Just as we were all starting to walk over to the tracks, I saw a bird—a big dark one—flying toward the top of that tree. All of a sudden when he got near it, he seemed to change to gold color. Then he went in among the branches and I couldn’t see him. I told Harry and he said, “We’re in an atmosphere of gold—everything is gold around here, even the sky. Look at that squirrel coming down to size us up. Kids, our fortunes are made—that’s a balsam poplar, and I’ll bet a doughnut, there’s as much real gold underneath it as there is gold light up on top. The seed of that tree pushed its way up out of a bag of gold, and Alf gets his bicycle. We’ve hit it rich! What do you say, Roy?”
Gee whiz, I could hardly tell what he was saying, because I was watching that squirrel. He came half way down the trunk and just stopped there upside down, looking at us. And he looked at the tent, too, as if he didn’t know what to make of it. And then he cocked his head sideways, just as if he was listening to Harry.
“Got your shovels and your axes all ready?” that’s what Harry was saying.
CHAPTER XXXIV—WE CAMP UNDER THE TREE
Brent led the way over to the railroad tracks, then he began poking his foot against the big spikes that hold the tracks down on the ties.
He said, “See there? What do you make of that, Sherlock Holmes?”
Harry said, “I don’t see anything unusual. What’s the matter?”
Brent went back along the track a little way and began walking along the ties. “There’s a spike, there’s another, there’s another, there’s another,” he kept saying, “and here’s another—with a different kind of a head. Notice? More square—see?” He kept walking along. “Now there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight” and he kept walking along and counting up to about eleven or twelve “of those square headed spikes. See? They’re different from the others and they were driven in after the others. Can’t foil the old Newburgh Sleuth. This is where the train was derailed.
“The way I see it is, those robbers ripped up the tracks for about ten or fifteen feet and set the ends apart and spread some leaves over the break. When the railroad people spiked the rail down again, they just happened to use spikes with heads of a little different shape. Then there was a lapse of twenty-five years—that’s what they usually call it, isn’t it, Pee-wee?—and, presto, along came the Boy Scouts. Nothing to it. Right here is where that hold-up occurred—you can take it from the Church Mice Patrol. Flowers and testimonials should be addressed to First B. S. Troop, Newburgh and sent prepaid.”
I just blurted out, “Brent, you’re a wonder!”