“Oh!...” she took on, like she does when she sees a new baby or an unusual crochet pattern. “Aren’t they per-fectly delicious? Have you tried them, Jerry?”
“No, thanks,” I shrugged.
I told her then that Poppy and I were going to stay all night on the cucumber farm. Mrs. O’Mally wanted us to, I said. For she had been hearing strange sounds. I caught Dad looking at me curiously. He realized, of course, that my chum and I were up to something. But he didn’t ask me any questions, realizing, I guess, that I was looking forward to the fun of surprising him.
Mrs. O’Mally lugged out a swell supper for us. And then we sat around until it got dark. The air, after the day’s heat, was sort of stagnant. And as though begging for a cooling shower a bullfrog army lined up in chorus on the river bank. Then the katydids got busy. See-e-e-saw! See-e-e-saw! They seemed to be very busy “sawing” something. I wondered what it was. Down near the mouth of the creek an owl shook itself awake and went, “Whoo-o-o-o! Whoo-o-o-o!”
“Lively stuff, huh?” laughed Poppy.
I didn’t say anything. But somehow I had the shaky feeling, as I watched the moon come up, that it was going to be plenty lively enough for us before morning. A fellow very frequently gets a premonition like that, or whatever you call it. You know what I mean.
CHAPTER XV
MIDNIGHT EXCITEMENT
Now that it was dark, with the shadows banked up around the old stone house like prowling black monsters from the river, would the one-armed treasure hunter come back through the tunnel to the secret rooms to resume his work? We hoped so. And it was to catch the first possible sound of the mysterious worker that we now gathered in Mrs. O’Mally’s front room with sharpened ears.
At first we had talked secretly of following the treasure hunter into the tunnel. But on discussion that plan had been dropped. For it was too much like starting in at the alley fence to open the front gate. What we needed, for quick work, was a direct opening into the secret rooms. And what better way for us to get started than to check up on the hidden pounder? Getting his general location, we could then do an effective trick with a pair of picks. Even if we had to amputate a whole wall Mrs. O’Mally wouldn’t object. For see how much there was at stake! Maybe a million dollars in gold! Gee! Over three hundred thousand dollars apiece!
With talk like this going on, you can imagine how crazy we were to see the inside of these hidden rooms that the river pirate had so strangely built under his stone house. What were they?—treasure vaults? And would we find whole stacks of crammed treasure chests? Probably not, came the more sensible thought, for if the gold cucumbers were so openly exposed as that the one-armed worker would have skinned out with them long ago. But no doubt there were old-time weapons of fearful history in the hidden rooms: muskets with bell barrels, bloodstained cutlasses, and dirks deeply knicked by human bones. Even more weird, we might find a skeleton or two. Wow! Could you imagine anything more exciting to a boy than to open up a place like that? And think of the later fun of searching for the hidden treasure!