“Here, too,” says I.
“Very well,” nodded the pleased old man. “But to make it a good bargain I guess you’d better go over there an’ shake hands with Tommy. I see he’s bin sittin’ there chawin’ his finger nails, which is a purty good sign that he’s sorry fur havin’ let his temper git away from him. An’ if you’ll give him a chance to show his real nature I think you’ll find that he’s a purty nice boy.”
As the old man had said, the kid didn’t look so mad now. Still, it kind of surprised me when he shoved out his mitt to us. And what a firm, warm mitt it was! Here was a kid, I told myself, whose friendship was worth prizing.
“Well, Tommy,” the old man grinned at his nephew, who now sat between us on the bed, “who’s goin’ to do the talkin’, me or you?”
“You go ahead, Uncle Abner.”
A chair was brought forward.
“I don’t know how much you boys know about this rascally uncle of mine who put away the treasure on the other side of the river,” the story was begun, “but if all accounts of him is true I tremble to think of what become of his wicked soul when he died. His thievery, though, as it was told to me, was a slim business fur the most part, as he hadn’t much chance to get his hands on anything big. One day, though, the story got out that a St. Louis packet was comin’ up the river with a shipment of gold. Well, old Peg-leg, as I’ll call him, seein’ as how that’s what everybody else called him, was determined to make the one big haul of his wicked career. An’, as we know, he did it. They was murder on the river that terrible night. An’ the gold that was later put away has on it the taint of human blood. A few weeks later, in early winter, old Peg-leg was shot. An’ when he was dyin’ he give my father, who was then a boy in knee pants, a gold cucumber about as long as my thumb. ‘It’s the key,’ says he. ‘Keep it. An’ whatever you find is yours.’ Then the posse broke in an’ my father had to git out of sight into the tunnel or he, too, young as he was, would ’a’ bin lugged off to jail an’ mebbe hung. Skippin’ the country, he went to Ohio, settlin’ near Rimtown, an’ so ’fraid was he of the Illinois law that he never dared to go back.
“This, of course, happened many years ago. An’ havin’ bin born an’ brought up in another state I never knew that they was sech a man as old Peg-leg Weir until my brother Nathan picked up the story from a distant relative. He come here then, Nathan did, to see what he could find, though he hadn’t bin told about the gold cucumber, as none of us knew about that until our father’s death. What Nathan brought home, a year later, wasn’t a chest of gold but a wife. Jest a young girl. Then, several years later, Tommy was born. As he grew up he was a great pet of his grandpa’s, an’ we used to wonder what the old man meant when he kept sayin’, ‘Some day, Tommy, Grandpa’s goin’ to make you rich.’ We was dirt poor. An’, fur one, I couldn’t figure out where these sudden riches was comin’ from. Then, on the tenth of last May,” the voice dropped, “we was left entirely alone, me an’ Tommy, but not until we had bin told the story of the gold cucumber. It was given to Tommy on his grandpa’s deathbed, an’ we was told about the tunnel an’ the secret door in the chimney. So, naturally, as soon as we could straighten up our affairs we set out fur Illinois, each with a pack on his back, an’ here we be with all of our belongings, which hain’t much. Of course, in startin’ out we hadn’t any idear of endin’ up in a cave like this. Havin’ bin led to believe that the old house was deserted, we expected to use it temporarily. But on findin’ it occupied we did the next best thing. An’, to that p’int, we’ve bin comfortable here, though sometimes the spiders an’ skeeters git after us. Makin’ free use of a boat that we found tied in the creek, we first went back an’ forth across the river in the dark. It wasn’t any trick fur us to find the tunnel an’ later on the secret passage leadin’ to the underground cellar. But however much we sounded the stone walls in the underground room we could find no hollow places, as seemed natural to expect. Lately I’ve quit goin’ over. Fur it seemed useless to me. But Tommy he hung on. He even took to goin’ over in broad daylight. But still, after a month’s work, we’re right where we started in. So, however good our claim is to the treasure, we’ll be mighty glad to share it with you, as I say, if you kin help us find it. Fur we’ve had no luck ourselves.”
Poppy and I were dead sure, of course, as we enthusiastically told the old man, that the treasure would soon be separated from its hiding place. And now that we were all working together, including Mrs. O’Mally, why not abandon the cave, we suggested. There was plenty of room for all of us in the big stone house. And the others would be a lot safer over there than here. So the cave stuff was quickly gathered up. And then, as we were leaving, the old man, now dressed, got down on his knees to dig his money box out of a hole in the floor.
“We hid it,” he explained, “not so much because of the hundred dollars that we’ve got in it as on account of the gold cucumber. Wait jest a minute an’ I’ll show it to you. Mebbe you kin better figure out its secret than us.”