A NEW SWIMMING-HOLE
By and by we began to sting less and to feel better.
“Did you bring the tools?” Jibby asked, innocently.
“I should say not!” Skippy said. “What was the use? A bee can’t sting an
axe.”
“Those bees could,” I said. “I expect that spade will be all swelled up
like a balloon by the time we see it again.”
That made Wampus laugh, which was a sign he was feeling better, too. I
told Jibby I knew now why he wanted to know if Bill Catlin was a
good-natured man.
“Yes,” Jibby said, “I thought you would figure it out sooner or later.”
“Well, the next time,” I said, “don’t be so polite. Don’t treat us as if
we had any sense at all. Make a picture of a bee and shove it in our
faces.”
“Yes, do!” Skippy said. “I’d rather, any day, have a picture of a bee
shoved in my face than have a real bee shove itself in my neck.”
That made us all laugh, and Jibby washed the mud off Wampus Smale’s
back, and when Wampus had put on his clothes we sat down and had lunch.
I never ate anything that tasted better, and when we had finished we lay
back for a while, just feeling good. Jibby Jones laughed.
“Laughing at us?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m laughing at myself. I’m thinking what a silly I was
to begin collecting sand from everywhere, and thinking one grain from
each place would be enough. I’ve been looking at this sand through my
magnifying-glass, and one grain won’t do.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Look at it,” he said, and he tossed me his magnifying-glass.
The minute I looked at the sand through the glass I saw what he meant.
Each grain stood out like the setting of a ring, and each grain was
transparent, and sparkled, but not one grain was green! About half the
grains were yellow and the other half were blue. It was only because
they were so small and so mixed together that the sand looked green,
because yellow and blue mixed makes green. I handed the glass to Wampus,
and he looked and passed it on until we had all seen that the green sand
was not green sand at all, but yellow sand and blue sand mixed.
After a while Jibby yawned.
“Well,” he said, “if we are going to get that treasure, we had better be
stirring ourselves. Wampus, is Bill Catlin a good-natured man or is
he--”
“Aw, quit!” Wampus said, and turned as red as his bee stings. “Bill
Catlin is all right. He will lend us a can of kerosene quick enough.”
So we fixed it that we would go up to Bill Catlin’s and get an oil can
and some kerosene. Jibby said he would not go.
“Bill don’t know me,” he said, “and he might get frightened if he saw my
nose.”
That was a joke, of course, and we coaxed Jibby to go with us, but he
would not go. I think he wanted to punish us for not paying attention to
him when he tried to tell us in his own way about the bees. He made one
excuse after another. He said he looked such a silly that Bill would be
afraid to trust us with kerosene if he was along. He said a lot of
things like that. Finally he said we had better go without him.
“You needn’t take so long,” he said, “because you can all run fast. I
know, because I heard you running.”
We left him lying there and went up through the woods to Bill Catlin’s.
He was not at home, but his wife was a nice lady and let us have a
gallon can full of kerosene. We stopped to eat a few grapes in Bill
Catlin’s vineyard, to keep them from going to waste, and then we started
across a field toward the woods again, but we had hardly climbed the
fence when we saw Jibby coming toward us. He was on a slow lope, and he
waved us back, so we stopped short and waited until he came up to us.
“Wait!” he said, and then he waited until he got his breath. “We’ve got
to be careful now. The enemy is at the green sands.”
I laughed. I thought he meant the bees had come down there, or that,
maybe, Jibby had run into another nest of them, but it was not that, and
it was worse than anything we had ever thought could happen.
Jibby had been lying there on the bank by the green sands waiting for us
when, all at once, he heard voices--men’s voices. They were the voices
of men coming up the Run, and one or two were complaining that this
could not be the right creek, and that they had come more than far
enough up it, but others said they had better be sure and go a little
farther to see whether there was any green sand.
Jibby put everything that was left of the lunch back in the basket and
crept up the bank of the Run and hid the basket. Then he edged along
down to where the men were and took a peek at them from the top of the
bank. There were ten of them, seven white men and three negroes, and one
of the white men had red hair and a scar over his eye. The negroes were
loaded down with bags and bundles. They had stopped, and the negroes
were complaining that they had carried that stuff far enough for one
day. They said there was no hurry, and that the treasure would not get
away after it had remained right in one place almost a hundred years,
they guessed, and that it was no use working black men to death, anyway.
Then the Red-Headed Bandit swore.
“You-all look mighty sharp you don’t let anything happen to that
provender,” he said. “I’m a bad man when I get riled. I’m the
great-grandson of my great-grandfather, and he killed more men than
there are kinky hairs on all your worthless heads, and I don’t mind
killing three more blacks right now, and I’ll do it if you let that food
stuff get harmed.”
The other men growled and scowled at the blacks, too, then, and the
negroes mumbled and scolded in low voices.
“Tell you what, Jim,” one of them said, “I reckon I feel about like
these darks feel. We don’t know that this creek is Murrell’s Run nohow.
We might go up and up and get to nowhere in the end. You’s pushin’ us
too hard and steady, Jim. To-morrow is another day.”
“Yes, and who knows how long we’ve got to be huntin’ for that treasure,
Jake?” the man called Jim answered. “We ain’t got none too much food
fora big gang like this, Jake. We-all can’t be skirmishing around the
country for food, Jake, when we’re on an exhibition like this.”
He meant expedition.
“No,” Jake said, “but we can’t walk up every creek to the No’th Pole,
Jim, either. We ain’t no Stefanssons or Pearys.”
They did not look like it, either, Jibby said. The seven whites looked
like the mountaineers he and his father had seen in the
Ozarks--Hill-Billies they call them down there. They looked like the
laziest lot that ever lived.
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Jake,” Jim said then. “Let the darks dump
their stuff here, and we’ll go on up the creek a ways and sort of
speculate around. That’s fair.”
“You white folks want to walk our foots off!” one of the blacks said
then, but he put down his load.
“Hey, there, you!” Jim shouted. “Heft that stuff down easy, can’t you?
Ain’t I told you often enough there’s dynamite in that bag?”
“I shore did heft it easy, boss,” the negro said. “I don’t heft no
dynamite down hard.”
They talked awhile longer, and the white men decided to let the negroes
stay to watch the dunnage, and they started off up the creek. The three
black men stretched out on the yellow sand in the sun and got ready to
go to sleep, and then Jibby stole away and came for us.
“Aw, pshaw!” Wampus said. “That ends it! Those men have dynamite and
everything and they’ll get that treasure, and we’re beaten out of it!”
“Maybe!” Jibby said. “I don’t know yet. I remember when I was in New
Orleans with my father and we went down to the levee and a bale of
cotton rolled over.”
“What has that got to do with it?” Wampus asked.
“Why, a negro was asleep, stretched out on the ground,” Jibby said, “and
the bale of cotton rolled on top of him and across him and then off of
him again.”
“Did it kill him?” Skippy asked.
“No,” Jibby said. “That isn’t it. I was just telling you how one of
those Southern negroes sleeps when he stretches out in the sun. This one
just brushed his hand across his face and said, ‘Shoo fly! go ’way!’ and
went on sleeping. Sleeping is the best thing some of those negroes do.”
“Well, what?” I asked.
“Nothing much,” Jibby said. “I was only thinking that the coming of this
gang of treasure-hunters is the best luck we’ve had yet. We only guessed
there was treasure here; now we know it. Now all we have to do is get
rid of these men.”
“And that is so easy! Only ten of them!” I said.
“Well, I am surprised at you, George,” Jibby drawled. “You talk as if
they were ten bumblebees.”
“But how are we going to get rid of them?” Wampus asked.
Jibby fondled his nose gently.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “they won’t like it here and will go away
without being asked to go.”
Well, I didn’t like it much, but Jibby picked up the oil can and started
for the woods along the Run, and, of course, a fellow could not hang
back, so we all went. When we were near the edge of the bank, we all got
down and wiggled forward until we could look over the edge and down at
the place where the three negroes were asleep. They were sound asleep,
too--plenty of sound, if you mean the sound of snoring.
The bank was about twelve feet high there, but not straight up and down.
It slanted toward the creek and was covered with grass and weeds and a
few small bushes as creek banks usually are. The dunnage of the
treasure-hunters was piled in one pile close to where the foot of the
bank met the sandy stretch on which the three black men were asleep. We
looked down awhile, and then wiggled back and got to our feet and went
off a few yards to hold a council.
“We’ll take a bunch of rocks and slam them down on those men,” Wampus
said. “We’ll scare the life out of them.”
Jibby was hunting around in the bushes, but just then he found what he
was looking for--his covered lunch-basket. He took out the green felt
bag his cat Orlando had been in and pulled the stout drawstring out of
the hem at the mouth of the bag. He tried this over his knee, to see if
it was strong, and it was strong.
We were whispering, saying how we could stone those three men, but Jibby
unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his head and began tearing
strips off it. He tied the strips together and tested them at the knots,
until he had eight or ten feet of it. Then he picked up the oil can and
motioned us to follow him. None of us knew what he was going to do, but
we followed him back to the edge of the bank like little lambs. We had
had enough lessons that day to know that Jibby Jones mostly knew what he
was doing before he started to do it.
When we got to the edge of the bank, Jibby stood up quietly and took
hold of a young birch tree that stood near the edge of the bank and bent
it back, away from the bank, until it was almost flat on the ground. He
motioned Wampus to come and hold it down for him, and then he went and
looked down at the dunnage again, and came back and eyed the birch stem
and tied the oil can to the stem by its handle. He used the stout string
from the green bag. Then he tied one end of the string he had made from
the strips of shirt to the bottom of the oil can.
When Jibby had done all this, I began to see what he was up to, and, for
once in my life, I guessed right. We let the birch straighten up slowly
and then pushed it down again, but this time toward the creek, so it
stuck out over the bank, and Tad and Wampus and Skippy and I bore around
on it until it held the can of kerosene exactly over the pile of dunnage
and food and stuff down below. Then Jibby pulled on the string he had
made of the shirt strips and the oil can tipped, and all the oil poured
out of the can onto the food and other stuff in the treasure-hunters’
pile. Then we let the tree straighten up slowly again. It was a good
job. It had spoiled all that food, because nothing spoils food more than
having coal oil on it. We knew from what the treasure-hunters had said
that they could not stay there long now; they would have to go away and
get more food, probably down the river somewhere.
I would have called that a good job and well done, but you can never
tell what Jibby Jones has in his mind. He was taking the pieces of old
newspaper out of his lunch-basket and getting handfuls of dry grass, and
balling it all up into a big ball, and, when he had done this, he tied
the ball around and around with the string he had made of shirt strips.
None of us knew what he was up to, so we just stood and looked, but,
when he had the ball all made, he untied the oil can and let the last of
the kerosene dribble on the ball. Then he tied the ball to the birch,
but a little higher than the can had been tied.
“Now,” he said, “who has a match?”
We all looked, but we did not have a match; not even a broken one, and
for a minute Jibby looked pretty blue.
“I ought to have thought of matches,” he said. “When a man goes
treasure-hunting he ought to think of everything. I had a bully scheme.
I was going to light this fire ball and bend the birch down until it
touched that pile of stuff I spilled the kerosene on, and light the
whole pile. I don’t know what would have happened, but it would have
been something. Maybe the stuff would have burned and maybe the dynamite
would have gone off. It would have bothered those fellows a lot, anyway.
But now we have no matches.”
“If we had a flint and some steel,” Wampus said, “we could strike fire,
maybe.”
“Or if any of us knew how to rub two sticks together and make fire,” I
said.
But Jibby Jones was busy before I got it half said. He had his knife out
and was scraping the handle of his lunch-basket, getting fine shreds off
it, and he splintered some of the basket and made a little pile of
sticks, like match-sticks, and the next moment he was down on his
stomach holding his magnifying-glass above the little pile so that the
concentrated rays of the sun fell full on the lint he had scraped. In
another moment a little string of blue smoke began to float upward, and
then there was a little flicker of red flame and the whole little pile
was ablaze. Jibby fed more pieces of the basket to the pile.
“Now!” he said, “you fellows get some dead wood or broken branches and
creep to the edge of the bank. Wampus, I want you to help me weigh this
birch down so the fire ball will light that pile of stuff. And the
minute it is alight, I want Skippy and Tad and George to slam the dead
wood and stuff at those black men, and yell like Indians. Then cut and
run. I don’t know how much dynamite there is in that pile, and I don’t
know what it will do when it takes a notion to do it.”
We crept back to the edge of the bank and we had plenty of dead
wood--big chunks of punk, as we call it--and we were pretty sure there
were going to be three surprised black men in about one minute. Jibby
lit the fire ball and he and Wampus bore the little birch tree over and
bore it down, and he had figured the distance right enough, but the
birch would not bear all the way down. It went flat against the top of
the bank, but that stopped it and the fire ball was a good two feet
above the pile of oil-soaked dunnage and food and dynamite.
“Hold it!” Jibby whispered. “Hold it!” And Wampus knelt on the birch.
The fire ball blazed and sent up black smoke, and in less than a minute
the string that held it to the birch caught fire and burned through and
the fire ball fell on the pile of stuff. It lay there and burned and the
top of the pile of stuff caught the flames and began to burn, too.
“Yip! Ye-ow-wow!” Jibby yelled, like a wild Indian, and he picked up a
hunk of dead wood and let fly at the negroes, and we all did the same,
and yelled as hard as we could.
About six out of ten of the things we threw hit where we meant them to
hit, and those three black men jumped to their feet and stared around
for just about one second of time. They were scared ash color, and they
did not know where they were for a moment, but they saw the black smoke
piling up from the pile of dunnage and they started down the Run faster
than we had run from the bumblebees.
“Dyn’mite! Dyn’mite!” they shouted, but we did not wait to see or hear
any more. Jibby was not waiting. He legged it away from there, and we
were not two steps behind him, and when he was deep in the woods he
threw himself down, and we did as Jibby did. It seemed the wisest thing
to do.
We were no more than flat on the ground before there came a big, flat,
heavy sort of “boom!” and then sand and small gravel fell on us like a
sort of rain, and Jibby got up. We went back toward the edge of the Run,
keeping mighty quiet, and we heard the seven men come loping down the
creek, and, when they reached the place where we had blown up their
stores, they swore and said they might have known it was not safe to
trust those worthless darks.
“We-all sure has got miserable luck,” the man called Jim said, in a most
disgusted way. “Just when we find the green sand, we get our stuff
blowed to nothing. Now we’ve got to go and get more feed and more
dynamite and more everything. It’s bad luck, but I’m right down glad of
one thing; them darks was blowed clean to nothing, too.”
They stood there awhile looking at the deep hole the blast had blown in
the creek bed, and then they went on down the Run, growling and
complaining, and we knew we had a couple of days at least to dig for
treasure before they came back. We slid down the bank and took a look at
things ourselves. The bushes and grass and weeds had been blown away
clean, and there was a hole where the sand had been, ten or twelve feet
deep and about twenty-five feet long, and as wide as that.
Jibby Jones sat down on the edge of the hole and began to take off his
pants, because he did not have any shirt to take off--he had torn it to
strips.
“Wampus,” he drawled out, in that slow way of his, “you take the
kerosene can and go back and ask Mrs. Catlin if she will lend us another
can of kerosene. I’m going to take a bath in the good old swimming-hole.
I thought maybe there would be one on this Run, somewhere.”
And, sure enough, there was the water trickling into that hole, and when
Wampus got back with the kerosene, Tad and Jibby and Skippy and I were
all in the pool splashing around and having a gay time. Jibby was right;
there was a swimming-pool in Murrell’s Run.