“Isn’t he getting just too clever for anything!” Grove said.
We went back to the tent under that great big tree, and Brent got out an old bar of iron with a flat end. It was all rusty and the rust had eaten into it so that Brent just pulled it against his knee and bent it. He said, “That’s what they did the trick with. Seems funny, doesn’t it, to find that after all these years?”
“You bet it does,” I said.
“Wonder just what happened here, hey?” he said.
We all sat down around outside the tent and it was awful nice there. It was just beginning to get dark. That gold colored place up at the point of the tree was kind of turned to brown. It was awful quiet all around. It was so still that I could hear something fall out of the tree and hit the ground. When I picked it up, I found it was just an acorn. I guess maybe it belonged to that squirrel.
“I like it under here,” Skinny said; “I like it better than being in a house.”
Harry took out the big envelope that had those secret papers (that’s what Pee-wee called them) in it; and he just kind of glanced them over. He read the newspaper articles and Brent listened. Then he said, “Let’s see—oh, this is about the tree. We called it the Dahadinee poplar, because that’s what old what’s-his-name called it. I can hardly see, it’s getting dark so fast … ‘trunk diameter of five or six feet … irregular, pyramidal open top … as moved by the wind … makes a handsome object….’ Some old tree, huh?”
“It’s a peach of a tree,” Brent said.
Then for a little while none of us said anything. Gee, I don’t know what we were all thinking about. Brent just held that old piece of bent, rusty iron, and kept marking in the ground with it. I know I was thinking about how funny it was, that away back years and years ago a robber should bury two bags of gold that had some seeds in them, and that a great big tree like this should grow up over the very place, just like we thought. A big tree that didn’t belong there—that belonged away up in the north. I guess I must have been sort of dreaming, because all of a sudden, I knew Harry was reading from that old letter that Pee-wee had found in the car. They were all listening, while he skimmed over it.
“‘So … have lost all I have by this outrage of scoundrels … but I paid him in good measure … Watertown to care for dying … say I am rough diamond but human life sacred even more than gold…. So I will come back to you and home with no riches for all this work but much love which no scoundrel can steal. The best reason I would pay this scoundrel … in one of these bags … for you to plant … nuthing but an adventure. I think more about how we can’t have our bench under our Dahadinee poplar ... with much love … Thor.’