“I certainly do understand now,” said he, “why the New Zealanders took Captain Cook's old barrel-hoops and refused his cash. Same here! All the money in this town couldn't buy this rusty knife--” as he seized a corroded blade set in a horn handle, yellowed with age. And eagerly he continued the hunt.
Fifteen minutes later he had accumulated a pair of scissors, two rubber combs, another knife, a revolver, an automatic, several handfuls of cartridges and a Cosmos bottle.
All these he stowed in a warped, mildewed remnant of a Gladstone bag, taken from a corner where a broken glass sign, “Leather Goods,” lay among the rank confusion.
“I guess I've got enough, now, for the first load,” he judged, more excited than if he had chanced upon a blue-clay bed crammed with Cullinan diamonds. “It's a beginning, anyhow. Now for Beatrice!”
Joyously as a schoolboy with a pocketful of new-won marbles, he made his exit from the ruins of the hardware store, and started back toward the tower.
But hardly had he gone a hundred feet when all at once he drew back with a sharp cry of wonder and alarm.
There at his feet, in plain view under a little maple sapling, lay something that held him frozen with astonishment.
He snatched it up, dropping the sledge to do so.
“What? What?” he stammered; and at the thing he stared with widened, uncomprehending eyes.
“Merciful God! How--what--?” cried he.