The pair in the bush stared at this man in amazement too breath-taking for speech. Then their glances met, as if to read substantiation, each in the other’s eyes.
So, then, it was true! The generalissimo issuing instructions was the long-time friend and family counselor, ex-Judge Samuel Allen.
CHAPTER XXIV—LOST YET WON
With the stealth of a Blackfoot brave, Peter Pape approached the powder cart in temporary use as a rostrum. Jane he had left where her safety no longer troubled him. His entire attention reached forward. Having gained the cover of a venerable cottonwood whose drooping catkins fringed the shafts of the lowering sun he stopped and deliberately listened, excused by the necessity of discovering just what was underway.
The slow, accented perusal of the apple-cheeked little big man of law was holding the attention of his assortment of thugs to a degree favorable for a surprise assault.
“Eighteen and twelve will show
The spot. Begin below.
Above the crock
A block will rock,
As rocks wrong’s overthrow.”
To the last word the verse carried to Pape’s ears, metered to match the two lines recited to him by Jane from her memory of the mysterious, stolen cryptogram. There seemed no reason to doubt that Allen was reading the rhymed instructions of the late Lauderdale eccentric.
Swinton Welch was first to offer thin-voiced complaint against the poem’s ambiguity.
“That third verse strikes me as the hardest yet, judge. What do you reckon them figures mean? I don’t see as there’s any way to decide whether they stand for rods or yards or feet. Eighteen from what? Twelve to which? Or do you suppose, now, it means that the spot is eighteen-by-twelve?”
With a wave of one chubby hand the lawyer dismissed these demands. “When quite a young man I knew the writer of this rhyme. It is characteristic that he should have put everything as vaguely as possible. He’d have made a wonderful detective, he was such a genius at involving instead of solving things. I’m relying quite a bit on my own gumption in the selection of this place. But I feel sure that I am right at last. We’re on a height, surrounded by the requisite number of poplars, aren’t we? The noises we hear from the city, spread about on every hand, might be called by poetic license any kind of a roar. And the whole place is shelved with rock. Since we can’t seem to solve those figures, let’s blow off the entire top if necessary and trust to the integrity of the ‘crock.’ You arranged for the acetylene lights, Duffy?”