his comforts.
I never knew scientists could rise to such occasions. Old Mangum
orally labelled and classified Goodloe and myself easily among the
lowest orders of the vertebrates; and in English, too, without going
any further into Latin than the simple references to Orgetorix, Rex
Helvetii--which is as far as I ever went, myself. And he told us that
if he ever caught us around his house again he would add us to his
collection.
Goodloe Banks and I remained away five days, expecting the storm to
subside. When we dared to call at the house again May Martha Mangum
and her father were gone. Gone! The house they had rented was
closed. Their little store of goods and chattels was gone also.
And not a word of
farewell to either of us from May Martha--not a
white, fluttering note pinned to the hawthorn-bush; not a chalk-mark
on the gate-post nor a post-card in the
post-office to give us a clew.
For two months Goodloe Banks and I--separately--tried every
scheme we
could think of to track the runaways. We used our friendship and
influence with the ticket-agent, with livery-stable men, railroad
conductors, and our one lone, lorn
constable, but without results.
Then we became better friends and worse enemies than ever. We
forgathered in the back room of Snyder's
saloon every afternoon after
work, and played dominoes, and laid conversational traps to find out
from each other if anything had been discovered. That is the way of
rivals.
Now, Goodloe Banks had a sarcastic way of displaying his own
learningand putting me in the class that was
reading "Poor Jane Ray, her bird
is dead, she cannot play." Well, I rather liked Goodloe, and I had a
contempt for his college
learning, and I was always regarded as good-
natured, so I kept my
temper. And I was
trying to find out if he knew
anything about May Martha, so I endured his society.
In talking things over one afternoon he said to me:
"Suppose you do find her, Ed,
whereby would you profit? Miss Mangum
has a mind. Perhaps it is yet uncultured, but she is destined for
higher things than you could give her. I have talked with no one who
seemed to
appreciate more the
enchantment of the ancient poets and
writers and the modern cults that have assimilated and expended their
philosophy of life. Don't you think you are
wasting your time looking
for her?"
"My idea," said I, "of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove
of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a Texas
prairie. A piano," I
went on, "with an
automaticplayer in the sitting-room, three thousand
head of cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies
always hitched at a post for 'the
missus '--and May Martha Mangum to
spend the profits of the ranch as she pleases, and to abide with me,
and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they
cannot be found of evenings. That," said I, "is what is to be; and a
fig--a dried, Smyrna, dago-stand fig--for your curriculums, cults, and
philosophy."
"She is meant for higher things,"
repeated Goodloe Banks.
"Whatever she is meant for," I answered, just now she is out of
pocket. And I shall find her as soon as I can without aid of the
colleges."
"The game is blocked," said Goodloe, putting down a domino and we had
the beer.
Shortly after that a young farmer whom I knew came into town and
brought me a folded blue paper. He said his
grandfather had just
died. I concealed a tear, and he went on to say that the old man had
jealously guarded this paper for twenty years. He left it to his
family as part of his
estate, the rest of which consisted of two mules
and a hypotenuse of non-arable land.
The sheet of paper was of the old, blue kind used during the rebellion
of the abolitionists against the secessionists. It was dated June 14,
1863, and it described the hiding-place of ten burro-loads of gold and
silver coin valued at three hundred thousand dollars. Old Rundle--
grandfather of his
grandson, Sam--was given the information by a
Spanish
priest who was in on the treasure-burying, and who died many
years before--no, afterward--in old Rundle's house. Old Rundle wrote
it down from dictation.
"Why didn't your father look this up?" I asked young Rundle.
"He went blind before he could do so," he replied.
"Why didn't you hunt for it yourself?" I asked.
"Well," said he, "I've only known about the paper for ten years.
First there was the spring ploughin' to do, and then choppin' the
weeds out of the corn; and then come takin'
fodder; and
mighty soon
winter was on us. It seemed to run along that way year after year."
That sounded
perfectlyreasonable to me, so I took it up with young
Lee Rundle at once.
The directions on the paper were simple. The whole burro cavalcade
laden with the treasure started from an old Spanish
mission in Dolores
County. They travelled due south by the
compass until they reached
the Alamito River. They forded this, and buried the treasure on the
top of a little mountain shaped like a pack-saddle
standing in a row
between two higher ones. A heap of stones marked the place of the
buried treasure. All the party except the Spanish
priest were killed
by Indians a few days later. The secret was a
monopoly. It looked
good to me.
Lee Rundle suggested that we rig out a camping
outfit, hire a
surveyor
to run out the line from the Spanish
mission, and then spend the three
hundred thousand dollars
seeing the sights in Fort Worth. But,
without being highly educated, I knew a way to save time and expense.
We went to the State land-office and had a practical, what they call a
"working,"
sketch made of all the
surveys of land from the old
missionto the Alamito River. On this map I drew a line due
southward to the
river. The length of lines of each
survey and section of land was
accurately given on the
sketch. By these we found the point on the
river and had a "connection" made with it and an important, well-
identified corner of the Los Animos five-league
survey--a grant made
by King Philip of Spain.
By doing this we did not need to have the line run out by a
surveyor.
It was a great saving of expense and time.
So, Lee Rundle and I fitted out a two-horse wagon team with all the
accessories, and drove a hundred and forty-nine miles to Chico, the
nearest town to the point we wished to reach. There we picked up a
deputy county
surveyor. He found the corner of the Los Animos
surveyfor us, ran out the five thousand seven hundred and twenty varas west
that our
sketch called for, laid a stone on the spot, had coffee and
bacon, and caught the mail-stage back to Chico.
I was pretty sure we would get that three hundred thousand dollars.
Lee Rundle's was to be only one-third, because I was paying all the
expenses. With that two hundred thousand dollars I knew I could find
May Martha Mangum if she was on earth. And with it I could flutter
the butterflies in old man Mangum's dove-cot, too. If I could find
that treasure!
But Lee and I established camp. Across the river were a dozen little
mountains
densely covered by cedar-brakes, but not one shaped like a
pack-saddle. That did not deter us. Appearances are deceptive. A
pack-saddle, like beauty, may exist only in the eye of the beholder.
I and the
grandson of the treasure examined those cedar-covered hills
with the care of a lady
hunting for the
wicked flea. We
explored
every side, top,
circumference, mean
elevation, angle, slope, and
concavity of every one for two miles up and down the river. We spent
four days doing so. Then we hitched up the roan and the dun, and
hauled the remains of the coffee and bacon the one hundred and forty-
nine miles back to Concho City.
Lee Rundle chewed much
tobacco on the return trip. I was busy
driving, because I was in a hurry.
As
shortly as could be after our empty return Goodloe Banks and I
forgathered in the back room of Snyder's
saloon to play dominoes and
fish for information. I told Goodloe about my
expedition after the
buried treasure.
"If I could have found that three hundred thousand dollars," I said to
him, "I could have scoured and sifted the surface of the earth to find
May Martha Mangum."
"She is meant for higher things," said Goodloe. "I shall find her
myself. But, tell me how you went about discovering the spot where
this unearthed increment was imprudently buried."
I told him in the smallest detail. I showed him the draughtsman's
sketch with the distances marked
plainly upon it.
After glancing over it in a masterly way, he leaned back in his chair
and bestowed upon me an
explosion of sardonic, superior, collegiate
laughter.
"Well, you are a fool, Jim," he said, when he could speak.
"It's your play," said I,
patiently, fingering my double-six.
"Twenty," said Goodloe, making two crosses on the table with his
chalk.
"Why am I a fool?" I asked. "Buried treasure has been found before in
many places."
"Because," said he, "in calculating the point on the river where your
line would strike you neglected to allow for the
variation. The
variation there would be nine degrees west. Let me have your pencil."
Goodloe Banks figured rapidly on the back of an envelope.
"The distance, from north to south, of the line run from the Spanish
mission," said he, "is exactly twenty-two miles. It was run by a
pocket-
compass, according to your story. Allowing for the
variation,
the point on the Alamito River where you should have searched for your
treasure is exactly six miles and nine hundred and forty-five varas
farther west than the place you hit upon. Oh, what a fool you are,
Jim!"
"What is this
variation that you speak of?" I asked. "I thought
figures never lied."
"The
variation of the
magneticcompass," said Goodloe, "from the true
meridian."
He smiled in his superior way; and then I saw come out in his face the
singular, eager, consuming cupidity of the seeker after buried
treasure.
"Sometimes," he said with the air of the
oracle, "these old traditions
of
hidden money are not without
foundation. Suppose you let me look
over that paper describing the
location. Perhaps together we might--"
The result was that Goodloe Banks and I, rivals in love, became
companions in adventure. We went to Chico by stage from Huntersburg,
the nearest railroad town. In Chico we hired a team
drawing a covered
spring-wagon and camping paraphernalia. We had the same
surveyor run
out our distance, as revised by Goodloe and his
variations, and then
dismissed him and sent him on his
homeward road.
It was night when we arrived. I fed the horses and made a fire near
the bank of the river and cooked supper. Goodloe would have helped,
but his education had not fitted him for practical things.
But while I worked he cheered me with the expression of great thoughts
handed down from the dead ones of old. He quoted some translations
from the Greek at much length.
"Anacreon," he explained. "That was a favorite passage with Miss
Mangum--as I recited it."
"She is meant for higher things," said I, repeating his phrase.
"Can there be anything higher," asked Goodloe, "than to dwell in the
society of the classics, to live in the
atmosphere of
learning and
culture? You have often decried education. What of your wasted
efforts through your
ignorance of simple
mathematics? How soon would
you have found your treasure if my knowledge had not shown you your
error?"
"We'll take a look at those hills across the river first," said I,
"and see what we find. I am still
doubtful about
variations. I have
been brought up to believe that the
needle is true to the pole."
The next morning was a bright June one. We were up early and had
breakfast. Goodloe was charmed. He recited--Keats, I think it was,
and Kelly or Shelley--while I broiled the bacon. We were getting
ready to cross the river, which was little more than a
shallow creek
there, and
explore the many sharp-peaked cedar-covered hills on the
other side.
"My good Ulysses," said Goodloe, slapping me on the shoulder while I
was washing the tin breakfast-plates, "let me see the enchanted
document once more. I believe it gives directions for climbing the