گنج

Treasure

There is a time in every boy’s life when he wants to go and dig for treasure. And that time came for Tom.

So, one hot summer’s day, he went to find Huck. Huck liked the idea of treasure. ‘Where are we going to dig’ he asked.

‘An old dead tree is best.’

‘Who puts the treasure under old trees?’

‘Robbers,’ said Tom. ‘And then they go away, or they forget to come back for the treasure.’

‘There’s a dead tree on Cardiff Hill,’ said Huck. ‘Let’s go there! I’ve got an old pick and shovel.’ It was three miles to the old tree, and the boys arrived tired and hot. They dug for an hour or two, but they didn’t find any treasure.

Then they stopped, and Tom looked down at an old house at the foot of the hill.

‘Hey, look’ he said. ‘Nobody lives in that old house. Let’s go there. Old houses are always good for treasure.’ ‘Good for ghosts, too’ said Huck.

They took the pick and shovel with them, went down the hill, and into the old house. They looked in all the rooms downstairs, and then went upstairs. But there was no treasure, and no ghosts. Then they heard a noise. lShP said Tom, suddenly. ‘What’s that?’ ‘GhostsV whispered Huck.

There were holes in the floor, and through them the boys could see into the rooms downstairs.

‘No,’ Tom whispered. ‘It’s two men. One is the old Spaniard. He came to live in the village last week. I don’t know the other man. Sh! Let’s listen to them.’ The two men sat down on the floor. The Spaniard had a green hat and long white hair; the other man was small and dark. He took out a bag and began to open it.

‘It’s hot in here,’ the Spaniard said. He took off his green hat - and then he took off his long white hair! ‘Tom’ Huck whispered upstairs. ‘That’s Injun JoeV. ‘We took six hundred and fifty dollars when we robbed that house,’ said the second man. He took some money out of the bag. ‘We can take fifty dollars with us now. What are we going to do with the six hundred?’ ‘Leave it here,’ said Injun Joe. ‘We can come back and get it next week. Here, give me the bag.’ He walked across the room to the fireplace, moved two big stones from the floor, and began to dig with his knife.

Upstairs, the two boys watched excitedly. Treasure! Six hundred dollars of wonderful treasure!

Injun Joe stopped digging. ‘Hello, what’s this’ he said. ‘There’s something here. It’s an old box.’ The two men got the box out and opened it.

‘It’s mon$y’ said Injun Joe’s friend.

Injun Joe put his hand into the box; ‘There are thousands of dollars here!’ he said, and the two men looked at the money with happy smiles.

‘But who—’ began Injun Joe’s friend.

‘Don’t ask,’ Injun Joe said. ‘It’s our money now.’

‘We can’t take it with us today,’ said his friend. ‘What can we do with it? Put it back under the floor?’ ‘Yes,’ said Injun Joe. (Happy faces upstairs.) ‘No! (Very unhappy faces upstairs.) Let’s put it under the cross - nobody goes there. We can take it there tonight.’ When night came, the two men carried all the money away. The boys did not go after them because they were afraid of Injun Joe. But they wanted very much to find that ‘cross’.

For a week the two boys thought and thought about the treasure. It was ‘under the cross’, but where was the cross? In St Petersburg the boys watched the ‘Spaniard’ carefully, but they didn’t see a cross, and they didn’t find the treasure.