Chapter XXXVI: Christmas and Aunt Martha

It was several weeks after the fire when a half dozen or more Scouts from up around the lakes appeared at the cabin escorting a tottering old white-haired man, clustering about him and rather frightening him with vociferous and conflicting information. Boys are usually ready with information whether they have it or not, and they told this poor old native that Buck had died, that he hadn’t died, that he had gone away to New York, that he had a job as gate-tender somewhere on a railroad. Probably all these and other morsels of advice had a certain vague foundation in rumor. I doubt if any of the boys had ever really known old Buck. But they brought this returning Rip Van Winkle to his forest home, and so he fell into the hands of Tom and Brent.

No one at the lakes knew at what point old Mink Havers had entered the reservation. He must have been astonished at seeing the seething Scout life, for scouting was a thing undreamed of when he had wandered away. He said he had left the road at Ben Harlowe’s place and struck into the hills. But as no one of that name is known for miles around it may be inferred that Ben Harlowe, and perhaps his place, are things of the remote past.

The old man, his memory restored (or at least in process of restoration) had escaped from kindly confinement in Missouri and in the course of time made his way to within three miles of his old cabin in Rattlesnake Gulch. Here, at the lakes, the new life had startled and confused him. It seems odd that after his long and devious journey the old hunter had been forced to submit to the guidance of Boy Scouts. Thus the old pathfinder of that region was taken to his primitive cabin by the young pathfinders of this present time.

I think old Mink’s imperfectly restored memory was a blessing; a complete restoration of it would have wrung his old heart. As it was he took everything for granted (the discovered treasure included), and he did not seem to grieve over the death of his old partner. “Bucky, he went with the lung ail, huh?” was all he said. By which I suppose he meant pneumonia.

Actions speak louder than words, indeed, with an old man who has achieved a pilgrimage more by instinct than intelligence. So it was not necessary, nay, it was not even possible, to give him an account of the happenings which I have tried faithfully to record in these pages. He hesitated a little when Tom explained to him about June Sanderson’s just claim to half the money and declined to give up so much of the precious horde. “There weren’t no sech gal,” he said. “’Tain’t no claim o’ her’n ’cause they wern’t no sech gal,” he said.

The difficulty of explaining to him the rule about those who die intestate and the claims of unknown heirs was too much for poor Tom and even for Brent, so they sent for me (whom they had ridiculed because of my prosaic habits) to help them out of this rather puzzling sequel to their adventure. I drove up because I apprehended certain other difficulties as well. Here was an old, homeless man escaped from an institution and living, unknown to the authorities, with two young treasure-seekers at Rattlesnake Gulch. Clearly a mature intelligence was needed there, and I think I have that, even if I am not a seeker of wild adventure.

I left my car in Sandyfield, parked where I had parked it on that fateful first visit to the Gulch, and Tom met me and piloted me to the cabin. That part of the neighborhood which had not been burned was so thickly grown with brush that I hardly knew it for the same place I had visited in the spring. I think I never saw a spot so wild, so forbidding, so apparently remote; it was terrible. Old Mink seemed to fit well in those surroundings, but, of course, it was out of the question to leave him there.

We did, however, leave him in his beloved old cabin in the care of several Boy Scouts, while we pushed our way back through wood and jungle to Sandyfield and drove to Kingston. Heaven help the poor old man, he had questions enough to answer that day.

* * * * *

Well, there is little more to tell you. I wired out west that we had old Mink and was able, I am glad to say, to inaugurate certain arrangements which resulted in his being placed in the Pinewoods Home for old people, of which my good friend Mr. John Temple was the founder. There he is living in patriarchal glory and his fifteen hundred dollars has gone to the institution. Whenever I drive past the beautiful place, almost hidden in the fragrant pines, I stop and see him, and sometimes I think his memory grows more clear. But he remembers things only in mass (if I may use such an expression) which is all that is to be hoped for, I suppose, considering his ninety-two years. I always take him tobacco for the pipe which I think is the only thing of my acquaintance older than he.

We found little June Sanderson to be another one of those unfortunates (of which Spiffy is the shining type) that the world does not understand. At least, the orphan asylum in Kingston did not understand her. I think that she never ceased to think of her forest home--and her beloved rattlesnakes, as Brent says. Even the knowledge that she was an heiress to the amount of fifteen hundred dollars did not seem to comfort her. She cried when she saw me, and cried more when I reminded her how she had “scared me about snakes,” and clung to me and did not want me to go.

So then we went to Aunt Martha’s. She was sitting on her little porch and seemed quite overwhelmed as we stopped before the house.

“Aunt Martha,” said I, “I blame you for some perplexities I have. I always knew that no good could ever come of the visit I made you, and now I am dickering with the authorities out west and visiting orphan asylums and dividing a fortune, and here are my two friends, Tom Slade and Brent Gaylong, and one of them knocked down a thief in the woods. The other nearly got killed by a rattlesnake and all _I_ have as my personal swag in these adventures is a program of the Gayety Museum of the Bowery. I blame you for all this. You invited me up here. You stood in back of that rattlesnake. It was you, strictly speaking, it was _you_, who pushed my friend Brent Gaylong into a well! _You_ are the accessory before the fact in a chain of harrowing and very dark adventures. I am not denouncing you for your part. Perhaps you didn’t realize what you were doing. But tell me this, so I can close up a very dark chapter in my career. Could you use (I spoke deliberately) a thoroughly first class little girl, as good as new, fully guaranteed? Just answer yes or no.”

* * * * *

Oh, well, to put an end to the nonsense, my Aunt Martha not only fell, but actually demanded, her share of the booty--“swag,” we told her she ought to call it. So I suppose I must consider her one of the gang of treasure-seekers, and like the pirate chief, she got the best part of the treasure. She is visiting me now, as I finish the record of these happenings, and chiding me for writing on this Christmas Eve, when I should be decorating the tree for her “swag,” which is just pretty little June Sanderson.

But I cannot stop till I have finished, for Tom and Brent are coming around to hear these last chapters and say whether I have told the plain truth. I have certainly tried to. And since they have been so much concerned with trees, I will let them try their hands at decorating while they “jolly” my poor old Aunt Martha as they always do, telling her that she was the cause of Brent’s mishap and Lawton’s thievery and the forest fire and all that. Well, it all sounds good in the home of a lonely bachelor. And my Aunt Martha will lay down her knitting, as she always does, and tell them that they should not make such charges against her in front of June, and try in her gentle way to show them how their reasoning and conclusions are defective....

THE END