Well, I rather liked Goodloe, and I had a contempt for his college learning, and I was always regarded as good-natured, so I kept my temper.
And I was trying to find out if he knew anything about May Martha, so I endured his society.
In talking things over one afternoon he said to me:
"Suppose you do find her, Ed, whereby would you profit?
Miss Mangum has a mind.
Perhaps it is yet uncultured, but she is destined for higher things than you could give her.
I have talked with no one who seemed to appreciate more the enchantment of the ancient poets and writers and the modern cults that have assimilated and expended their philosophy of life.
Don't you think you are wasting your time looking for her?"
"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.
Lee Rundle suggested that we rig out a camping outfit, hire a surveyor to run out the line from the Spanish mission, and then spend the three hundred thousand dollars seeing the sights in Fort Worth.
But, without being highly educated, I knew a way to save time and expense.
We went to the State land-office and had a practical, what they call a "working," sketch made of all the surveys of land from the old mission to the Alamito River.
On this map I drew a line due southward to the river.
The length of lines of each survey and section of land was accurately given on the sketch.
By these we found the point on the river and had a "connection" made with it and an important, well-identified corner of the Los Animos five-league survey—a grant made by King Philip of Spain.
By doing this we did not need to have the line run out by a surveyor. It was a great saving of expense and time.
So, Lee Rundle and I fitted out a two-horse wagon team with all the accessories, and drove a hundred and forty-nine miles to Chico, the nearest town to the point we wished to reach.
There we picked up a deputy county surveyor.
He found the corner of the Los Animos survey for us, ran out the five thousand seven hundred and twenty varas west that our sketch called for, laid a stone on the spot, had coffee and bacon, and caught the mail-stage back to Chico.
I was pretty sure we would get that three hundred thousand dollars.
Lee Rundle's was to be only one-third, because I was paying all the expenses.