But, when we had talked it all over and had come right down to facts, the only thing about the treasure that Jibby seemed to be real sure of was that the old negro Mose had been awful dead earnest. That old negro had been mortal sure there was treasure somewhere. He would have bet a million dollars on it. And that was what made Jibby think there must be some treasure hidden somewhere. There was no doubt that there had been a land pirate named John A. Murrell.
Talking it over together that way, we asked Jibby a million or two questions, and it came out that the old negro Mose had said that “Riverbank” was the key to where the treasure was hidden. There was no “Riverbank” on the map side of the map, but on the back of it the one word “Riverbank” was written, old Mose had said, and old Mose said his father had said that was the key. “You go whar Riverbank is, up the river whar black folks is free,” was what his father had said. Of course, that was away back when there were slaves, and Mose was a slave then, and so was his father.
The other thing Jibby had to go on was the pine tree—the signal pine that every friend of John A. Murrell and his pirates set out in the corner of the lot or yard or farm. The thing to do, Jibby said, was to find a lone pine tree, because that would be a sign and a signal and a symbol and a sort of trademark, showing that place had something to do with John A. Murrell. We tried to think of lone pines, but, just offhand, we couldn’t think of any that night. All we knew were planted in rows.
So there did not seem to be much to do but elect Wampus the Captain of the Land Pirate’s Treasure-Hunting and Exploration Company, and go to bed. We thought we would go up and down the river when we had time, and explore back into the country here and there, and look for lone pines, and, if we found one in the corner of a lot or farm, we would look for a likely treasure-hiding place.
Early the next morning, Parcell, who runs the boathouse down at town, came up with my sister May and a load of groceries and meat for everybody, and he brought my dog along. My dog is one of the bulliest dogs you ever saw, but along about April that year all the hair came off his back, and mother said he was an awful sight, so we let a man take him, to grow his hair back on. The man was a horse doctor and good at making hairless dogs hairy again, and he had fixed Rover up fine. And now he had sent him back.
I was tickled to see Rover again, and he was tickled to see me, and I guess my mother was almost as glad, because some pretty tough customers live in houseboats on the river, sometimes. Most of the houseboaters are all right, and are kind and nice, but some mean ones come floating down the river, and you can never tell what they’ll do. So a dog comes in handy, especially a good-sized dog like Rover.
The only thing I was sorry about was that Rover had come this particular day, because the next day I would have to tie him up and leave him at home, because it was the day of the Uncle Oscar Fishing Prize. You can’t have a dog along when you are fishing from a skiff for a prize. And Uncle Oscar’s Fishing Prize was one of the most important things of the whole summer, always.
The way of the Uncle Oscar Fishing Prize was this: Every year, as long as we had been going up to the island, Wampus Smale’s Uncle Oscar had given a prize to the fellow who made the best fishing record on a certain day, and that day was Uncle Oscar’s birthday. That was why we fished for the prize on that day, and not on another day.
This Uncle Oscar just lived and breathed on the river, as you might say, and loved it, and he thought nobody fished enough or boated enough or swam enough or loved the big old river enough. That was the way he was. He almost wept when he told about the old days when the river was full of fish and the big old packets and logging steamers were as thick as mosquitoes, and great long log rafts used to float down with huts built on them, and campfires, and men pushing the long sweeps to steer them.
That was why, every year, he offered the fishing prize, but we boys got so we didn’t take much interest in it.
“He just gives it so Wampus can win it,” Skippy Root said to me this year. “He knows Wampus is the best fisher, and he knows Wampus is sure to win it.”
“Well,” I said, “ain’t you going to try for it? Fishing is luck, and sometime Wampus’s luck is going to go back on him.”
“Sure, I’m going to try,” Skippy said. “I’m going to try, but not because I’ve got a chance to win. I’m going to try because Uncle Oscar Smale is a bully fellow
