"Just as you say," responded the lumber-king. "Now you come right in and I'll put you up for the night and we'll send over at once for the crowd that I have in mind and get this expedition started right away."
"The sooner the better," responded the professor, heartily. "Any day, some collector may bring back a bushmaster and beat me out with the Smithsonian."
"I feel the same way," agreed the lumber-king. "I want Jim Donegan to have the first crack at those Inca emeralds."
While all this talk about gold and emeralds and bushmasters was going on in Big Jim's big house, over in a little house on the tiptop of Yelpin Hill, Jud Adams, the old trapper, was just sitting down to supper with two of his best friends. One of these was Will Bright, a magnificently built boy of eighteen with copper-colored hair and dark blue eyes, and the other his chum, Joe Couteau, silent, lithe, and swart as his Indian ancestors. Jud himself was not much over five feet tall, with bushy gray hair and beard and steel-sharp eyes. These three, with Fred Perkins, the runner, had won their way to Goreloi, the Island of the Bear, and brought back Jim Donegan's most prized gem, as already chronicled in "The Blue Pearl." They had learned to care for one another as only those can who have fought together against monsters of the sea, savage beasts, and more savage men. Joe and Will, moreover, had shared other life-and-death adventures together, as told in "Boy Scouts in the Wilderness," and, starting without clothes, food, or fire, had lived a month in the heart of the woods, discovered the secret of Wizard Pond, and broken up Scar Dawson's gang of outlaws. Will never forgot that Joe had saved him from the carcajou, nor Joe that it was Will who gave him the first chance of safety when the bloodhounds were hot on their heels through the hidden passage from Wizard Pond. Each one of the four, as his share of the blue pearl, and the sea-otter pelt brought back from Akotan, had received fifteen thousand dollars. Fred had invested his money in his brother's business in Boston, left Cornwall, and bade fair to settle down into a successful business man. Will and Joe had both set aside from their share enough to take them through Yale. As for Jud, the day after he received his winnings in the game which the four had played against danger and death, he had a short interview with his old friend Mr. Donegan.
"All my life long," began Jud, "I've been makin' money; but so far, I haven't got a cent saved up. I know how to tame 'most any other kind of wild animal, but money allers gets away from me. They do say, Jim," went on the old man, "that you've got the knack of keepin' it. Probably you wouldn't be worth your salt out in the woods, but every man's got somethin' that he can do better 'n most. So you just take my share of the blue-pearl money an' put it into somethin' safe an' sound that'll bring me an income. You see, Jim," he went on confidentially, "I ain't so young as I used to be."
"I should say you ain't!" exclaimed Big Jim, knowing how Jud hated to be called old. "You're 'most a hundred now."
"I ain't! I ain't!" howled Jud, indignantly. "I ain't a day over fifty—or thereabouts."
"Well, well," said his friend, soothingly, "we won't quarrel over it. I'll take care of your money and see that you get all that's comin' to you for the two or three years which you've got left"; and with mutual abuse and affection the two parted as good friends as ever.
To-night the old trapper and his guests had just finished supper when the telephone rang.