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* with it?
- a month,
of the bluff; I wonder what he’s: after
PUBLISHED
WEEBLY.
. CHAPTER ONE ° .
HERE was just breeze enough to
] stir the jack pines growing on the.
bluffs, as Perry Calvert: and his
chum, Jim Norris, climbed the steep
path to the sheltered nook that was
one oftheir favorite retreats, It took
but a few moments to gather’ cones
enough to build a small but brisk fire
in front of a huge bowlder, and to place
two green sticks over it on which to set
the battered tin coffee pot and the old
frying pan. :
- There was one thing that worried the
boys greatly as they browned. the
crisp slices of bacon and sat down to
eat. And that was that many of the
cultivated fields were fast assuming the
tawny. hue of the desert. ° |
“It looks better here than it: does
down there, where you can see just how
burned things are,” said Perry, as he
reached for another sandwich. - “It’s
been the hottest summer I ever saw.”
“And it’s still hot,” added Jim anx-
-iously, “ and going to stay so, I’m afraid.
T could get ‘only a trickle of water last
night when I opened the gates. It didn’t
get halfway down the main ditch before
it was, all soaked up. And if the water
stops—” Jim did ~not finish his. sen-
tence; he did not need to, for Perry
menaced the little community.
not seem possible to the boys that the,
parched thirsty acres*before them could
be the same that a few short weeks ago
had been emerald green with the sprout-
ing crops.
_ Copyricut, 1923, sy DAVID C. COOK PUBLISHING COMPANY, Etern, Intrnors.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS
“Us, I guess,”. laughed the other, as
he hastily set the coffeepot’ back on
the fire. “If we’re going to have call-
ers,
come
Perry was right about the. sheriff’s
errand. The tall, broad-shouldered man
who -was scrambling up the © bluff,
stopped with an unmistakable grunt of
relief as he saw the boys. .“ Hi, there,
you chaps,” he hailed them. “So this
is your roosting place, is it? Your folks
said I’d probably find you up here. I
began to think I needed an airplane in-
stead of a pony,” he added, as he. sat
down on a convenient rock and took
the cup of coffee Perry offered him.
“Boys, he said gravely when he had
finished the coffee,“ I’ve bad news for
you. Uncle Jerry Webb has made his
last trip prospecting. Lon McMahon
found him lying at the foot of Hump-
back Ridge one day last week. He was
too weak to talk’ a great deal, but he
told Lon that he had been followed for
days. by a gang of desperadoes. He
had tried to get rid of them by climb-
ing old Humpback and had slipped and
fallen just before Lon happened to pass
that way.
“Uncle Jerry urged Lon to tell you
boys to look in the fifth book from the
left in his bookease, and you would find
out all about the treasure that he had
_ discovered. You don’t know it, of
course, but some time ago Uncle Jerry
came to me and made a will, leaving
what: little he had to you two boys be-
cause of your kindness to him when he,
had the mountain fever last spring. So,
whatever ‘treasure’ may be, boys, it’s
yours. I brought the key to Uncle
Jerry’s cabin with me. Here it is.”
dJim’s eyes blurred as he took the key.
Both boys were thinking of the kindly
~..ing the bluffs again.
we may as well make them wel-
” .
hours they had spent in Uncle Jerry’s
little cabin, listening to his stirring
reminiscences of his many adventurous
trips into the wild, unsettled country be-
yond them. It. was hard to think they
would never see their old friend climb-
But the possibility
of Uncle Jerry’s leaving them a “ treas-
- ure”: seemed to the boys absurd and
preposterous.
- “T never knew Uncle Jerry to have
any money saved,” said Jim frankly.
“Usually he just about made enough
to pay up his grub stake, when he would
get in debt again and start on another
trip. *
The sheriff shook his head doubtful-
ly. “I’m not so sure of that,” he re-
marked. “Uncle Jerry was certainly
right about. somebody’s following him.
As soon as Lon told me what Uncle
Jerry had said, I started right out to
investigate; and sure enough, I hadn’t
goire two miles on Uncle Jerry’s back
track when, coming to a dry wash, I
saw footprints.in the sand that were
never made by: Uncle Jerry’s big hob-
nailed boots.
men on Uncle Jerry’s track. And, queer-
_est of all, I ‘eame to a place where
they’d built.a fire and then thrown wa-
« ter on-it, as if for some reason they
*had wanted to put it out in a hurry.
Down among the charred sticks was a
little puddle of hardened pewter. | Boys,
did Uncle Jerry ever take anything made
of pewter on his trips?”
“Sure,” exclaimed Jim quickly. “He
had a tin plate and a pewter plate that
he always carried with him. He told
us that the pewter plate belonged at one
time to Jake-Early, the man who dis-
covered the Golden Eagle mine. I think
Uncle Jerry had a notion that the old
plate was a sort of mascot and would
bring him good luck, He never put it
near the fire because he said it would
melt.”
“Somebody else did then,” affirmed
the sheriff grimly, “there’s no doubt
about that. I trailed them clear to the
edge of the Madrona sink, and there
I lost the tracks in a wind storm and
had to come back. That was one rea-
son why I came to see you as quickly
as I could. Suppose we go up to Uncle
Jerry’s cabin and look for that book he
spoke about, I want to solye this mys-
tery if I can.”
“All right,”
replied Perry, hastily
old prospector and of the many happy stamping out the last spark of fire,
.
“The trouble is that the reservoir isn’t .
big enough at the best,” explained Perry,
“and last winter .the snows were so
light in the mountains it was only half
filled. Dad is- almost frantic “ with
“We aren’t much better off,” admitted
Jim. “As mother and I are the only
ones, it seems as if I ought to be able
to take care of her, but it begins to look
as if ’Il have to hire out awhile to some
of the’ cattlemen at Pisa.
it,” he continued reflectively, “how one
trouble always brings a lot of others
T don’t—”
_ The sound of heavy boots clattering
on the. rocks below interrupted the
speaker.
looked down the bluff.
“Why, it’s Sheriff Conner,” remarked
Jim in surprise. “I haven’t seen him in
Ile’s left his pony at the foot
up here.’
Queer, isn’t -
Both boys leaned over and -
“Whatever the treasure may be. boys,. it is yours.”
There were at least three
September 15, 1923.
while Jim packed their rough but serv-
iceable lunch kit. Slipping the. straps
of their camera cases over their shoul-
ders, the boys led the way along the
roughe trail. Uncle Jerry’s cozy cabin
nestled on the very edge of a broad
shelf, its log doorstep ‘hardly a yard
from the edge of the bluff. The sheriff
examined the ground about the cabin
carefully, but there was no evidence that
anyone had been there for some time.
Except for a gray film’ of dust, the
cabin was just as the old prospector had
left it. Uncle Jerry had been a good
deal of a bookworm and the shelves of
the bookcase were well filled.
“The .fifth’ from the left,” repeated
Perry, running his hand along the backs
of the familiar volumes. “ Why, it’s a
—geography,” he exclaimed.
Jim uttered a long low whistle of sur-
prise. “ And such a geography,” he add-
ed in increasing amazement as Perry
turned the time-stained dog-eared pages
of the old book. “It looks as if it might
be the very geography Uncle Jerry used
“Why, ‘it's a—geography,” Perry exclaimed
when he went to the little old school-
house in Vermont, fifty years ago at
least.”
Some dimly penciled. lines on the
margin of one of the pages attracted
the sheriff's attention. .“What’s that
written on that leaf?” he demanded,
thrusting a big forefinger between the
pages.
Perry held the book. nearer the win-
dow, “It’s nothing but a schoolboy
scrawl inviting some other chap to go
nutting Saturday afternoon,” he an-
swered, “Talk about conundrums!”,
The .sheriff took off his hat and
scratched his head in frank .perplexity.
“If it wasn’t for those footprints in the
bed of that gully, ’'d say Uncle. Jerry
was crazy, and let it go at that,” he re-
marked bluntly. “As it is, there’s an
answer to the conundrum somewhere,
*Men don’t follow queer old prospectors
a hundred miles for nothing. There’s
something at the bottom of this, some- ¢
thing that will bear investigating,” in-
_ Sisted the sheriff.
“Vd like to stay longer. to see if I
could come any nearer solving the prob-
lem, but I’ve got to be at Hoover to-
night to attend to some business. If
you find out anything“ more, let me
know, will you?”
“We certainly will,” promised Perry.
When: the sheriff’ had gone the two
chums again examined the old geogra-
phy. Perry felt of each page carefully.
“T didn’t know but perhaps some of the’
pages might be glued together. I heard
of an old woman who hid bank notes in
a book in that way.”
“TI thought of that,” confessed. the
other, “but you can see that these pages
(Continued on page 7.)
