“You have been wishing, my dear,” said the little lady, “to hear some news from your father—some good news, to be sure. I have it for you.”
“Yes, I—” June leaned forward eagerly.
“But wait!” said the little lady, “I have omitted something.” She touched a bell. A tiny maid in a white cap appeared.
“The tea, Martha.”
The little lady folded her hands.
Florence could see that June was tense with emotion. She herself was greatly excited. Not so the little old lady. She did everything, said everything in the spirit of absolute repose and peace.
“And why not?” the girl asked herself. “What’s the good of all this jumping about like a grasshopper, screaming like a seagull, and living all the time as if you were racing to a fire? Peace—that’s the thing to seek, peace and repose.”
“Ah, here is the tea.” The little lady’s eyes shone. “Do you have sugar or lemon? Lemon? Ah, yes. And you? Lemon also. That makes us three.
“And now—” she sipped the tea as if she were about to say, “I had muffins for breakfast. What did you have?”
What she did say was, “I heard from your father, my dear. It was only the day before yesterday. Oh, not by mail, nor by wire. Not even by radio. He is rather far away and, for the moment, shut off. But I heard. Oh, yes, my dear, I heard—” she smiled a roguish smile.
June was staring, eyes wide, ears straining, taking in every expression, drinking in every word.
“He has been out of my circle of influence for a long, long time,” said the little lady. “But now he is not so far. It is an island—that’s where he is.”
“Wha—what island?” June’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
“That, my child, it is strange!” The little lady smiled a curious smile. “He does not know, nor do I. It is a very large island, this I know. He is well. He is not alone. He is very short of food, but hopes to find more presently. He will, in time, find his way off this island. He is convinced of that. And so am I. And then, my dear, then—”
“I shall see him!” This came from June as a cry of joy.
“Then you shall see him.”
“Wha—what is my father like?”
For a full moment the little lady looked at her without reply. Then she said, “He is short and rather stout. He is jolly.”
“See?” Florence whispered in June’s ear.
“He has always been well-to-do,” the little lady went on. “Now he may be rich. It is strange. His thoughts are clouded on that point. It is as if he had been rich, as if for the moment great wealth had escaped him, but that in a short time he hoped to regain it.
“And now—” her words appeared to fade away. “Now I must ask you to excuse me from further talk.”
At that moment Florence experienced a peculiar sensation. It seemed to her that with the fading of the little lady’s words she also faded. She seemed to all but vanish.
“Pure fancy!” Florence shook herself, and there was the little lady, bright and smiling as ever.
“No, no, my child!” she was saying to June, “Put up your purse. No money ever is passed in this room. This place is sacred to loyalty and friendship, beauty and truth.”
A moment later the two girls found themselves once again in the bright sunshine of a winter’s day.
“That,” said Florence, “is the strangest one of them all. Or is she one of them at all?”
“No,” said June, “she is not one of them.” She was thinking of Madame Zaran, of the voodoo priestess and all the rest. “She—” she hesitated, “she is the spirit of truth. All she said is true. But how—” her face was filled with sudden dismay. “How are we to find this large island?”
“Perhaps,” said Florence with a broad smile, “we shall not be obliged to find the island. It may find us, or at least your father may.”
CHAPTER XXIII
STRANGE TREASURE
“Vivian! Look down there!” Jeanne’s lips were drawn into a tight line as she pointed to a spot on the smooth frozen surface of the little lost lake.
It was the day following the storm. All was clear, bright and silent now. They had climbed the ridge, those two. Then they had gone slipping and sliding down the other side.
As Vivian heard Jeanne’s words, she gave her a quick look of sudden surprise. “Why—what—”
“Don’t ask me!” Jeanne exclaimed in a low, tense tone. “I can’t tell you. I mustn’t! Just look!”
Without further question Vivian dropped to the frozen surface of Jeanne’s little lost lake, cupped her hands about her eyes and, for one full moment, lay there flat upon the ice, looking—just looking.
To Jeanne those sixty seconds were sixty hours. “That girl June Travis,” she was thinking to herself, “expects her father to come back. Sometimes people have faith to believe such things. God must give them the power to believe. But if her father is down there—if he has been there for years?” She only half formed this last question, and made no effort to answer it.
“Jeanne!” Vivian sprang to her feet with a suddenness that was startling. “I see an airplane down there. There is a circle on the right plane and inside the circle is D.X.123!”
Jeanne uttered a sharp cry. “Then it is true!”
“What is true?” Vivian demanded. “How did the airplane get there?”
Slowly, haltingly, Jeanne told her all she knew of the D.X.123, and all she suspected as well.
“Jeanne!” Vivian’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “There is a great beacon light on Passage Island, four miles off the end of Isle Royale. It is there to guide passing ships. But on a night of wild storm song birds, driven off their course, seeing the beacon and thinking it a place of refuge, come racing in to dash out their lives against the thick glass of the light. The men in that plane must have thought this little lake a place of refuge, and found it only a grave!
“And yet,” she said quickly, “just because the plane is down there is no proof the men are there also. Only last summer an airplane went down in Rock Harbor, just ten miles from here. The plane sank from sight in ten minutes. But before it sank the two men on board were rescued and are living still.
“Come!” Once again her voice changed as she prepared to spring into action. “We must hurry back and tell Sandy about our discovery. We’ll get the short wave at Michigan Tech. They will relay a message to Sandy’s paper. Just think what a scoop it will be for him! Can’t you see the headline: ‘Plane D.X.123 found at bottom of small lake on Isle Royale!’”
“Yes,” Jeanne spoke slowly, “I can see that. I can see more than that. I can see the face of my friend June Travis when she reads that headline. Her father left in that airplane, Vivian. Her father! She may not know all about it, but when she reads that name, John Travis, she will know. But, Vivian, newspapers are often cruel. We must not let Sandy’s paper be cruel; at least, please not yet!”
“Al—alright, Jeanne.” Vivian put her strong arm about Jeanne’s waist and together they made their way across the lake to the foot of the ridge.
“Jeanne,” said Vivian as they left the lake, “I wonder how long paint keeps its color at the bottom of a lake.”
“I wonder who knows?” Strangely enough, there was a fresh note of hope in Jeanne’s voice.
As they reached the crest of the ridge, Jeanne turned back. Her gaze took in not the lake alone, but the lower ridge beyond that, a broad stretch of lower land.
“Look!” she said, pointing to the distant shore. “Smoke below.”
“Smoke?” There was a puzzled expression on Vivian’s face. “Whose fire can it be?”
“Does no one live there?” asked Jeanne.
“No one. There is a cabin there. It was owned by an Indian, John Redfeather. He died two years ago. All his stuff is in the cabin, nets for fishing, canned goods, salt fish in kegs, everything. But, until this moment, I believed we people at Chippewa Harbor were the only ones on the island.
“Vivian!
” Jeanne gripped her arm hard. “You don’t suppose—”
“No.” Vivian read her meaning. “How could they? No one could live on this island for years without being seen. Small boats are going around the island all summer long. No, no! It is impossible.
“And yet—” her voice softened. “Those people probably are in trouble. They may have been driven across the lake in a small boat.
“Tell you what!” she exclaimed. “Here’s a large flat rock and over there are some small dead trees. Those people may not know we are at Chippewa Harbor. We will build a beacon fire to let them know they are not alone. Then perhaps they will come over and we can help them.”
“All the same,” Jeanne thought as she assisted in laying the fire, “I still have faith.”
“Jeanne,” said Vivian as a half hour later the fire, which had blazed high, was a mass of glowing coals, “we are only a short distance from the highest spot on the ridge. In a sort of cave beneath that spot is to be found ‘some considerable treasure.’ Shall we go look for it?”
“Lead on!” said Jeanne.
It was Vivian who talked most of the mysterious “treasure” she and Jeanne were about to seek in the cave-like opening of the rocks on Greenstone Ridge. And why not? Had it not been she who, while lifting her father’s nets, had taken the ancient churn from the bottom of Lake Superior? Had she not cherished it as a mark of Isle Royale’s colorful history? Had she not, with Jeanne’s aid, discovered the note telling of that treasure? What was most important of all, Jeanne had insisted that if anything of value were found it should be sold and added to Vivian’s boat fund.
Vivian was saying as they made their way along the ridge toward its highest point: “I know just the boat we need. It was made by a famous old boat builder. He built it for his own use. He was old. His sight failed him. He never put it in the water. He is quite poor now. If he can sell his boat, how happy he will be!”
“And how happy you and Violet will be!” said Jeanne, suddenly coming out of a brown study. She was still thinking of the lost airplane D.X.123 and of that mournful sight both she and Vivian had seen at the bottom of the little lost lake, the sunken plane.
At the same time she was thinking of that column of smoke rising from the edge of a tiny island along the farther shore of Isle Royale.
“Smoke!” she whispered. “How much it has meant to man through all the years! How he has read the meaning of its upward curlings. If he is wise, it tells him of wind and approaching storm. He signals his distant friends with columns of smoke. Other columns warn him of hiding enemies. All this is of the past. How little that distant smoke says to me! And yet, somehow, I cannot help but feel—” she spoke aloud—“that somehow that smoke is connected with the missing airplane.”
“I can’t see how that could be,” replied Vivian. “All that must have happened years ago. No one could live undiscovered on this island all that time—not even if he chose to.”
“And yet—” Jeanne did not finish. Her thoughts at that moment were for herself alone.
“But think, Jeanne!” Vivian exclaimed. “‘Some considerable treasure.’ That’s what we read in that note. Think back over the history of our island. Lake pirates are believed to have hidden away in our long, narrow harbors. Of course, that was years and years ago. But think of the ancient gold and silver plate, the jewels they may have hidden here!
“But then—” she sighed a happy sigh of anticipation. “It may not have been that at all. This island is only sixteen miles from Canada. Think what a hiding place it must have been when smugglers were chased by revenue cutters!”
“What did they smuggle?” Jeanne asked absent-mindedly.
“Silks, woolens, drugs, opium, uncut diamonds and—oh, lots of things.”
“Silks would rot. Who wants opium? I’m not sure I could tell an uncut diamond from a pebble.” Jeanne laughed in spite of herself.
“Well, anyway,” Vivian exclaimed, “here’s the highest spot! Now we go down.”
“But how?” Jeanne looked with dismay upon the sheer wall of rock beneath her.
“This way.” Vivian gripped the out-growing root of a tree, swung into space, tucked her toe into a crevice, caught at a sapling clinging to the rocky wall, found a narrow shelf, then dropped again.
“Oh, Jeanne!” she cried. “Here it is! Here’s the very place! All dark and spooky!”
“Yes,” Jeanne wailed, “and here am I. I—I just can’t come down there! Makes me dizzy to think about it.”
“Wait. I’ll come up and help you.”
In a surprisingly short time Vivian was again at her side. “It’s all in getting used to it,” she breathed. “I’ve always lived here, and I’ve climbed all over. Now when I get down to that first shelf, you grab that root and slide over the side. I’ll catch you.”
With wildly beating heart Jeanne followed instructions. Three minutes later, to her vast surprise, she found herself on a lower rocky shelf looking into a dark cavern that might well have been called a cave.
“You—you’re wonderful!” She patted Vivian on the shoulder.
Vivian evidently did not hear this well-deserved praise. “Now,” she breathed, “now for the treasure!”
At that moment two men, one with his feet garbed in crude moccasins made from a torn-up blanket, were standing on the distant shore close to a weather-beaten cabin.
“John,” the taller of the two was saying, “that column of smoke is the first sign of life I’ve seen on this island. Who can it be? Do you suppose they’re Indians?” They were speaking of the smoke from Vivian’s signal fire.
“If they’re Indians, they’re civilized, living this far south. Probably got a good supply of food, too, and that’s what we need. Stuff in this cabin is about gone. Wish I knew what island this is.”
“Anyway,” the other said, “we’ve got to get up there and down on the other side, where they live. We’d better start as soon as possible. Be dark before we get over the ridge, as it is.”
“We’ll start at once,” the other agreed. Then they disappeared into the cabin.
“Treasure!” Jeanne was saying at that moment. “He called that treasure—four big slabs of copper beaten out of the rocks, probably by Indians, and hidden here perhaps two hundred years ago. It may go well in your museum, but how is it going to help with that boat of yours?”
“It won’t help much,” Vivian agreed with a sigh.
Flashlights in hand, they had entered the rocky cavern. It was neither very wide nor deep. Well toward the back of it they had come upon these irregular slabs of pure copper. The marks of fire and Indians’ stone hammers were still to be seen upon them. Here at least was proof that wild tribes did mine copper here in centuries gone.
“Copper,” said Vivian slowly, “is worth eight cents a pound, if you have it near a smelter. Up here it is worth very little.
“But there have been times,” she added in defense of the unknown one who had left that note in the ancient churn, “when this pile of copper would have been considered a treasure. It would have sold for two hundred dollars, and that much money would buy a house in a city, or a pretty good farm, way back in the long ago. It all depends—”
She did not finish, for at that moment Jeanne exclaimed from the deepest and narrowest corner of the cavern: “Vivian! Come here quick! See what I’ve found!”
“Oh—oh!” Vivian cried. “How strange!” Her flashlight played over a narrow shelf-like ledge of rock. On that shelf rested several pieces of crockery.
These were not like any Vivian had seen before. Moulded from bluish clay, then fired to a bright glaze, they bore on their sides strange markings.
“Pictured crockery,” Jeanne murmured. “Seems strange that Indians should have done that!”
“And yet they must have been Indians,” Vivian replied. “Who else could have made them?
“And oh, Jeanne!” she cried with sudden enthusiasm. “What an addition they will make to my museum collection!”
“I wonder,” Jeanne said thoughtfully, “if these could have been the treasure referred to in that note?”
“Treasure? These?” Vivian laughed a merry laugh. “Pieces of old crockery! But,” she added thoughtfully, “they are a treasure, of a sort. Come on. I’ll take off my mackinaw and pack them in it. We’ll have to handle them with care.”
A half hour later, just as dusk was falling, they crept out of the cave. After a quarter hour spent in struggling up the steep rocky wall, they went hurrying down the slope toward home.
At the same time two men, one who limped and one who wore rags for shoes, were struggling across the narrow plateau where snow lay deep and wolf tracks were numerous, toward that steep wall of rock in which the cavern was hidden.
Jeanne’s question regarding the pieces of ancient crockery proved not to be so far wrong after all. The moment Sandy MacQueen saw them he exclaimed “What a discovery! Until this moment not a whole piece of Indian crockery has been found on the island, only fragments. And now, here you have a dozen or more perfect ones.
“But what is this?” He fairly leaped at one piece. “Here is the picture of that heathen god Thor! Can’t be any mistake about it. Why would Indians put such a picture on their crockery?”
“Know what?” His face beamed. “I may be wrong, but if I’m not, this will go far toward proving a story that until now has seemed more than half legend—that Norsemen, driven to the shores of America, perhaps a thousand years ago, came to this island for protection from savage Indians, and that they were the true discoverers of copper on Isle Royale.
“Vivian! Violet!” His tone was low, exciting. “You have your summer boat paid for right now! I know a museum curator who will pay you handsomely for these pieces.”
“I—I sort of wanted them for my museum,” Vivian demurred. “But the boat—”
“Oh, yes, the boat!” Violet exclaimed. “The boat! The boat!” At that she grabbed Vivian and Jeanne both at once and together they went whirling madly around the room.
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