“That sounds like good sense,” Skippy said.
“Of course it does!” said Jibby Jones. “You make fun of imagination, but how did we first come to think of treasure being hid out there at that old farm?”
“Why, you saw that old pine tree in the corner of the lot,” Wampus said.
“Yes, and I imagined it might be one of John A. Murrell’s signal pines, such as he had planted in the corners of yards and farms all through Tennessee and Mississippi and Arkansas. I imagined that, didn’t I? There’s nothing so useful as imagination. So I stood by that old dead pine and imagined I was John A. Murrell, with a lot of stolen treasure, and that I was liable to be caught and kept in jail fifty years or more after the treasure was hidden. I knew right away that you would not find it in the house, because that would be exactly the first place any of the Murrell gang would look for it, if he wanted to cheat John A. Murrell while Murrell was in jail. Isn’t that so?”
We had to admit that it was; the house was the first place we had looked, anyway.
“So I imagined I was John A. Murrell, away down in Arkansas, and that I wanted a true friend to hide my money here in Iowa, so that I could find it years later, even if the true friend was dead or had moved away, and even if the house had burned down and disappeared. I imagined I was John A. Murrell, getting out of jail and coming up the Mississippi until I came to the mouth of the creek you said was Murrell’s Run. Then I remembered the green sand you said was in the bottom of Murrell’s Run near the farmhouse. So I imagined I came up the creek until I came to the green sand, and that was a sign to me to climb out of the creek and look for—what?”
“The signal pine, of course,” said Skippy Root.
“Certainly,” said Jibby Jones. “So I imagined I was standing there looking at the signal pine. Then I knew there was just one place where the treasure could be—it would be planted right at the root of the old signal pine. For that is what John A. Murrell would order: ‘Plant a signal pine at the corner of the farm, and bury the treasure at the foot of the pine.’ Even if John A. Murrell was dying, he could tell exactly where the treasure was, in a few words, and nobody could miss it. He might be in Asia, and he could send a man directly to it. ‘Go up the Mississippi until you come to a creek about five miles below Riverbank, Iowa. Go up the creek until you come to green sand. Climb the bank on your left and find a signal pine in the corner of a farm. Dig at the foot of the pine.’ ”
Well, this might be wonderful imagination or it might be plumb nonsense, but out there in the dark, walking home past the cemetery, it sounded great to us. We all told Jibby he was a wonder, and he said he was not, that it was just ordinary common sense.
“I don’t say the treasure is there,” he said modestly, “because someone may have dug it up, but if it is anywhere it is there, at the foot of that signal pine tree.”
“But I’ll say you used some imagination,” said Skippy.
“Oh, no!” Jibby said, still more modest. “That wasn’t much. I don’t call that much of anything. But maybe I can show you, sometime, what imagination is worth.”
So then we went on talking about the treasure and the 1804 dollar, and how we must not talk about it outside, but Jibby Jones said it would be all right to tell our fathers and mothers about it, because they would not tell. We let Wampus Smale take the 1804 dollar home, because he said his mother had a silver wash that she used to dip silver things in to make them as bright as new. The 1804 dollar was not worn smooth—it was as sharp as if it had just come from the mint—but it was as black as iron, and we thought it would be a good thing to have it brightened.
We did not see how we could get out to the old Murrell farm to dig the treasure—if it was there—before the next Saturday, so we decided on that, and then we went home.
The sad thing happened the next morning—Sunday morning—when we were all going to Sunday school together, and the Tough Customer was to blame. He lost the 1804 dollar for us.
When Wampus got home that Saturday night, his folks were at supper and his father made him go and wash up and come right to the table, so he did. When he sat down at the table his father and mother were talking about Mary—their hired girl—and the man she had in the kitchen just then.
“Well,” Wampus’s mother was saying, “I did not like the looks of him, but Mary said he was her cousin, so I said she could give him some supper in the kitchen.”
“That’s all right, of course, for this one time,” Wampus’s father said then, “but don’t let the fellow hang around here. I think he is a tough customer, judging by his looks. He has a bad eye. If he
