Pee-wee piped up, “What do you mean?”
Brent said, “Dear me; foiled again.”
Tom said, “Now I know what it means. The boys from the Geological Survey were here. All that had me guessing was the word treasure. A pie is a topographic mark; it shows where government land ends. Cons means contours. They staked their measurings. They were just measuring this cove and the creek so as to make government maps. T.W. means tide water.”
Harry said, awful funny like, “If it wouldn’t be asking too much, will you please tell me what it means where it says, ‘Treasure at HW limit indicated at AN stake.’ Can you answer that?”
Tom said in that sober way of his, “I think it means something about this boat, the Treasure being at high water limit as indicated at anchorage stake. I can’t tell just exactly what that memorandum means, because I never worked in the survey, but I guess the survey boys weren’t doing any harm out at Deacon Snookbeck’s. They were probably lining up the contours on his farm. Anyway, all they were doing here was taking the contours and the water lines for the government maps. The only thing that puzzled me was the word treasure.”
“And there is no pie here?” Brent said.
“A pie is a government mark,” Tom said; “it means the government owns the land to that point—where the pie is. See?”
Oh, boy, Harry didn’t say a word. None of the rest of us said a word—only Brent.
He said, “Then I have been deceived by a scarecrow! This ends my quest of adventure; I am through. I am going home and to the only refuge where real adventure can be found—the movies. I am through with the boy scouts. Perhaps with William S. Hart or Douglas Fairbanks I can find the life I crave. There I can find cliffs to jump off, roofs to leap from, people to kill who are worthy of being killed—not scarecrows——”
“And floods to get caught in!” Pee-wee yelled.