Cherry Ames 21 Island Nurse (15 page)

“Now that is a very curious thing,” he said slowly.

“A very curious thing. And to think I never noticed it afore this.”

Cherry held her breath. “What didn’t you notice?”

“They aren’t the same kind of stones at all,” he said.

“Not at all.” He darted across the room, got a straight chair, which he dragged over to the fi replace. Climbing on it, he began feeling the stones just below the legend: “All nature hath a tongue. E’en the stones do speak if ye have ears to hear.”

Cherry heard Tammie murmuring to himself as he touched the stones, “This is a rock with gold in it; this one has lapis in it—I can see streaks of platinum. This is quartz.” He skipped several he did not appear to know. Then continued, “This one … this black one.” He stopped, poked the stone harder. “Why, why here’s

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a loose one!” he cried, grasping it with his hands. It was about the size of a large grapefruit. “Look! Look!” He gave it a yank and it fell with a thud on the hearth.

Cherry sprang closer to the boy. And the two of them found themselves staring into a hollowed-out place back of where the stone had been.

“I think there’s something in there,” Tammie said.

His voice rose excitedly, as he started to reach in.

“Don’t put your hand in there,” Cherry warned, grabbing his arm. Snatching her fl ashlight from the table where she had left it, she shone it into the hollow. There was something way at the back!

Before she could stop him this time, Tammie jerked his arm free and, reaching in, pulled out a small leather pouch. Jumping down, he handed it to her and they rushed over to the table to look at it by the light of the candelabra. The pouch had a simple drawstring closing, but Cherry’s fi ngers trembled so with excitement that she could not open it. As she fumbled with it, she could feel what seemed to be pebbles inside and something thin and crackling.

“Open it, Miss Ames,” Tammie kept saying, hopping about. “Please open it. Let’s see what’s inside.”

“I’m trying,” Cherry told him. “But I’m so excited. …

There!” She pulled, the mouth of the pouch open, almost ripping the ancient leather in her haste. The contents—black pellets, some large, some small—spilled out on the table.

Tammie seized one and made white shiny streaks on it by scratching it against his metal belt buckle.

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“Silver! It’s silver!” he cried, dancing up and down. “We found us a whole pocketful of silver!” Pointing toward the black stone that had fallen on the fl oor, he began to laugh, delighted with himself and his discovery.

“That’s a silver rock,” he declared. “Old Sir Ian hid the pouchful of silver behind the rock with silver in it.” He thought it was a wonderful joke. Cherry laughed with him.

She and Tammie picked up a handful of the black-ened silver pieces and let them dribble through their fi ngers. “We’ve found the treasure, just as people always did in fairy tales, eh, Tammie?”

He nodded, bright-eyed.

Cherry felt the pouch. “There is still something in here,” she said, putting her hand inside and drawing out a sheet of paper, folded several times. It had been torn from a notebook, for one edge was ragged.

With Tammie watching her intently, Cherry carefully opened the yellowed and fragile sheet, which was covered with writing in a clear, copperplate script, the ink brown with age. She read aloud:

“ ‘June 8. This is silver from the Old Mine, which has not been worked for years and years. Found rocks of native silver when I went past the crawlway in Rogues’

Cave.

“ ‘June 9. Found more rocks. Pure black sulphurets.

When I exposed them to fi re, I got globules of native silver. Must be a vein of silver somewhere.

“ ‘June 10. Followed the tunnel to the shaft of the Old Mine and came out on top of the big hill. Can’t

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fi nd the vein, but brought back more rocks. Each day I melt the silver and hide it behind the stone of silver which I got from the Old Mine. No one would think to look behind this stone above the fi replace. Magic words cannot open Ian Barclay’s treasure cranny, as Ali Baba did in the story in Arabian Nights.

“ ‘June 11. Rained today. The Cameron and Morgan boys came over. They looked at the different rocks I had put under the legend over the fi replace. They did not know one rock from another. They only know about iron.

“ ‘June 12. Explored all afternoon. Still could not fi nd vein of silver. Mother and Da will be away tomorrow, I shall explore all day. I will fi nd the silver lode. It has to be there.’ ”

That was the end of the entries.

“A silver mine!” exclaimed Cherry.

“That’s what they were looking for, the Bad Ones!” cried Tammie. “Silver!”

“Of course, that’s it!” agreed Cherry. “That’s what they must he smuggling out.”

“The men on the
Heron
have been digging and carrying silver out,” said Tammie.

“But, Tammie,” Cherry said, “it must take lots and lots of rocks to make a very little silver.” The boy gave her a scornful look. “Ye see that rock,” he asked, pointing to the black rock on the hearth.

“That’s real native silver. It’s full of nails, like wire, and they’re pure silver. My da says I know the different rocks and minerals almost as well as he does.” 144
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“I’ll take your word for it,” Cherry told him. “But how do these men dig it out? Don’t they have to have drills or something?”

“Na, na. Not native silver,” replied Tammie. “Ye can dig it out with a bar with a point at one end and a chisel at the other, easy as that.” He snapped his fi ngers. “And it doesn’t take a lot to make a good bit of silver, either. My da says some of the miners in Mexico used to hollow out the handles of their hammers and fi ll them with pulverized rocks. Why, they even, some of them, Da said, used to carry enough away in their cigarette papers to sell for several pennies.” It was obvious Tammie knew what he was talking about. He was apparently as much of a boy scientist as Old Sir Ian had been in his day.

Cherry could scarcely believe that she and the boy Tammie had fi nally uncovered the secret of the abandoned mine. Of course, the discovery of a rich vein of silver could mean a fortune to the Barclays and probably solve all Sir Ian’s fi nancial problems. If Little Joe Tweed’s men had been working the vein and carrying off the silver, they must be stopped.

Cherry gathered up the little silver balls and the pages of the notebook and put them back into the leather pouch. “Oh, if only Lloyd and Meg were here!” she thought. She put the pouch into her pocket for safekeeping.

While Cherry had been lost in thought, gathering up the silver pellets, Tammie had been walking up and down in front of the bookshelves.

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“Are you looking for something, Tammie?” she asked.

He glanced at her, smiling, “Ay. We dinna fi nd Sir Ian’s notebook yet.”

“Do you think it’s there among the other books?” asked Cherry. She skimmed the titles in their neat rows in the ornate bookcase. Geology and other books on science were all together. Then there were history, biography, fairy tales and ballads, stories of pirates, and factual accounts of explorers and expeditions.

“When I dinna want anyone to fi nd something,” Tammie said, peering up under the shelves, “I fi x it to the underside of something. There was once a boy who used to swipe my marbles, so I taped the bag under my desk and he caudna fi nd them.”

The shelves were of heavy wood, decorated with carving. A strip of carving perhaps three inches wide ran along the front edge of each shelf. Cherry joined Tammie in peering under the shelves behind the strip of carving, which was quite wide enough to hide a book.

Tammie knelt down to look at the second shelf from the fl oor. “Here’s something!” he cried.

Cherry quickly got her fl ash, and kneeling down beside the boy, played the light on the shelf. She saw that a wooden box with one side cut away had been nailed to the underside of the shelf. Tammie reached in through the cutaway side and pulled out an old book.

Cherry and Tammie grinned happily at each other.

He handed the book to her and they slowly stood up.

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Cherry took the book to the table and together they examined it under the candlelight.

On the spine were the words “The Bo Ha’.” The binding was handmade of white canvas now yellow with age, and on the cover in hand lettering was the full title “Sir Greysteel of Bo Ha’.” With rising excitement, Cherry turned back the cover. The fi rst page was fi lled with handwriting wonderfully clear, even though the paper was yellow and the black ink turned brown. She read aloud to Tammie:

“ ‘My journal from my 11th Birthday, 21 June 1881.

I am going to keep a daily journal beginning today.

I shall set down in it what I do and think and things that happen. I shall tell about exploring and all I fi nd and experiment with, such as plants, bugs, chemicals, but especially rocks and minerals. I mean to be a scientist some day.

“ ‘I think it amusing to make a jest of my journal, which is all about real things and happenings, and give it a fairy-tale name, Sir Greysteel of Bo Ha’.’ ” Cherry read no further.

“Is this the notebook Old Sir Ian used to write in every day when he was a boy?” asked Tammie.

“Yes, Tammie,” Cherry told him excitedly. “This is Old Sir Ian’s secret journal. And you are the one, Tammie, who found it!”

With trembling fi ngers, Cherry turned the pages.

“See, Tammie,” she said, “the pages are fi lled with writing. And here at the end is where a page has been torn out. That is the page we found in the leather pouch

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with the silver—it just matches the book. It was the last page he ever wrote in his journal.” Cherry could guess why the torn-out page was the last of the journal. Obviously, the boy had written no more after the time he had been lost for days in Rogues’

Cave. He had been quite ill after that experience. And, as soon as he was well enough to travel, he had been sent to school in Scotland. It was twenty years before he returned to Balfour, a man grown and married, so the story went as Higgins had told Cherry. The secret journal and the secret cranny of silver, if Old Sir Ian ever thought of them again, were a part of the long-ago past, better left undisturbed among the magical adventures of boyhood.

Cherry became aware that Tammie’s attention had wandered. His head was cocked, listening. The two of them had been so intent on the journal that they had not noticed how quiet everything had become. It would have been quite still outside were it not for the pounding of the surf upon the rocks below the cliffs.

Tammie padded over to the window, opened the casement, and looked out. “I think the storm’s almost over,” he announced.

Cherry followed and stood beside him to gaze at the sky, which was full of clouds racing away to the northeast. Now and then a star shone. But the wind still tossed the branches of the trees and the rain spattered their faces.

“Listen, Miss Ames!” Tammie cried suddenly. “I heard someone cry out down below.”

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Cherry listened. Faintly, as from a great distance, it seemed she could hear a cry. She was not sure, for the waves roared too loudly.

“There it was again!” exclaimed Tammie. “I heard somebody cry out. It must be Grandda.” Tammie darted away. Cherry leaned out, trying to catch the sound of a voice. When she turned to see what Tammie was doing, she found that he had drawn on his boots and was putting on his slicker.

“I’m going to fi nd Grandda,” Tammie said. Snatching up his sou’wester and his bundle, he dodged past her out the door, and went fl ying down the stairs.

“Tammie! Tammie!” Cherry shouted.

She might as well have called to the wind. Tammie’s footsteps could be heard going down, down, down the fl ights of stairs. The door on the ground fl oor slammed shut after him, the bang echoing up the stairwell.

Cherry had quickly blown out the candles, and, taking her fl ashlight, raced after him as fast as she could, down the staircase and outside into the storm.

As she ran, she kept calling, “Tammie! Wait! Tammie, wait! You’ll get hurt!” But there was no answer.

She went stumbling along the path at the top of the cliffs, shining her fl ash this way and that, hoping to pick out his fi gure in the gloom. She called, “Tammie!” No answer. There was no one on the cliffs. She stopped to listen. The only sounds were those of wind and rain and the boom of the surf.

When Cherry burst into the kitchen, drenched, curls in wild disorder, Tess, the cook, was so much startled that she cried out in alarm.

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“Oh, Miss Cherry! What’s happened?” Tess asked.

“You’re pale as a ghost!”

“It’s Tammie!” Cherry cried out. “Little Tammie Cameron. He’s gone. I can’t fi nd him. I’ve looked everywhere.”

Higgins, who was just returning from a tour of the downstairs windows to see if water had seeped in, heard their voices raised in alarm and came running.

He was aghast to fi nd Cherry, who was supposed to be quite dry inside the house, appear of a sudden all wet and dripping pools of water upon the fl oor like the King of the Golden River.

The fi re in the kitchen fi replace burned up brightly, but Tess and Higgins stood holding candles aloft as if frozen at attention while Cherry breathlessly told them of going to the tower, of Tammie’s arrival, of hearing someone call from below the cliffs, of Tammie rushing out in the belief that it was his grandfather, and of her own fruitless search for the boy.

Neither Tess nor Higgins asked questions. To fi nd the boy was the important thing.

In spite of his years, Higgins moved with the agil-ity of youth. Setting down his candle, he plucked his sou’wester and oilskins from a peg on the kitchen wall, and put them on. Then he drew on his boots.