALE’S SCHOOL RIVALS
DOROTHY DALE IN THE CITY
DOROTHY DALE’S PROMISE
DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST
DOROTHY DALE’S STRANGE DISCOVERY
DOROTHY DALE’S ENGAGEMENT
DOROTHY DALE TO THE RESCUE
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BY ALICE B. EMERSON
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_12mo. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
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Ruth Fielding was an orphan and came to live with her miserly uncle.
Her adventures and travels make stories that will hold the interest of
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Ruth Fielding is a character that will live in juvenile fiction.
1. RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
2. RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
3. RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
4. RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
5. RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
6. RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
7. RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
8. RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
9. RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
10. RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
11. RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
12. RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
13. RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
14. RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
15. RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
16. RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
17. RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST
18. RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE
19. RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING
20. RUTH FIELDING IN THE FAR NORTH
21. RUTH FIELDING AT GOLDEN PASS
22. RUTH FIELDING IN ALASKA
23. RUTH FIELDING AND HER GREAT SCENARIO
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1. BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
_or The Mystery of a Nobody_
At twelve Betty is left an orphan.
2. BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON
_or Strange Adventures in a Great City_
Betty goes to the National Capitol to find her uncle and
has several unusual adventures.
3. BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL
_or The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune_
From Washington the scene is shifted to the great oil
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4. BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL
_or The Treasure of Indian Chasm_
Seeking treasures of Indian Chasm makes interesting reading.
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_or The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne_
At Mountain Camp Betty found herself in the midst of a
mystery involving a girl whom she had previously met in
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_or School Chums on the Boardwalk_
A glorious outing that Betty and her chums never forgot.
7. BETTY GORDON AND HER SCHOOL CHUMS
_or Bringing the Rebels to Terms_
Rebellious students, disliked teachers and mysterious
robberies make a fascinating story.
8. BETTY GORDON AT RAINBOW RANCH
_or Cowboy Joe’s Secret_
Betty and her chums have a grand time in the saddle.
9. BETTY GORDON IN MEXICAN WILDS
_or The Secret of the Mountains_
Betty receives a fake telegram and finds both Bob and
herself held for ransom in a mountain cave.
10. BETTY GORDON AND THE LOST PEARL
_or A Mystery of the Seaside_
Betty and her chums go to the ocean shore for a vacation
and there Betty becomes involved in the disappearance of a
string of pearls worth a fortune.
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End of Project Gutenberg's Patsy Carroll Under Southern Skies, by Grace Gordon