CHAPTER XXI
TWO RIFLE SHOTS
As the boys stepped into the room George arose from a heap ofblankets near a broken bunk and stood regarding them with aquizzical smile on his face. The boys at once clustered around himwith dozens of questions on their lips.
"What's been doing here?" demanded Tommy.
"You missed the biggest sensation of the excursion!" exclaimedGeorge.
"Where are the fellows who busted up the furniture?" asked Sandy.
"You ought to know," replied George. "They ran out just before youentered. It's a wonder you didn't meet them."
"Who are they?" asked Will.
"You remember the two men who came to the window that night?" askedGeorge. "Well, these were the two men!"
"Did one of 'em have his head in a sling?" asked Tommy.
"Sure he did!" was the reply.
"Why don't you sit down and tell us all about it?" asked Sandy.
"That won't take long," replied George. "They came in heresomething like half an hour ago and began mixing up with thefurniture. They searched everything in sight and out of sight, andwere about to take up the floor, I reckon, when they heard youcoming."
"Did they say what they were searching for?" asked Will.
"Not directly," was the reply, "but I know from expressions I heardthat they were searching for the Little Brass God."
"The Little Brass God?" repeated Will. "Why, they've got it now!"
"You bet they have!" Tommy joined in.
"How do you know they have?"
"Because we saw them have it in the cavern!" answered Will. "Theywere in that cavern not more than five minutes before we left thehills. They must have hustled to beat us to the cabin and make ahalf hour's search before we arrived."
"I think we've all got a lot of guesses coming," Sandy observed.
"Yes, but what I can't get through my head is why those fellowsshould be searching through the cabin for the Little Brass God whenthey have it in their possession," Will said.
"You're sure they had it?" asked George.
"I saw them have it in the cavern earlier in the evening," was thereply. "When we went to try to make them give it up, they vanishedas if they had gone up in the air!"
The boys began straightening things in the cabin, and Sandy busiedhimself in the corner where the provisions were stored.
"I'd like to know where that Indian went," Thede said, as heassisted Sandy in preparing some of the game which had been caughtearly the morning before. "He won't go far away, I'm thinking."
Before the words were off the boy's lips the door was pushed gentlyopen and Oje looked in. He made a gesture asking for silence andwent out again, softly closing the door behind him.
"That's a funny proposition!" whispered Tommy. "Why don't he comein and get some of the supper Sandy is getting ready?"
The door opened again, then, and Antoine staggered inside. Hisface was bloodless and his eyes seemed starting from their sockets.His clothing was slit in places as if he had been attacked with aknife, and he staggered about while searching for a chair.
Will sprang forward to the man's assistance, helped him to a chair,and poured a cup of strong coffee, which the roan drank greedily.
The man's eyes roved wildly about the room for a second then heturned anxiously to Will.
"Did they get it?" he asked.
"Did they get what?" asked the boy.
"What they came to search for."
Will turned inquiringly toward George.
"Did they find anything during their search?" he asked.
George shook his head.
"They hadn't concluded their search," he replied. "Then theyfailed to find the Br----"
There was a movement at the window followed by a rifle shot.
Antoine sitting before the fire by George's side crumpled up anddropped to the floor, a stream of blood oozing from his temple.
Before the lads could quite comprehend what had taken place, asecond shot came from outside. Then Oje's face appeared in thedoorway again, beckoning to those inside.
Tommy and Sandy stepped into the open air and were directed aroundto the rear of the house.
There, face up in the moonlight, lay the man whom Will haddescribed as an East Indian. The bandage was still around hishead, but a new wound was bleeding now. His eyes were alreadyfixed and glassy. The bullet had entered the center of theforehead.
"He shoot man inside!" the Indian grunted.
"And he killed him, too!" answered Tommy.
Entirely unconcerned, the Indian would have struck off into theforest, but the boys urged upon him the necessity of partaking offood. With a stoical exclamation of indifference, Oje finallyfollowed them into the cabin and seated himself before the openfire.
Antoine was quite dead. The boys straightened his still figureupon the floor and placed by its side the body of the man who hadbeen his murderer.
"We must give them decent burial in the morning," Will decided,"and in order to do so, we must keep them away from the wildanimals of the wilderness tonight."
There was a hushed silence for a long time in the room. The boysinvoluntarily turned their eyes away from the two inanimate objectswhich had so recently possessed the power of speech and motion.
Presently Sandy saw something glistening at the breast of the darkman. Where his heavy coat of fur dropped back the boy thought hedistinguished a gleam of gold. Thinking that it might possibly besome trinket calculated to reveal the identity of the man, Sandyadvanced to the body and threw the coat open.
There was the Little Brass God!
"We didn't have to find it," Tommy said slowly after a short pause."The fellow brought it to us!"
Will took it into his hand and made a careful examination of it.
"Do you think this is the one we are after?" he asked.
"Holy Moses!" exclaimed Sandy. "You don't think there are twoLittle Brass Gods, do you? One seems to have kept us pretty busy!"
"I've heard of their traveling in pairs," Thede suggested.
"Is this the man who made the search of the house?" asked Will ofGeorge.
"That is one of them!" was the reply. "The other seemed to be aman in the employ of this man. He was dressed like a trapper andacted like one. They quarreled over some suggestion made by thisman and the one whom I took to be a guide went away in a rage."
"You are sure he didn't find what he was looking for?"
"Dead sure!"
"Then there are two Little Brass Gods!" insisted Tommy.
"Yes, and I guess the one we want is the one we haven't got!" Willsaid.
"I don't see how this fellow could have the one containing the lastwill of Simon Tupper," Tommy argued. "Can you open the tummy ofthe Little Brass God, Will?" asked Sandy.
"Mr. Frederick Tupper showed me how to do the trick," Will answered.
"Then why don't you see whether this is the right one or not?"asked Sandy. "If you can open it, it's the one; if you can't, itisn't the one!"
"Wise little boy!" exclaimed Will taking the ugly image into hishands again.
He pressed here and there on the surface of the Little Brass God,touching now a shoulder, now a foot, now the top of the head, forall the world like one operating the combination of a safe.
"You see," he said, as he continued his strange employment, "theshell of the image is not very thick and when I press on certainparts, certain things take place on the inside."
He put his ear to the side of the image and listened intently.
"There!" he said. "You can hear a click like the dropping of atumbler when I press here at the back."
"If the combination works, then," shouted Tommy, "it must be thatwe have the Little Brass God holding the will."
"It works all right enough," Will replied.
With the final pressure on an elbow Will turned a foot to the rightand the Little Brass God opened exactly in the center.
But no will was found in the cavity.
Instead a mass of diamonds,emeralds, pearls, rubies, amethysts glittered out upon the floor.
The boys stood looking at the shining mass with wide open eyes.
"There must be a million dollars there!" Tommy said almost in awhisper.
"I wasn't thinking of that!" Will said. "I was thinking that,after all our labor and pains, we have unearthed the wrong BrassGod."
"But we've just got to find the right Brass God," Sandy insisted.
"Yes, and we'll have a sweet old time doing it!" exclaimed George."The poor fellow who lies dead there searched every bit of spaceinside the cabin, yet he didn't find it!"
"But it may not be anywhere near the cabin!" exclaimed "Will.
"If we knew whether Antoine ever had it in his possession," Tommysaid, "we'd know better where to look."
"Of course he had it in his possession!" said Sandy. "I'm surehe's the man who took it from the pawnbroker's shop on Statestreet. Now let's see," the boy went on, "what were the last wordshe spoke?"
"He started in to say Brass!" replied Will.
"Then you see, don't you, that that proves that he knew all aboutit?"
"Yes, and he asked if they found what they were looking for," Tommycontributed, "and that shows that the Little Brass God he broughtfrom Chicago is some where about this palatial abode."
CHAPTER XXII
THE TWIN BRASS GODS
Oje, who had been sitting by the fire, waiting for his supper, longdelayed by the rush of events, now arose and took the Little BrassGod into his dusky hands.
"Have you ever seen one like that before?" asked Will.
The Indian shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the body ofAntoine.
"Dead man have one!" he said.
"Like this?" asked Will.
The Indian grunted an assent.
"Then I'll tell you what took place, boys," Will said. "WhenAntoine shot Pierre, he came here and took possession of the cabinand provisioned it, He had had the Little Brass God in the cavernwhere George and Thede saw it, and he thought a safer place for itwould be the cabin."
"So he moved in here and hid it!" Tommy went on. "And we boyschased along and drove him out into the wide, wide world. Now thequestion is whether he took the Little Brass God back to the cavernor whether he left it hidden about the cabin."
"It's a hundred to one shot," Sandy observed, "that this dead EastIndian knew that the image he sought was in or about this cabin.The first night we came here he prowled about looking for it andtried to get one of us boys into a hypnotic trance. We don't knowhow many times he has been back here since that night."
"But who sent the fellow up here after the Little Brass God,anyway?" asked George. "How did he come to get on the track of theugly little devil."
"I guess that's something we'll have to find out in Chicago,"replied Will. "All we know is that Antoine was scared to death ofhim, as shown by his sudden flight from the cavern when he lookedin and saw the East Indian and his guide standing looking out athim."
"And they chased him clear up to our burning tree!" Thede cut in.
"That's a fact," Sandy replied. "That dusky faced chap certainlyhad Antoine buffaloed!"
"Well," Will went on, "the East Indian kept returning to the cabinand Antoine kept returning to the cabin, so it's a pretty safe betthat the Little Brass God we seek is here. Besides, the fact thatAntoine asked if the East Indian found anything proves that it isin or about the cabin."
"Well, we're going to find it if we tear the cabin to pieces,"Tommy said. '"As Will says, it is a sure thing it is not far away."
There was not much sleep in the cabin that night, and it was adreary supper the boys ate. Before daylight the Indian lay downupon the floor in a blanket, but the other boys remained awakeuntil morning.
Then they began the search for the Little Brass God. They weresatisfied now that Pierre had never had possession of it, that hehad been despatched as one familiar with the woods and the ways ofAntoine, in the Sigsbee interests to secure it from the man who hadpurchased it at the pawn shop. Everything pointed, as has beenstated, to Antoine's being the man who had taken it out of Chicago.
The boys searched the cabin for two days until not a sliver of theinside remained uninvestigated. Then, after putting up theirtents, they began taking the structure down, log by log.
On the third day they found what they sought in the heart of arotten log. Antoine had hidden it in a secure place. Will had nodifficulty in opening the belly of the little image, and there hefound the last will of Simon Tupper, bequeathing his entireproperty to Frederick Tupper.
"That settles the case, boys, so far as we are concerned," Willsaid, "and I think we'd better be getting back to Chicago in orderto straighten things out."
"You talk about getting back to Chicago like we could take theelevated and get there in an hour!" laughed Sandy. "I guess thatyou forget that we've got three hundred miles of wilderness totravel before we reach the railroad station!"
"Well, we've got our canoes, haven't we?" asked Tommy.
"Yes," Will answered, "and if we want to use the canoes, we'll haveto wait until the river opens in the spring. We can get out on theice all right, I guess."
At the end of two weeks the boys found themselves at a way stationon the Canadian Pacific road. After that it did not take them longto reach Chicago. During the trip down they had rather enjoyed thehunting and fishing. Once or twice they had caught sight of a manwhom they believed to be the guide the East Indian had secured, butafter a time the man disappeared entirely and was seen no more.Oje accompanied them part of the way and then much to their regret,turned back.
The finding of the will, of course, settled the Tupper estate forgood and all, and the boys were well rewarded for what they haddone.
"There's one thing I'd like to know," Will said, as they sat in Mr.Horton's office after all the adventures of the trip had beenrelated, "and that is where this second Little Brass God came from,and how this East Indian got into the Hudson Bay country in questof the other Brass God about as quick as we did."
"That has all been explained," the attorney replied. "From yourdescription, Antoine is undoubtedly the man who took the LittleBrass God in which we were interested from the pawn shop. Theevening papers of that day described the burglary of the Tupperhome and referred particularly to the taking of the Little BrassGod from the mantle in the library.
"The newspapers said at that time that the taking of the imagewould doubtless result in the discovery of the burglar. In this,the newspapers were wrong. The burglar has never been brought topunishment.
"On the other hand, however, the taking of the Brass God led to therecovery of two sacred ornaments belonging in a Hindu temple inIndia. It seems that two prominent Hindus read the articleconcerning the Little Brass God and made inquiries at policeheadquarters and at all the pawn shops in the city concerning it.The idols had been stolen years before and these men considered ittheir duty to restore them to the temple if in their power to do so.
"They found one of the Little Brass Gods without difficulty, ithaving been purchased a few months ago by a dealer in antiques.They might have known of the wealth contained in the belly of theidol, but it is certain that the dealer in antiques never did. Ofcourse the East Indians learned all that any one knew concerningthe destination of the image taken from the pawnshop, and so one ofthem, the man who was killed, went north in quest of it.
"So far as Pierre is concerned, it is probable that he was pickedup here in Chicago and sent north by Sigsbee. Of course we shallnever know the truth of that matter, but it is plain that he is notthe man who took the idol from the pawnbrokers' shop.
"Well, that ends the case so far as we're concerned," Georgereplied, "and if you've got any more Boy Scout excursions in view,Mr. Horton, I wish you'd suggest a hot climate for the next one.It seems to me like I never would get warm again!"
"What do you think of the people who live up in the Hudson Baycountry all the year round?" asked Mr. Horton.
"How would you liketo wander around there year after year, as Oje does?"
"Say that Oje's a good Indian!" Tommy exclaimed. "I tried to gethim to come on down to Chicago with me, but he said he wouldn'tlive here on a bet."
"What are you going to do with the two Little Brass Gods and allthe precious stones?" asked Sandy.
"I would suggest," Mr. Horton replied, "that the two idols bereturned to the Hindu still remaining in the city, the companion ofthe one who was killed, and that the jewels be returned with them."
"That's a lot of money to give away," Sandy suggested.
"There's nothing compulsory about it!" laughed Mr. Horton. "If youboys want to run the risk of being chased up by those Hindus untilthey finally get their hands on the idols, you may do so."
"Not for mine!" exclaimed Thede. "I don't want any dusky EastIndians chasing me up!"
It was finally decided to restore the two little Brass Gods withthe jewels to the Hindu. Later the body of the East Indian wastaken from its grave near James Bay and transferred to his owncountry.
"There's one little commission I'd like to have you boysundertake," Mr. Horton said, after all the details of the Tuppercase had been settled. "There's quite a bunch of trouble down herein a coal mine that I'd like to have you boys look into."
"Is it good and warm down there?" asked George.
"Suppose you walk down a few thousand feet under ground, some day,and make a note of the temperature!" laughed Tommy.
"Of course we want to go!" replied Will.
After a few days in Chicago, the Boy Scouts were off on theirtravels again. The story of their adventures will be found in thenext volume of this series entitled.
"Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns; or, The Light in Tunnel Six."
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