“My idea,” said I, “of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a Texas prairie.  A piano,” I went on, “with an automatic player in the sitting-room, three thousand head of cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies always hitched at a post for ’the missus’—­and May Martha Mangum to spend the profits of the ranch as she pleases, and to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they cannot be found of evenings.  That,” said I, “is what is to be; and a fig—­a dried, Smyrna, dago-stand fig—­for your curriculums, cults, and philosophy.”

“She is meant for higher things,” repeated Goodloe Banks.

“Whatever she is meant for,” I answered, just now she is out of pocket.  And I shall find her as soon as I can without aid of the colleges.”

“The game is blocked,” said Goodloe, putting down a domino; and we had the beer.

Shortly after that a young farmer whom I knew came into town and brought me a folded blue paper.  He said his grandfather had just died.  I concealed a tear, and he went on to say that the old man had jealously guarded this paper for twenty years.  He left it to his family as part of his estate, the rest of which consisted of two mules and a hypotenuse of non-arable land.

The sheet of paper was of the old, blue kind used during the rebellion of the abolitionists against the secessionists.  It was dated June 14, 1863, and it described the hiding-place of ten burro-loads of gold and silver coin valued at three hundred thousand dollars.  Old Rundle—­grandfather of his grandson, Sam—­was given the information by a Spanish priest who was in on the treasure-burying, and who died many years before—­no, afterward—­in old Rundle’s house.  Old Rundle wrote it down from dictation.

“Why didn’t your father look this up?” I asked young Rundle.

“He went blind before he could do so,” he replied.

“Why didn’t you hunt for it yourself?” I asked.

“Well,” said he, “I’ve only known about the paper for ten years.  First there was the spring ploughin’ to do, and then choppin’ the weeds out of the corn; and then come takin’ fodder; and mighty soon winter was on us.  It seemed to run along that way year after year.”

That sounded perfectly reasonable to me, so I took it up with young Lee
Rundle at once.

The directions on the paper were simple.  The whole burro cavalcade laden with the treasure started from an old Spanish mission in Dolores County.  They travelled due south by the compass until they reached the Alamito River.  They forded this, and buried the treasure on the top of a little mountain shaped like a pack-saddle standing in a row between two higher ones.  A heap of stones marked the place of the buried treasure.  All the party except the Spanish priest were killed by Indians a few days later.  The secret was a monopoly.  It looked good to me.