That was the way we went in Tom’s flivver. We turned in at Sloatsburg and went in past what they call Burnt Sawmill Bridge. They are building a dam there now to flood the section west of Brundige Mountain, and by the time this chronicle is in your hands there will be a fine new lake there which I am afraid will swallow up the old cave below the mountain.
Pretty soon we hit into a road going southeast and went through about the most unfrequented country that ever a road traversed. Then we came to St Johns, which is a picturesque little church (I can’t imagine who attends it). The rest of the municipal furniture seems to consist of a girl, a house, a turtle, and four cows. Then we came to Sandyfield, approaching it from the west instead of from the north. This obscure route had taken us through about the loneliest section of country that I have ever known within a stone’s throw of civilization.
We parked the flivver exactly where I had parked my car, and I modestly resigned to Tom the task of piloting us through the woods. I was astonished at his skill in doing this. Like old Buck, he seemed to recognize a trail where there was no trail, and at times he would be always looking to right and left trying to discover the path of least resistance. Now and then he asked me questions, and once or twice my memory came to his aid. It is wonderful what a scout and woodsman he is. As for Brent, he moved along soberly. I don’t know whether his soberness is altogether a humorous pose; with his steel spectacles and his intentness on the pathfinding he seemed to me excruciatingly funny.
One familiar thing (trail signs, I think they call them) I did see, and I have thought of it often since. I plucked from a bush a little wisp of gingham that was fluttering like a tiny pennant in the breeze. No doubt it was torn from the simple dress of my little friend June Sanderson, perhaps upon that very trip when she and old Buck accompanied me back to Sandyfield. “We’re on the right track,” I said, waving it at Tom. But in a way we were not exactly upon the right track either.
“Look here, Tomasso,” I said to Tom; “I don’t want you to get into an argument with the old man. I don’t want you to crack up game wardens. Above all, I don’t want you to tell him that those fellows never got his money. He knows they did and that’s enough.”
“If it makes him happy to think they got his money, let him think so,” said Brent. “He might be disappointed if he thought it was safe and secure now.”
“Well, you mind what I say,” I repeated to Tom. “You can never convince or change a person of his age; especially one of his type. We’ll just make a little call. Barney Wythe got the money whether he got it or not and game wardens are varmints.”
“Absolutely,” said Brent.
But, indeed, there was no need to coach Tom in the matter of handling my old chance acquaintance. There was no need of my concern for the old man’s feelings. I need not have troubled myself about respecting his sturdy prejudices. Indeed, there was no need of our following that obscure trail at all. For Long Buck Sanderson’s cabin was closed up tight with a rough board nailed across the door. He had gone where there were no game wardens—or only good game wardens. And it mattered very little where his precious three thousand dollars were after all.