"Oh, laugh if you want to," said Polly, indulgently. "Since I've seen the place I'm sure it's here." "I'll say this," remarked Penhallow, "if I had anything I wanted to hide and didn't want any fools blunderin' into, I couldn't pick a likelier place to hide it in than this one--whether it was gold or a body." Mendoza ran them within a few yards of the hut and they got out. Gasca's late residence did not improve on closer inspection. The door hung loosely on its hinges and once within, its dark recesses suggested many things not altogether pleasant. There was little furniture and that broken and poor; the hut boasted two rooms and the floor was merely the ground. There was nothing to suggest hidden treasure, and no place where it could be secreted as far as the visitors could see. Even the fireplace yielded no secrets. "How stupid of us!" declared Polly, determined not to be discouraged. "Of course it wouldn't be in here or they would have found it when they took the poor woman away. Let's go outside and think." "My idea is that it's either buried or they got rid of it," said Penhallow, promptly. It had suddenly occurred to him that Mendoza was a poor chaperon for a good-looking widower--not old--and a pretty girl engaged to Marc Scott. It was a disturbing idea, for Sam was of a conventional turn of mind. "If he's buried it, we'll have to dig all over the place, and I take it none of us is much on the dig." "Wait a minute, I've got an idea myself," said Polly, with dignity. "You look in the chicken-house and I'll take a peep into the shed in the corral." Sam shrugged his shoulders and started for the chicken-house. "Scott's gettin' his match all right," he muttered, rebelliously. "Goin' to make him toe the chalk line, that girl." "Mr. Penhallow, come here!" Polly's voice was shrill and excited. "Come here!" "Comin', lady. Did you find it?" "Look here." Polly was at the side of an old cart, peering and poking through the sticks of wood and bits of old straw which filled it. "See, down there--doesn't that look to you like something?" Sam Penhallow felt a sudden thrill; a thrill he had not known the like of since he led the posse across the border after the kidnapping bandit. He bent an excited gray eye over the hole indicated. "Sure does look like there was somethin' besides wood in there--somethin' bulky, and there's some sacking.--Hi, Mendoza, come here and lend a hand!" In the meantime he and Polly began throwing the wood out of the wagon. "My idea is that Gasca hid it in the wagon because he thought no one would suspect anything there," said Polly, "and he could haul it away in a hurry if they did." "It's more likely he buried it and after he died the woman dug it up and packed it in here meaning to go South with it and then got sick and died before she had the chance." "Well, I said you had imagination. That's a much better theory than mine," said Polly, generously. "But why didn't somebody take the wagon?"