“You needn’t look at me with your wicked eyes. I am going to kill you if I can, and why, I don’t know, because I believe in a way you have done me a pretty good turn. Helen trusts me now, at least!”
He raised a great bowlder over his head and with a sure aim hurled it down on the serpent, who was even then making his strange rattle like dry leaves in the wind.
“That was your swan song, old boy,” and so it was. The snake was crushed by the blow, only his tail sticking out, twitching feebly, the rattle vibrating slowly, making a faint lonesome sound.
“I think I’ll take this for a souvenir!” The doctor got out one of his ever ready instruments and deftly extracted the rattle from the now harmless reptile. “Some day we may laugh over this,” but I don’t know why this made him blush as it did, there all by himself in the Devil’s Gorge.
The rattle in his pocket, he started back up the cliff, when he suddenly remembered his quest. “Well, by Jove, it looks as though that mysterious wallet was destined to be left in the branches of the dwarf oak!” he exclaimed, as he made his way back down to the spot and this time got the leather wallet. It was very tightly wedged into the tree, in fact, it had become incorporated, as it were, into the growth of the tree, and one of the gnarled and twisted limbs had to be cut away before he could free the object of his morning walk.
It was a bulky pocket-book, made of alligator skin which, because of its toughness, had evidently been able to withstand the weather that Dr. Wright felt sure it must have had to undergo for years, judging by the way the branches of the tree had grown around it.
“I won’t open it now, but will take it to Helen. It was her find and I am not going to jump her claim.”
The camp was stirring when he returned. Much shouting from the bath-house assured him that the boys were undergoing a shower of the freezing mountain water. He waited until the last glowing, damp-haired youth filed out and then took a sprinkle himself, which refreshed him greatly but left him so hungry that the delightful odors from the open air kitchen almost maddened him. Roe herring he was sure of,—that is always unmistakable; hot rolls were holding their own in the riot of smells; bacon was asserting itself; there was a burnt sugar effect that must mean fried June apples; and threading its way through the symphony of fragrance and rising supreme over all was a coffee motive.
“Do you blame any one for stealing food when he is hungry?” he asked Gwen, whom he found in the pavilion setting the tables. “I don’t.”
“You have been up a long time, sir. I saw you a little after four on the trail near Aunt Mandy’s.”