Chapter 6. A Wild-Goose Chase

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_ CHAPTER SIX. A WILD-GOOSE CHASE

The doctor carefully opened the roll of skin upon the table, while Chris turned the lamp up a little higher, keeping one eye upon his father's actions the while and then scanning eagerly the plainly-seen marks which pretty well covered the little guide.

For that it was evidently intended to be, so as to give future searchers an easy means of reaching the treasure that the unfortunate adventurer had discovered.

All gazed down at the skin, which had been smoothed out, and for some minutes not a word was spoken. But it did not take long for the whole of the party to come to the same conclusion, and it was this--

That the adventurer had taken great pains in the preparation of his map for another's benefit, in case he should not be able to seek for the treasure himself, but that to make his chart available it needed something more.

Griggs was the first to give his feelings words, which expressed the thoughts of the rest exactly.

"This is all very well," he said, as he wrinkled his brow and scratched his head viciously, "and it's very nicely done for a man who seems to have begun by making his own makeshift for paper, and then his own pen and ink. What do you make this skin to be, doctor?"

"The nearest guess I can give is that it is the skin of a jack-rabbit that has been pegged-out tightly and dried in the sun."

"Same here," said Griggs; "but what about the ink?"

"Ah, that looks like charcoal ground very fine, mixed with water and some kind of tree gum, and painted on with a pointed piece of wood."

"That's just what I thought it might be," cried Griggs, "and a deal of trouble the poor fellow has taken with it. Look here, neighbours, east and west and north and south plain enough. What does he say here?--'Des--' Yes, that's right enough, and means desert. Plenty of it too. And what's here?--'No water.' Of course, and over and over again, 'N.W.' That means no water, of course. Mountains under these stars. Plenty of 'em too. More desert, and then three stars set triangle fashion about what looks like a square box with some one's name on it."

"No," cried both boys together; "it's 'temple.'"

"So it is, boys," cried Griggs, "and these dots all round it--I mean all square about it, must mean the city walls. Well, that's clear enough."

"Look there," cried Chris.

"Yes, I'm looking," said Griggs. "What is it?"

"That big W," said Chris. "That must mean water or well."

"Very likely, my boy," said the doctor.

"And these square bits must mean houses, I s'pose," continued Griggs. "Well, it's a prettily-done, careful sort of map, made under difficulties. Mountains here and mountains there, and all the rest desert. But he means whoever uses the map to go straight for the place, by sticking in all these little arrows right away from the north-east corner across the desert to the temple."

"Yes, that's the way to go, plainly enough," cried Bourne.

"That's what I thought, neighbour."

"Well, then, what are you finding fault about?" cried Wilton sharply. "You talk as if you despised it."

"Oh no, not I, squire. It's a very pretty little map, and took the poor chap a long time to do; but it seems to me that it's no good at all."

"I don't understand you," said Wilton sharply. "Look here, he gives a starting-place marked with a big dot, and the little arrows go right across to the three mountains and the temple."

"That is how he described it to me," said the doctor.

"Just so, sir. That's how I understand it, neighbours; but what then?"

"Why, of course!" came in chorus, as every one at the table grasped the hitch that the American had seen.

"Ah, you all hit it now," said Griggs, laughing.

"I think I understand what you mean," said the doctor thoughtfully.

"So do I," came in chorus, and then Bourne said quickly--

"Suppose you speak out and say what you mean, Lee."

"It seems to me," said the doctor gravely, "that though this chart has been prepared so carefully, and points out the trend of the deserts and mountains, and also where the gold-hills, the city, and the temple stand, while the points of the compass are shown as well, it might be a chart of any part of the country, a mere patch, or a territory of great extent."

"That's so, doctor," interposed Griggs; "but you haven't quite hit it yet."

"No, but I was coming to your point directly. You mean that the map gives us no hint of the direction in which the gold-hills lie."

"Now you've hit it right in the bull's-eye, doctor," cried Griggs. "That's it. Say we made up our minds to go and look for it, starting from here, are we to begin north, south, or east? Couldn't go very far west, because that would mean going straight out to sea."

"Of course--of course!" was chorused.

"But we could find the place, after all," cried Chris excitedly.

"How?" said Wilton.

"Mr Griggs can tell us which direction the poor old fellow was coming from."

"No, he can't," said the personage spoken of. "He was zig-zagging about all sorts of ways, and more than once after a stumble I saw him get upon his legs and go back the same way he came, as if he was half blind."

"Oh!" cried Chris, in a disappointed tone.

"You meant, young squire, that if I could tell you the direction from which he had come, all we should have to do would be to go right along his track till we saw the three mountains?"

"Yes, that is something like what I thought," said Chris, who felt damped.

"Wouldn't work, youngster," cried Griggs. "Even if he had come on the last day in a straight line that wouldn't help us about how he came on the other days; and as to his trail--why, the poor old fellow had been on the tramp for years. Look here, all of you; I'll give you another chance for a spec. I'll take five cents for my share. Who'll buy? Don't all speak at once. What, no one? Well, you are a poor lot! Only five cents. Well, never mind; if you won't make yourselves rich it's no fault of mine. I'll keep my share myself in a goose-quill stopped up at the end with wax--when I get it."

"I should very much have liked to go in search of that place," said Wilton, who hardly heard their American neighbour's words.

"And I too," said Bourne. "Setting aside the gold discovery, it would be most interesting to visit the relics of the ancient city."

"I could do without seeing the old place," said Griggs dryly. "Depend upon it, you'd find it terribly out of repair. I should be dead on the gold. How do you feel, doctor?"

"I should like to explore the old place," he replied, "but I certainly should make a point of getting all the gold I could."

"Then why not try and find the spot?" cried Chris. "It must be somewhere south."

"Yes," cried Ned. "Oh, father, don't let's give up without a good try to find it."

The doctor laughed at the boy's eagerness.

"Somewhere due south," he said; "a nice vague direction. Somewhere due south may mean anywhere between here and Cape Horn."

"No, no, father," cried Chris; "not so far as that. I haven't forgotten all my geography since I've been here, and I know that there are plenty of desert regions such as that poor fellow may have been wandering in between here and Panama."

"Hear, hear!" cried Griggs. "But give us one or two, squire."

Chris grew red and uncomfortable, but he caught his father's eye looking keenly at him, and he spoke out.

"I don't know about being exactly south," he said. "Perhaps some of the places lie east; but the old man might have been wandering in the mountainous parts of Colorado or Lower California, or--or--"

"New Mexico," whispered Ned.

"Yes, New Mexico, or California, or perhaps have got to Mexico itself."

"Well done, our side!" cried Griggs, thumping the table. "Three cheers for our own private professor of geography. To be sure, there's desert land in all those places, as I've learned myself from fellows who have been there. But what's Arizona done to be left out in the cold?"

"In the sun, you mean," cried Chris eagerly. "That's the hottest and dryest place of all of them."

"To be sure," said the doctor--"the arid zone."

"Dessay it's true," said Griggs. "I vote we go and see."

"Why not Lower California, or one of the other States?" said the doctor dryly.

"To be sure, why not?" said Griggs, and the boys, who smelt change in the air, thumped the table.

"Quiet, quiet, boys!" said the doctor sternly. "I'm afraid, neighbour Griggs, that your plantation would suffer a good deal during your absence on such a wild-goose chase."

"What! My plantation suffer?" cried Griggs, chuckling. "Oh, come, that's too good a joke, doctor! Suffer? Have you been round it lately?"

"Not for a year past," was the reply. "I've been too busy slaving over our own."

"Then you don't know. Why, my good neighbour, it's in nearly as bad a condition as that poor old fellow we have just buried."

"Have you tried to sell it to some immigrant?"

"Have I tried to swindle some poor fellow just come into the country?" cried Griggs sharply. "No, I haven't. I don't set up for being much of a citizen, but, 'pon my word, doctor, I wouldn't be such a brute as to even give it to a man on condition that he would live there and farm it. Your joint plantation here is bad enough, but my bit's ten times worse."

"I join issue there," cried Wilton sharply; "it can't be."

"Oh, can't it!" cried the American. "You don't know what it's took out of me. Why, I'd have pitched the whole thing up a couple of years ago if it hadn't been for you three here."

"What had we to do with it?" said Bourne sharply.

"Everything. I used to see you folk and these boys plodding along, working like niggers, no matter how your crops turned out, and waiting patiently for better times to come."

"Well, what of that?" said Wilton. "Of course we wanted to get on."

"So did I, squire, and seeing you all keep at it so when I wanted to chuck up, I pitched into myself and called him--this chap, 'Thaniel Griggs, you know--all the idle, lazy scallywags and loafers I could think of, and made him--'Thaniel, you know--so ashamed of himself that he worked harder than ever. 'They've all cut their eye-teeth, Griggy, my boy,' I said, 'and they wouldn't keep on if there wasn't some good to come out of it by and by,' and after that I worked away. But now you all talk of giving up, and say you've proved that there's no good in the place, what's the use of my niggering away by myself?"

"You'd sooner go on such a wild, harum-scarum search as this, eh?" said the doctor, looking at the tall, sun-burnt man grimly.

"To be sure I would. There'd be some fun and adventure in it."

"And risk."

"Well, yes, neighbour; I don't expect it would be all honey. There'd be some mustard and cayenne in it too."

"And danger of wasting your life as that poor fellow yonder did his."

"Some," said the American coolly. "You can't make fortunes without a bit of a fight. I came here to this place to make mine, but there's no stuff here to make it of. If we should find the gold-hills now, that would be something like. The fortune's already made. All it wants is for us to go and pack it up and bring it away."

"To find it first," said Ned's father bitterly.

"Nay, it's already found, parson. The poor old boy found it, and gave the job over to the doctor here, along with those title-deeds."

"Which don't say where the land lies."

"Oh, never mind that. I boggled about it at first, and thought it was a regular blind lead. But I don't now. Amurrykee isn't such a big place as all that comes to. There's the gold somewhere, and we've got some sort of a guide as well as the right to it. We're none of us so old that we can't afford to spend a few years, if it's necessary, in hunting through first one desert and then another. Can't you see what a chance we shall have?"

"I must confess I do not," said the doctor.

"Well, I do, sir. We shall have those places all to ourselves. There'll be no one to complain of our making footmarks over their gardens and strawberry-patches."

"What about the Indians, Mr Griggs?" asked Bourne.

"The Injun? Yes, there's the Injun, but we shouldn't go as one. We should be half-a-dozen, and if the 'foresaid Injun takes my advice he'll stop at home and leave me alone. I ain't got more pluck in me than most fellows have, but though I called 'Thaniel Griggs all the lazy coons I could lay my tongue to, I've a great respect for that young man. Selfish or not, I like him better than any fellow in this country, and I should no more mind drawing a straight bead on the savage who tried to kill him than I should mind putting my heel on a sleeping rattler's head while I drew my knife and 'capitated him. There, now."

"Self-preservation's the first law of nature, friend Griggs," said Wilton.

"Is it, now?" replied the American. "Then all I can say is that number two and all the rest of her laws have got to be very good ones if they come up to number first, sir. Oh, I shouldn't stop for no Injuns if I made up my mind to go, sirree. I should chance that, practise up my shooting, and never go a step without having my rifle charged in both barrels."

"But can't you see that the chances are very much against any one finding this place?"

"No, sir. It'll be a tight job, no doubt; but what one man could do, going without the slightest idee where to go nor what there was to find, surely half-a-dozen of us, counting the young nippers in, could do, knowing that the gold's there waiting for us, and that we've only got to find the right spot."

"Only!" said Bourne sadly.

"Yes, sir, only. There, if I talk much more I shall want to go back home to see if there is one ripe orange on my plantation that I can suck. So I'll just put my opinions down straight. Those is them--I say, Squire Ned, that's bad grammar, ain't it?"

"Horrible," replied the boy, laughing.

"Never mind; you understood it. Look here, gentlemen, there's a fine chance here for a fortune, and I say, have a try for it, and take me with you to help, share and share alike. I'll work with you, fight for you, and share all the trouble like a man. It's worth the try, and I think so much of it that if you say downright that you won't go I shall see if I can find a trusty mate, and go myself. There, that's all."

Griggs threw himself back on his seat so as to get his back square against the wall, tilting the stool on two legs, and looked sharply round the table, and then at Wilton, who had risen and come round to him to offer his hand.

The American looked at the long brown fingers and then up in their owner's face.

"What's that for?" he said. "Want me to shake, and then go home, because you're tired of me?"

"No," cried Wilton fiercely. "It's for you to give me yours. I say you're right, Griggs. The place must be found, and I'll go with you to work and fight, and through thick and thin, for I believe in you as a true man. I'll go with you, and we'll find the treasure or come back, worn out, to die."

"Not we!" cried the American, seizing Wilton's hand in his strong grip. "I'm with you, to stick to you, Mister Wilton, like a brother man. I'm ready to start with you to-morrow, if you like, if the doctor here will hand over that dockyment.--Any more going on?"

The two boys sprang to their feet and looked at their fathers, who spoke as one man. "Sit down, boys!" they cried.

"Why, you rash young reprobate," cried the doctor. "Do you mean to tell me that you'd go off on this mad journey without asking my leave?"

"No, father, of course not. Ned wouldn't either without Mr Bourne's consent; but I want to go with old Griggs, who has always been such a good fellow to us, and I feel sure you and Mr Bourne both mean to go too."

"What makes you say that, sir?" cried the doctor sternly.

"Oh, first because Mr Wilton's going, and you'd neither of you like him to go without you."

"Any other reason, sir?"

"Yes, father. It seems to me that as we are going away to make a fresh start, it would be much better to go in search of this treasure than to be sailing straight back to England, not knowing what we should do when we got there."

"Oh, that's what you think, is it, sir?" said the doctor.--"By your leave, Bourne!--Now, Master Ned, pray what do you think about it all?"

"Oh," cried the boy addressed, speaking to the doctor, but looking hard and searchingly in his father's face, "I want to go with Chris, of course, and I think just the same as he does. Why, it would be grand, Mr Lee. We should have no end of adventures, and see the beautiful country."

"And the dismal desert. Why, you romantic young dreamer! You'll never see a place south of here half so beautiful."

"But what's the good of its being beautiful if we can't live upon it?"

"Then you'd be glad to go?"

"Oh yes, sir," cried Ned.

"Humph! Well, Bourne, it seems then that you and I will have to go back to England empty and alone."

"No, you won't, father," said Chris quickly. "I shouldn't go without you went too."

"And I shouldn't either, father," said Ned huskily, as he went and stood behind his father with his hands resting on Bourne's shoulders.

"Here, I wish you two young fellows had held your tongues," said Griggs roughly, "because it's like filling a man full of pleasure, and then making a hole and letting it all out again. But it's all right, lads, and thankye all the same. No, you can't go away and leave your two dads; it wouldn't be right, and you couldn't expect to prosper if you did. But I wish they'd think as we do, and say they'd go and chance it. Raally, doctor, and raally, Mr Bourne, I'd go to bed and sleep on it. P'r'aps you'd feel a bit different in the morning. What do you say?"

The doctor was silent for a few moments, gazing full in the American's face, the latter receiving the look without blenching.

"Let me see, Mr Griggs," he said; "I've known you nearly four years, haven't I?"

"Four years, four months, doctor, and that's just as long as I've known you."

"Yes," said the doctor, at last. "Bourne, what do you say to all this-- shall we go and sleep on it?"

The two boys caught hands and gazed hard at Ned's father, who was also silent for a few moments, before he drew a deep breath and said firmly--

"Yes, Lee, old friend, I say let us go to rest now, think deeply, and as we should, over what may mean success or failure, and decide in the morning what we ought to do."

"Shout, boys," cried Griggs, springing up. "Not one of your English hoo-roars, but a regular tiger--_ragh_--_ragh_--_ragh_! That's your sort. They mean to go."

"Yes, Griggs, old neighbour," said the doctor; "in spite of all the terrible obstacles I can see plainly in our path, I feel that to-morrow morning my friend and I will have made up our minds that this is too great a thing to give up easily, and that we shall decide to go." _

Read next: Chapter 7. All For Gold

Read previous: Chapter 5. A Piece Of Skin

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