CHAPTER IX.

DISCOVERY OF THE LOSS.

“This is where you wake up and find yourself rich; how do you like it?”

Mark, who asked the question, was yawning sleepily as he sat up from his bed, a pile of blankets on the floor of his tent. It was about five o’clock Sunday morning, and the booming echo of the réveille gun was still upon the air. Down by the color line a drum was still rattling, with a fife to keep it company. And throughout the camp cadets were springing up to dress, just as were the four we noticed.

There is no tent room in West Point for the man who likes to lie in bed and doze for half an hour in the morning; cadets have five minutes to dress in, and they have to be out in the company street lined up for roll call at the end of that time. And there is no danger of their failing about it, either. They tell a good story up there about one fond mother who introduced her young hopeful, a soon-to-be plebe, to the commandant of cadets, and hoped that they wouldn’t have any trouble getting “Montmorency dear” up in the morning; they never could get him up at home.

But to return to the four A Company plebes who were meanwhile flinging on their clothes and performing their hasty toilets.

The lad who propounded the question was Mark, as said before. The one who answered it was Jeremiah Powers, and Texas vowed he liked being rich mighty well. He got no chance to explain why or wherefore, however, for by that time he was outside of the tent, and the resplendent cadet officer was giving his stentorian order:

“’Tenshun, company!”

At which signal the merry groups of cadets changed into an immovable line of figures stiff as ramrods.

The plebes had come back to camp late last night, or rather early this same morning, scarcely able to realize what had happened. They were still striving to realize it all as they sat whispering to each other in mess hall. They were rich, all of them. How much they had none of them had any idea. The learned Parson had informed them--and he didn’t have to go to a book to find it out, either, that a pound of gold is worth two hundred and fifty dollars. Allowing two hundred pounds to that box, which was a modest guess indeed, left some seven thousand dollars to each of them, a truly enormous fortune for a boy, especially a West Point plebe who is supposed to have no use for money at all.

Cadets do their purchasing on “check-book,” as it is called, and their bills are deducted from their salaries. And though they do smuggle in some contraband bills occasionally they have no way of making use of large sums. This was the problem the Banded Seven were discussing through the meal and while they were busily sprucing up their tents for “Sunday morning inspection.”

Texas was for quitting “the ole place” at a jump and making for the plains where a fellow could have a little fun when he wanted to. The fact that he had signed an “engagement for service,” or any such trifle as that, made no difference to him, and in fact there is little doubt that he would have skipped that morning had it not been for one fact--he couldn’t leave Mark.

“Doggone his boots!” growled Texas, “ef he had any nerve he’d come along! But ef he won’t, I s’pose I got to let that air money lie idle.”

After which disconsolate observation Texas fell to polishing the mirror that hung on his tent pole and said nothing more.

“Think of Texas running away!” laughed Mark. “Think of him not having Corporal Jasper to come in on Sunday mornings and lecture him for talking too much instead of sprucing up his tent as a cadet should. Think of his not having Captain Fisher to march him ’round to church after that and civilize him! Think of the yearlings having nobody to lick ’em any more! Think of Bull Harris, our beloved enemy, who hates us worse than I do warm cod liver oil, having nobody to fool him every once in a while and get him wild!”

Mark observed by that time from the twitching in his excitable friend’s fingers and the light that danced in his eye that his last hit had drawn blood. Texas was cured in a moment of all desire to leave West Point. For was not Bull Harris, “that ole coyote of a yearlin’,” a low, cowardly rascal who had tried every contemptible trick upon Mark that his ingenuity could invent, and who hadn’t had half his malignity and envy knocked out of him yet? And Texas go away? Not much!

Parson Stanard was heard from next. The Parson knew of a most extraordinary collection of fossils from the Subcarboniferous period. The Parson had been saving up for a year to buy those fossils, and now he meant to do it. He swore it by Zeus, and by Apollo, and by each one of the “Olympians” in turn. Also the Parson meant to do something handsome by that wonderful Cyathophylloid coral found by him in a sandstone of Tertiary origin. The Parson thought it would be a good idea to get up a little pamphlet on that most marvelous specimen, a pamphlet treating very learnedly upon the “distribution of the Cyathophylloid according to previous geological investigations and the probable revolutionary and monumental effects of the new modifications thereof.” The Parson had an idea he’d have a high old time writing that treatise.

Further discourse as to the probable uses of the treasure was cut short by the entrance of the inspecting officer, who scattered slaughter and trembling from his eye. Methusalem Z. Chilvers, “the farmer,” alias Sleepy, the fourth occupant of the tent, was responsible for disorder that week and the way he caught it was heartrending. He was so disgusted that as usual he vowed he was going to take his money back to Kansas and raise “craps.” After which the drum sounded and they all marched down to chapel.

A delightful feeling of independence comes with knowing you are rich. Perhaps you have never tried it, but the Seven were trying it just then. They beamed down contentedly on irate cadet corporals and unfriendly yearlings with an air of conscious superiority that seemed to say, “If you only knew.” Of the Seven there were only two who were at all used to the sensation of being wealthy. Texas’ “dad,” “the Honorable Scrap Powers, o’ Hurricane County,” owned a few hundred thousand head of cattle, and Chauncey, “the dude,” was a millionaire from New York; but all the others were quite poor. Mark was calculating just then what a satisfaction he meant to have in sending some of that money to his widowed mother, to whom it would be a very welcome present indeed.

He was thinking of that in the course of the afternoon, when church and likewise dinner had passed, leaving the plebes at leisure. And so he proposed to them that they take a walk to pass the time and incidentally bring some of that buried wealth back with them. Nothing could have suited the Seven better, as it happened. They were all anxiety again to get up to that cave and hear those gold coins jingle once more. To cut the story short, they went.

It was a merry party that set out through the woods that afternoon. The Seven were usually merry, as we know, but they had extra causes just then. Everything was going about as well for them as things in the world could be expected to go. And besides this, Parson Stanard, who was a wellspring of fun at all times, was in one of his most solemn and therefore laughable moods at present.

The thought had occurred to the Parson, as his first sordid flush of delight at having wealth had passed, that after all he was in a very unscholarly condition indeed. The very idea of a man of learning being rich! Why it was preposterous; where was all the starving in garrets of genius and the pinching poverty that was always the fate of the true patrons of Minerva. That worried the Parson more than you can imagine; he felt himself a traitor to his chosen profession. And with much solemn abjurgation and considerable classical circumlocution he called the Seven’s attention to that deplorable state of affairs. Search the records of history as he could, the Parson could not find a parallel for his own unfortunate condition. And he wound up the afternoon’s discussion by wishing, yea, by Zeus, that he could be poor and happy once more.

Dewey suggested very solemnly that nobody was going to compel the unfortunate Parson to claim his share, “b’gee”; that he (Dewey) would be pleased to take it if he were only paid enough to make it worth while. But somehow or other the Parson didn’t fall into that plan very readily; perhaps he didn’t think Dewey really meant it.

Still chatting merrily, the Seven made their way through the mile or two of woods that lay between the post and the cave.

As they drew near to the opening the plebes were startled to notice that the ground at the foot of the rock was marked and torn with footprints.

The Seven had not done that, they knew, for they had been of all things most careful to leave not the least trace that should lead any one to suspect the presence of their secret cavern. And consequently when they saw the state of the ground there was but one thought, a horrible thought that flashed over every one of them. Somebody had been in their cave! And during the night!

Almost as one man, the Seven made a dash for the entrance, scrambling up the rocks. There was never a thought of danger in the mind of any one of them, never a thought that perhaps some accomplice of the dead counterfeiters had come to get the gold, might now be inside, armed against the intruders. They had time to think of but one thing. Somebody had seen them go in last night, had seen them find the treasure! And now--and now?

Texas was the first of them to get to the entrance, for Mark was still lame with his injured arm. He flung his body through the hole, half falling to the floor on the other side. The rest heard him stumbling about and they halted, silent, every one of them, scarcely breathing for anxiety and suspense. They heard Texas strike a match. They heard him run across the floor----

And a moment later came a cry that struck them almost dumb with horror.

“Boys, the money’s all gone!”