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Books by Max Brand. Trivia About Ronicky Doone's T No trivia or quizzes yet. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. But her big gray eyes were as bright and as steady as the torch in Ronicky's hand. There was something wonderfully honest and wonderfully feminine about her whole body and the carriage of her head.
Ronicky guessed at once that here was a true Western girl who could ride like a man, shoot like a man, perhaps, and then at the end of the trail be gentleness itself. She was tensed with excitement as she looked to Ronicky now. His name is Doone. He has nothing to do with the band. And he's come here out of the honest goodness of his heart to warn you of Moon's intentions.
Dawn, will you come to and see that what she says is the truth? I'll go one further. Now, Dawn, we're on even terms. Would one of Moon's men put you there? Hugh Dawn was staggered, for Ronicky had slipped his revolver back into his holster at his right hip. It was worse than an even break for Doone, because Dawn held in his hand, bared of the leather, the light thirty-two- caliber revolver which he had taken from the girl.
Moon's more full of tricks than a snake is of poison. But maybe this is square. Maybe this gent ain't got a thing to do with Moon. Jump out of this house, saddle your hoss, and ride! There was such honest eagerness in his voice that Hugh Dawn started as though to execute the suggestion.
He only hesitated to say: What d'you get out of it? What am I to you? I couldn't let a murder be done if I could keep you from it. The other shook his head. But the girl cried: For Heaven's sake, believe him—trust in my trust. Get your things together. I'll saddle the gray and—". The storm of her excited belief swept the other off his feet. He flashed one glance at Ronicky Doone, then turned on his heel and ran for his room. The girl raced the other way, clattering down the stairs.
Perhaps when she sprang outside into the night Jack Moon and his men would already be there. But she had never a thought for danger. Ronicky Doone only delayed to run into the front room on that floor —the room from which the girl had spoken to him when he tried the front door—and there he lighted the lamp and placed it on the table near the window.
Ronicky Doone's Treasure eBook by Max Brand | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster
After that he sped down the stairs, untethered Lou from her tree at the side of the house, and hurried with her to the back of the house and the old, tumble-down horseshed which stood there. Lantern light showed there, where the girl was saddling a tall, gray gelding. She was working the cinch knots tight as Ronicky appeared, so fast had been her work, and now her father came from the house at a run, huddling himself into his slicker. I seen their faces, lady, and they ain't a pretty lot! Leave you to be found by them?
Not in a thousand years. She grew a little pale at that, but she still kept her head high. As he spoke he caught saddle and bridle from their hooks and slapped them onto the horse. I ain't understanding things. Doone, you put shame on me! Of course I ain't going to leave her alone! He called from the door of the shed, where he had taken his stand: No use calling them this way with a light!
We'll go over the hills. Tomorrow Jerry can come back, when it's safe. I forgive that punch that knocked me cold. Four ghostly, silent figures, stooping low, advancing with stealthy stride, came out of the pines and slid toward the house. They could not be distinguished individually. They were simply blurs in the mist of rainfall, but for some reason their very obscurity made them more significant, more formidable. Ronicky Doone heard a queer, choked sound—Hugh Dawn swallowing a horror that would not down.
Ronicky Doone jerked up a threatening fist. Not that there was a real danger that they might be overheard at that distance, but because he had odd superstitions tucked away in him here and there, and one of those superstitions was that words were more than mere sounds. They were thoughts that went abroad in an electric medium and possessed a life of their own. They might dart across a great space, these things called words. They might enter the minds and souls of men to whom they were not addressed. The idea had grown up in Ronicky Doone during long periods of silence in the mountains, in the desert where silence itself is a voice.
That raised fist brought the hunted man's teeth together with a snap. Then the gesture of Ronicky commanded them to go forward, on foot, leading their horses. He himself went last and acted as the rear guard while they trudged out past the horse-shed—blessing the double night of its shadow! They came even with the side of the house. Things that move fast are seen a pile quicker than things that stand still. He gave the example of swinging into the saddle on Lou.
The girl, as she imitated, went up lightly as a feather, but Hugh Dawn's great bulk brought a loud grunt from the gray he bestrode, and the three sat a moment, straining in fear. But there was no sound. The four shadows had melted into the greater shadow of the house. They began at a walk. They climbed higher on the swinging trail among the trees until they were above another eminence and looked down.
The house seemed as near as ever, the trail had zigzagged so much to make the altitude. They could see the front of the building clearly, and suddenly the light wobbled, flashed to the side, and almost went out; then it grew dimmer in the center of the apartment. They've sprung the trap, and they've got nothing! The girl added a pleasant grace note to what her father had said: I thought you were they.
I thought they had come for dad! And—well, every day that he lives from now on, is a day due to you, Mr. Doone; and he will never forget. I will never forget. For some reason that assurance that she would never forget meant more to Ronicky Doone than any assurance from the grown man. It's Lou that done it. It's Lou that outfooted their hosses and give me the half hour's head start. She piled that up inside of twenty miles' running, too, and after she'd gone a weary way yesterday.
Yep, if you got anything to thank, it's Lou. Me, I just done what anybody'd do. I'll leave you folks here," he added, as he got to the top of the crest of the hills with them. You see, I forget, Mr. It seems that so many things have happened to the three of us tonight that we are all bound together. Besides, I bring bad luck. Stay clear of me, or you'll have the back luck, too! Seems to me that there may be some more action before this game's done and over, and I'd sort of like to horn in and have my say along with you, Dawn—if you want me and need me, I mean! Doone, I'm in fear of death.
Why, man, I have the greatest thing in the world to do, and I'm single-handed in the doing of it. But if you'll take the chance, why, I'll trust you, and I'll let you in on the ground floor. But if you come with me, lad, you'll be taking the chances. You'll be playing for millions of dollars.
But you'll be putting up your life in the gamble. How does that sound to you? But remember that if you come along with me, you get Jack Moon and his tribe of bloodhounds on your trail, and if they ever come up with you, you're dead. D'you know what I'm talking about? Millions, girl, millions—not just mere thousands! You take him, and you begin to drag him down in the net. Oh, Dad, is this a reward for him? Is this a reward for him? Remember that story about Bluebeard's wife?
She had all the keys but one, and she plumb busted her heart because she couldn't get that one key and see inside that one room. Well, lady, the same's true with me. Suppose I had the key to everything else in the world and just this one thing was left that I could get at; well, I'd turn down all the other things in the world that I know about and take to this one thing that I don't know anything about, just because I don't know it.
Well, lady, danger is the finest bait in the world for any gent like me that's fond of action and ain't never been fed full on it. That's the straight of it. The two men reached through the dark night and the rain. Their wet, cold hands fumbled, met, and closed in a hard grasp. It was like a flash of light, that gripping of the hands. It showed them each other's minds as a glint of light would have shown their faces. As the trio plodded on steadily through the night, many things about the father and daughter impressed Ronicky Doone favorably. There was something so fine, sat naturally well-bred about their whole attitude, that he felt his heart warming to both; and yet there were reasons enough for him to maintain an attitude of suspicion and caution so far as the pair was concerned.
He was calling the girl "Jerry" before the ride was ended; both father and daughter were calling him "Ronicky. The ride lasted all the night and well on into the morning. Lou, great- heart that she was, bore up wonderfully. She had the endurance of an Arab horse, and indeed she resembled an Arab in her staunch and tapering build. The big grays struck a hard pace and kept to it, but Lou matched them with her smooth-flowing gait.
Her head went down a little as time passed, but when the dawn came, gray and cold under a rainless sky, it showed her still with an ample reserve of strength, while the grays were well-nigh as fagged as though they had covered all her distance of miles in the past twenty-four hours. For the sake of Ronicky's horse, knowing the distance the mare had covered, the Dawns would have stopped the journey for rest, but Ronicky would not hear of it. As he pointed out, Jack Moon could not attempt to pick up the trail until the morning; and then he probably would only be able to locate it by striking out in a great circle with the house as the center of his sweeping radius.
If they pushed straight ahead, stopping only when they had put a solid day's march behind them, they would doubtless pass well beyond the reach of that radius, particularly since the outlaws would be looking for the signs of two horses instead of three. These reasons were so patent that they were accepted, and so the party held on its way. By midmorning they came in sight of a village among the hills to their left. Ronicky—because he would not be recognized by Moon's scouts in case they inquired after Dawn in that place—rode down into the town and bought supplies; then he rejoined the group on the trail four miles out from the village, and they pressed on for another hour.
The sight of a little ruined shack here proved too strong a temptation for them, and they determined to make their day's halt. They were too tired to prepare a meal. Canned beans, crackers, and coffee were their portion. They slept wrapped in their blankets.
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At four in the afternoon Ronicky wakened to find that Hugh Dawn was already up. He had kindled a fire in the wrecked stove which, without a chimney, stood in one corner of the shack; and now he sat beside it, his hands wrapped about his knees, a big black pipe clenched between his teeth, and his eyes fixed, through the doorway, upon the south trail. The broad shoulders, which could not be pulled forward even by the draw of the arms in this position; the forward thrust of the heavy head and the powerful neck; the solemn and alert expression of the face—all of these things went to convince Ronicky, as he lay unstirring for a moment in his blankets, that his new-found companion was by no means a soft variety of adventurer.
The night before he had shown himself in the most unfavorable, and almost a cowardly, light. But no doubt that was explained as a result of a long hounding— explained by the fact that he was returning from safety into a region where his life would constantly be in danger. Ronicky could not help admiring the quiet with which the man had been able to light the fire and break up wood and handle the noisy plates of the stove without making sufficient disturbance to waken either him—a remarkably light sleeper at all times—or the girl.
She lay in the position she had taken when she first wrapped herself in the blankets, her face turned up and pillowed in the tumbled masses of her hair. But on her lips, strangely enough, there was the smile of complete happiness and joyous dreams. Ronicky saw the face of the father, as it turned for an instant to the girl, soften wonderfully and lose every stern line. Again his heart warmed to the man. He sat up in his blankets, was greeted by a smile and a silent raising of the hand, and, after folding his blanket, went outside to find water.
He discovered a place a hundred yards away, where a little freshet had pooled its waters in a small lake, and that tempted him to a swim. He came back from his bath and shave, and saw that the father had not changed his position. Only iron muscles and a mind wrapped in the profoundest meditations could have kept him in that cramping posture.
At sight of Ronicky he rose, and, crossing the rotted boards of the floor with marvelous softness, considering his bulk, he came out to greet his new friend. What do you think of that? Or, if she doesn't do that, she'll go back to the big house and die of loneliness, wondering what's happening to you.
And at the house, who knows if Moon won't drop in on her, and take some means of finding out from her where you've gone—eh? You must know him a pile better than I do. But I got this to say, that if ever I saw a cold-blooded devil in the form of a man, Jack Moon is him. We can't leave the girl. But if we take her with us, won't she run into the same danger? I take it that if he finds us where we're going, he'll know everything. Ronicky, they's a curse on this treasure we're after. I was all wrong to bring you in on it. But, playing my lone hand, I was pretty sure I could never beat Moon.
With you I figured that we'd all have a chance—of being rich! That once you belonged to Moon's crowd. That you broke away from the crowd ten years ago. That in Moon's crew the punishment for desertion is death. That you ran out of the country to keep clear of him. That he worked hard to get on your trail all the time. That the minute you got back, he learned about it. That he's trying to kill you now. That you came back here partly because you wanted to see the girl. That another thing brought you back, which was this treasure you talk about. That's much as I know, or think I know.
Mind you, I ain't asking for a thing that comes hard for you to tell. Every gent has shadowy places in his life. I've only got this to say, that I'm going to make a clean breast of everything to you. It'll take time, but we got time. Jerry needs another hour for rest. Girls ain't like men. They get plumb no-good unless they have their sleep.
Ronicky Doone and the Cosslett Treasure
Speaking of Jerry, I got to say that she don't know the half of what I'm going to tell you—and I don't expect her ever to learn anything more from you. Dawn cast about in his mind for an easy method of opening a rather difficult narrative. It was essential that he should not lose the respect of his new-found ally; for he sensed at once the vital truth that Ronicky Doone could not work for an instant with a companion whom he did not trust. Well, one of 'em is packed in among rocks and hasn't a square chance to grow; and even when it grows, it pitches out to the side, all crooked.
And the other goes up big and straight as a king, eh? Ronicky, it's the same way with humans. Take two men of the same kind and give one a chance and one a hard row. One of 'em goes straight, the other goes crooked. Well, Ronicky, that's my case. He was a moneymaker, an easygoing fellow, too, and he liked to spend money as well as he liked to make it. Mines were his meat, and you know how cheap you regard gold that you dig out of dirt.
He treated me the same way he treated himself. I grew up just the way I felt like growing. He didn't make me do anything. I didn't feel like going off to school, and he didn't make me. Result was that I just ran wild, got to be a man, married the finest girl that ever stepped, had a girl born—and then the mines went smash, and dad went smash with them.
I didn't have any occupation. I didn't know anything about ranch work, even. And how was I to support my family? Then came a hard winter. My father and my wife died and left me with the baby girl to take care of. That hit me pretty hard. When your wife goes hungry it's bad enough; but when a kid cries for food, it sure cuts you up. And I got it! Tried my hand at gambling, and I had a beginner's luck that lasted me two years. Then that luck petered out, and I was flat as ever—and nothing saved of all the money I'd made.
He'd been watching me for a long time like the fox that he is. He saw me going downhill and he waited for the right time. When it came, he was ready. He put up his game to me, and I fell for it. I was desperate, you see? And the way he told me was that I wouldn't have to ride with him more'n a couple of times a year. The only hard thing was that, once in the band, I had to stay with it all my life. But even that I was willing to do, because there was Jerry, nearly eight years old, pretty as a picture, and needing a pile of things to keep her happy. So I gave Moon my word and went in with him.
Meantime, he gave me money, kept me easy, and built up a big debt that I owed him. End of the six months he called on me. It was a safe-blowing job. I rode with Moon and two others, and I didn't do much but look on; but afterward I got a split on the profits. Well, Ronicky, that night when I saw the soup explode and the door of the safe blown off, it seemed to me I was seeing the whole power of the law blown to the devil. It was more'n I could stand. I got Moon aside and told him that I was pretty well tired of the whole thing and I wanted to turn in my share to pay off my debts to him and get myself out of the band.
But Moon only laughed at me. He said that every man was a little hard hit his first time out, but afterward he got used to it. Besides, he said that I had the makings of a new leader, if anything happened to him; and he tried to flatter me into being happy. That started me thinking faster and harder than I'd ever thought before. I can see now that he simply wanted to test me out. He said he knew that I was a hard rider and a good shot, and he said, too, that he was going to honor me by giving me the job of running down a skunk that had tried to double-cross his band.
This was the story that Moon told me, and I'll try to give you every point just as he gave 'em to me. The boys dug out the gold like dirt. They got it by the millions. It was all surface stuff, and the claims gave out quick; but while they lasted —about two years and a half—they were mints. The chief trouble with the mines along the Jervey was that they wasn't any railroad within three hundred miles, and the gold had to be carted out on mules and hosses along the trails across the mountains. Naturally there was a lot of robbing and holdups going on—such a pile of it that nobody could say how much gold was lost or how many men murdered in the business.
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But Jack Moon says that out of about sixty millions taken from the Jervey claims, not more'n twenty millions ever was got across the mountains by them that shipped it out! You'd think that losses like that would have brought out the whole United States army to look after things.
But the whole army wasn't very big in those days, and it was tolerable busy with the Indians. Besides, when the stories got East, they weren't believed; or if they were believed, nobody cared very much. They were used to hearing all kinds of wild tales about gold coming out of the West, and most generally they figured that the gold diggers were a set of rascals, one about as bad as the other.
So nothing was done till the miners done it. Then they stopped digging and got ready to fight, and they were about as good at one thing as the other. They meant trouble, and they meant trouble in heaps. In a couple of weeks something broke. They sent out a fake gold convoy. There wasn't any gold, but there were ten mules and only ten men—and behind the ten came close to fifty with rifles. Sure enough, the ten were jumped, there was a big fight, and half a dozen of the robbers were shot down.
The miners were so mad that they didn't leave 'em live long. But one gent kept a spark of life, and he lived long enough to tell 'em that the whole system of robbing was run under one head, and that that head was the gent that was sheriff of the district where the mines was! The skunk had worked a double game and won both ways. His name was Hampden. At first he put up quite a talk; but they faced him with the dying gent, and he weakened. He was smooth as oil, but there was some things that he couldn't answer.
When they searched his cabin and found under the flooring some guns that was known to belong to gents that had been murdered on the gold trails, they give that sheriff a short time for living. He begged 'em to give him a chance. He swore that he wasn't any more than a tool, and that the gent that had planned all the organized robbery was really to blame, and that if they'd spare his life he'd take them to that gent and they could not only get him that was the root of the whole affair, but they could get the gold that had been stolen—a third or half of it, anyway, because that was the share, he said, that the master kept for himself.
Hampden wanted to live, and so he was lying and putting the blame on somebody that didn't exist. Anyway, they cut him short by kicking the box from under him, and Hampden swung still trying to talk and explain as long as he had a breath in him. He heard about this story; and he had an idea that they was something in it. Seems he hunted around for ten years trying to locate who the master mind had been, if there was such a man; and finally he hit on a gent named Boyd Cosslett that lived in a cabin right up on a cliff over the Cunningham River.
He was a queer old gent with yards of white beard, and always packing the Bible around and living quiet. What started the suspicions of Moon was that no letters and no money ever come in for old Boyd Cosslett, but every now and then he went down to town and bought supplies, and what he paid down was always raw gold or dust! But nothing happened, so one day he took a couple of the boys, Whitwell and another, and rushed Cosslett's shack at night.
He heard 'em coming. When they smashed through the door, they found him closing something into an iron box on the table. Moon shot him twice with his revolver, but Cosslett lived long enough to snap his box shut and throw it into the river. Then he turned around and laughed and shook his fist at Moon and dropped. Moon's a stickler for things like that.
Then they went down and dragged the lake to get the iron box, because they figured that it must contain something they could use as a clue to finding the treasure. But the bottom of that lake was thick with mud, and they got nothing but tired arms for their work. And he stayed away so long that Moon knew he had quit the band.
After a while they pick up his trail and find him not far from Cosslett's cabin. And there they find him dragging the lake! He was trying to get his hands on that iron box of old Cosslett's and he wanted to get it for himself and not have to share up with the band. Moon let him stay on there for a month, hoping that maybe Whitwell would find the box; and then they'd kill Whitwell and take the box from him.
But Whitwell didn't have any luck, it seemed, so finally Moon came to me and gave me the job of killing Whitwell. That was the rule under Jack Moon, and that's the rule under him still. It brought me up at last to an old deserted camp, and there I nailed Whitwell. There wasn't anything to it.
He was sound asleep in a chair. When he woke up, I had my gun shoved under his chin. He just sat up and grinned at me. First thing he said was: I'd heard so much from Moon, he seemed so sure that that box held the clue to the treasure, that I gaped at Whitwell. He went on to talk smooth and easy. He figured that I'd come along for him. He admitted that I had him, and that I could blow his head off, but what was the good?
I told him, and I told him true, that I couldn't kill him, that the job had been forced on me, and that I hated Moon and the rest of his band. That was music to Whitwell. He told me the whole story right off. He'd found the box by dragging. But it was heavy; weighed forty pounds, even if it was small. He tried to break it open, but he didn't have a sledge hammer; and while he was trying to smash the lock against a rock he saw somebody coming up the river road. He took his glasses and made out that it was me.
He saddled and jumped onto his horse. But he couldn't take that heavy box with him, so he left it behind at Cosslett's house and then tore off across the hills. What he intended to do was to shake me off the trail, get some giant powder, return and blow up the box, and then see what was to be seen. I thanked him, and we were shaking hands to seal the bargain when a gun was fired through the window, and Whitwell was shot out of his chair. He had orders to simply kill me if I tried to dodge the work. And that was what his man tried to do, because the second Whitwell spilled out of his chair, another shot was sent at me and just clipped through my hair.
I dropped to the floor beside Whitwell. My ear was close to his lips. I heard him whisper: He figured that he'd killed us both with those two shots, from the way we'd both dropped. There was nothing for it but to get him out of the way. I shot for his legs, saw him go down, and then I scrambled through the door and rode like mad for Cunningham Lake. Treat hadn't come alone. Moon and two others were with him, and they rode like devils to cut me off.
They did it and turned me into the south mountains. For a month they hunted me, and for a month I managed to keep out of bullet range. By that time I was away south, and I saw that the country was too hot for me. I could never get back to Jerry. They'd watch around her and lay for me. There was only one thing left and that was to get as far away as I could, start to work, and support Jerry.
I just had to live where I was and work and send her the money to live on. And that's what I did. Ten years of it, lad, without ever seeing her face. But I gave her enough for an education.
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Then when she was independent I made up my mind that I'd come back and risk the chance to get Cosslett's gold. I came back then, told Jerry simply that I was in danger from Moon and his band, and started to plan to get to Cunningham Lake and Cosslett's old shack. But before I got well started, you know what happened. You arrived in time to drag me out to safety. You arrived in time to give me a fighting chance at that money—and give yourself a chance at the same thing!
She knows the story behind that, and how Moon killed the old man. She knows that I can't call down the law on the head of Moon because there are complications; but just what those complications are, she can't say. Is it all clear to you now, Ronicky, just how we stand? First men were killed so that he could get his hands on it. Then other gents were bumped off because they were his agents. Then Cosslett was killed because he had the gold; and then several other gents were killed because they were trying to find out where Cosslett hid the stuff.
Now here we go, you and me, and take your girl with us; and all three of us walk up and rap at the same door. Well, Dawn, it looks like black business to me! Won't Moon suspect that we're heading for Cosslett's old shack? Won't he be apt to drive straight for that place and wait for us there? Moon don't know Whitwell's secret. I'm the only one that knows it except you and Jerry. Besides, maybe he guesses that you know something. What it is, he can't guess. But if he's at Cosslett's—then that's fate. And if fate's agin' us, well be beat any way we look at it.
But we won't be beat, son. We can get to Cosslett's inside of two hours of hard riding. And Moon ain't apt to get there as quick as that. Then a look under the veranda—". That veranda was built close to the ground.
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If Whitwell put it there, he must have put it there because he knew nobody'd look there. It seemed to Ronicky that there was more than an ordinary admixture of superstition in the nature of Hugh Dawn. If fate aided him, he would get Cosslett's gold. If fate were against him, he would get death instead. So he went ahead blindly trusting in luck. He had made only one sensible provision to meet danger, and that was enlisting the aid of another man, Ronicky himself.
The more Ronicky thought of the affair, the more of a wild-goose chase it seemed to him. Yet he knew that it was madness to attempt to dissuade Hugh Dawn, and he dared not let the big fellow go on with his daughter to face Moon. And face the outlaw chief he knew they would, before the adventure was finished. Returning to the cabin, they found Geraldine Dawn already up, and they found, moreover, that she had reached the conclusion to which they had already come. She dared not go back and live alone in the big house of her father; a thousand times she would rather continue the trip and face whatever lay before them, than make the return.
Only one thing upset her—what would the people of Trainor say when she did not appear to teach the school? But there was, in the village, a girl who had substituted for her once before during an illness. Therefore the classes would be taken care of. With that scruple cared for—how slight a thing it seemed to Ronicky Doone! They started on within a few minutes, swerving now to the left and striking through rougher mountain trails.
Hugh Dawn had correctly estimated the distance. In the early evening they came upon Cosslett's cabin. It stood in an imposing place on the cliff above Cunningham Lake. On all sides the ground sloped back. There were no trees near, though in all other directions the forest stepped down from the mountaintops to the very edge of the lake. He wouldn't trust a forest where gents could sneak up on him. Ronicky smiled to himself. Such reasoning simply proved that Dawn had already convinced himself, and was willing to pick up minute circumstances and weave them into the train of proof.
They climbed the slope and found that ten years had dealt hard with the little house. The roof was smashed in. The sides caved out, as though the pressure of time were overcoming them. But the first place to which they ran, the veranda, showed no opening beneath its floor and the ground. Hugh Dawn looked at it in despair. The ground, indeed, was flush with the top of the flooring. I dunno how this come! It was easily done. The rotted wood gave readily around the nail-heads, and in a minute or two every board had been torn up.
But they saw beneath no sign of such a thing as a forty-pound iron chest. Hugh Dawn was in despair. He could not complete the sentence, so great was his disappointment. Ronicky, expecting nothing at all, was quite unperturbed. He looked at Jerry Dawn. She was as calm as he, but something of pity was in her eyes as she looked to her father.
Was it possible that she, too, saw through the whole hoax and had simply undertaken the ride to appease the hungry eagerness of her father? They entered the cabin through the front doorway, stepping over the door itself, which had fallen on the inside. All within was at the point of disintegration. The cast-iron stove was now a red, rusted heap in a corner. The falling of a rafter had smashed the bunk where it was built against the wall. The boards of the floor gave and creaked beneath their steps. In the corners were little yellowed heaps of paper—old letters, they seemed. And on the floor beneath the bunk Jerry Dawn found, face down, and yet with every page intact, the Bible which was always mentioned whenever the name of Cosslett was brought into conversation.
When she raised the book, it seemed that she raised the ghost of the old white-bearded hermit at the same time. In spite of the ruin, the terrible scene rushed back upon the memory of each of the three—Jack Moon and his men tumbling through the door—the two explosions of guns—the hurling of the casket through the window—the fall of the hermit.
Suddenly Hugh Dawn shouted in alarm. Making a careless step with his great weight, he had driven his foot crashing and rending through the flooring where rain had rotted away the wood except for a mere shell. He scrambled out of his trap, half laughing and half alarmed. Jerry Dawn looked up from the Bible, whose yellowed, time-stained leaves she had been turning with reverent fingers. The awe went out of her eyes, and bright interest came in its place. Perhaps that's the place where he hid all the gold, dad? Hide fifteen or twenty million dollars' worth of gold in a cellar!
The band must of took a clean forty millions, and out of everything that they took, that old hawk, according to Hampden, got fifty per cent. He was a business man, right enough! And what's half of forty? She leaned to see him put his fingers through a gaping crack between boards, work them to a firm grip, and then rip up the whole length of the plank. Below them opened the black depth of the cellar. Ronicky lighted a match and dropped it into the aperture. Who suspected a cellar under a house like this until you put your foot through the floor? Ronicky was lighting matches in the darkness below.
All the stringers holding up the floor on this side are rotten and smashed over sidewise.
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I've come back and put my head into the mouth of the lion for nothing. That skunk Whitwell aimed to make a fool of me, that was all! Why should he of told me the truth, anyway? It fell with a crash onto the floor, the jar of the impact knocking off from its sides long flakes of the red dust, so that the metal looked forth from beneath. And there it's laid ever since! They stood about it in trembling excitement, Jerry so agape with astonishment that it was plain she had considered, up to this point, that the whole story was a myth.
Hugh Dawn was beyond use of his muscles. Only Ronicky Doone had not been incapacitated by wonder and excitement. For unquestionably it was the "forty-pound box" so often referred to. Even Ronicky Doone was convinced. Of course there was no reason to think that the box proved anything, or that its discovery lead to important things. But as it stood there in the center of the three, a mass of red rust, its presence verified one step in the story of the Cosslett treasure, and thereby the whole trail seemed to be the truth.
The rotting strong box was like a fourth presence. Its silence was more eloquent than a voice. Did you bring a sledge hammer, Dawn? Nope, Ronicky, I had my pack under my arm when I left the house on the run last night, and the things in the pack are a pick and a shovel and a chisel and an eight-pound sledge. As he enunciated the last word Ronicky disappeared through the door. Hugh Dawn picked up the strong box and, carrying it outside, had braced it firmly, lock up, between two big stones ready for the hammering which was to open it. Ronicky came a moment later with the hammer.
He loosed a terrific blow which landed fairly and squarely upon the lock. But the hammer, after crunching through the rust, rebounded idly. The lock had not even been cracked. He whirled it again, again, and again. His back went up and down, and the sledge became a varying streak of light that struck against the box, always hitting accurately on one spot.
Ronicky Doone looked on in amazement, and the girl's eyes shone in delight at the prowess of her father, when there was a slight sound of cracking; at another blow the box flew open. Ronicky Doone gasped with excitement. Was it true, then, that what the box was used for was to guard a secret and not money?
There were three slips of paper, apparently fly leafs of books torn off, and the girl examined them. He snatched them from her, glaring; then he crumpled the paper into a ball and cast it to the ground. If ghosts walk the earth, he's somewhere in the air now laughing at me. Ronicky Doone alone had not seen the writing. He ran a few steps after the ball of paper as it rolled along in the breeze, picked it up, and smoothed out the separate bits. What he found was exactly what had been reported. First there were two slips covered with a list of names and dates:.
The list continued, each separate name followed by dates ranging through two years until October of the second year. With this month the dates were crowded together. Half of the first slip and all of the second were covered with names and dates of that month. And last of all was the name "Hampden, October Cosslett's gold will rest and rot.
No man'll ever find it— all them millions! So it ran on through line after line of bracketed numbers with commas and semicolons interspersed. Ronicky Doone dropped the paper to his side. But this mess of figures—I dunno what could have been in Cosslett's head when he started to make it up. Anyway, it can't do us any good. Ronicky and her father anxiously turned toward her. Since both of them were convinced that the trail to the treasure began at the shack of Cosslett, and since there was no possible clue save that piece of paper and the list of numbers, they hoped against hope that Jerry could make something out of it.
She always was a wonder at puzzles, even when she was no bigger'n a minute. Inside the brackets the numbers are separated with commas and grouped with semicolons. I counted the groups set off by the semicolons, and altogether there are fifty-eight of them. Well, the average length of a word is about five letters. Five goes into fifty-eight eleven times and a little over. Fifty-eight letters to make up eleven words. And those eleven words —since they were locked up so carefully in the strong box—may they not form the directions to the place where the treasure is buried?
Ronicky Doone's Treasure
I admit that I don't see how he could have written complete directions with so few words; but at least it gives us a new hope, doesn't it? See any way you can get at the code? But then, most puzzles seem hard until you get at them, you know; and, once they're deciphered, they seem so simple that everyone is surprised he didn't see through the thing before. There are lots of ways of making up codes, of course. The oldest way is the worst. You simply substitute particular characters for the different letters.
In that way you simply have a new alphabet. E is used much more than any other letter. But to come back to this conundrum. It obviously isn't one of the simple types of codes. I'm certain that each group inside a semicolon represents a letter, and not one of the groups is identical with another.
So the 'substituted alphabet' code isn't used at all. Outside of that code, there are scores of others, of course. Anyone can make up a code with a little forethought, and probably each code will be quite unlike, in several features, any other code in the world.
At least there's room for work. For instance, inside of each bracket the first letter of each group is the same. And in each succeeding bracket the first letter is one larger. The characters of the first bracket run one, one, three, two; one, one, six, five; et cetera. In the second bracket they run two, nine, one, thirteen; two, nine, one, four, et cetera. And this continues right down to the last bracket, where the first character is thirteen. But let's look at some other interesting features. The first character in each group is the same throughout the individual bracket.
The second character is also identical throughout each bracket. In the first bracket the second character is everywhere one; in the second it is nine; in the third it is eighteen; in the fourth it is six. Each group is made up of four characters. The first two are regular throughout and follow some definite plan. The third character varies in the first two brackets only. In the first it is three, six, nine, twelve.
In the second it is one, one, three. But after that the third character also becomes regular. In the third bracket it is always two, and in the fourth bracket it is always two; while in other brackets other numerals are used, but each is constant throughout the individual bracket. But the fourth character in each group is the variant. The regularity of the first three characters of the groups shows me that they are intended as guides. But the actual distinguishing element in each group is the last or fourth character.
All of this, I admit, goes for nothing unless I get at some clue to the problem. They come out of the character and life of the man who makes the code, as a rule. This man, so far as I know, was a clever criminal. He also was fond of isolation and the Bible. Perhaps he thought he could read his way out of guilt and responsibility for his sins. At any rate, I'm going to think over what I know about him. The whole thing may clear up in a moment. Then, to their astonishment, she pushed the paper into the hand of Ronicky and opened the Bible.
Chapter one, third verse, second word— 'God.