CHAPTER XXXV—IT COMES TO A SHOWDOWN

Maybe you’ll say we were all crazy, but _I_ should worry. Anyway, I’m going to tell you everything, just the way it happened.

While the rest of us were starting our camp-fire, Harry was digging up spades full of earth as close to the trunk of the tree as he could get the spade. Each time he would spread the earth out on the spade and examine it very carefully by the light of the fire.

“You’re a swell lot of treasure hunters,” he said; “leaving all the work to me.”

“Wait till we get the fire burning up and we’ll give you a hand,” Brent said.

“That’s the best kind of gold,” little Bill spoke up; “that yellow flame.”

“It turns everything to gold all of a sudden,” even Pee-wee said; “look at the trunk of the tree.”

“Some bunch of treasure hunters!” Harry said. “Pee-wee, I’m surprised at _you_. Where are your pan and your rolling-pin and your burlap bags? I thought you were Captain Kidd, Junior.”

“It’s time enough in the morning, isn’t it?” the kid said. “Then we’ll get to work in earnest. We have to get our fire started, don’t we?”

“Oh, sure,” Harry said.

“We belong to the Union,” Brent said, “and we don’t shovel dirt after three in the afternoon. We believe in the two hour day. Don’t bother us.”

Pretty soon the fire was burning up, and it made the tree all bright—kind of flickery, like. We could look away into the dark woods—they were awful black. But right near us it was bright, just like gold. There was an owl hooting some-where—maybe he was up in that tree.

We all sat down around the fire to rest a minute. Harry pulled a log over close to the big trunk of the tree and out of the heat of the fire and sat down on it, and leaned back against the trunk. He said, “I guess I’ll have my bench under the Dahadinee poplar. Look here, you fellows.”

He held out his hand and in the middle of the palm was just a little yellow dust.

“_It’s gold!_” Pee-wee shouted.

Brent said, “Yellow gold, by gum!”

We all just stood around him, looking at it; gee whiz, I just couldn’t take my eyes off it.

“There’s a clincher for you,” Harry said; “the treasure is here all right. All we have to use is some elbow grease to get it. You see we’ll have to chop her down first, because if we go to undermining her, she may fall. Then all we’ll have to do is to dig around among the upper roots, and keep our eyes open, and scrape up the dust. We won’t get anywhere near as much as was here, but we’ll get enough to buy some wireless outfits and bicycles and things,—or I’m mistaken. Of course, the bags must have rotted away years ago. Put some wood on the fire, Grove.”

“It shows how much those seeds wanted to live to push right up through those bags,” Pee-wee said.

Harry said, “I declare! Listen to Pirate Harris!”

“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” Pee-wee said. It was awful funny.

“Oh, sure, they wanted to live all right,” Harry said; “a lot they cared about gold. A scout is a friend to gold——”

“He’s a friend to everything that lives,” little Alf spoke up.

Brent Gaylong went over and put some wood on the fire and the blaze jumped up, and everything around there was all flickered up and bright. Then he lay down on his back and put one knee up over the other and looked up into the sky. That’s always the way he does when he’s around camp-fire.

After about a minute he said, “Scouts, I have an idea. This trip is a failure—it’s commonplace. We’ve been trying to get some originality and pep into our travels and we haven’t succeeded. We planned an escape from jail and it fell through. We weren’t even sent to jail; I’m ashamed to admit it, but it’s the truth. You fellows were on the point of being sent to jail and then, just when everything was going nicely and you seemed likely to have an adventure, along came some old judge and put one over on you—gave you a check for five hundred bucks. It’s discouraging.”

Harry said, “I know it,”—awful funny.

Then Brent said, “Every story I ever read about going after buried treasure, the men who went after it found it. I was in hopes our little story might have a different ending—just for the sake or originality. But nothing doing; it seems we’re going to go home loaded down with gold.”

“I know it,” Harry said; “I’m sorry. I kind of like this bench under the Dahadinee poplar; it makes me think of old Thor or whatever his name was, and Ann.”

For about a minute nobody said anything; we just sprawled around watching the fire. The big tree stood there, you know, kind of dignified and solemn like.

“What time shall we start chopping and digging?” Brent asked.

But nobody said anything. Then, good night, Pee-wee Harris, Captain Kidd, Jr., spoke up.

“What’s the good of gold, anyway?” he said. “We had a lot of fun, didn’t we?”

“How about the rolling-pin and the burlap bags and the pickaxe and the shovels?” Harry said.

“We had a lot of fun, didn’t we?” Pee-wee shouted at him. “Alf is right.”

“Right?” Harry said.

“Yes, _right_; that’s what I said,” the kid yelled: “a scout cares about everything that lives. If you were a scout, you’d know that.”

“I?” Harry said.

“Yes, you,” Pee-wee shouted; “I’m not going to help chop down this big tree just to get some gold dust. If you think we’re a gold dust troop, you’re mistaken! We’re _scouts_, that’s what we are!”

“Goodness me,” Harry said; “you seem to be on the side of the girls now. You and Ann and Grace Bronson——”

“Girls are all right,” Pee-wee shouted; “I know all about girls; I know more about them than you do!”

“I don’t claim to know anything about them,” Harry said; “and I don’t claim to know anything about the scouts, either. I think they’re all crazy.”

“I don’t mind being called crazy,” Grove said.

Harry said, “So, you’re with him, hey?”

“Yes, and I’m with him, too,” I said.

“So am I,” Skinny shouted.

“If it rained this tree would keep us dry,” one of Brent’s patrol spoke up.

“I like trees best,” little Willie Wide-Awake piped up.

“It seems there’s a mutiny,” Harry said.

Brent said, “That was more than I dared to hope for. I’ve always longed to be mixed up in a mutiny. I’ll be the leader of this one.”

“Well,” Harry said, “all I know is, that we formed this party to come up here after buried treasure, and that we came equipped with rolling-pins and saucepans and pickaxes, and now it seems we’re talking about trees. You’re a queer lot, you scouts.”

I said, “Yes, and you feel just the same as we do, too. You try to make me think you don’t agree with Grace Bronson.”

Harry and Brent just looked at each other and laughed.

Then Harry said, “Well, girls and scouts, they’re a mystery to me. I’m here for business, but, of course, if there’s a mutiny——”

“Let’s take a vote,” Grove said.

“All right,” Pee-wee shouted; “I vote to leave this tree where it is. We had plenty of fun.”

“I vote to have some eats,” I said.

“Second the motion,” one of Brent’s scouts spoke up. Believe me, a scout is a friend of eats.

“You won’t get me to help chop it down,” Grove said.

“I’ll stick up for you,” Willie Wide-Awake sang out.

“I seem to have a large minority,” Harry said; “how about you, Brent?”

Brent said, “Oh, I vote for the original ending. I’m a friend to everything that’s different. I say, let’s not find the treasure—let’s beat the story books at their own game. If Roy ever writes up all this nonsense, why the readers will think that we’re all going to end up millionaires.”

“They’ll get left,” Pee-wee said; “we’re just plain scouts. It—it came to a showdown.”

Harry said, “Well, it seems as if the old Dahadinee poplar wins. I think I’ll leave this bench right here underneath it, in memory of Thor and Ann.”

“And Grace Bronson,” I said.

“Put some more sticks on the fire, Roy, and we’ll take a full vote,” Harry said, all the while smiling. I always kid him about Grace Bronson whenever I get a chance.

“Think she’ll be satisfied?” Harry said.

Just as I was putting some more sticks on the fire I happened to look up where the trunk of the big tree was all kind of gold color, on account of the camp-fire blaze. That’s the kind of gold that scouts like best. And right there in the light, about half way down the trunk was that squirrel, standing upside-down, and cocking his head sideways at Harry Donnelle, just as if he were waiting to find out how we decided.

THE END

_This Isn't All!_

Would you like to know what became of the good friends you have made in this book? Would you like to read other stories continuing their adventures and experiences, or other books quite as entertaining by the same author?

On the _reverse side_ of the wrapper which comes with this book, you will find a wonderful list of stories which you can buy at the same store where you got this book.

_Don’t throw away the Wrapper_

_Use it as a handy catalog of the books you want some day to have. But in case you do mislay it, write to the Publishers for a complete catalog_.

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Author of “Tom Slade,” “Pee-wee Harris,” “Westy Martin,” Etc.

Illustrated. Picture Wrappers in Color.

Every Volume Complete in Itself.

In the character and adventures of Roy Blakeley are typified the very essence of Boy life. He is a real boy, as real as Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. He is the moving spirit of the troop of Scouts of which he is a member, and the average boy has to go only a little way in the first book before Roy is the best friend he ever had, and he is willing to part with his best treasure to get the next book in the series.

ROY BLAKELEY ROY BLAKELEY’S ADVENTURES IN CAMP ROY BLAKELEY, PATHFINDER ROY BLAKELEY’S CAMP ON WHEELS ROY BLAKELEY’S SILVER FOX PATROL ROY BLAKELEY’S MOTOR CARAVAN ROY BLAKELEY LOST, STRAYED OR STOLEN ROY BLAKELEY’S BEE-LINE HIKE ROY BLAKELEY AT THE HAUNTED CAMP ROY BLAKELEY’S FUNNY BONE HIKE ROY BLAKELEY’S TANGLED TRAIL ROY BLAKELEY ON THE MOHAWK TRAIL ROY BLAKELEY’S ELASTIC HIKE ROY BLAKELEY’S ROUNDABOUT HIKE ROY BLAKELEY’S HAPPY-GO-LUCKY HIKE ROY BLAKELEY’S GO-AS-YOU PLEASE HIKE

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All readers of the Tom Slade and the Roy Blakeley books are acquainted with Pee-wee Harris, These stories record the true facts concerning his size (what there is of it) and his heroism (such as it is), his voice, his clothes, his appetite, his friends, his enemies, his victims. Together with the thrilling narrative of how he foiled, baffled, circumvented and triumphed over everything and everybody (except where he failed) and how even when he failed he succeeded. The whole recorded in a series of screams and told with neither muffler nor cut-out.

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GARRY GRAYSON HITTING THE LINE; or, Stanley Prep on a New Gridiron.

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Westy Martin, known to every friend of Roy Blakeley, appears as the hero of adventures quite different from those in which we have seen him participate as a Scout of Bridgeboro and of Temple Camp. On his way to the Yellowstone the bigness of the vast West and the thoughts of the wild preserve that he is going to-visit make him conscious of his own smallness and of the futility of “boy scouting” and woods lore in this great region. Yet he was to learn that if it had not been for his scout training he would never have been able to survive the experiences he had in these stories.

WESTY MARTIN WESTY MARTIN IN THE YELLOWSTONE WESTY MARTIN IN THE ROCKIES WESTY MARTIN ON THE SANTA FE TRAIL WESTY MARTIN ON THE OLD INDIAN TRAILS

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Hundreds of thousands of boys who laughed until their sides ached over the weird and wonderful adventures of Jerry Todd and his gang demanded that Leo Edwards, the author, give them more books like the Jerry Todd stories with their belt-bursting laughs and creepy shivers. So he took Poppy Ott, Jerry Todd’s bosom chum and created the Poppy Ott Series, and if such a thing could be possible—they are even more full of fun and excitement than the Jerry Todds.

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