"Maybe somebody's already found it," Bob moaned when he saw how things were.
"Nope," Danny countered. "They wouldn't have torn the house up like this if they had.
"Maybe so," Mike said. "But it's sure going to be a rough deal finding it in this mess. It looks like every decent hiding place has already been raided."
They poked around in the house a little, and went through the barn and woodshed. But the searchers had been there as well. Boards had been jerked off, boxes and barrels had been pried apart, crockery jars had been broken. Every inch of every building had been carefully gone over.
"You don't suppose Cliff and Jack have been over here before today, do you?" Bob asked as they came out of the barn and stood looking down on the spot where the canoe was hidden.
"It could be," Danny said.
"Well," Mike added, "whether it was Cliff and Jack or someone else, it's getting pretty late. I think we ought to be starting back."
Danny squinted at the clouds that were churning over the trees. "It's going to cut loose and rain tonight," he said, "but I believe we've got time to look in one more place."
"Where's that?" Bob asked.
"At old Gibb's grave."
"His grave?" the boys echoed.
Danny nodded.
"Oh, no," Bob said. "Not me. I'm not looking in any grave. Treasure or no treasure!"
"We'll look around it, anyway," Danny said, laughing.
The three of them, with Laddie padding along beside, walked through the woods to a small weed-infested clearing. The only sounds were those of their feet crackling branches and dry grass and their labored breathing. Danny stopped on the edge of the clearing and pointed to a weather-beaten little house about twice the size of a doll house resting on a long, narrow mound. "There it is," Danny said softly.
"What kind of a grave is that?" Mike asked.
"It's just a regular pagan, Indian grave," Danny told him. "You see the Indians have some funny ideas about God and Heaven. They have sort of a belief in Heaven, but they don't think God, or the Great Spirit as they call their god, has much power. If they bury a body in a casket or box, they always drill three holes in it so the soul can get out. Then they put a little house on the grave with some tobacco and food in it."
"What's that for?" Mike asked, his deep brown eyes serious.
"I'm not sure," Danny said, sitting down on a big rock. "But I think they build it so the soul will have a place to live."
"Then the food must be for the soul to eat," Mike said.
"That's a lot different than what the Bible teaches us," said Danny. "The Bible teaches us that Jesus said to His disciples, 'In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.' A Christian doesn't have to depend upon a little wooden house nailed together by his friends and relations as a resting place for his soul. He has a home which God has prepared for him. God prepared a place in Heaven for those who put their trust in Him, just as there's a place in Hell for those who haven't taken Him as their Saviour."
"You—you don't believe that everybody is going to go to Hell, do you?" Mike asked. His face was drawn and white as he asked the question.
"I believe what the Bible says," Danny told him. "And the Bible says that everyone who refuses to confess his sins and take Christ as his Saviour will go to Hell."
There was a long, heavy silence. "I—I can understand about somebody like—well, like old Gibb who maybe drank a lot, or someone who steals or cheats or lies," Mike said at last. "But what about the good people?"
Danny flipped open his Testament to Romans 3:10. "The Bible tells us," he began. "'There is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.' And in another place it says, 'The wages of sin is death.' That means that everyone is wicked enough to be cast into Hell before he has accepted Jesus as his Saviour, whether he tries to be good or not."
"Do you think that means me, too?" Mike asked. He spoke so softly Danny could scarcely hear him.
Praying that God would give him the right words to say, Danny said, "Yes, Mike. It means you and anyone else who hasn't taken Jesus Christ into his heart. Three or four years ago it meant me too. But I took advantage of God's grace and mercy. I made it right with Him by taking Christ as my Saviour."
For two full minutes Mike stared at the ground. Finally he raised his eyes.
"Would you show me the way to let Christ into my heart?" he asked.
Rejoicing, Danny knelt with Mike right there in the woods. Danny explained the way of salvation again, as clearly as he possibly could. He told Mike how he must confess his sin before God and how he must completely and absolutely place his trust in Christ who died on the cross and arose from the grave that men and women and boys and girls might be saved. He told him how he must be ready to forsake anything that should stand in the way between himself and Christ. As they prayed they forgot Bob and the treasure and Laddie; they even forgot where they were until they finished praying and got slowly to their feet.
"Where's Bob?" Mike asked quickly, looking about.
"I don't know," Danny said. "He was here a couple of minutes ago."
"I'll bet he's up to something."
At that instant they heard Laddie barking furiously from the direction of the creek. "Come on!" Danny cried. "Something's wrong!"
They went crashing through the woods to the water's edge just as Bob shoved out into the creek in the canoe. Laddie was running back and forth on shore and barking furiously.
"Now, let's see you sissies get home!" he cried.
The canoe was four or five feet from the bank when Laddie gave a mighty leap for it. He caught the side of the frail craft with his front feet. Bob screamed in terror as it flipped over, spilling him into the deep, churning water.
The house looked as though a tornado had gone through it.
Chapter Eight
Bob Changes Some Ideas
"HELP!" Bob screamed as he went under. "Help!" He was thrashing the water wildly with his hands, and the current was taking him farther and farther from the bank. "Help! Help!"
"I'm coming!" Danny shouted, running down to the edge of the water.
Bob went under for the second time as Danny quickly kicked out of his shoes and dove into the deep, cold stream. Bob came up again, beating the water with his arms. The drowning lad clutched frantically for Danny, but the young woodsman eluded him, jackknifed in the water and came up behind Bob, grasping him by the hair before he realized what was happening. With his lungs gasping for air, Danny pulled Bob over to the bank where Mike was crouching.
"I got him!" Mike cried, reaching down and grabbing Bob beneath the arms. "I've got him!"
Danny scrambled up on the bank, and the two of them dragged Bob out of the water. He was unconscious now, and his pallid face was turning blue.
"Is he dead?" Mike gasped.
"Help me roll him over," Danny ordered. "We've got to get to work on him!"
"Bob!" Mike cried. "Open your eyes! Bob!"
Danny rolled Bob over on his stomach, laid the unconscious boy's head on one arm and began to work the water out.
"He took a lot of water," he explained as he worked over Bob. "We've got to get that out of him and get his lungs to working."
Mike watched in silence for a moment or two, then walked slowly over to where Laddie was lying, his head between his paws. The big dog seemed to sense the trouble he'd caused.
"That's all right, Laddie," Mike said softly. "That's all right, old fella."
He walked back, once more, to where Danny was working methodically over his brother. And without quite realizing what he was doing, he dropped to his knees and began to pray.
"O God," he prayed. "I—I don't know much about talking to You yet, but You know all about Bob. You know about this—this accident. You know about how he
needs Your help. And the worst of it is, God, he isn't ready to die. He hasn't taken Jesus as his personal Saviour. O God, help Bob to be all right so he can become a Christian! And help him, Heavenly Father, to see that he needs Christ just as I did. In Jesus' name-" Mike wanted to pray more, but his voice choked until he couldn't go on. Instead he just knelt there in silence, his heart crying out to God. He didn't know how long he knelt there. Time seemed to stand still.
"Mike!" Danny said tensely. "Mike! He's moving!"
Sure enough! Bob's eyes opened, and he began to stir. The color had begun to come to his face. He was breathing in long gasps. While Mike watched, he struggled to roll over on his side. "O-o-o-h," he groaned.
"O God!" Mike cried. "I thank You! I do thank You."
Bob groaned again.
"Come on, Mike!" Danny ordered crisply. "We've got to get him in the house where it's warm."
Danny was shivering with the cold himself, but he was giving no thought to that. Together they carried Bob up to the house and laid him on the bed.
"You'd better trade clothes with him, Mike," Danny said as he saw that Bob was trembling with shock and cold. "Then we'll get this stove rigged up and get a fire going."
"Hadn't we better get him back to your place as quickly as we can?" Mike asked, peeling out of his shirt.
"We won't be able to do that tonight," Danny said. "Bob's in no shape to move, and besides, our canoe's floating downstream somewhere."
While Mike was getting Bob dressed in his own warm, dry clothes and crawling into the cold, wet shirt and trousers of his brother, Danny put the stovepipe back in the stove and chimney and got a fire going.
The wind came up again, moaning through the trees and whipping the usually quiet stream to a white-capped frenzy. Rain stung Danny's face as he carried in an armload of wood.
"We're really in for a storm," he said. "Let's move Bob in here in the kitchen and get these windows boarded up."
Bob got to his feet uncertainly and walked into the kitchen, holding on to the wall for support. Mike and Danny carried the slashed mattress in and laid it on the floor in front of the stove.
"I—I never did feel so weak," Bob said.
"You'd better lie down again," Danny told him, "while Mike and I get these windows covered up." Bob lay down, and Mike threw over him a piece of an old blanket he'd found in the corner of the closet.
It was beginning to get warm in the little kitchen, and by the time they had finished covering the windows it was very comfortable. Mike and Danny sat close to the fire so their clothes would dry.
"H-h-how're we going to get back to your place, Danny?" Mike asked softly when it seemed that Bob was asleep.
Danny shook his head. "I don't know," he said, "but God will take care of us. He'll help us get back, somehow. I'm not going to worry about it."
"I-I sure pulled a dumb one," Bob put in suddenly.
"I thought you were asleep," Mike explained.
"If it hadn't been for me, none of this would have happened," he went on. "I had to go and get mad when you became a Christian a-a-and act like a fool."
"Everything worked out all right," Danny said. "That's the main thing."
"Well, thanks a lot for pulling me out, Danny," Bob said. "If you hadn't, I'd have been a goner. I—I can't swim at all."
"It was a good thing that we got you out when we did," Dan said. "You sure had swallowed a lot of water."
Bob had raised up on one elbow and was staring hard at his twin brother. There was a long silence.
"You—you were praying for me, weren't you?" he said at last, and so softly they could scarcely hear him.
Mike nodded without speaking.
"It seems sort of like a dream," he went on, "but I can kind of remember hearing you pray for me to be all right."
"God answered my prayer, Bob. At least He's answered half of it."
"Half of it. What do you mean?"
"I've been praying for you to take Jesus as your Saviour, just as hard as I prayed for Him to spare your life."
In the half-light Danny could see Bob biting his lower lip. "I—I know," he whispered. "I heard that too." He started to go on, but choked up and had to stop for a moment. "I've been fighting it ever since that first day on the boat when we were coming out to Angle Inlet. That was the reason I—I ran and tried to steal the canoe a-and leave you two stranded here. I knew that if I—I stayed around I—I'd be taking Christ as my Saviour, and I didn't want to. I didn't want to."
"I didn't want to either, Bob," Mike said quietly, "or at least I thought I didn't. It seemed to me like a Christian wouldn't ever have any fun." He stopped a moment, and a grin lighted his face. "I haven't been a Christian very long, but already I can see that I'm going to have more fun than I ever did."
"You know," Danny said, "if Satan can fool us that way and keep us from Christ, that's just what he wants to do."
"But I—I could never be good enough to be a Christian," Bob told him. "I say things I shouldn't, and swear and lie sometimes. There are so many things I do that a—a Christian shouldn't, that I just couldn't be good enough."
"Danny told me that being good in our own strength doesn't have anything to do with it," Mike put in. "If we confess our sins before Jesus, and put our trust in Him to save us and help us to keep from doing those things, it's all that's necessary. The Bible tells us that we can't be good enough on our own."
"But I like to go to shows and stuff like that," Bob countered.
"God can take care of that too," Danny said simply. "But you don't have to decide about everything like that now. Trying to do that is like trying to figure out exactly where you're going to place each foot every time you take a step on a ten-mile hike before you leave home. The main thing is to do like Mike said. Confess that you are a sinner who needs a Saviour, and put your trust in Him. After you've done that you can study your Bible and pray for guidance, and He will help you give up the things you shouldn't be doing."
There was another heavy silence. Finally Bob said, "Would you pray with me, Mike?" His voice was thick with emotion.
The three of them knelt before the crackling fire while the rain beat against the roof, and the wind howled through the trees and rattled the door. Bob gave his heart to Christ. "O God," he prayed, "I'm—I'm a sinner, and—and please show me the way." When he finished and raised his head, there was a smile on his face that Mike had never seen before.
Soon after that it was dark, and Danny lit the stump of a candle he found in one of the cupboards. Then, taking out his water-soaked Testament, he read a couple of chapters, leaning close to the candle to catch its feeble light on the pages.
"It's funny," Bob said when they had finished reading, "but a fellow's ideas sure change fast. It used to make me mad when you'd read or even say anything about the Bible or Jesus. Now I like it."
They talked for a while and then went to sleep, curling up together on the old mattress.
The storm lasted all night long without a letup, and, toward morning Danny woke up, stiff and shivering. The fire had gone out, and the little kitchen was cold. He rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow.
"Is that you, Danny?" Bob asked, the moment he showed that he was awake.
"Yeah. I thought you were asleep."
"I'm so c-c-cold I can't sleep," Bob said. "For the last couple of hours I've about frozen to death."
"Me too," Danny said. "I'll see what I can do about that fire."
There was plenty of firewood in the house, but Danny had neglected to bring in any extra kindling.
"There are some old magazines in the other room," Bob said. "I saw them yesterday afternoon."
"I've got them," Danny said a moment later. "These'll make good kindling too."
He threw a couple of dirty faded pictures with thin, veneer-like wood backing the frame on the floor before the stove. He crumpled a double handful of magazine pages and put them in the stove, then knocked out the thin wood from the pictures and tossed the frames
and the water-stained prints carelessly at Bob's feet. The fire flickered and leaped into flame.
A moment later Bob cried, "Danny! We've got it!" We've got it!"
"We've got what?" Danny demanded.
Mike sat up with a start, instantly awake.
"We've got it. We've got old Gibb's treasure map!
Is he dead?
Chapter Nine
The Strangers’ Map
"WE'VE FOUND IT! We've found it!" Bob exclaimed over and over again, his voice trembling with excitement. "We've found the treasure map!"
"Are you sure?" Danny demanded.
"Of course, I'm sure. It couldn't be anything else!"
Danny and Mike crowded closer to him and peered over his shoulder in the flickering light. It was a map, glued to the back of the old-fashioned print of a basket of roses on a table. It was as faded and water-soaked as the picture it was glued to, but the lines were still sharp and clear. And down in the corner was the date and signature, Renaud Du Bois, June 17, 1736.
"It's the real thing all right," Danny said.
"Of course it's the real thing," Bob countered. "There's the signature of the guy who made it. It's even on some kind of skin instead of paper. Of course it's real."
Danny was studying the map and scarcely listening to the jabbering of his cousin. "There's the island Fort Charles used to be on," he said, pointing at a long, irregular shape on one side of the map. "This must be Massacre Island where that priest and the band of French soldiers were killed by the Indians."
"And here's where the treasure's buried," Mike cut in, pointing to a small x along the western shore of Massacre Island.
Danny Orlis and the Angle Inlet Mystery Page 5
