Buried Treasure

O Henry

There are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody please sit still until they are called

upon specifically to rise?

I had been every kind of fool except one. I had expended my patrimony, pretended my

matrimony, played poker, lawn-tennis, and bucket-shops--parted soon with my money in

many ways. But there remained one rule of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not

played. That was the Seeker after Buried Treasure. To few does the delectable furor

come. But of all the would-be followers in the hoof- prints of King Midas none has

found a pursuit so rich in pleasurable promise.

but she did not know it, and I did not paint the picture for her.

You see, I wanted May Martha Mangum for to have and to hold. I wanted her to abide

with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they cannot be

found of evenings.

May Martha's father was a man hidden behind whiskers and spectacles. He lived for

bugs and butterflies and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz or get down your back or in

the butter. He was an etymologist, or words to that effect. He spent his life seining the

air for flying fish of the June-bug order, and then sticking pins through 'em and calling

'em names.

He and May Martha were the whole family. He prized her highly as a fine specimen of

branches of mathematics and logic.

If it hadn't been for his habit of pouring out this information and learning on every one

that he addressed, I'd have liked him pretty well. But, even as it was, he and I were, you

would have thought, great pals.

We got together every time we could because each of us wanted to pump the other for

whatever straws we could to find which way the wind blew from the heart of May

Martha Mangum--rather a mixed metaphor; Goodloe Banks would never have been

guilty of that. That is the way of rivals.

You might say that Goodloe ran to books, manners, culture, rowing, intellect, and

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clothes. I would have put you in mind more of baseball and Friday-night debating

societies--by way of culture--and maybe of a good horseback rider.

But in our talks together, and in our visits and conversation with May Martha, neither

Goodloe Banks nor I could find out which one of us she preferred. May Martha was a

natural-born non-committal, and knew in her cradle how to keep people guessing.

English, too, without going any further into Latin than the simple references to

Orgetorix, Rex Helvetii--which is as far as I ever went, myself. And he told us that if he

ever caught us around his house again he would add us to his collection.

Goodloe Banks and I remained away five days, expecting the storm to subside. When

we dared to call at the house again May Martha Mangum and her father were gone.

Gone! The house they had rented was closed. Their little store of goods and chattels was

gone also.

And not a word of farewell to either of us from May Martha--not a white, fluttering note

pinned to the hawthorn-bush; not a chalk-mark on the gate-post nor a post-card in the

post-office to give us a clew.

conversational traps to find out from each other if anything had been discovered. That is

the way of rivals.

Now, Goodloe Banks had a sarcastic way of displaying his own learning and putting me

in the class that was reading "Poor Jane Ray, her bird is dead, she cannot play." 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

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

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."

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 you hunt for it yourself?" I asked.

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.

sights in Fort Worth. But, without being highly educated, I knew a way to save time and

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

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.

drove a hundred and forty-nine miles to Chico, the nearest town to the point we wished

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. With that two hundred

thousand dollars I knew I could find May Martha Mangum if she was on earth. And

with it I could flutter the butterflies in old man Mangum's dove-cot, too. If I could find

that treasure!

But Lee and I established camp. Across the river were a dozen little mountains densely

covered by cedar-brakes, but not one shaped like a pack-saddle. That did not deter us.

Appearances are deceptive. A pack-saddle, like beauty, may exist only in the eye of the

beholder.

We spent four days doing so. Then we hitched up the roan and the dun, and hauled the

Lee Rundle chewed much tobacco on the return trip. I was busy driving, because I was

in a hurry.

As shortly as could be after our empty return Goodloe Banks and I forgathered in the

back room of Snyder's saloon to play dominoes and fish for information. I told Goodloe

about my expedition after the buried treasure.

"If I could have found that three hundred thousand dollars," I said to him, "I could have

scoured and sifted the surface of the earth to find May Martha Mangum."

"She is meant for higher things," said Goodloe. "I shall find her myself. But, tell me

how you went about discovering the spot where this unearthed increment was

distances marked plainly upon it.

me an explosion of sardonic, superior, collegiate laughter.

"It's your play," said I, patiently, fingering my double-six.

"Twenty," said Goodloe, making two crosses on the table with his chalk.

you neglected to allow for the variation. The variation there would be nine degrees west.

Goodloe Banks figured rapidly on the back of an envelope.

"The distance, from north to south, of the line run from the Spanish mission," said he,

"is exactly twenty-two miles. It was run by a pocket-compass, according to your story.

Allowing for the variation, the point on the Alamito River where you should have

searched for your treasure is exactly six miles and nine hundred and forty-five varas

farther west than the place you hit upon. Oh, what a fool you are, Jim!"

"What is this variation that you speak of?" I asked. "I thought figures never lied."

"The variation of the magnetic compass," said Goodloe, "from the true meridian."

He smiled in his superior way; and then I saw come out in his face the singular, eager,

location. Perhaps together we might--"

adventure. We went to Chico by stage from Huntersburg, the nearest railroad town. In

Chico we hired a team drawing a covered spring-wagon and camping paraphernalia. We

had the same surveyor run out our distance, as revised by Goodloe and his variations,

and then dismissed him and sent him on his homeward road.

It was night when we arrived. I fed the horses and made a fire near the bank of the river

and cooked supper. Goodloe would have helped, but his education had not fitted him for

practical things.

But while I worked he cheered me with the expression of great thoughts handed down

from the dead ones of old. He quoted some translations from the Greek at much length.

"Anacreon," he explained. "That was a favorite passage with Miss Mangum--as I recited

education. What of your wasted efforts through your ignorance of simple mathematics?

How soon would you have found your treasure if my knowledge had not shown you

"We'll take a look at those hills across the river first," said I, "and see what we find. I am

still doubtful about variations. I have been brought up to believe that the needle is true

to the pole."

creek there, and explore the many sharp-peaked cedar-covered hills on the other side.

tin breakfast-plates, "let me see the enchanted document once more. I believe it gives

directions for climbing the hill shaped like a pack-saddle. I never saw a pack-saddle.

What is it like, Jim?"

"Score one against culture," said I. "I'll know it when I see it."

Goodloe was looking at old Rundle's document when he ripped out a most uncollegiate

swear-word.

"Come here," he said, holding the paper up against the sunlight. "Look at that," he said,

laying his finger against it.

On the blue paper--a thing I had never noticed before--I saw stand out in white letters

"It's the water-mark," said Goodloe. "The paper was manufactured in 1898. The writing

"Oh, I don't know," said I. "The Rundles are pretty reliable, plain, uneducated country

people. Maybe the paper manufacturers tried to perpetrate a swindle."

And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his education permitted. He dropped the

glasses off his nose and glared at me.

"I've often told you you were a fool," he said. "You have let yourself be imposed upon

by a clodhopper. And you have imposed upon me."

"How," I asked, "have I imposed upon you ?"

"By your ignorance," said he. "Twice I have discovered serious flaws in your plans that

a common-school education should have enabled you to avoid. And," he continued, "I

I rose and pointed a large pewter spoon at him, fresh from the dish- water.

always barely tolerated it in any one, and I despised it in you. What has your learning

done for you? It is a curse to yourself and a bore to your friends. Away," I said--"away

from the quest."

I pointed with my spoon across the river to a small mountain shaped like a pack-saddle.

A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river road. It was the mail-wagon from

"I am done with the swindle," said he, sourly. "No one but a fool would pay any

attention to that paper now. Well, you always were a fool, Jim. I leave you to your fate."

He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail-wagon, adjusted his glasses

nervously, and flew away in a cloud of dust.

After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses on new grass, I crossed the shallow

river and made my way slowly through the cedar- brakes up to the top of the hill shaped

like a pack-saddle.

It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I seen so many birds, so many butter-

flies, dragon-flies, grasshoppers, and such winged and stinged beasts of the air and

fields.

as set forth in the document of old man Rundle.

stepped into a beautiful green valley where a tributary small stream ran into the Alamito

River.

And there I was started to see what I took to be a wild man, with unkempt beard and

ragged hair, pursuing a giant butterfly with brilliant wings.

"Perhaps he is an escaped madman," I thought; and wondered how he had strayed so far

from seats of education and learning.

And then I took a few more steps and saw a vine-covered cottage near the small stream.

And in a little grassy glade I saw May Martha Mangum plucking wild flowers.

She straightened up and looked at me. For the first time since I knew her I saw her

What followed you may guess--there was my wagon and team just across the river.

I've often wondered what good too much education is to a man if he can't use it for

himself. If all the benefits of it are to go to others, where does it come in?

For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is an eight-room house in a live-oak

cannot be found.