Treasure and Trouble Therewith | Page 4

Indian fashion, the man propelled it with
the pole, prodding against the bottom. He did it skillfully, the unwieldly

hulk making a slow, even progress. He also did it with a singular
absence of sound, the pole never grating on the gunnel, feeling quietly
along the soft mud of the shores, rising from the water, held suspended,
then slipping in again as noiseless as the dip of the dragon flies.
No words passed between them. Sliding silent over the silent stream,
they were like a picture done in a few strong colors, violent green of the
rushes, violent blue of the sky. Their reflection moved with them, two
boats joining at the water line, in each boat two figures, every fold of
their garments, every shade and high light, minutely and dazzlingly
reproduced.
Highwayman is a word of picturesque suggestion, but there was
nothing picturesque about them. They looked like laborers
weather-worn from wind and sun; the kind of men that crowd the
streets of new camps and stand round the cattle pens at country fairs.
Knapp, sitting in the bow, was younger than the other--under thirty
probably. He was a big-boned, powerful animal, his thick, reddish hair
growing low on his forehead, his face, with its wide nose and
prominent jaw, like the study of a face left in the rough. In his stolid
look there was something childlike, his eyes following the flight of a
bird in the air, then dropping to see its reflection in the water.
Garland was older, fully fifty, burly, thickset, strong as an ox. His hat
lay in the bottom of the boat and his head, covered with curly, grizzled
hair, was broad and well-shaped. A corresponding grizzle of beard
clothed his chin and fringed a straight line of lip. The rest of his face
showed the skin sun-dried and lined less from age than a life in the
open. Wrinkles radiated from the corners of his eyes, and one, like a
fold in the flesh, crossed his forehead in a deep-cut crease. His clothes
were of the roughest, a dirty collarless shirt with a rag of red bandanna
round the neck, a coat shapeless and dusty, and overalls grease and
mud-smeared with the rubbing of his hands. His boots were the
iron-hard clouts of the rancher, his hat a broken black felt,
sweat-stained and torn. Passing him on the road, you would have set
him down as a farm hand out of a job.
The boat had passed beyond the shelter of the hills to where the tules

widened. Pausing, he glanced about. Far to the right he could see a
small white square--the lodge of a sportsman's club which in the duck
shooting season would disgorge men and dogs into the marsh. It was
closed now, but on the plain beyond there were ranches. He dropped to
his knees, shipped the pole, and drew from the bottom of the boat a
piece of wood roughly shaped into a paddle. Here in the heart of the
tules, where a head moving over the bulrush floor might be discerned,
sound would not carry far. He dipped in the paddle, the long spray of
drops hitting the water with a dry, running patter.
The man in front moved and looked ahead.
"We'd ought to be near there."
"A few yards over to the right," came the answer, and with it the boat
took a sharp turn to the left, nosing along the bank, then stole down a
waterway, a crystal channel between ramparts of green. This looped at
a right angle, shone with a sudden glaze of sun, slipped into shadow
and, rounding a point, an island with a bare, oozy edge came into view.
A deep stroke of the paddle sent the boat forward, its bow burrowing
into the mud, and Knapp jumped out and beached it. The place was a
small islet, one side clear, a wall of rushes, thick as grass, clothing the
other. Over the water line the earth was hard, its surface cracked and
flaked by the sun. On this open space lay two battered kerosene oil cans,
their tops torn away, and a pile of stones. The hiding place was not a
new one and the properties were already prepared.
With a knife and chisel they broke open the box. The money was in
small canvas sacks, clean as if never used before and marked with a
stenciled "W. F. & Co." They took it out and looked at it; hefted its
weight in their hands. It represented the first success after several
failures, one brought to trial, others frustrated in the making or
abandoned after warnings from the ranchers and obscure townsfolk
who stood in with them. Knapp had been discouraged. Now he took a
handful and spread it