“No harm done,” he said, “only let’s not follow it up. The buried treasure is buried; let’s not follow it up.”
“You mean follow it down,” I said. “It’s not troubling my innocent young life, I know that.”
That’s the way it is with Brent, he’s always thinking about what’s best for other fellows. And, gee whiz, he knows Hervey Willetts like a book. He was always a good friend to Hervey. Lots of times Hervey would have gotten into trouble with his recklessness if it hadn’t been for Brent. Tom Slade and the trustees liked Hervey well enough and they admitted he was brave and reckless. But they were kind of sore at him because they couldn’t manage him, and, gee whiz, you couldn’t blame them. Hervey was kind of on the outs at camp except with just us few fellows and that’s why he stuck with us.
Now I’ll tell you about the buried treasure—that’s what we always called it. It was a kind of a joke till little Skinny McCord nearly got drowned trying to fish it up. Then the trustees said we should all forget it. They put a notice on the bulletin board that there should be no more fishing for it.
That was two summers ago. It was before Hervey ever came to Temple Camp. It was only just kind of like ancient history when he got there. I had forgotten all about it because I have no use for ancient history anyway—that and civil government.
CHAPTER XVIII
A STORY OF THE PAST
Now this is the story about the buried treasure. After the big fire at Temple Camp three years ago (that’s when I was a tenderfoot, but I wasn’t so awful tender) a lot of carpenters were working putting up new buildings at camp.
They built the cooking shack (that’s Pee-wee’s favorite building) and the diving board (that’s my favorite building) and the observation tower (that’s Hervey’s favorite building because he’s always on the top of it taking chances and observations).
They built the new Administration Shack too. That’s where the library and the mail office are and it’s where the managers stay and it’s where all the office business is. There are lots of pictures in there and portfolios with maps in them and everything. One thing I don’t like about it, it’s got a rug on the floor.
One day—it was on a Saturday—Mr. Carson (he’s a trustee) and another man who was a scoutmaster, went to Catskill to get the money out of the bank to pay the workmen. They always brought it in a tin box. So now you better look at the map.