“That’s it, all right!” Wampus said. “That’s just about the way the creek comes into Greenland Slough, and just about the way Greenland Slough comes into the river. And look where the X is. A straight line across the back of the square that stands for the house would go right spang to that X. That’s where the treasure is, sure! Unless it is where the head of the arrow points, where the creek crosses the road.”
Jibby drew a deep, solemn breath, if you can call a breath solemn. He looked at us with something like awe in his eyes.
“Boys,” he said, “this is the real map! Whoever drew it, and whatever it was drawn for, this is a real land pirate map. Because that’s not an arrow. That’s a pine tree—a signal pine tree; that’s a John A. M’rell signal pine!”
As soon as Jibby said it, we all wondered why we hadn’t known it from the first minute. It looked like a pine tree, once anybody said so, and it was in the corner of the lot, where all the John A. Murrell signal pines were.
We were all excited, and we wished it was the next day, so we could get to hunting the treasure, but Jibby Jones just stared at the map and turned it one way and another. By and by he said:
“Have any of you ever been up there at Greenland?”
We all had, and we told him so. He asked what the store and post-office were like, and we told him the store was the post-office, and that it was an old frame building, painted white, with a big porch in front and a roof over the porch, and usually some boxes and barrels on the porch. Close back of the store was a shed, open toward the store, where some lumber, and lime in barrels, and cement in bags, and drain tile, and bales of hay, and barrels of salt, and so on, were stored. And alongside of the shed was a big red barn, with old wagons and empty boxes and barrels and the usual store litter scattered in the yard the three buildings made.
“The shed and the barn don’t show on the map,” Jibby said.
“No. Maybe they were built later, after the map was made,” Skippy said, and Jibby thought that might be so.
“I’ve been thinking how we want to go at this job,” he said. “It seems to me we want to go up the river in the motorboat, and up the slough until we come to the mouth of the creek. Then we’ll leave the motorboat and tramp up the creek. When we come to where the creek crosses the road that runs down toward the slough, one of us will go up the road, and the others will continue up the creek to about where the X mark is on the map. If I’m the one that goes up the road, I’ll stop when I come to the rear end of the Greenland store, so I can sight along the end of it. Then, when you come to about where the X mark is, one of you stand a spade straight up. I’ll sight along the rear of the store and motion to the left with my hand if the spade is too far to the right, or to the right if the spade is too far to the left. That way you’ll find the exact spot.”
That was fine; nobody but Jibby Jones would have thought of it. So we decided we would do it that way.
The next morning we tuned up Wampus’s motorboat and saw that she had gas, and each of us got a lunch, and we started for Greenland Slough bright and early. We had spades and an old pickaxe, and a good stout gunnysack to put the treasure in. The sun was bright and the river just a little choppy with a brisk cool breeze, and it was all fine and exciting and glorious. The boat went along at a good speed, and before long we were running close to the shore on the Illinois side just below the mouth of Greenland Slough.
Jibby took the map out of his hat and looked at it.
“This is all right,” he said. “Now we know the only thing about this map we didn’t know before. Now we know what these crisscross scribble marks below the mouth of the slough mean. They mean swamp. It’s as if whoever made the map had said, ‘If you come for the treasure, don’t land here, it’s swamp.’ ”
So we swung into the slough and ran up toward the mouth of the creek, and the first thing we saw was smoke. It came from one of the banks of the creek, but the fire it came from was hidden by willows. It wasn’t until we reached the creek that we saw a skiff fastened to one bank of the creek, and on the shore close by a fire with a tin pail hung over it, and the Tough Customer and the Rat sitting on a log eating out of a pan.
The minute they saw us, they jumped up, and the Tough Customer grabbed a spade and the Rat grabbed a club. Wampus swung the motorboat out toward the middle of the slough and we went by and on up the slough.
“What do you know about that!” Skippy said. “They’re here already!”
We could hear them crashing through the willows and driftwood as they came running along the bank of the slough, and Wampus put on a little more speed.
“Did you see anything that looked like treasure?” Tad asked.
We hadn’t, any of us. But we hadn’t noticed much of anything.
“How far does this slough run before it comes
