CHAPTER X.—THE OLD HOUSE BY THE RIVER.
“Perhaps,” Clay suggested, as the two were about to leave the Rambler for the proposed visit to the old house where the third paper was believed to be, “it might be well to awake Case, so the boat will not remain without a guard. How long will it take us to make the visit?”
“Not longer than a couple of hours,” was the reply. “We ought to be back here before midnight. The house is close to the river.”
“Why didn’t you get it before you came on board?” demanded Clay.
“I was afraid to go there alone in the dark,” was the frank reply. “I could see more than ten million ghosts every time I thought of it.”
“Pretty vivid imagination you have!” laughed Clay. “And now,” he went on, “how are we going to get ashore without getting wet? The first thing I shall do in the morning will be to buy a small rowboat.”
“I’m wet now,” Tom grunted, “and I can swim ashore, hire a boat, and come out after you, if you have the price! I haven’t seen a cent of real money since the birth of Adam!”
“Exaggeration seems to be your failing,” Clay laughed. “Well,” he concluded, “you may go and get a boat if you care to, and can. But don’t bring a boatman with you. We don’t want any one to know that the Rambler is unguarded. It seems a pity to awake the boys, so we’ll take the risk of leaving the boat alone for a time—alone with Captain Joe and Teddy on guard!”
“The dog ought to guard the boat, all right,” suggested Tom.
“He usually does, but twice lately people have come aboard without any warning from him. One was Don, your brother, and the other was King, the deputy in search of your brother. However, he may keep awake to-night, and awake the lads if any one comes sneaking around.”
Tom reluctantly took to the water again, and soon returned with a small rowboat which he had rented from an all-night fisherman. Instead of entering the boat at once, Clay called the boy on deck and handed him a suit of dry clothes. The garments were much too large for the slender youth, but they were preferable to the wet ones he removed. Then, taking two electrics and two automatic revolvers, the two rowed to the shore, secreted the boat in a little slip, and set out for the old house by the river.
“Now,” Clay observed, as they walked along, “you might tell me something about those papers. What do they stand for, and why are they scattered so widely? Is there any one on earth who can read them?”
“The papers,” replied Tom, “refer to a locality in one of the canyons of the Colorado river. We don’t know exactly what it is they stand for. We have been told that our fortune lies there, and so we are trying to get it. It may mean gold, diamonds, copper, silver, or good advice! We never will know unless we get the third paper and go look for the thing which lies behind the big ‘X.’ It is a long story.”
“In one of the canyons of the Colorado river?” repeated Clay. “And that is the reason you two rascals decided to take passage on the Rambler! You expect us boys to take you up to your fortune?”
“We shall pay you for the trouble, you know,” falteringly.
“But suppose you don’t find anything of value there? Suppose the suggestion you recently made about good advice is the correct one? How are we to get our pay, then?” asked Clay, with assumed gravity.
“Then we’ll pay you in good advice,” was the quick reply. “The good advice will be not to take tramp boys on board your boat on the strength of any plausible fairy tale they may tell you! How’s that?”
“Where did these mysterious papers originally come from?” asked Clay, without replying to the last question, but smiling at the quick humor of the other. “Who unloaded them on you boys?”
“Uncle David Durand,” was the reply. “He was a sort of a hermit, and lived in the Grand Canyon for a long time, all alone, after we left him. I guess he lived on the fish he caught and his grouches! Every time I saw him he had fish scales on his vest front and a three-cornered grouch under his crust. He left the papers to us as an inheritance, with the warning that we'd have a beaut of a time finding our fortune! We are having all of that!”
“But you said Don stole the papers. What about that?”
“This man Josiah Trumbull stole the two first. This Josiah is a crook. He lived with Uncle David for a time, trying to worm his secret out of him, but did not succeed. Then he salted a mine and sold it to a friend of David’s for $50,000, and got out of the country, with the officers close behind him. That’s the $50,000 Don took when he stole the handbag to get the papers.”
“And you don’t know where this location is?”
“No more than a rabbit! We think it is near where Uncle lived, but we’ll find out when we get the third paper. That gives the clue to it all.”
“Who put it in the old house where we are going to look for it?”
“A paper in Trumbull’s bag located it there, that’s all I know. Don was to get it when he reached Yuma, but King was too hot after him. The boy will be glad to know that we unearthed it—if we do.”
“It seems to me to be about as clear as mud!” Clay exclaimed, and you’ll have to tell me about it at some other time. Do you see the old house by the river yet? We have been quite a time on the way.”
“It is there,” answered Tom, pointing. “You can see the roof from here. It is an old derelict, formerly occupied, ages ago, by Uncle David, now mostly given over to rats. I stood here a long time before I saw your boat and heard your voices, wondering if I had the courage to go in there alone without a gun or a light. I found that I hadn’t, and so went scouting along the river, looking for you.”
“Rats!” repeated Clay. “You say the old house is mostly given over to rats? Is that what you said a moment ago?”
“It surely is,” replied Tom. “Rats own the place now.”
“Must be a peculiar kind of rats that carry a lantern,” Clay observed. “If you look you’ll see a light passing from window to window.”
There surely was a light passing from side to side of a large room which faced the street. There were no sash in the window openings, and the large front door hung on one hinge. Taken altogether, it was as dreary-looking a structure as one would be apt to come across.
The boys made no attempt to enter the house by the front door. Instead, they passed around to the west, or river side, and vaulted through an open window which lighted a room back of the one in front. The river ran close to the foundation wall on the west, and eddied about under this window, proclaiming an unusual depth of water there. The house stood in a hollow, lower than the river, but protected by the raised bank.
Listening for sounds, watching for lights, Clay and Tom stood by the window opening a long time without hearing or seeing anything worthy of note. There was only the murmur of the waters and the uncertain light of the stars. After a time Clay whispered:
“Where is the paper you came here to find?”
“It is supposed to be in an old cupboard in the cellar,” was the reply. “It is enclosed in a wallet with other documents. I’ll show the way, as near as I can without having been over the ground since I was a little chap.”
“But why—”
Clay cut the sentence short, for he realized that that was no time or place to ask questions regarding the motives of the person who had placed the paper in such a place. Besides, he believed that the person who had shown a lantern was still in the house. Directly a creaking on the cellar stairs confirmed this opinion.
Followed by Tom, who was actually shivering with fright, he crept to the head of the cellar staircase and looked down into a dark passage. But while he looked a light sprang out and King’s face was revealed. The deputy was digging with a shovel in one corner of the cellar!
The cupboard Tom had mentioned was close to the stairs, and Clay decided that he could get to it while King worked with his shovel, seize the wallet, and get out of the house without being seen.
But King, while industrious, was always watchful. Time and again he lifted his lantern and glanced keenly around the place.
Clay started down the steps several times, but always drew back, for the least noise attracted King’s attention. The boy had no idea how the deputy had reached Yuma so soon after being put off the Rambler, or why he was digging in the old house, but all this was of less importance to him than the recovery of the paper said to be in a wallet in the old cupboard, which stood in plain sight from where he crouched, near the head of the stairs. At last King picked up his lantern and began looking in an other and more distant corner of the cellar.
Then the boys moved down the steps, gained the cupboard, and threw the door open. Three shelves were revealed, each one covered with a collection of miscellaneous articles and dust. There were cracked dishes, broken knives and forks, unknown things tied up in brown paper, and scores of such articles as a miserly man or woman might store away, not having the heart to discard them utterly. And there was the wallet!
Clay seized it eagerly and thrust it into a pocket. Then, as he reached up to make an investigation of an article on the top shelf, his foot slipped and he came near falling.
He would have fallen only that he clung to the shelf for support. But the shelf was not stable, for his body swayed back as he clung to it, and then he saw the entire interior of the cupboard swing out! The displacement of the woodwork revealed an opening in the west wall of the cellar, against which the cupboard stood.
Standing back of Clay, Tom saw King lift his lantern and move toward the stairway. If he came on discovery was certain, so the lad pushed his companion on into the dark opening and followed him.
At first Clay resented the action, for the place beyond the opening was dark, and damp gusts of wind sighed out of it, but at a whispered word from Tom he groped in and made way for his companion. The light of King’s lantern flashed almost in their faces as they turned to look out into the cellar again.
King was advancing toward them, so Clay reached out and softly drew the shelves toward the wall. There was a sharp snap, as of metal meeting metal, and then all was dark and still.
Clay brought out his electric and flashed it around the place. It was just a dungeon cut off from the cellar on the river side. The walls were of stone, and the ceiling was of iron. Through the wall on the west the murmur of the river could be heard.
“Looks to me like a miser’s vault,” Clay whispered, as he swung his electric around. “You say your Uncle David lived in this house once?”
“Yes, but that was a long time ago. He owned it at the time of his death, and, the people of Yuma say, used to visit the place once a year.”
“He might have stored gold or silver here,” Clay suggested. “This den wasn’t prepared to keep vegetables in!”
Tom went to the door and listened, having no answer to the supposition. He could hear King moving about in the cellar, and finally there came a tap on the door, which, the boy saw, was covered with a plate of rusty iron. Then a voice, muffled by wood and metal, came to his ears. It was King speaking and his tone was one of triumph.
“Good-night, boys!” the deputy said. “You are welcome to all you find in there! I’ve been over every inch of it! Good-night. I’ll see that you remain there for a time!”
“We might starve to death here, and no one would ever know!” Tom complained. “I knew Uncle David had such a hole as this, but I never thought I’d be locked up in it!”
“How do you think King found out about it?” asked Clay.
“There must have been papers Don didn’t get with the handbag,” was the reply. “I don’t know! He found out, anyway, and so did we! I suppose we are about nine thousand feet under the surface of the earth!”
“Make it a good one while you are at it,” chuckled Clay.
“How are we ever going to get out?” asked Tom. “I’m afraid down here in this musty hole! I always was afraid in the dark. I see ghosts in every shadow! Guess I was born that way!”
“We’ll have to dig out,” Clay answered. “We’ve just got to get back to the Rambler! What will the boys think?”
“Think we’ve run away, I presume.”
“Then you’ve got another presume coming! They’ll think we have been abducted and killed. So many strange things have occurred lately that they have a right to think almost anything! It is after midnight now, and I was to awaken Case at that time and go to bed.”
“We’ll both go to bed in the promised land, I guess!” Tom declared, gloomily. “I don’t see how we’re ever going to dig out of here!”
“If you’ll cast your mournful eyes over into that corner,” Clay said, “you’ll see a shovel, or a spade, or some digging implement King must have left here. I reckon we can do something with that! Do you get me?”
“I never knew that a shovel could dig through stone or iron,” observed Tom, still despondent. “You’re just trying to think you can dig out.”
“Son,” chuckled Clay, “these stones are laid on solid ground. I don’t know how deep the foundation runs below the bottom of the cellar, but, no matter about that. We’ll dig down until we get under the wall, and then the stones will come tumbling down and we’ll walk out—to the confusion of King and the great delight of the boys and Captain Joe and Teddy.”
“I’d like to know how King got up here,” Tom muttered, as Clay took up the shovel and set to work. “You said he was down the river.”
“He won’t stay put,” said Clay. “He probably attracted the attention of a steamer crew and came up ahead of us. There! Look here,” he added. “The foundation is on a level with the bottom of the cellar. I’ll have this wall tumbling in no time. Then for the Rambler before daylight.”
Clay dug away manfully, and the great stones of the wall soon began sagging down. Directly there was a line of light just under the sill of the house.
“Now we’ve got it!” laughed Clay. “Here’s light and fresh air. The moon must have come up after we came down here. See how light it is! A few more minutes, and we’ll be out of here and on our way!”
Quite a section of the wall now fell in, so that Clay had to make quick motions in order to avoid being crushed by the great rocks. Still there was insufficient space at the top to permit of their passing out.
Clay mounted the fallen stones and tried to work his way through, but found that he could not do so. When he stepped down and took up the shovel again he found himself standing in water!
The excavation he had made had connected with the river, and the cellar was being flooded!