“Carrots,” as Fritz had instantly been christened by the lads on account of his hair, accepted the invitation and climbed to Uncle Sam’s hurricane deck. Thereupon the vengeful Silva twisted Uncle Sam’s tail with direful results. Carrots made a froglike leap over the mule’s head into one clump of cactus, and Silva, caught by the mule’s heels before he could get out of the way, sat down in another clump.
The campers were not long in finding out that Carrots was the subject of weird hallucinations. His latest delusion concerned buried treasure. It cropped out in the afternoon of his second day in camp. Merry had taken the football players out for a “breather”—down the cañon to Dolliver’s, and back. Silva was out with a shovel and hornspoon, somewhere in the hills, hunting a placer, and incidentally nursing his grievances. The professor was reading in the shade of a cottonwood. In the shade of another cottonwood, Carrots was mooning over a pipe of tobacco.
“Brofessor,” called the Dutchman, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and putting it carefully away in his pocket, “vill you told me someding?”
The professor looked up from his book and over his spectacles at Fritz.
“What is it that you desire to know?” he asked.
“Ask me dot.”
The professor showed signs of impatience.
“Simpleton! Am I not putting the query? What shall I tell you?”
“Py chiminy Grismus! Oof I know vat you vas to told me, for vy should I make der rekvest for informations?”
Borrodaile gave a grunt of disgust and hunted the shade of another cottonwood. Fritz was persistent, however, and followed him up.