We had almost reached Sandyfield and I was preparing to part from my chance acquaintance when it jumped into my head to ask him what he had meant by saying that if he had what really belonged to him he might own one of them contraptions—meaning an automobile.
“I reckon three thousand would buy one,” he said.
“It would certainly buy a better one than mine,” I observed. “Did somebody cheat you out of three thousand dollars?” I asked. For I suspected that he might have had some differences with the government in the matter of taking over his property in the public interest, though to be sure his real estate holdings in Rattlesnake Gulch could not have been worth three hundred dollars, to say nothing of three thousand. I should say three dollars would have been a fair price.
“You come ’long daown ter my cabin, mister,” he said, “and I’ll tell yer, an’ show yer. Mebbe yer kin tell me along ’baout my little gal. Guess yer a lawyer, mebbe, huh?”
I told him no, I was an author, but that if he had anything interesting to show or tell me, I would be glad to follow him. He did not vouchsafe me any further information but started down into the woods, and after making sure that my car would be safe I followed him.
I have often wondered why I did this upon such slight provocation and with a destination elsewhere. I suppose there is a little of the spirit of adventure left in me. For one thing the old man captivated me. Perhaps also the name of Rattlesnake Gulch fascinated me. At all events, I was in for it before I knew it and the machinery of the weirdest chain of happenings I have ever heard of was set going.
Our way led down through a dense wood and up a rugged height and through a wild pass between hills. Beyond this he showed me where the White Bar Trail crossed our path, that trail of the Boy Scouts which inscribes an erratic oblong course about the region and is met at intervals by spoke trails, as they are called, which converge in a rambling way toward Scout Headquarters at the lakes. Old Buck did not take the Scouts very seriously.
All the way he was telling me a queer story. “Me’n Mink lived daown here till he got possessed,” the old man said. “Mink, me’n him was pardners.”
“You mean dispossessed—put out?” I suggested.
“They can’t put me outer here nor him neither if he was here,” he said. “I got title ter my place ’long as I live. When I go it re-verts.”