PIRATE’S TREASURE
Well, that all sounded reasonable enough. We were all standing under the
old pine tree, and Wampus and Skippy and Tad and I started for the old
house on a run, but Jibby just stood there by the tree.
“Come on!” we shouted. “Come on and search the house.”
“You go,” Jibby said. “I want to think this out first. I can think
hidden treasure better when I’m here by the signal tree. I thought out
about it being here, and I’ve got to think where it would be hidden.”
He leaned up against the tree and stayed there. He was rubbing that big
nose of his with his forefinger, but we did not watch him long; we piled
into the house and began to hunt pirate’s treasure with all our might.
We pounded on the walls and rummaged in every room, hunting for secret
hiding-places, and everything had a different look to us. Nothing
changes a place like thinking there is treasure hidden in it. We were
all as busy as bees.
I was up in the attic, under the roof that was tumbling in, and Skippy
and Tad were on the ground floor, pounding and poking, and Wampus was in
the cellar that was under about half the house. The way we worked you
might have thought the treasure was butter that might melt and run away
if we did not find it soon enough. Wherever there was a loose brick we
pried it out, and wherever there was a loose board we pried it up.
Now and then I looked through the broken roof, and there was Jibby Jones
by the old pine tree, rubbing the side of his nose slowly with his
finger and looking first one way and then another. Sometimes he would
look at the sky, and then he would look far off into the distance, and
then he would look at the house. Now and then he would shake his head,
and once he took off his hat and hit himself three or four times on the
head with his fist, as if he was trying to make his brains work better
by joggling them. I would have laughed, but I could not waste the time,
so I only grinned. He was a funny fellow.
I was poking around, doing my best to find a million dollars or so, and
finding nothing but cobwebs and dust, when I heard Wampus shout in the
cellar.
“Come down here quick,” he shouted; “I’ve found something.”
I slid down from the attic and Skippy and Tad were already piling down
into the cellar. I went to a window and shouted to Jibby to come, but he
only waved his hand.
“Wampus has found something in the cellar; come on!” I shouted; but
Jibby only waved his hand again, although he heard me well enough, so I
piled down into the cellar, too.
Wampus was showing Skippy and Tad a place in the cellar floor, and he
was as excited as a kitten with a mouse.
“Listen to this and then to this,” he was saying, and he thumped on the
floor of the cellar in different places with his heel. The floor was
just a dirt floor. In some places it was dry and dusty and in other
places dry and hard, but wherever Wampus stamped his heel, except one,
it sounded solid; in that one place, bigger around than a barrel, the
floor gave a hollow sound.
“You’ve found it!” Skippy cried. “Call Jibby. He has a right to be here
when we get the money. And we’ll divide it into five parts; one for each
of us.”
So Tad went to fetch Jibby Jones. Do you think he would come? Not a bit.
When Tad told him what we had found, Jibby just rubbed his nose a little
slower.
“Go ahead and look there if you want to,” he said to Tad, “but be
careful you don’t fall in and get drowned. I’m glad you found it,
because it is a good sign, but I’ve got to think out where that treasure
is.”
That was all Tad could get out of him. When Tad came back to the cellar,
we were all digging at the floor over the hollow-sounding place with our
jack-knives, but Tad sent me up to see if I could get half a dozen
shingles off the old roof that would be sound enough to dig with. I got
eight or ten and took a look at Jibby Jones. He had not stirred.
Tad and Wampus and Skippy and I dug the dirt away, using the old
shingles to dig with, and we came to boards. The boards were thick, but
they were dry-rotted. We cleared away all the dirt that covered them and
pulled up the boards. By this time it was getting dark, especially down
there in the cellar. We looked down into that dark hole and we could not
see anything. I threw a piece of dirt down and it sounded dry. I asked
Tad and Wampus and Skippy for a match, but none of us had any, so I went
out to ask Jibby Jones for one, if he had one.
“I can’t figure it out,” he said. “I’ve been thinking and thinking, but
I can’t find it.”
“Find what?” I asked him.
“The hidden treasure,” he said.
“What do you want to think for?” I asked him. “That’s no way to find it.
The way to find things is to hunt for them.”
“No, George,” Jibby said. “No! That’s not the way. That’s not the way
Columbus did. He thought it out first. He thought until he was sure the
world was round, and then he knew that if he sailed west from Spain he
would find India.”
“But he didn’t find India,” I said.
“He found something almost as good,” Jibby grinned.
“But we’ve found the treasure hole already,” I said. “Come on and help
us down into it.”
“No,” Jibby said slowly. “No, George. I’m going to stay here and think
where that treasure is hidden. I’ll find it quicker that way.”
“Then give me some matches,” I said. “We’ve found the secret hole and
we’re going to see what is in it, treasure or no treasure.”
Jibby gave me a box of safety matches.
“Get some dry grass and light it and throw it down before you go down
yourself,” he said. “There may be poison air down there. If there is,
the air will put the grass out. If the grass burns, it is safe for you
to go down. But you won’t find anything. I’m glad you found the hole,
because it is a cistern, and it used to have water in it. That’s a good
sign for us, because, if the cistern was put in the cellar, it means
that the people in the house may have been afraid they would have to
stand a siege sometime and did not want to have to surrender for lack of
water. That looks like pirate business.”
Wampus was shouting for me to hurry. I ran to the old house, and we did
as Jibby had told me. The grass burned clear and bright, and Wampus and
Tad held me by my arms and lowered me into the old cistern. It looked as
if Jibby was right; there wasn’t much down there but dust and flakes of
rotted wood, but I lighted one twist of dried grass after another and
scraped all over the bottom of that cistern. Tad and Wampus and Skippy
were flat on the cellar floor, looking down and telling me what to do,
but I had just made up my mind it was no use scraping around any longer
when I scraped up a coin.
It was just one coin, and it was the only coin we found in that cistern,
but it made me feel bully. We had found something, anyway.
The coin was a dollar, and it was as black as coal, the way silver gets
when it isn’t kept polished. I scraped and scraped, after that, but it
was no use--that was all the treasure we found. The fellows pulled me
out of the hole.
By this time it was plumb dark, and we lighted matches and looked at the
dollar we had found. It was an old one, but not worn at all--it was as
clean and sharp as the day it was made. Tad was looking at it, and all
at once he kicked up and threw his cap on the cellar floor and jumped on
it, and shouted like a crazy man.
“Oh, boy!” he yelled. “Oh, you boy, you!”
As soon as we had looked at the dollar and had seen what Tad had seen,
we jumped and yelled, too. Then we piled out of the cellar and ran to
where Jibby Jones was still standing by the old pine tree. We were all
shouting and kicking up and yipping like mad, but Jibby, when we reached
him, just sighed as if there was no more hope in the world.
“Oh, you Jibby!” I shouted. “What do you think we found?”
Jibby shook his head. He was not interested at all.
“I can’t think it out!” he said, drawling like he always does. “That
John A. Murrell treasure ought to be somewhere, but I can’t think where
it is. He would send it here by a trusty messenger, and the man here
would hide it. It would have to be hidden in a safe place, and in a
place that John A. Murrell could find, even if the man here moved away
and the house and barn burned and every one died. But I can’t think
where--”
“But what do you think we found?” we shouted. “We found it in the old
cistern. Look, Jibby! An 1804 dollar! And as good as the day it was
minted.”
“That’s nice,” he said, careless-like, and he went on thinking.
“But it’s an 1804 dollar, Jibby!” I yelled at him. “Don’t you know what
that means? It is worth a thousand dollars, maybe; it is the rarest of
all the dollars. A thousand dollars! We’ll sell it and divide the
money.”
I don’t believe he heard a word. Did you ever hear of such a fellow? We
had found an 1804 dollar, and we shouted it at him, and he took no more
notice of us than if we had been four gnats buzzing around him. He was
more interested in leaning up against an old pine tree, trying to think
where some old land pirate might have hid some old treasure--if there
ever was any treasure--than he was in a genuine 1804 dollar. And he
looked so glum over it that I thought he was going to cry.
“Well, we’ve got to go home,” he said. “It’s dark now. I don’t know what
is the matter with this old head of mine. I thought it was good for
something, but I guess not. I guess my brains have got glued together.”
“But, say!” I said. “You did not really think you could stand here and
think exactly where the treasure was buried, so we could walk right to
it, did you?” I asked Jibby.
“Why, of course, I did!” Jibby Jones said. “That ought to be easy,
oughtn’t it? If this old head of mine wasn’t off on a vacation or
something, we would have had that treasure by now.”
He said something about showing that old head of his that it couldn’t
behave that way with him, and he turned around and bumped his forehead
against the old pine tree three or four times. At the last bump Jibby
stood back and put his hand to his head.
“Solid!” he said. “Solid wood!”
“What? The tree?” Wampus asked.
“No, my head,” Jibby laughed. Then he hit each of us with his fist, for
fun and to show he was tickled. “I’ve found it!” he said. “I know where
that treasure is.”
“Where?” we all asked.
“In my head,” he said, and he laughed again. “I won’t tell you where
else it is, because we’ll need a spade to dig for it, and it is too dark
now, and we can’t come to-morrow, because it is Sunday. We’ll come out
and get it next week sometime. Did you say you had found something?”
We told him all over again, and he looked at the 1804 dollar by the
light of a match and said it was genuine, and we all felt fine and
bully. We hiked toward home at a good rate, talking and shouting, and
all at once Jibby Jones stopped short.
“Pshaw!” he said. “We forgot something!”
“What?” I asked.
“We forgot what we went for; we did not get that green sand,” Jibby
said. “We’ll have to get that the next time we come.”
“After we dig up the treasure,” Wampus said.
“No, before we do anything else,” Jibby said. “Treasure is nothing but
money, and I may have plenty of chances to get money in my life, but
this may be the only green sand I ever have a chance to get. We’ll get
the sand first.”
We had to agree to it. If Jibby knew where the land pirate’s treasure
was, he was the only one that did know, so we had to do what he planned.
“How much green sand are you going to get?” I asked him.
“One grain,” Jibby said. “I need only one grain for my collection, so
I’ll get only one grain.”
And that was exactly like Jibby Jones. He thought he knew where there
was a pirate treasure worth, maybe, thousands of dollars, and he would
put off getting it so that he could get one grain of sand. It looked
foolish, but maybe it was the wisest way, after all. I guess it is. I
guess the wisest thing is to make up your mind what you want, and then
go for it, and keep on going for it until you get it.