I said, “Brent, you crazy Indian, you sound just the same as last year. You haven’t changed a bit.”
“I couldn’t even change a dollar,” he said.
“Well, this is some streak of luck anyway,” Harry said. “We’ve got a 1920 Cadillac stalled down in the village. We’re on our way to search for buried treasure—up near Lake Ontario. We think we’ve got a clew to a couple of bags of gold. Want to join us? At present, we’re starving. You haven’t got such a thing as a cheese sandwich loafing around, have you?”
“The last cheese sandwich I saw was on its way down little Bill’s throat,” he said, “but we have some cold corned beef, and crackers and rye bread, and a few other odds and ends that you’re welcome to. What do you say we make a camp?”
So we all went into the woods and got a fire started just for old time’s sake, and sprawled around it and had some eats. Believe me, it seemed good to be with those fellows again. Brent said that wherever we went, they would go too. He said they were on a vacation and they didn’t care what happened to them. He said that if he could only make one stab for buried treasure, he would feel that he hadn’t lived in vain. That was always the way he talked—crazy like.
CHAPTER XII—WE GET THE CAR STARTED
We spent about an hour in the woods near the road, sitting around the fire and telling all about our adventures since the time we had seen each other before. Those fellows were on an auto trip, the same as we were, and they had a camping kit and everything. They were just starting to follow the Old Forge road north and wriggle around through the Adirondacks, that’s what Brent said. But he said as long as we were going in search of treasure, they’d go with us. He said that treasure was his middle name.
Harry said, “Well, you seem to be something of a dabster with engines; suppose we all go back into the village and maybe you can get our old boat started. Then we’ll hit the trail for the next berg and see if we can get a place to bunk until morning.”
“We bunk in the woods,” one of those little fellows sung out.
Harry said, “Yes, but you’re good scouts; you came prepared to do that.”