He thought for a moment and remembered Thomas had told him the bandits found a way up on horseback. “There must be another way,” muttered Gabriel. He left the sunny clearing and began tromping through the woods. Reentering the dense forest made him uncomfortable again, even in the daytime. He walked along the base of the cliff, which seemed to extend as far as he could see into the woods. Maybe the bandits and Captain Tew were on the other side of the river? There was no way he could get across the river when it was still so high. The thought of entering a raging river again gave him goose bumps.
He walked for almost an hour in one direction along the base of the cliff. He found nothing. “Enough of this!” Gabriel felt foolish for wasting the morning chasing after the legend of an old drunk.
But just as he turned to head back down the river, he noticed a particularly thick patch of bushes growing out of the cliff. He took out his knife and cut away at some of the branches. He reached his hand into the bushes, trying to feel where they came out of the cliff. But to his astonishment, there didn’t seem to be any cliff behind the bushes.
He began stomping down the bushes with his feet and stabbing at the branches with his knife. Once he was through the thickest part, he could see a sloped trail set out before him. Gabriel’s heart leapt at finding this passageway hidden by the overgrowth of bushes. The path was still rocky and steep, but it was an easy climb compared to the cliff on either side of him.
He pawed his way along the path, still having to trudge through weeds and bushes before he finally reached the top. He stepped out into sunlight and saw the river. The water raced along at a mesmerizing pace before disappearing over the rushing falls ahead. He watched a large fallen branch floating along the current. It met the edge of the fall and dropped instantly out of view.
What a horrible way to die, thought Gabriel. If what Thomas the Terrible had told him was true, his grandfather met a horrible fate toppling over the edge of that waterfall.
The sun was still high in the sky but making its way down now. He left the edge of the waterfall and headed further upstream. The river bent gently to the left and disappeared out of sight. Gabriel walked along the bank as close to the water as he could without risking falling into the swift current.
The water had gone down a little from its recent highs, so he could see the effects of the powerful flow of water that had gushed through the river. At more than one spot along the bank, slender young sapling trees, several feet tall, had been snapped in two by the force of the water. Other young trees had their roots exposed, just waiting for a good wind to topple them over into the river.
Where the river began to bend, large boulders jutted out from the water, creating frothy foam all around them. The water swirled to and fro as it darted around one rock and then another. In most places, only the very tops of the rock peeked up out of the swirling water.
Gabriel turned his attention back to trees. There was no guarantee the oak tree he was looking for would still be standing. After all, it was at least a hundred years old. So he tried to take careful notice of the trees that had fallen and were decaying on the forest floor. This made his job even more difficult, for a maple tree decaying on the forest floor looks the same as an oak. He noticed the beginning of a narrow trail leading away from the bend in the river. Maybe Captain Tew didn’t pick a tree right on the bank of the river.
Gabriel decided to follow the trail. He walked the entire length and, in a matter of a few minutes, found himself back at the river, only now well upstream from the bend. This trail is nothing more than a shortcut used by deer or other animals coming to the river to drink, he realized. There were very few oak trees along the trail, and the ones there didn’t have any hollows with hidden treasure inside.
Even more frustrated than before, Gabriel walked a little bit further upstream to a small clearing beside the river. Exhausted, he plopped down on a large rock very near the river’s edge. Why had he listened to the crazy ranting of an old drunk who looked like a common beggar?
He thought about getting back to the road, but he no longer knew how to find the road. Now he was out of coins and food, and this forest seemed to be an uninhabited wasteland. There would be little chance of him stumbling across a house. Gabriel’s stomach growled. He could already begin to feel the first twinges of a hunger he knew would not go away. It would only grow worse. He put his head in his hands and prayed. It was the only thing he could think of to do at the moment.
With his head in his hands, Gabriel sat motionless on the rock. He knew to look up would mean facing the foreboding circumstance surrounding him. He looked down at the drum resting at his feet and cursed the day he found it and pulled it out of the muddy banks of the East River back in New York. Yet, it had become a part of him. It was silly, really, he thought. He didn’t even know how to play the thing other than to bang it, making a senseless
