"Well," he said, "you"re right in the hollow where the old creek used to flow. Let"s push along through it a little ways and see what we can dig up."
You couldn"t see that it was a hollow just looking at it, but you had to go down into it and then you knew. It was all grown up with bushes and we just went along through it, the same as if we were pushing through a jungle. All of a sudden I felt something crunch under my foot, and when I picked it up, I saw it was a fish"s backbone.
"See," Bert said, "what did I tell you?"
It seemed funny to be squirming our way along where a creek used to flow before it changed its mind and decided to flow into Bowl Valley.
"Maybe it changed its mind and made the lake because it knew the scouts were coming, hey?" I asked. "That was a good turn."
"It was a good _long_ turn," he said. "And n.o.body around here seems to know anything about this old creek bottom. We just stumbled into it the same as you did. That"s some b.u.mp you"ve got."
"Sure, my topography is changed," I told him.
He said, "Old Nick fought in the Revolutionary War. He owned all this land around here right through to the lake--I mean Bowl Valley. His house was at the bottom of Bowl Valley."
"What do you say we fish it up some day?" I asked him.
"All this was his farm," Bert said. "See that old silo there? I guess that"s what it was, or something like it."
"Maybe he hid muskets or powder from the redcoats there, hey?" I said.
Now if you"ll look at the map, you"ll see just where we were. I was right on the edge of that ring I made. Do you see the ring? Well, that ring was really a round hole in the ground just beside the old creek bottom. Gee, I wish you could have seen that hole. Because you can"t make a hole on a map.
It was about fifty feet deep and about thirty feet wide, I guess, and it was all walled in with masonry. It looked like a great well. Bert thought it had something to do with the farm that used to be there, because quite near it, there was an old foundation. Maybe it was some kind of a silo, I don"t know.
I said, "I"d like to get down in that."
"What for?" Bert said; "there"s nothing but puddles at the bottom. How would you ever get out?"
"Couldn"t we drop one of those saplings into it and I could shin up that?" I said. Because I saw two or three saplings lying around. I suppose they blew down in the storms lately.
"What would be the use?" he asked; "you can see what"s down there. If we"re going to get those letters onto a mail train, we"ve got to hustle."
That was enough for me, because I cared more about Skinny than I did about all the old creek bottoms and holes in the ground this side of Jericho. So I just said, "Righto," and we started following the old creek bed, till pretty soon the bushes were so thick that we hit up north of it a little ways and hiked straight over to the houseboat.
When we got to the house-boat we lowered the skiff and rowed across to Catskill and mailed the letters. Then we went up the street for a couple of sodas. Bert bought some peanut brittle, too--I"m crazy about that. Then we went to another store and got some post cards. Some of them had pictures of Temple Camp on them. I sent home about six. All the while it was getting dark and pretty soon it began to rain, so I said, "Let"s go and get a couple more sodas till it holds up." We drank two sodas each, but even still it didn"t hold up.
"We can"t make it hold up that way," Bert said; "I don"t believe twenty sodas would do it, the way it"s raining now."
"I guess you"re right," I said, "but, anyway, I"m willing to try twenty, if you say so."
No fellow could ever say _I_ was a quitter.
CHAPTER XXVIII
TELLS ABOUT HOW DAME NATURE CHANGED HER MIND
Maybe you"ll laugh at that stopping a shower with sodas. But once on my way home from school I stopped in Vander"s Drug Store to get a soda, and wait for the rain to stop. When I was finished it hadn"t stopped, so I got another soda--a strawberry. Even after that the rain didn"t stop and I was just going to start out anyway, when a man who was in there said, "Why don"t you try one more?" So I did--a pineapple--and by the time I had finished that, the rain had stopped. So that proves it.
But that day I"m telling you about, I guess it wouldn"t have stopped even if we had stayed in Catskill a couple of hours drinking sodas. We sat on one of the benches in the waiting room of the wharf where the Albany boats stop, and watched it rain. It was so thick that we could hardly see across the river. Merry Christmas, didn"t it come down! We saw the big day boat go up and all her lights were burning, it was so dark on the river. I guess we waited a couple of hours.
"It"s all on account of the old what"s-his-name, St. Swithin," I said.
"I bet he was the head of an umbrella trust."
Bert said, "Oh, I don"t know, I kind of like rain. It"s all part of the scout game." That was just like him, he had some use for everything.
I guess it must have been about supper time when it held up enough for us to start across. Anyway, I know I was hungry. But that was no proof it was supper time. Sometimes I"ve been hungry in the middle of the night. I guess St. Swithin stopped to have his supper; anyway, it began pouring again as soon as we got across.
"Anyway, we got the letters mailed," I said; "what do I care? Let it rain."
"I"m willing," Bert said, "as long as we can"t stop it." We were both feeling good, even if we were wet.
"Suppose Lieutenant Donnelle writes and says he doesn"t know anything about the money?" I said. Because now the excitement of getting the letters ready and all that was over, I began to feel a little shaky.
Bert said, "Well, if it"s a case of _supposing_, suppose we start home."
We hiked it back the same way we had come, all the way in a pelting rain. It came down in sheets--and pillowcases. When we hit into the old creek bed, the water was running through it just the same as if it was a regular creek. It was right up to the top of the bushes that grew there and dragging them sideways, as it rushed along.
"Well, what do you know about that?" I said.
Bert just stood looking at it and then he said, "That"s no rain water."
"Sure it is," I said; "what else do you suppose it is?" "Something"s wrong," he said.
All of a sudden he reached in through the wet bushes and pulled something out. "Look at that," he said.
It was a sort of a little college pennant on a stick.
"Those fellows went to Catskill didn"t they?" Bert asked me, kind of quick.
I told him, "Yes, I thought so."
"Lucky for them," he said, "that"s off their tent. Come on, hurry up."
We didn"t try to go through the old creek bottom, but even alongside it we began coming to big puddles, and pretty soon we were wading through water up to our waists. Even a hundred feet away from it, the land was like a lake and we just plodded and stumbled through water. I knew now that the rain itself could never have done that. Pretty soon we must have got over into the old creek bed, because we stumbled and went kerflop in, and the next thing we knew, we were swimming.
"Let"s get out of this, but try to keep near it," Bert said, "so we"ll know where we"re going. This has got me rattled. I don"t know what"s happened or where we"re at. I don"t even know if we"re north or south of the creek bed."
It was pretty hard keeping near the hollow, because all the land was flooded and we had to feel each step. But if we got away from it, _good night,_ we didn"t know where we might end. Only the trouble was, it kept getting worse and worse the farther we went, and it nearly toppled us over backwards, it was flowing so strong.
Pretty soon Bert stopped and said, "Listen."
We were both standing in the water up to our waists, and I was shivering, it was so cold.
"Do you hear the sound of water rushing?" he asked me.
I listened and heard a sound far off like a water fall.