Moosemeadows/Chapter 6

SET out for the moosemeadows half an hour later, accompanied by the black dog Duster. I had ham sandwiches and gingerbread in my pockets—and other things. I wore well oiled trench-boots. What with the sunshine and my bright idea, I felt light-hearted. I felt myself to be more than a match for a dozen old fools like Ruben Glashner. An old woodroad led me three miles on my way, through tall timber; and from that point forward I followed a ghost of a track through tangled underbrush and over rotted blow-downs. I broke clear at last, and looked out upon a scene of desolation which even the sun of a May morning could not enliven. Brown and gray and flat and set in a low black rim, the hardhack spread for miles to the east and north and south. Here were miles, thousands of acres, of life which looked like death, and death which fed that life. Far out a few crows flew, their black wings gleaming in the sunshine like burnished metal. Farther out, beyond the flapping crows, a circular space of open water flashed like glass.

I felt depressed. I sat down on an outjut of mossy rock and lit a cigarette.

"I've seen barrens and swamps and battlefields, but this wins," I said.

The dog whined as if in agreement, sat down against my leg and looked out across the hardhack. The crows came ashore. A brown hawk went cruising over, flying low.

The level of the dreary waste was broken in five places within my range of vision. Two of these breaks were clumps of bushes and saplings lifted from four to five feet above the grim hardhack and tinted yellow and green with bloom and leaf; two others were solitary pines, half-grown and worse than half-dead, stooped like lost travelers in a desert; and the fifth was a knoll like a tiny island in that tideless sea, topped by a tall shaft of timber, gray as an old bone. This, after the expanse of open water farther out, was the most prominent mark in my range of vision on that vast waste. The timber was what is locally known as rampike—a gigantic pine, long dead and long since denuded of its crown and limbs and bark, hollow and crumbled within, but weathered to the toughness of horn without. This landmark stood at a distance of about three hundred yards from where I sat.

I produced my field-glasses from my pocket and studied the knoll and the rampike in detail. Good glasses, these. I saw juts of granite, mossy knobs, a tangle of brush and fallen timber around the base of the ancient shaft, and scars in the gray shell where the great limbs had been torn out by wind and frost and time. I noted one of these scars in particular. By its size, I judged it to have been the socket of one of the mightiest limbs of that once mighty tree. From there I swung my magnified glance slowly to right and left, then pocketed the glasses and produced compass and notebook. Duster left my side to scout around; and in a minute he had struck an interesting scent and gone away on it. His eager yelps receded swiftly to the northward. I made a few jottings, slowly, thinking hard, smiling at my thoughts. I felt better. By the inner light of my brightening idea, the scene before me lost something of its desolate significance.

I ventured out on the surface of the waste. I sank slowly to the tops of my boots in the wiry growth; and it quaked around me like stiff jelly. Lifting a sunk foot, I saw that I had not reached water. I moved forward, setting the hardhack a-tremble for yards on every side with every step. Faint murmurs and squashy sobs arose from the depths. My progress was slow, for I was afraid of coming upon a weakness in the mat of quaking vegetation. I had not gone far, and had paused to light a cigarette, when that sense which is not of eye, ear, nose or fingers warned me that I was under observation. I completed the lighting of the pipe, drew several slow puffs—then turned in my sunken tracks like a flash. But nothing showed of my observer. The edge of bush and wood disclosed nothing. My footmarks had been erased from the hardhack over and into which I had trod knee-deep. But I knew that I was still being watched by human eyes. I proceeded to retrace my steps; and when halfway back to my point of departure, I whistled shrilly for the dog. I heard him barking, far away on my right. I whistled again. The barking ceased, and the sensation of being watched left me. My right hand was in the right-hand pocket of my coat. I saw the top of an alder shaking on my left front; and I jerked my hand from my pocket and fired two shots.

The reports startled me back to reason and time and place. Now I stood staring, dismayed at my impulsive act, sinking slowly into the quaking, elastic hardhack. The alder had ceased to shake. I pocketed the pistol, pulled up my feet and went ashore. I forced my way cautiously and anxiously through the bushes to the mark at which I had fired. There was the alder; but, to my great relief, there was nothing else. The ground was matted with moss and deadwood and tufts of sprouting coarse grasses. I did not find a footprint, nor any mark of blood. I was glad of the lack of blood-sign, for the thought that the shaker of the alder may have been Tom Deblore himself had been with me ever since the shooting. I was about to turn away when Duster joined me. He circled the alder, with his nose to the ground, whined, yelped and dashed off to the northward. After a moment's hesitation, I whistled him back. He came reluctantly.

It was mid-afternoon when I got back to the old house. Deblore and Sol Bear were afield. Amy Bear was in the kitchen sewing patches on an old coat, Ruben Glashner was asleep in an armchair in a corner of the big dining-room, and Lion lay just outside the dining-room door, with one eye open. I told Amy Bear to tell old Glashner, should he awake and question her, that I had not yet returned. She nodded her head, with a brightening of dark eyes. I tiptoed to the front of the house and soon found the library. It was across the musty hall from the big drawing-room. It smelled of mildew and dryrot. All the wall space not occupied by chimney and windows and doors was covered with glazed bookcases. Several of the shelves were empty, and there were gaps in others, and hundreds of books lay scattered about the rotten old carpet.

By the thin ray of my electric torch I soon found what I had come in the hope of discovering. From an ancient volume bound in sheepshkin I cut a time-browned fly-leaf. With this, I retired to my room upstairs and locked myself in. For fifteen minutes I worked on a page of my notebook. Then I emptied my fountain-pen of ink, dipped it in diluted iodine and copied from the notebook onto the time-stained paper which I had brought from the library.

I contemplated my work with satisfaction. The paper was brown with age and the strokes and jots of the pen were brown as a mummy. Here was something for old Ruben Glashner and his unknown confederate to busy themselves with. Here was a "family paper" for their best attention.

I investigated the contents of the Gladstone bag and saw that the missing papers had not yet been replaced. Inserting the fly-leaf from the old book into the collection, I let myself out—leaving the door open behind me—and went for a walk.

I found Tom Deblore sowing oats, with Sol Bear and the harrows after him. He sowed from a basket that was slung at his left side by a broad strap across his shoulder. He halted at the end of the tillage and lowered the basket and fished up his pipe from a hip-pocket.

"What did you do?" he asked. "Any adventures?"

"I think I've started something," I replied. "We'll see less of that old crocodile, for a few days at least, or I miss my guess. I've planted something among my private papers that should keep him wading about in that hardhack and scratching through the woods for a while."

"That will be a relief, however you've fixed it."

I produced my notebook and showed him the rough draft of my work and told of the copy done with diluted iodine on time-stained paper. He studied the page with flattering attention, turning it this way and that, wrinkling his eyebrows and twitching his whiskers.

"What suggested this to you, Giddy?" he asked, lifting his gaze suddenly and keenly to my face.

"The old man's behavior—his talk to me, his climb up the chimney and his search of my papers," I answered.

"Nothing else?"

"What else, in heaven's name!"



"True, true—but it is very good. I almost believe it myself. You are to be congratulated. L P? What does that stand for?"

"Large pine. You know the old rampike standing up there about three hundred yards out in the hardhack."

"Yes. Very good. And l b?"

"Large branch. The socket-hole still shows. There must have been a branch there in the old days."

"That's so. And what about these marks?"

"That's what old Ruben will want to know. He'll have a busy time finding out."

"Aren't there any marks?"

"Of course there are not any marks—except the rampike."

"All this is pure invention? It is hard to believe. The fact is, you know—or you don't know—there's been talk of hidden treasure for generations. You've never heard of it, Gidwicke?"

"Never—except from old Ruben, and now from you."

"There has always been talk of it. I did not tell you so before. I wondered if you knew. Perhaps I shared old Glashner's suspicion; but now I know you better and trust you absolutely. But there's nothing in it. The first Deblore here was a very wealthy man. His children hadn't so much, though they had plenty. That's what started the stories, I suppose; and they have been growing ever since, naturally. What do you think?"

"I think that's quite likely."

"Yes, that's my idea; but on the other hand, if there ever has been a hidden treasure, it has been found. Henry always believed in it. That is why he encouraged me to go abroad as a youth—wanted to hunt for it in peace and single-handed. Henry found either the treasure, or proof positive that it had never existed, or he would still be here at Moosemeadows."

"But I've been told that he had to go, and go in a hurry, to save his life."

"The matter of knifing the shopkeeper. You didn't know Henry. He either wouldn't have run away from the hostile demonstration, or he had solved the mystery of the treasure and was ready to go. Nothing could scare Henry Deblore. He was as brave as he was ruthless. And he was clever. Had his nature been different, he would have been a great man. He left Moosemeadows Park of his own free will, despite appearances. He wrote me that I was the rightful owner, and exactly where to lay my hand on the true will; and when he received word from me that I was on my way, he threw a knife into Pete Higgley for a long-standing grudge and made an easy getaway. When the scum around here tell you that they chased him home, don't you believe it. They didn't come within gunshot of the house until they were quite sure that he was out of it. They were scared of him to the last. Henry was a bad man. You are one of the family, and you'll be my heir, so I'm frank with you—and you knew it, anyway. He wasn't respected—but, by the Lord, he was feared!"

"What was his grudge against the store-keeper?"

"Higgley always pretended that he wasn't afraid of him."

"So he tried to kill him!"

"Undoubtedly. But not until he had decided to leave the country. He was not one to move except of his own free will. He took several of the best of the old pieces of family plate with him, by the way—and a number of the heirlooms of gold and precious stones, as well, so far as I can reckon them up. Henry didn't go away a pauper, you may be sure; nor he didn't run away before he was ready to go, you can bet on that. I wish these louts were half as scared of me as they were of Henry. I wish old Glashner was. I've heard that Henry had that old blackguard—his own father-in-law, mark you—crawling on his prayer-handles to him."

"He must have been a formidable character."

"He was all of that. But does Ruben know that you have been to North Meadow?"

"I don't know if he does or not—but somebody does. Somebody took a look at me from the bush, but got away without showing himself."

Tom wagged his head. "We are surrounded by spies," he said. "Damn their insolence! All hostile, too. It's no joke being a Deblore nowadays in this neck of woods. I'm a peaceful man, and an honest one—but I'll stick to my inheritance! I've never given any man or woman or child in this country cause to hate or despise me. It is hard, unjust. But I'm here till death takes me—or hell freezes over. And Sol and Amy are with me."

"So am I, if that's any comfort to you," I said.

We shook hands impulsively, but I didn't tell him about the two shots I had let fly at the shaking alder.