THE TREASURE HUNT
The night after we had chased the Tough Customer and the Rat from Birch
Island we had a meeting of the Land Pirate’s Treasure-Hunting and
Exploration Company in the shaft-house of the Five Friends’ Worm Mine.
The Worm Mine was something we had started a few days earlier.
Everybody knows it is hardly worth while going fishing unless you have
worms or minnows for bait. Minnows are the best bait, but they are hard
to get and harder to keep, so nearly everybody uses worms. When
everything is moist, you can dig worms almost anywhere on the island,
but, when a dry spell comes on, the ground gets drier and drier, and the
worms go down so deep that you can dig for an hour out back of the
cottages and not get a worm. Then there is only one place on the island
where you can get worms. That is in what we all called Mosquito Hollow.
This year the worms went deep, and we had to try Mosquito Hollow for
them.
Jibby was with us when we said we guessed we would have to try Mosquito
Hollow for worms, and the minute we said it he sat down on a log of
driftwood and closed his eyes and laid his finger alongside of his nose.
“What are you doing that for?” Wampus Smale asked him.
“For worms,” Jibby said.
“Trying to smell where they are?” Wampus asked, laughing at him.
“Maybe so,” Jibby Jones said. “I want to do my share when it comes to
getting worms, and you know I can’t go to Mosquito Hollow. I wonder--”
“Why can’t you go to Mosquito Hollow?” Wampus asked.
“I might stand it if it wasn’t for my spectacles,” Jibby said. “The
mosquitoes get in behind my spectacles and I can’t smack them. And then
I swell up.”
This was true. Jibby always wore tortoise-shell rim spectacles, and he
did swell up when a mosquito bit him.
“I’m ashamed to swell so much,” Jibby said, “but I can’t help it. I
think perhaps my grandchildren won’t, if I ever have any grandchildren,
because the swelling seems to be going out of our family. When I get a
mosquito bite, it only swells as big as a walnut, but father’s and
mother’s bites swell almost as big as apples, and my grandfather used to
swell as big as a wash-basin. I don’t know how big a mosquito bite would
have swelled on great-grandfather. But I wonder--”
“What do you wonder?” Wampus asked.
“I was just wondering if you could charm a worm by playing it a tune on
a flute, the way people charm snakes,” Jibby said. “If we could, we
might get a flute and charm some worms until they crawled out of their
holes, no matter how deep the dry weather has sent them. But I never
heard of charming worms with a flute.”
We laughed, but Jibby Jones was entirely serious. If he had ever heard,
or read, of worms being charmed, he would have tried it because that was
the way he was. But he hadn’t.
“No,” he said, “I don’t believe it would work. If it would work, Izaak
Walton would have written it in his fishing book. I’ll have to think of
some other way.”
“No, don’t you bother,” Tad said. “We’ll get the worms.”
So then we all said the same thing, because we knew how Jibby swelled up
when mosquitoes bit him. Some folks do and some folks don’t, but Jibby
does. And Mosquito Hollow is just about the worst mosquito place in the
world.
The skeets are bad enough anywhere on Birch Island, because there are
billions of them that come over from the ponds and sloughs, but in
Mosquito Hollow it is as if all the mosquitoes in the world had gathered
together in one place. A hundred skeets will get on your hand in a
second and all start to bite at once.
Mosquito Hollow is the lowest ground on Birch Island and the dampest,
and that is why there are always worms there, but it is why there are
always skeets there, too. It is down near the end of the island, below
all the real cottages. There is one old shack there, about as big as a
playhouse, but nobody has lived in it for years--too many skeets, I
guess. All around the hollow, and in it, the nettles grow as high as a
man’s head and keep out the breeze, and the skeets just make it the
metropolis of the whole skeet world. There are not so many in early
spring, but by summer there are trillions of quadrillions, and the noise
they make sounds like a sawmill.
“Don’t you bother, Jibby,” I said. “We’ll get worms for all of us.”
So Jibby went with us down the path along the river, but, when we got
down near the old shack, he sat down on an elm root to think how to get
worms without getting mosquito-bit, and the rest of us went back in
through the nettles to get the worms. It was only a few yards, but the
minute we got to the low ground the skeets were at us. All of us began
slapping our necks and faces and hands and arms and whacking at our
backs and ankles and legs, and jumping around and waving our arms.
We had our spades and tin cans and Wampus rammed the blade of his spade
into the ground and then yelled and began slapping himself everywhere.
Tad grabbed the handle of the spade and pushed down on it and turned up
a chunk of soil, and then he began yelling and slapping himself. I
kicked the clod of dirt with my foot and picked up one fat worm and put
it in the can, and then I yelled and began to slap myself. And Skippy
did not even pick up a single worm; he just yelled and slapped and then
ran for the riverbank full tilt, dragging his spade after him, and we
all followed him. It was no use; the skeets were too fierce, we couldn’t
stand them.
Jibby Jones was sitting just where we left him, and we began scratching
our ankles and rubbing our necks and faces and the backs of our hands,
and saying, “Gee!” and “Whew!” and “Oh, boy!” on account of the bites.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come back,” Jibby Jones said.
“Well, we came back,” I said. “I guess we didn’t stay long enough for
you to get homesick for us, did we?”
“I didn’t notice,” Jibby said. “I’ve been thinking. I think a person
ought to think when he hasn’t anything else to do. I was thinking about
fishworms, and I thought it wasn’t fair for you fellows to do all the
work and get all the worms when I am going to use some of them.”
“Hah!” Wampus said. “I guess there aren’t going to be any worms. I
wouldn’t go back to that hollow for a million dollars.”
“Mosquitoes?” asked Jibby. “And, of course they are worse for me.”
“Because you swell up when they bite you,” said Tad.
“Not only that, but there is more of me to bite,” said Jibby. “I got
more exposed surface than you fellows. More face.”
That did not seem so, but he proved it was so.
“On account of my nose,” he said. “Wampus has hardly any nose--it is
just a nubbin--but my nose is like the jib sail of a boat. It is like a
big triangle sticking out from my face. If you measure across Wampus’s
face, you’ve got all the surface mosquitoes can get at, because his nose
doesn’t amount to much, but, when you measure across my face and come to
the nose, you’ve got to measure my nose, too. You’ve got to measure the
base and altitude and hypotenuse of my nose on one side, and then
measure the base and altitude and hypotenuse of the other side of my
nose, and it amounts to a lot. The mosquitoes have a whole lot more nose
to bite on me than on any of the rest of you.”
We saw that was true and we said so.
“So I thought I had better think of a way to get all the fishworms we
need without getting mosquito-bit,” said Jibby, “and I did.”
“How?” I asked him.
“Well,” said Jibby, “the best way is to have a worm mine and mine for
them.”
“Mine for them!” Skippy yelled, laughing. “You go back into that hollow
and try to mine! I dare you!”
“I wouldn’t want to do that,” Jibby said, as solemn as an owl. “I didn’t
think of doing that. I thought of mining in the old shack over yonder.
It has a dirt floor and it has screens over the windows and at the door.
I thought we could go into the shack and close the screen door and sink
a shaft there, and then tunnel out under Mosquito Hollow and get the
worms. I don’t suppose a worm cares whether you dig down to get him or
tunnel up under him to get him. I never heard so.”
Well, of course, Jibby was joking about whether worms cared how we got
them, but as soon as he mentioned a worm mine, we all wondered why we
had never thought of one. When you come to think of it, a worm mine is
the only sensible way to get worms from a place where the mosquitoes
practically eat you alive. You are down under the ground where the
skeets can’t get at you, and you are down where the biggest and best
worms are, and you have your mine, and any time you need fishworms you
can go into the mine and dig a little worm-ore and get the worms out of
it.
Almost before Jibby was through talking, we were making a rush for the
old shack. The screens were fair to middling at the door and
windows--good enough, anyway, even if they were rusty--and in a minute
Tad had marked out the size of the shaft we ought to sink. He scratched
it on the hard earth of the floor with his spade. But Jibby wasn’t there
with us. We were so excited that we did not notice, at first, that he
was not with us, but about the time when we began to try to dig the hard
earth of that floor he came in bringing a regular ditch-digger’s pick.
It was just what we needed. Jibby always did think of everything.
Well, the worm mine was a big success. We took turns digging the shaft,
some of us digging and some of us looking for worms in the dirt we dug
out and some of us carrying the dirt out of the shack and dumping it.
The dirt we got out of the shaft was pay-dirt, but it did not assay very
heavy in worms; it was low-grade ore and the worms ran small to
middling.
We talked a good deal while we worked, and we decided to call the mine
the Five Friends’ Worm Mine. We got so interested in mining worms and in
making it a first-class mine that we forgot all about fishing. It was
bully to think that we were probably the first worm miners the world
ever knew, and that this was the only worm mine in the world. So, from
then on, whenever we wanted worms, we went down to the shack and mined
some. And that was what the Five Friends’ Worm Mine was, and that old
shack was the “shaft-house” where we met to talk over the plans of the
Land Pirate’s Treasure-Hunting and Exploration Company.
We began planning while it was daylight, but before we were through we
had lighted our lanterns.
First of all, Jibby unpinned the map from inside his hat and spread it
out on the bottom of an old tin bucket. If the paper wasn’t old, it
looked old, and was stained and yellow. The whole map wasn’t much bigger
than my hand. First, we looked at the back of it, and there was the word
“Riverbank” written as plain as could be. Then Jibby turned the map
over. We all leaned over and looked at it.
The map was exactly as the Tough Customer had explained it to the Rat.
There was the river marked “river,” and the slough, and the creek
emptying into the slough, and the crossroads, and the house, and the “X”
where the treasure was probably buried, and the arrow pointing north.
There was the “2-3 miles” and the “Greenland.”
“That’s it, all right!” Wampus said. “That’s just about the way the
creek comes into Greenland Slough, and just about the way Greenland
Slough comes into the river. And look where the ‘X’ is. A straight line
across the back of the square that stands for the house would go right
spang to that ‘X.’ That’s where the treasure is, sure! Unless it is
where the head of the arrow points, where the creek crosses the road.”
Jibby drew a deep, solemn breath, if you can call a breath solemn. He
looked at us with something like awe in his eyes.
“Boys,” he said, “this is the real map! Whoever drew it, and whatever it
was drawn for, this is a real land pirate map. Because that’s not an
arrow. That’s a pine tree--a signal pine tree; that’s a John A. M’rell
signal pine!”
As soon as Jibby said it, we all wondered why we hadn’t known it from
the first minute. It looked like a pine tree, once anybody said so, and
it was in the corner of the lot, where all the John A. Murrell signal
pines were.
We were all excited, and we wished it was the next day, so we could get
to hunting the treasure, but Jibby Jones just stared at the map and
turned it one way and another. By and by he said:
“Have any of you ever been up there at Greenland?”
We all had, and we told him so. He asked what the store and post-office
were like, and we told him the store was the post-office, and that it
was an old frame building, painted white, with a big porch in front and
a roof over the porch, and usually some boxes and barrels on the porch.
Close back of the store was a shed, open toward the store, where some
lumber, and lime in barrels, and cement in bags, and drain tile, and
bales of hay, and barrels of salt, and so on, were stored. And alongside
of the shed was a big red barn, with old wagons and empty boxes and
barrels and the usual store litter scattered in the yard the three
buildings made.
“The shed and the barn don’t show on the map,” Jibby said.
“No. Maybe they were built later, after the map was made,” Skippy said,
and Jibby thought that might be so.
“I’ve been thinking how we want to go at this job,” he said. “It seems
to me we want to go up the river in the motor-boat, and up the slough
until we come to the mouth of the creek. Then we’ll leave the motor-boat
and tramp up the creek. When we come to where the creek crosses the road
that runs down toward the slough, one of us will go up the road, and the
others will continue up the creek to about where the ‘X’ mark is on the
map. If I’m the one that goes up the road, I’ll stop when I come to the
rear end of the Greenland store, so I can sight along the end of it.
Then, when you come to about where the ‘X’ mark is, one of you stand a
spade straight up. I’ll sight along the rear of the store and motion to
the left with my hand if the spade is too far to the right, or to the
right if the spade is too far to the left. That way you’ll find the
exact spot.”
That was fine; nobody but Jibby Jones would have thought of it. So we
decided we would do it that way.
The next morning we tuned up Wampus’s motor-boat and saw that she had
gas, and each of us got a lunch, and we started for Greenland Slough
bright and early. We had spades and an old pickaxe, and a good stout
gunnysack to put the treasure in. The sun was bright and the river just
a little choppy with a brisk cool breeze, and it was all fine and
exciting and glorious. The boat went along at a good speed, and before
long we were running close to the shore on the Illinois side just below
the mouth of Greenland Slough.
Jibby took the map out of his hat and looked at it.
“This is all right,” he said. “Now we know the only thing about this map
we didn’t know before. Now we know what these criss-cross scribble marks
below the mouth of the slough mean. They mean swamp. It’s as if whoever
made the map had said, ‘If you come for the treasure, don’t land here,
it’s swamp.’”
So we swung into the slough and ran up toward the mouth of the creek,
and the first thing we saw was smoke. It came from one of the banks of
the creek, but the fire it came from was hidden by willows. It wasn’t
until we reached the creek that we saw a skiff fastened to one bank of
the creek, and on the shore close by a fire with a tin pail hung over
it, and the Tough Customer and the Rat sitting on a log eating out of a
pan.
The minute they saw us, they jumped up, and the Tough Customer grabbed a
spade and the Rat grabbed a club. Wampus swung the motor-boat out toward
the middle of the slough and we went by and on up the slough.
“What do you know about that!” Skippy said. “They’re here already!”
We could hear them crashing through the willows and driftwood as they
came running along the bank of the slough, and Wampus put on a little
more speed.
“Did you see anything that looked like treasure?” Tad asked.
We hadn’t, any of us. But we hadn’t noticed much of anything.
“How far does this slough run before it comes into the river again?”
Jibby asked.
We told him three or four miles, and that the motor-boat could get
through to the river that way, because this slough was not dammed at the
head.
“Speed up, Wampus,” Jibby said. “We will get out into the river, and
hasten back down below the mouth of the slough, and below the swamp. Can
we walk back to the hills below the swamp?”
We all thought so, although we had never tried it, so we ran on up the
slough and out into the river, and chugged back to where the swamp below
the slough ended. We left the motor-boat there and struck inland.
It was a tough trip. First, we had to climb five or six feet of steep
mud bank, and that brought us to a thicket of willows and weeds and
trees and grapevines that we had to fight through inch by inch, pushing
them aside and climbing over and dodging under. Then this opened onto a
blind slough--a slough that closed at both ends when the river fell in
the spring--and we had to work down-river a half-mile or so until we
came to a place where there was no water and the surface of the mud had
dried and cracked into big bent cakes. We crossed there and fought
through more thicket and came out into a forest of water-maples and
water-elms. The river had been over this in the spring, and there was
half a mile or so of stinging nettles, shoulder high, and great rifts of
driftwood. We couldn’t walk in a straight direction more than twenty
feet at a time; we had to go around piles of driftwood, or around mud
holes, or pools, or places where the ground was like mush. Forty times
we went in over the tops of our shoes, but by and by we came to a huge
big cornfield that had been planted after the water had fallen. We
walked between the rows of corn, and as we went the land got higher and
higher until it began to slant up fairly steep, and then the cornfield
ended and we were at the foot of the hills.
The hills here rounded upward and were grassy and not very bad walking,
and we got to the top. We were just back of a farmhouse, and we edged
along the farm fence, up-river toward the Greenland crossroad, and then
struck inland until we hit the hilltop road. We walked along that until
we came to the Greenland store.
Right away we saw that the map did not exactly jibe with the things we
saw. In the first place, the store was not as far back from the
crossroad as the map showed it to be; it was so close to the crossroad
that you could step off the porch into the road. And there was no signal
pine there, because there was no room for one. We sat down by the side
of the road to have a look at the map.
Jibby left us there looking at the map while he walked down the
crossroad. In a couple of minutes he came back.
“Well,” he said, “this isn’t a road at all. It is just a sort of
driveway alongside of this store, and, as soon as it dips down the hill,
it ends in a swampy pasture, and beyond the pasture the hill drops so
sharply that no road could go down it, and no road ever did go down it.
And I’ll tell you another thing. Every nail in every board in this store
is a wire nail, and there were no wire nails in 1835. This isn’t the
place. This store has been built since then. We’ve got to go farther up
the hill road.”
“Why?” Wampus asked. “Maybe the place is back in the direction we came
from.”
“No, because the ‘X’ mark was on the creek, and we haven’t crossed the
creek yet. We’ll go on up the road until we come to the creek.”
We were pretty tired, but we went on up the road. We went about half a
mile before we came to the creek. It went under the road through a big
tile culvert almost the size of a man. But there was no crossroad
anywhere near there, and no house, and no sign of a pine tree. There was
a barbed-wire fence and a cornfield where the house and the tree should
have been.
“No good!” I said.
But Jibby Jones had spread himself flat on the ground alongside the
barbed-wire fence, and he hunched along until he was against the lowest
wire, almost, and then he held it as high as he could and hunched under.
He got up and disappeared in the cornfield, and we sat down and waited.
A farmer drove by, and asked us if we were after woodchucks when he saw
our spades, but he didn’t wait for an answer.
And then we heard Jibby Jones, off in the cornfield, calling “Hi-hoo!
Hi-hoo!” and we hunched under the barbed wire and hurried through the
corn to where he was.