“They were in one of those rich men’s camps—those places are all through the Adirondacks, you know. There was a lake about half a mile across, a fine hunting lodge—big chimney-place and everything. Yes, I’ve seen it myself! I took a run up there before I came home. The hunting lodge is, oh, maybe, fifty by a hundred, all rough stone. Outbuildings and everything! Regular millionaire’s camp!”
“Go on,” I said, laughing at his enthusiasm. “Did you meet the millionaire?”
“Nah, he wasn’t there; the place is for sale. There were just a couple of game wardens bunking there when the surveyors saw the place. When I was there week before last there wasn’t a soul. But I saw a deer—saw two of ’em. So you see it’s not much like Times Square. Oh man alive, that’s some wilderness up there. Why, when I went back to Temple Camp I thought I was on Broadway.
“So I didn’t learn anything when I was there, only I saw the place. Oh boy, what a place for trout fishing—regular mountain streams, you know, rocks and everything. Well, now here’s what the surveyors told me—I’ll give you an idea of the place afterwards.”
“Any golf up there?” I coyly ventured.
“There you go with your golf!” he hurried on. “No, there’s no golf. But if you want to get your shoes shined or your suit dry cleaned—you old front porch shark—you can go to Plattsburg about twenty miles away, over the mountains.”
“Do the buses run often?” I asked.
He ignored my query and hurried on. “Well, now that camp is owned by Harrison McClintick who made millions in leather during the war. He made holsters for pistols, and leather belts, and with the odds and ends he made leather buttons, and the strips that couldn’t be used for leather buttons or puttee laces, he made into shoelaces. By the time he got through with a leather hide there wasn’t enough left to clog up a fountain pen.”
“Fancy that,” I commented.
“Yes sir; well, to make a long story short, that place, Leatherstocking Camp, is for sale, and it can be bought cheap. Now wait a minute, I’m going to tell you something—keep still.”