THE TREASURE
So that was what the sheriff told them, and at first there was a good
deal of complaining, but, when they saw that the sheriff and Bill Catlin
meant it, they formed in line at the corner, and Skippy and Tad and
Wampus and me collected the dollars. Every time we took a dollar we
said, “Thank you. Look out for bumblebees under the old dead pine
there,” and they did look out. Most of them went a good distance around
the old pine, and every one of them made a straight line for the old
tumbledown farmhouse as soon as they were safe from the bees. Some that
did not have money to pay the dollar borrowed some from others, but a
few could not get in. But I’ve got to tell you what Jibby was doing.
As soon as Jibby had the seven dollars from the Arkansas men he said:
“All right, you can hunt treasure now, until midnight, but if you don’t
find it by then it will cost you another seven dollars.”
“Don’t you worry, son,” the man named Jim said. “We’ll find what there
is to find before sundown, and if you hadn’t blown up our dynamite we
would have found it in half an hour. We know where it is.”
“That’s good,” said Jibby Jones. “My father always says it is wise to
know what you are going to do before you do it. So I guess you know the
law about hidden treasure, too?”
“It belongs to the man that owned it in the first place,” said the man
named Jim, “and I guess that as good as means me. I didn’t come all the
way up here from Arkansas without getting ready beforehand, like your
father says to. I’ve got papers here to prove that I’m the
great-grandson of old John A. Murrell, the land pirate, and that I’m his
only heir. So that settles that! If great-grandfather was alive, it
would be his treasure, and if any other Murrells were alive part of the
treasure would be theirs, but I’m the only one alive, so it is mine.
That’s all fixed, and if there is any treasure there I get half, and
these six friends of mine divide the other half among them. That so,
men?”
The six tough-looking Arkansans said it was so.
“Go and get it, then,” Jibby Jones said.
Jim and Jake and the other five got together and talked awhile in
whispers, looking out through the trees now and then. They were making
plans. The crowd from Riverbank was so big it couldn’t all get inside
the ruined farmhouse and those that couldn’t were digging outside of it,
and the whole lot--those inside and those outside--were shouting and
quarreling and carrying on the way money-crazy people do. It was like a
riot or something, and all the while more strings of people were coming
up the road and stopping to pay us a dollar, and then rushing for the
old farmhouse, afraid they would not get there in time.
The seven Arkansans had their spades and shovels and picks, and they got
together in a bunch, and when Jim gave the word they started across the
weedy field with a rush, and straight for the old signal pine, too.
Jibby watched them until they were halfway across the field, and then he
came wandering toward where we boys and Bill Catlin were collecting
money from the late comers. We had our pockets full of silver dollars
and bills and small change.
“That’s pretty good,” Jibby said, “but we made one mistake.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Do you mean we should have brought a
gunnysack to carry the money in?”
“No,” he said; “we ought to have advertised in the Riverbank
‘Eagle’--the weekly edition of it that goes to the farmers. Everybody in
town knows about the hidden treasure by now, but the farmers don’t. We
ought to have put an advertisement in the paper so the farmers could
have paid us a dollar apiece, too. But I suppose no one can think of
everything.”
We all turned just then, because one of the Arkansas men had let out a
yell. A bumblebee had just stung him. The next moment another one let
out a yell; he had got his sting, too.
The Arkansas men had gone at the old pine tree slam bang, because they
knew they had to work fast. They knew that, as soon as the men and boys
by the farmhouse saw them digging at the tree, there would be a rush for
the tree, so they all piled into the work at once and as hard as they
could, and there is nothing bumblebees hate so much as they hate just
that. They hate hurry.
In a moment the whole seven Arkansans were hopping and swearing and
slashing at their necks and beating at the air, but they kept right on
digging and picking and whacking at the tree. They made more than chips
fly. Whang would go a pick into the dead wood and out would come a big
slice of tree, and all the while the whole seven were jumping and
yelling and cussing like crazy men.
Then some of the crowd began to run from the old farmhouse toward the
old pine, and then others began to run, but, when the first man came
near the tree, he yelled like fury and slapped the back of his neck and
began to dance, and then he ran. He ran zigzag, but he ran away from the
tree. The rest of the Riverbankers stopped, and when he reached them
they asked what was the matter and he must have said “Bees!” for they
all crowded back. They made me think of the mob in a movie. They went
back a step at a time as if a director was saying, “Now! Mob--back one
step; show fear; back another step!” Only it was bees doing the
directing this time.
Then the Arkansans gave it up, all but Jim. He wrapped his coat around
his head and dug and hopped but of a sudden he dropped his pick and hit
himself in four or six places and jerked the coat from his head and came
loping toward us sweeping the air with the coat, all around his head. He
had not found the treasure, but he had found the bees’ nest, and as he
came toward us we scooped up the money and held our pockets and ran.
We had so much money we were weighted down with it, and we had to run
easy or spill it, but we made pretty good time. Not a bee got us. We ran
down the road toward Riverbank a hundred yards or so, and that was far
enough, for the seven Arkansans only came about fifty yards and they
were making it lively for the bumblebees, and the bumblebees were making
it lively for them. Neither of them had time for anything else just
then.
While we were all scattered that way, we saw one man come out of the
Riverbank crowd and walk right up to the dead pine. It was the Tough
Customer. He had tied his pants tight around his ankle, and he had
pulled his shirt up around his head, and he had his one woolen sock on
one hand for a mitten and a red handkerchief tied around the other hand.
With his coat on, there wasn’t a place a bee could get at him, and he
hobbled right up to the dead pine and picked up the pick Jim had thrown
down, and began to dig.
Jibby Jones looked disgusted.
“Dear me!” he said. “I don’t like that at all! I did hope we might find
that treasure ourselves, but I certainly think it is a shame for the
Tough Customer to find it after all the trouble we took to make him
depart.”
This was too much for Wampus.
“What do you care who digs it up, Jibby?” he asked. “That Jim fellow
gets it, anyway. You said yourself that, no matter whose land it was
found on and no matter who found it, the treasure belonged to whoever
owned it first. It wouldn’t be us, if we found it, and it won’t be the
Tough Customer, if he finds it. The treasure will belong to that Jim man
from Arkansas, because he is the heir of old John A. Murrell, and John
A. Murrell was the first owner.”
The only answer Jibby gave to that was to reach out a hand and feel of
Wampus’s shirt, but he didn’t like the feel of it, so he felt of mine
and he seemed to like it better.
“Take off your shirt, George,” he said, slow and calm, as if he had all
day to waste, and he took off his own shoes and pulled off his socks. “I
don’t think that tramp has brains,” he said, “but I think he has robbed
honey hives, and sometimes experience is as good as brains.”
I had my shirt off now, for I can work pretty quick when I have to, and
then Jibby began pulling it over his head.
“Mr. Catlin,” he said, “I see those Arkansawyers are not fighting bees
now”--but how he saw that with my shirt over his head I don’t know--“and
they are not digging treasure. They seem to be looking at the sheriff as
if they did not like him. And I never did like them much. I never did
think that men who come sneaking up a creek or up any back way were
thoroughly honest men. I wonder if it would be a good thing for the
sheriff to walk over to them and tell them that they have gone off the
farm into the road and that they will have to pay another dollar to get
back onto the farm again? If you think that would be a good thing, and
you want to tell it to the sheriff, maybe you had better tell the
sheriff to pin on his badge so it can be seen.”
Bill Catlin grinned.
“I think it might be a good thing,” he laughed.
“Thank you,” Jibby said, “and it might not hurt anybody if the sheriff
ran toward the Arkansawyers to tell them. Maybe they would like to know
it as soon as possible, so they can make plans.”
Jibby was ready now to go and help the Tough Customer dig treasure and
he started. He did not bother to try to see what the Arkansawyers did,
but we saw. They were standing in the road, looking at the sheriff and
the badge on his coat, and were talking among themselves when Bill
Catlin went up to the sheriff and spoke to him and pointed to the
Arkansas men. The sheriff nodded his head, and looked down to see that
his badge was in plain sight, and then he started for the seven Arkansas
men, going pretty fast. Those seven men took one look at him and at Bill
Catlin and turned and ran across country, jumping the fence and getting
away from there as fast as they could.
That was the last we ever saw of them. I don’t know what was on their
minds, but they must have had mighty guilty consciences about something.
Guilty consciences have no use for a sheriff.
There were plenty of bumblebees left by the old pine tree, and the Tough
Customer had to keep batting at the holes in his shirt that he had made
to see through, but Jibby had the best of that because he was wearing
his tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles, and no bee, not even a bumblebee,
can sting through glass. He picked up a spade and began to dig, and he
had hardly stuck spade into the ground twice before he had hit a metal
box. He jammed the spade in again, and pried on the handle and up came
the box. He did not wait there. He grabbed the box and ran.
The Tough Customer could not see very well, but he knew somebody was
getting something that he was not getting and he pulled his shirt from
his head. It was a bad mistake. Jibby was gone and the treasure box was
gone, but the bees were not all gone. One of them told the Tough
Customer so and told him quick and hard, and for the next minute the
Tough Customer was not thinking of treasure; he was thinking of bees.
Jibby came running to where we were, and the whole of Riverbank--or all
those that had come out to hunt treasure--came running after him, to see
what he had found. They got to us just as we had all crowded around
Jibby and when he was stamping on the box with his heel to break it
open. It broke open easy enough.
I jumped at it and grabbed for the gold money that was in it. It was not
much; it was only one hundred gold pieces--ten-dollar pieces--one
thousand dollars in all, but Jibby was opening a faded piece of old
paper that had been in the box.
The writing on the paper was so old we could hardly read it, but we did
make it out. This is what it said:
John--I have abided in this locality twenty years now, but no word
from you and very poor living here, so mean to go to California,
thinking shall do better gold mining than farming. Am taking that
which you left with me and will keep it twenty more years, as you said
to do, before I touch any of it. If you hunt me look for me near a
signal pine as agreed. I am leaving one thousand dollars in case you
come and need it to pay expenses. It is part of what you sent.
Murrell
So that was what the land pirate’s treasure amounted to, but one
thousand dollars is a lot better than nothing. I believe one man from
Riverbank did go to California to look for a signal pine and to hunt for
treasure under it, but probably he did not find it. There are millions
of pine trees in California, or trees that would do for pine trees.
When we counted up, we found we had taken in eight hundred and fifty-six
dollars from the Riverbank treasure-hunters, and we got half of it,
which was eighty-five dollars and sixty cents apiece for Jibby Jones and
Wampus and Skippy Root and Tad and me, because we had to give Bill
Catlin his half first. And then we got two hundred dollars apiece of the
one thousand dollars that was in the box that Jibby had dug up. We
didn’t send it to Jim from Arkansas, even if he was John A. Murrell’s
great-grandson. I’ll tell you why.
When Jibby was opening the box, the Tough Customer and nearly all the
Riverbankers came crowding around to see what Jibby had found, and when
they saw, one of the men said:
“Pshaw! Only a thousand dollars! That don’t amount to much.”
“No,” I said, “and we can’t keep it, anyway, because in this country
hidden treasure has to be given back to whoever the first owner was, or
to his heirs, and we know who the first owner was and we know who his
heir is.”
Right there Jibby Jones surprised us.
“No,” he said, “we don’t know. We’re going to keep this money ourselves,
because we don’t know who the real owner was, and we never can find
out.”
“Why can’t we?” I asked him.
“Because nobody in the world knows who the first owner was,” Jibby said.
“John A. Murrell never did own it; he stole it. The man he stole it from
was the real owner, and John A. Murrell never did have any right to have
it. And how can you ever find out who owned it away back in 1835? Nobody
could do that. So it is ours and we’ll keep it.”
And we did. We were just starting back for town when all at once Jibby
Jones stopped short.
“Wait!” he said. “I’ve almost forgotten something. I’ve got to go back
to the creek.”
“My land!” Wampus said. “What for?”
“To get two grains of that green sand for my collection of grains of
sand,” Jibby said. “You can never tell what will happen. To-morrow, or
before I have a chance to get a specimen, my father may decide to go to
Chile or China or Chattanooga. But, hold on a minute!”
He sat down at the edge of the road and took off his shoe and looked in
it.
“It’s all right!” he said. “We can go on back to town. I’ve got five or
six grains right here in my shoe.”
So that was how we went back to town from our treasure-hunting. Skippy
and Tad and Wampus and I carried the money and Jibby Jones came along
behind us with one shoe on, carrying the other shoe in both hands as if
it was a plate of soup, because I do believe he was more interested in
not losing those grains of green sand than in all the treasure John A.
Murrell ever hid.
But that was the way Jibby Jones was.
THE END