Chapter XIII: Down-Down

You will remember the story that Long Buck Sanderson told me: how he was returning from New York with a sum of money. His partner, Mink Havers, was waiting for him near a swamp some distance from their cabin to advise him of the visit of Barney Wythe and others. Mink wished to hide the money and they agreed upon Conner’s well as a safe place. Nothing could be more certain than that Mink started off to hide the money there.

Now, when I read that newspaper article which Tom brought me, I noted that this mysterious John Mink out in a western asylum had spoken of some treasure or other in a bait-box. I thought it altogether unlikely that Long Buck would carry his money from New York in any such container. But on thinking it over afterward, I saw that here one thing hitched up plausibly with another. Perhaps Mink had taken such a box to the meeting place when he went to wait for his partner. They had intended to secrete their money for only a few days at most. Yet clearly a wallet would not be a suitable thing to leave in a swamp or in the bottom of an old well. So, after all, the metal box was not a false note in the story.

As soon as Tom had gone away I began to have a little respect for his enthusiastic reasoning. He had certainly scored a triumph over me in his investigation of that old game warden of bygone times. In face of this it seemed a rational supposition, at least, that the money was still secreted in that forsaken fastness. I had to admit as much.

Therefore, it seemed to me altogether sensible for my adventurers to begin by an exhaustive exploration of the old well. “Tom has some sense, at that,” I said to myself on reading Brent’s letter. To be sure, old Buck must have explored that black hole more than once; I could picture him visiting it again and again in those weary last years of his. Still, mud and débris accumulate in such a place, and it was barely possible that even within a day or two of the secreting of a box there, it might have been swallowed up in the oozy bottom of the dank hole.

It was Brent who volunteered to descend into that forbidding place, and he insisted on having his way. They first took the precaution of getting some wood on fire and throwing it in so that they might see the bottom. They found the place to be very deep and the bottom covered with stones and rotten wood. Together they tumbled a heavy rock in to ascertain if the bottom was solid. Of course, the material below yielded under the weight of the rock, but Tom and Brent decided that there was no treacherous quicksand or even a perilous accumulation of mud below.

Brent then let himself down, sliding over the edge and clinging to the branches of root which projected into the well through crevices in the rough masonry. Those damp, earthy tentacles were not pleasant to the touch. Here and there he could find a foothold on some slight projection of rock. But, after descending a few feet, he found himself with no dependable foothold below him and he was still a considerable distance from the bottom.

“Don’t see how I’m going to make it,” he called.

“Don’t drop,” Tom warned; “it’s too far.”

“There’s a rock sticking out if I can only reach it with my foot,” Brent called. “I wish I was a few inches taller.”

“Come back and I’ll try it,” Tom said.

“I can’t get back, either,” answered Brent; “that piece of root I had hold of broke off. They don’t put the material into roots that they used to--quantity production, I suppose. I’m stranded--also sanded; my eyes are full of earth and woods and mountains and things. I bet that rock landed right on my eyeglass case.”

“Watch your step,” Tom called down.

“I haven’t got any step,” Brent answered. “Is this a time for joking?”

At last, by a series of perilous acrobatics, he reached the bottom. “Here I am on terra cotta, or firma, or whatever they call it,” he shouted. “If we don’t find the money I’m going to climb buildings--Harold Lloyd. I’d climb the Woolworth Building for five and ten cents. Well, here I am; I wonder what property’s worth down here?”

“Is it solid?” Tom called down.

“It’s nice and springy,” said Brent. “I think I can be very happy down here; I suppose I’ll have to be, for I don’t know how I’m going to get up again. The root of the trouble, or I should say the trouble with the root----”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Tom called. “I’ll get a rope.”

“I’ll be the old oaken bucket,” called Brent,

“The Bridgeboro woodsman,
The boy scout explorer,
The lonely young camper
That hung in the well.

I’m glad I brought the clotheslines from our yard; they’ll have to send the stuff to the laundry, but they’ll have their son back.”

“Don’t worry,” Tom called; “dig around and see what you can find.”

“Here’s my eyeglass case,” Brent announced. “Do you want me to dig in the mud?”

“Sure, see what’s what.”

“Well,” Brent called, “there’s an old, rotten vine and some stones--and, oh, here’s a tin wagon, a kid’s tin wagon. Or maybe it’s a Ford--no, it’s a toy wagon, all rusty.”

I have often thought of that tin wagon eaten and brittle with rust in the bottom of Conner’s well in Rattlesnake Gulch. Did the unknown Conner “fetch” it from “Noo York” to some little Conner, perhaps? At Christmas time? Christmas time in Rattlesnake Gulch!

“Strike a light,” Tom called down. “Have you got plenty of matches? Is there anything else down there?”

“I think there’s malaria down here,” Brent called. “You go ahead and get the rope and I’ll reconnoiter. I’ve got my flashlight. Don’t worry about me: I may be down but I’ll never get out. Go and get the rope while I’m hunting.”

“I’m afraid it’s in the car,” Tom called down.

“All right, go and get it--no hurry. I’m going to systematize my search. If you think of a word meaning treasure and ending with qzx jot it down in my cross-word puzzle book. Try the car and see if you can get it started just for fun--it may start, at that.”

“I may be an hour,” Tom called.