Left to pursue their mining, Nate and the two Ranger boys worked the remainder of the morning, and mined several handsome specimens. These Garry had been carrying loose in his pocket, but now they had become too bulky, and so they were transferred to a canvas bag.
Phil suggested that they be secreted in the tent, and so a hole was dug and the bag inserted. Then the dirt was replaced, and the boughs that made one of the bunks thrown back there.
About midafternoon, another rich pocket was unearthed by Garry, and when this was panned, revealed a score of fine commercial gems.
Phil was detailed to take them to the tent and add them to the others. This he did, and had barely uncovered the gems and was putting the latest find with their companions, when he was struck over the head with a heavy club. His last remembrance, as he floated away into unconsciousness, was the sound of a mocking laugh that belonged to none other than their deadly enemy, the halfbreed.
Garry waited several minutes for Phil to return, and when his chum failed to come back, walked to the tent to see what was delaying him.
He opened the tent flap and was shocked to see Phil lying unconscious on the ground. He raised his voice and called to Nate, who came rushing from the ledge.
“Someone’s knocked Phil out,” he told Nate. “Run and get a pail of water.”
Nate didn’t stop to ask questions, but hastened to do Garry’s bidding.
He had hardly gotten outside the tent, however, when Garry called him back.
“I was so startled I forgot what I was doing for a minute. We don’t need water. Grab a blanket, Nate, and we’ll roll him up in that. A person knocked unconscious suffers a bit of a shock. What he needs now is warmth. There, now he’s covered up. Chafe one of his hands and arms, Nate, and I’ll take the other. We want to start the circulation flowing rapidly.”
They worked swiftly for several minutes, and finally Phil’s eyelids fluttered weakly. Then, as returning consciousness dawned, he struggled to sit up.
“Lie back there quietly and keep still,” ordered Garry.
“No, I’m all right,” protested Phil weakly. Then he thought of something.
“The tourmalines,” he gasped. “Look for them.”
Garry ran to the hole made for the canvas bag.
The bag was gone!
But in searching about the tent to see if perchance they had been misplaced, Nate came upon a piece of paper, weighted down by a pebble.
“There’s your thief and the man who knocked out Phil,” he said.
There was nothing on the paper but the crude representation of a bear.
“The Bear,” said Garry disgustedly. “Jean LeBlanc’s nickname. Oh, Nate, what a lot of fools we’ve been. We should have kept a watch for him every minute. Now here’s all our time gone, and our valuable gems. Of course we may get others, but suppose the pockets give out. All gone.”
Phil said nothing, but Garry knew that he saw his visions of going to school with his chums in the fall going a-glimmering.
He strove to console Phil, who remained silent.
Finally Phil began to recover fully from the effects of the blow, and with the recovery his spirits rallied.
“Well, that’s just our hard luck for the present,” he said philosophically. “It means that we’ll have to get out and hustle a bit harder to make up. I know that there are more tourmalines there. I believe we have only just begun on the mine.”
Both Nate and Garry insisted, however, that Phil stay quiet for the rest of the afternoon, despite his protestations that he was all right.
“I wouldn’t have gone out that time, if it wasn’t that the club LeBlanc used hit me on the tender spot that was left from the bump I got when I fell off the train. That and my game ankle have almost made a blooming invalid out of me.”
He was insistent about getting up, and it is probable that his friends would have yielded to his demands, except that at that moment a shadow darkened the doorway of the tent, and they looked up to see the figure of their friend, the Hermit.
They would hardly have recognized him except for his clothing, for he had had his hair cut and his beard shaved off.
They bade him a hearty welcome, and asked how he had found them. He explained that he had found that they had come to Hobart and had walked there, taking almost a week to make the trip, and arriving at Hobart had been directed to Denton, who told where the boys and Nate might be found.
Garry caught himself gazing at the Hermit all the rest of the afternoon. There was something puzzling, something that lurked in his mind that he could not quite uncover. Then a wild thought came. He went outside the tent, and called Nate out.
“Listen carefully now, please, Nate. I may be crazy, and then again if I’m right, it may be the biggest thing in life for two people. I haven’t time to explain now. But on no condition let the Hermit out of your sight until I can get my father here. Keep him if you have to tie him to do it.”
Garry dashed away toward the town, which lay some four miles distant. He arrived at the station and found that it was closed. The next objective was the hotel, and here he inquired for the residence of the station agent. To his dismay he was told that the station agent lived some twenty miles down the road, and had gone there for a short time. He had taken the last down train, and a relief operator would come in the morning to take his shift during his time off.
“You see, there are no trains here after nightfall, and so there’s no need for a telegrapher or station agent,” explained the hotel owner.
“But this may be a matter of life and death,” cried Garry. “Look here, I can send a message myself. Can you suggest any way of getting into the station?”
“Well, young man, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. There isn’t any chief of police or the like of that here, but I’m a Justice of the Peace, and maybe that will give me authority to bust a window in the station and let you in.”
“That will be the ticket,” said Garry.
The hotel man got his hat and a screwdriver, and they repaired to the station. Here the hotel man stuck the screwdriver under the window latch, and with a quick snap forced it open.
“Guess I could qualify for a good burglar after this, and I’ll probably catch merry blazes in the morning, but I’ll take a chance,” he said.
He boosted Garry in through the window and followed himself. Once at the instrument, Garry opened the key and began calling for any station. Stations have each a particular letter combination, and there is, in addition, a code combination that calls the nearest man on the line to answer. In a few seconds he got a reply and ticked an explanation that he was at Chester and desired to send an urgent message.
“Who are you, you’re not Campbell,” ticked the man at the other station.
Telegraph operators who are acquainted with each other, can tell the “send” of a telegrapher as easily as a person can recognize the handwriting of a close friend.
Garry explained that he was only an amateur and that he had to get off this emergency message. The explanation evidently satisfied the man, who told him to “shoot” his message, promising to relay it promptly to Colfax.
Here is what Garry sent to his father:
“Come to Chester at once. Most urgent. Please let nothing delay you. Matter of grave importance. Answer immediately.”
He signed his name to it, and then inquired how long the other operator would be on duty. He learned to his gratification that the man would be there until midnight, and promised to relay immediately any answer that would come.
The hotel proprietor, Graves by name, when he saw Garry’s familiarity with the telegraph, was convinced that everything was all right, and agreed to let him remain and see if a message would come in answer.
Garry fretted and fumed with impatience for nearly two hours, and then the ticker started, and he got the following message:
“Am in Bangor. Mother ’phoned me about message. Don’t understand your wire, but will start in morning and arrive Chester tomorrow evening. Meet me.”
With a sigh of relief Garry ticked his thanks to the other operator and prepared to go. He insisted on paying Graves something for his trouble, and after consulting a rate book that hung on a nail over the telegraph instrument, left the costs of the telegram on the table.
It was almost eleven o’clock when he came back to the tent. The hermit was asleep on a bough bed that he had fixed, and did not wake when Garry entered, as did Phil and Nate. He whispered to them to come outside, and they did.
“Now,” said Nate, “what’s all the shooin’ for?”
“Not so loud,” cautioned Garry. “Here’s the answer.”
Then he bent closer and whispered something. It made them utter surprised exclamations which they immediately muffled after a warning nudge from Garry.
“So, now,” concluded the Ranger leader, “all we can do is wait until Dad gets here tomorrow night.”
For Nate and the two boys the next day passed on leaden feet. They went about their mining, as usual, and were aided by the hermit, who displayed a remarkable knowledge of geology, and when told that they were mining for tourmalines, told them something of the early history of the stones,—astrekkers or “ashdrawers” as the Dutch called them, because of their magnetic property in picking up bits of straw or ashes. The boys learned for the first time how they had been discovered on Mount Apatite in Paris, Maine, by two boys who were out hunting.
About half-past three Garry departed for Chester to meet his father on the five o’clock train. He arrived several minutes before train time, and chatted with the agent and explained what he had done the night before.
When the train arrived, Mr. Boone was the first to alight, and Garry rushed forward to meet him. After they had shaken hands, Mr. Boone demanded to know if anyone had been hurt.
“No, everyone’s all right. Dick is away in the woods doing a Joe Knowles, but what we wanted is to find that I’m right on the biggest hunch I ever had, or else crazy as a loon. Now I’m not going to say anything more till we get to camp, for I want to see your reaction to what I’m going to show you without having influenced you.”
They reached the tent, and Garry called out:
“Oh, Hermit, come out just a minute.”
The hermit parted the flap and stepped outside. He looked blankly at Mr. Boone and bowed.
Mr. Boone stared at the hermit, however, as though he were looking at a spirit from the world beyond. Then he cried:
“Great Heavens! It’s Dick’s father!”
“Hurrah,” shouted Garry, and he was joined in his jubilation by Phil. Even Nate shared in the exuberance.
All this time the hermit looked puzzled at the uproar. Finally Mr. Boone turned to him, and stretching out his hand, advanced and said:
“Don’t you know me, Richard?”
“No, sir; I don’t think I ever saw you before.”
Garry looked significantly at his father and, unobserved by the hermit, slightly tapped his forehead.
“You know young Dick, don’t you?” pursued Mr. Boone.
“Of course I know Dick; he’s a fine young man, too,” answered the hermit, who we will now call Prof. Wallace.
“Well, you are Professor Richard Wallace and Dick is your son.”
A look of wonder spread over the professor’s face.
“Perhaps you are right. I don’t know who I am or where I came from years ago. All I know is that I have lived in the forest for many years.”
Very slowly and gently Mr. Boone explained about the previous accident and the escape from the hospital before the operation. When he had concluded, the professor asked:
“You say there was to have been an operation? Is there anything to prevent that being done now?”
“No, we will take you back in the morning to Boston and have the best surgeons there do it.”
So the matter was arranged. However, knowing the peculiarity of the Hermit, as they still thought of him, Garry and Phil alternated in keeping watch that night. They figured that his talk with Mr. Boone might have been during a particularly lucid moment, and that the old trouble would come back on him, and he would disappear as he had done on so many other occasions.
However, nothing happened, and the next morning Mr. Boone took him to Chester to board the train that would eventually take them to Boston. It was agreed that Dick should not be told of the visit of the hermit, and that the matter should be kept a secret to be sprung on him after the operation.
“And believe me, Nate and Phil,” declared Garry, “Dick will be the happiest boy in the world, when he learns he has found his father.”