Perk on his part was already sharing the excitement of his pal, although apparently from an entirely different reason. He had already started to scramble to his knees, being doubtless bent on taking some aggressive action, when he saw Jack reach forward and deliberately pluck some object from the hole under the displaced adobe fire brick, and hold it up to view.
As he saw its nature Perk’s jaw dropped, and he was the picture of abject astonishment—but it was far from being any poisonous reptile that Jack was thus exhibiting with such a grand flourish; just as though he might be some necromancer or magician, and drawing all manner of amazing things out of an apparently empty stove-pipe hat.
“Gosh-a-mighty! that looks like real money! I swan!” burst from Perk’s lips, as he continued to stare.
“Just what it’s supposed to be, Pal Perk,” said Jack, trying to keep his own voice from displaying a genuine tremolo—“a neat wad of it, waiting here for us to drop in and pick it up. Seems like things might be set up, like tenpins in the alley, for two lucky dogs to knock down with a couple of rolled balls.”
“If that don’t beat anything I ever did see,” continued the astounded Perk, now grinning, as though the pleasant nature of their find was commencing to appeal to him. “Jest think o’ a pair o’ air tramps ahappenin’ along, runnin’ across this here deserted shack, an’ findin’ a fortune askin’ to be taken care of—don’t it beat the Dutch what c’n happen—Arabian Night’s adventures can’t hold a candle to the real thing in these modern days. Some ol’ miser musta hid that boodle under the bricks, so’s to keep the Mex raiders comin’ up over the international border from gettin’ their itchin’ fingers on it—how ’bout that, Jack?”
“Off color, I’m afraid, Perk,” Jack told him, after taking a quick look at his wonderful find in the hearth cache; “that miser story might go with some but it doesn’t wash with me worth a red cent. In the first place if this money had been hidden here by a miser, he’d have taken it away with him when he cut stick. Then again it would surely have been partly in hard cash, like gold eagles, and such stuff—all hoards of misers, you remember, are made up like that, Perk, and when you give this the once-over you’ll also notice how it’s all in bills, mostly fresh ones at that, as if they hadn’t seen much circulation, as you might say.”
Perk drew in a long breath, and continued to stare hard at the object Jack was holding out in front of him; it might be that something in the other’s words and manner suggested certain possibilities that seemed almost too staggering for poor Perk to digest offhand.
“Gee whittiker jewsharps! Jack—what’s this you’re hintin’ at, ol’ pal—give it to me easy-like, so I c’n swaller it—all in bills—mostly fresh ones at that—not seen much handlin’ around—say, are you tryin’ to tell me they’re every one five dollar bills,—Jack?”
“I reckon that’s what they are, Perk, I’d say, from taking a quick look at the same.”
“Bad currency—counterfeits—bogus stuff, er—what?” gasped the other.