Brent led the way over to the railroad tracks, then he began poking his
foot against the big spikes that hold the tracks down on the ties.
He said, “See there? What do you make of that, Sherlock Holmes?”
Harry said, “I don’t see anything unusual. What’s the matter?”
Brent went back along the track a little way and began walking along the
ties. “There’s a spike, there’s another, there’s another, there’s
another,” he kept saying, “and here’s another—with a different kind of a
head. Notice? More square—see?” He kept walking along. “Now there are
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight” and he kept walking
along and counting up to about eleven or twelve “of those square headed
spikes. See? They’re different from the others and they were driven in
after the others. Can’t foil the old Newburgh Sleuth. This is where the
train was derailed.
“The way I see it is, those robbers ripped up the tracks for about ten
or fifteen feet and set the ends apart and spread some leaves over the
break. When the railroad people spiked the rail down again, they just
happened to use spikes with heads of a little different shape. Then
there was a lapse of twenty-five years—that’s what they usually call it,
isn’t it, Pee-wee?—and, presto, along came the Boy Scouts. Nothing to
it. Right here is where that hold-up occurred—you can take it from the
Church Mice Patrol. Flowers and testimonials should be addressed to
First B. S. Troop, Newburgh and sent prepaid.”
I just blurted out, “Brent, you’re a _wonder_!”
“You’re _some_ scout,” Grove said.
Harry just kept shaking his head and then he said, “Brent, we’ve got to
hand it to you fellows. Pee-wee did a pretty good little stunt in
deduction himself, and the fact that these spikes are on the left side
bears out what he said.”
Then he told Brent about what Pee-wee had said, and Brent said, “Well,
it seems we haven’t got anything on Scout Harris, when it comes to
deducing.”
“Did you hunt for the tree?” Harry asked him.
Brent said, “No, because we weren’t sure of there being any tree; and
you weren’t either. We came up the track hunting for signs of a derailed
train, and we found them. It was as easy as pie.”
“Some pie isn’t so easy,” Willie Wide-Awake said.
Brent said, “Alas, ’tis true!” in that funny way he has. I guess little
Bill had had some experience, hey?
“Now come back to the tent and I’ll show you something else,” Brent
said; “we found it in the bushes when we were collecting firewood. How
about you? Are you game for camp-fire to-night?”
“You bet we are,” I said; “I’d rather have a camp-fire any day than an
auto trip.”
“You mean any _night_,” Skinny spoke up.
“Isn’t he getting just too clever for anything!” Grove said.
We went back to the tent under that great big tree, and Brent got out an
old bar of iron with a flat end. It was all rusty and the rust had eaten
into it so that Brent just pulled it against his knee and bent it. He
said, “That’s what they did the trick with. Seems funny, doesn’t it, to
find that after all these years?”
“You bet it does,” I said.
“Wonder just what happened here, hey?” he said.
We all sat down around outside the tent and it was awful nice there. It
was just beginning to get dark. That gold colored place up at the point
of the tree was kind of turned to brown. It was awful quiet all around.
It was so still that I could hear something fall out of the tree and hit
the ground. When I picked it up, I found it was just an acorn. I guess
maybe it belonged to that squirrel.
“I like it under here,” Skinny said; “I like it better than being in a
house.”
Harry took out the big envelope that had those secret papers (that’s
what Pee-wee called them) in it; and he just kind of glanced them over.
He read the newspaper articles and Brent listened. Then he said, “Let’s
see—oh, this is about the tree. We called it the Dahadinee poplar,
because that’s what old what’s-his-name called it. I can hardly see,
it’s getting dark so fast ... ‘trunk diameter of five or six feet ...
irregular, pyramidal open top ... as moved by the wind ... makes a
handsome object....’ Some old tree, huh?”
“It’s a peach of a tree,” Brent said.
Then for a little while none of us said anything. Gee, I don’t know what
we were all thinking about. Brent just held that old piece of bent,
rusty iron, and kept marking in the ground with it. I know _I_ was
thinking about how funny it was, that away back years and years ago a
robber should bury two bags of gold that had some seeds in them, and
that a great big tree like this should grow up over the very place, just
like we thought. A big tree that didn’t belong there—that belonged away
up in the north. I guess I must have been sort of dreaming, because all
of a sudden, I knew Harry was reading from that old letter that Pee-wee
had found in the car. They were all listening, while he skimmed over it.
“‘So ... have lost all I have by this outrage of scoundrels ... but I
paid him in good measure ... Watertown to care for dying ... say I am
rough diamond but human life sacred even more than gold.... So I will
come back to you and home with no riches for all this work but much
love which no scoundrel can steal. The best reason I would pay this
scoundrel ... in one of these bags ... for you to plant ... nuthing but
an adventure. I think more about how we can’t have our bench under our
Dahadinee poplar ... with much love ... Thor.’
“Pretty good letter, hey?” Harry said. “Who do you suppose he was?”
Brent just shook his head. Then he said, “He was a rough and ready old
scout with a heart as big as a ham. When it came to a showdown, he cared
more about a tree for he and his precious Ann to sit under, than he did
for a couple of bags of gold dust. He was _one lollapazuzza_!”
Harry just said, “_When it came to a showdown._”
“Probably on his way back from the Klondike, hey?” Brent said. “Lots of
them came down across Canada. Maybe he and Ann lived up along the
Dahadinee River when they were kids.”
“No telling,” Harry said.
Then nobody said anything, except Grove said we had better be starting
our fire.
“And he was bringing these seeds home to her,” Harry said, very quiet,
“so they would grow up and they could have some kind of a tree at home——
Oh, I think he was just _splendid_!”
I knew he was just imitating Grace Bronson.
All of a sudden he jumped up and said, “Let’s have one of those shovels.
Pee-wee, and I’ll make a dig—just for a tryout. Then we’ll get down to
business in the morning.”
Pee-wee got up kind of slow and got a shovel out of the tent and handed
it to Harry.
“Of course, we’ll have to chop the whole business down to-morrow,” Harry
said, “and dig in around the roots.”
“The gold dust will be pretty well mixed up with the earth right plunk
under the tree. It’ll be pretty hard to get at. But there are plenty of
us to do the work and we’re all scouts—except me. We’re not afraid of
work. We’ve got a wireless outfit to get, and a bicycle painted green.
Are you all game for a hard day’s work to-morrow?”
Brent was sitting there on the ground with his knees drawn up and he
just said, “We’re all scouts when it comes to a showdown.”
“Righto,” Harry said; “_when it comes to a showdown_.”