CHAPTER XXXIII—WE MEET A FRIEND
Pretty soon we saw a stick stuck in the ground near the track on our side. It was split a little way down and another stick was crossways in it. One end was peeled and it meant that we should go the way that pointed. That’s a scout sign, If you ever see one like that, go where it points and maybe you’ll get something to eat.
But anyway, we didn’t have to go far, for almost right away we heard a voice, and it was Brent’s. They had their tent up quite near the tracks and we saw it almost as soon as we saw the stick.
It was a peachy place for a camp. Brent was sitting on a rock, making some kind of a birch-bark thing, and those kids were sitting around him. Cracky, they were all crazy about that fellow.
Little Willie Wide-Awake piped up, “Oh, here they are! Here they are!”
Harry said, “Hello, you old grouch; we got your letter. Hello, kids; well, here we are at last, after many ups and downs and thrilling adventures.”
“When it comes to ups and downs, you haven’t got anything on us,” Brent said; “did you come up that road through the woods? We were hoping you wouldn’t find us so easily.”
“If you were any nearer the track, you’d get run over,” Harry said.
Brent said, “We were hoping you’d search for days and days and not find us, and then just as you were starving—just as Pee-wee was breathing his last—little Bill here, would come and place a gum drop between his emaciated lips. Everything seems to go wrong on this trip.”
“Same old Brent,” Harry said; “well, here we are, ready to search for the treasure.”
“It’s all over except the shouting,” Brent said.
“You don’t mean you’ve found it?” Pee-wee piped up.
“Take a good look at this tree,” Brent said; “come off here a little distance where you can see it.”
We all went about twenty feet from the tree and took a good look at it.
“What do you say?” Brent said.
Oh, boy, I had never seen another tree like that in all my life. Most of the trees around there were birches, and it stood there among them just like a great big giant. I guess the trunk of that tree was four or five feet thick. Away up high, oh, about a hundred feet I guess, it went to a point. There weren’t any other trees around there anything like it, or anywhere near as big. Away up high near its top it was all kind of gold color, because the sun was beginning to go down. It seemed sort of, as if it paid attention to that great big tree first of all, because it was so grand.
“It’s a poplar, all right,” Harry said, sort of low, because I guess we all felt kind of serious to see it standing there. We knew we were going to hunt for such a tree, and we thought there was a pretty fair chance of there being one somewhere around there. But now that we all stood there looking at it, we just couldn’t speak, exactly. I noticed even Pee-wee, just standing there gaping. One thing sure, that great big tree was a stranger in those woods. It seemed proud, but kind of lonely there. Especially when you looked away up high at it, it seemed lonely.
Harry just stood there looking at it, and shaking his head. “Some—old—giant,” that’s all he said.
“It’s got plenty of gold up on top,” Brent-said; “now it remains to be seen if there’s any gold down underneath—real, honest to goodness, gold. Anyhow, this is where the desperate deed was did. Come over here till I show you something.”
Just as we were all starting to walk over to the tracks, I saw a bird—a big dark one—flying toward the top of that tree. All of a sudden when he got near it, he seemed to change to gold color. Then he went in among the branches and I couldn’t see him. I told Harry and he said, “We’re in an atmosphere of gold—everything is gold around here, even the sky. Look at that squirrel coming down to size us up. Kids, our fortunes are made—that’s a balsam poplar, and I’ll bet a doughnut, there’s as much real gold underneath it as there is gold light up on top. The seed of that tree pushed its way up out of a bag of gold, and Alf gets his bicycle. We’ve hit it rich! What do you say, Roy?”
Gee whiz, I could hardly tell what he was saying, because I was watching that squirrel. He came half way down the trunk and just stopped there upside down, looking at us. And he looked at the tent, too, as if he didn’t know what to make of it. And then he cocked his head sideways, just as if he was listening to Harry.
“Got your shovels and your axes all ready?” that’s what Harry was saying.