“Look there,” he said, bending down and pointing. “There’s that Tough Customer’s shanty-boat. He didn’t quit the island. He only floated down and landed lower down.”
We all bent low and saw the shanty-boat. It was in a sort of small cove, where the willows must have hid it from the slough, and I don’t suppose anybody could have seen it from the island except from the very spot where we were.
“Come on!” I whispered. “Let’s go and get Orph and your Uncle Oscar, and tell them.”
But Jibby Jones put out a hand and held me back.
“This doesn’t look right,” he said, shaking his head. “This looks evil to me. Those men were told to get off the island, and they said they would get off the island, and there’s no honest reason why they should be on the island. All they had to do when they were out in the slough last night was to let their shanty-boat drift and they would have gone on down past here. They must mean some devilment on the island, and we ought to know what it is.”
Well, that seemed reasonable, and Jibby said what we must do. We must crawl up through the willows and investigate. The only trouble was Rover. I couldn’t tie him to a tree because he would howl, and, if I dragged him through the willows, he would see the shanty-boat and bark, and, if I turned him loose, he would probably jump all around and go to the shanty-boat and scare the Tough Customer and the Rat into fits. But Jibby fixed that. He said the thing for me to do was to take Rover and go back and get Orph Cadwallader and Wampus’s uncle. So I went.
Jibby and the boys crawled as close to the shanty-boat as they could, Indian fashion, and lay in the willows, and they were in luck, because the Tough Customer and the Rat were talking.
“No, sir!” the Tough Customer was saying. “I don’t stay on any island where caretakers go around with shotguns, shooting them off any time of the day or night.”
“I don’t see that you’ve got any kick to make about shotguns,” the Rat said, in his whining voice. “I’m the one that got shot at.”
“I don’t care who got shot at,” the Tough Customer said. “Four or five barrels of cider wouldn’t pay me for getting my hide full of birdshot, not if it was the hardest cider on earth. And you don’t know that they hid the cider on this island—you only think so. It may be on any island in the whole river. You just forget that cider, pardner, and let’s get to hunting that treasure I know about.”
“Well, it ain’t playing me square,” the Rat whined. “A bargain is a bargain, and the bargain was that, if I paid my money and bought this shanty-boat, you would help me find that cider first, and help me get away with it and sell it. And I as good as know it was on this island them barrels of cider was hid. And, if so, on this island is where we want to be.”
“And get shot full of birdshot or, maybe, buckshot,” sneered the Tough Customer. “Why, man alive! just now after these island folks is all roused up is no time to hunt around on this island for a few pesky barrels of cider. They’ll all be carrying shotguns for the next month or so. No, sir! Now is the time to stay away from this island. We can come back later on if you want to, but now is the time to be hunting that land pirate’s treasure.”
“You don’t know how much it is, and you don’t know where it is, and you don’t even know if there is any,” complained the Rat.
“All right!” said the Tough Customer. “Maybe I know more than you think I do. Maybe I ain’t told you all I know yet. Maybe I thought I would just wait and see if you was a reasonable cuss and willing to do the wise thing, or if you was a sort of idiot that would want to hang around an island and get shot full of buckshot and bullets for a few barrels of no-account cider. How about that?”
“ ’Tain’t right! ’Tain’t right!” the Rat complained. “Pardners ought to be fair and square and tell all. Next thing you’ll be saying you won’t split half and half.”
“Half and half was what I said, and half and half holds good,” said the Tough Customer. “And this will, maybe, be a big thing. I’ll play fair with you if you play fair with me. Will you play fair? Hope to die and may your throat be cut, if you don’t?”
“Hope to die and may my throat be cut if I don’t!” said the Rat. “Fair and square, or may the dogs eat us!”
“Now, that’s talking,” said the Tough Customer. “Look here, now!”
They heard him feeling around among the boards of the shanty-boat, inside and nearest the corner to the boys.
“I got a map of the whole business,” the Tough Customer said. “You didn’t know that, did you? It’s been right there in that split board back of the lantern ever since I come aboard this boat. And you would never have seen it if you hadn’t played fair and square with me, you bet! Gimme that board there to spread it out on.”
They heard the Rat move around and then the Tough Customer spoke again.
“When I
