So he came along until we met Binney and Plunk. They hadn’t seen a sign of life, and it was pretty clear the chief was off on some sort of expedition; but we were worried because there wasn’t even a little lump of gold to be seen through any of the windows—not a smidgin!
“Maybe he’s got a secret hidin’-place.”
“Prob’ly with some horrible image a-stand-in’ guard over it,” Binney said, and shivered like he was a little chilly. “They always have them awful-lookin’ images with grinnin’ mouths and maybe seventeen arms and legs a-guardin’ their secret and sacred places.” He’d got so interested that he could almost see a whopping big carving of some scary thing standing right there in front of him.
“Most likely we’ll have to find a hidden spring to touch. There’ll be a huge stone stuck against the openin’.”
I was getting tired of talking about it so much, so I up and said: “Well, let’s git to lookin’ for the place. We can study how to bust into it when we find where it is.”
We started off toward the back of the yard, when all at once Mark halted us and pointed off to the left. “Th-there it is!” he hissed. “The cave! Up that precipice! See the openin’?”
We looked and, sure enough, we saw what Mark meant. It was the icehouse with a little square opening up near the very top and a ladder nailed to the wall running up to it.
“It ain’t guarded,” says Binney, his mouth open like he was surprised most to death.
“How in the world did they ever come to neglect that?”
“The guard’s there,” Mark says, contemptuous-like. “Don’t you see him a-stand-in’, leanin’ on his spear? We got to hide around the corner and git him before he gives the a-a-alarm.”