It was warm and pleasant, and we decided that no shelter would be necessary that night. We built a small fire against the side of a log, fried some bacon in a skillet, made coffee, and fared well, if not sumptuously, with supplies from the boat.
We sat around and talked until quite late. The object of the expedition was revealed by Saunders.
“They was a feller that come to the bogie-house one night w’en they was a big storm that ’ad come up sudd’n. He’d come from the lake, an’ it was blowin’ so hard that it ’ud take hair off a frog. He’d started on a long trip with a little boat. He had one o’ them cusséd motors like wot we got, an’ it went punk, an’ ’e had an awful time git’n’ in alive. He seen my light an’ come up. I didn’t ’ear ’im til ’e knocked, so I didn’t ’ave no chance to spring the ghost on ’im. W’en I seen the mess ’e was in, I took ’im in an’ fed ’im an’ dried ’im out ’fore the fire.
“He seemed to be a scientific feller, an’ ’e told me a lot about the rivers all over the country. He said that durin’ the fall ’is business was to go ’round an’ buy pearls wot fishers got out o’ them fresh-water clams that’s all over the bottoms o’ the rivers. He’d pay ’em good prices. He said the pearls ’ad thin layers on ’em, like onions, an’ sometimes one would look like it was no good. Then ’e’d take a steel thing an’ peel off the outside skin, an’ sometimes ’e’d git one that way that was wuth five hundred dollars. Then ’e said they was button companies that ’ud buy all the shells o’ the clams, so they was a lot o’ money in it, even if they wasn’t no pearls found. He had a little pearl in ’is pocket that ’e’d peeled. It wasn’t a very good one—prob’ly wuth three er four dollars. He gave it to me fer bein’ good to ’im, an’ ’ere it is.”
The old sailor carefully unrolled a small piece of paper, which he took out of his tobacco pouch, and produced the pearl.
“This feller gimme a little book that didn’t ’ave no cover on, that’s sent out by the gov’ment, an’ it tells all about clam fish’n’, an’ how to make drag-hooks, an’ how to rig ’em, an’ drag ’em, an’ all about it.”
He brought out the interesting pamphlet, with the address of the giver written in pencil on one of the margins.
“The next mornin’ I helped the feller put wot was left o’ his boat an’ motor up in the bogie-house, an’ ’e went off through the woods. He said ’e’d come back some day an’ git ’em.
“Invent’n’s no good. We gotta git sump’n we c’n git a big bunch o’ money out of. Fish’n’s git’n’ to be too hard work fer us. They’s slews o’ wealth in this water, an’ we’r’ goin’ to git it out an’ we won’t ’ave to work no more. We didn’t say nothin’ to nobody. John come ’round an’ we told ’im, but ’e’s all right. This whole thing’s a dark secret. It’s all right fer you to know, but we gotta keep still, er the place’ll be full o’ flatboats an’ the pearls’ll be gone. Sipes an’ me’s seen where the mushrats ’as been pilin’ the shells ’round them little places where they got holes in the banks, an’ out’n the marsh where their houses are, w’en we was down ’ere duck-shoot’n’. If them little beasties c’n git ’em, we c’n mop out the whole river with all that tackle that the book tells about.”
“The fust thing we gotta do, after we git a flatboat built, is to git some heavy wire fer them clam drags,” said Sipes. “We c’n go back to the railroad an’ git some out between them telegraph poles. The wire don’t cost them fellers nothin’, an’ it’s better we should ’ave it. Tomorrer we’ll rig up a reg’lar camp, an’ then we’ll go to work on all the things we gotta git ready so we c’n begin devastat’n them clamsies.”