I guess Sunday school did not do us much good that day. On the way home we talked about the chances of ever getting the 1804 dollar back—four of us did—but Jibby did not talk. We knew it was hopeless. The Raccoon Creek sewer is the main sewer in Riverbank and is really the whole of Raccoon Creek cemented in and roofed over, and there was less chance of getting that dollar out of it than of finding a pinhead fired out of a rifle into the Desert of Sahara. The water was always two or three feet deep and the mud a foot or two more. We decided there was no hope, and so Wampus said:
“Well, it is gone; the next thing is to get the treasure. Maybe there will be a couple more 1804 dollars in the treasure. We’ll get the treasure Saturday.”
“Maybe!” Jibby Jones said. “I’ve got to do some thinking first, and I’ve got to find a good thinking place before I do any more thinking.”
We tried to talk him out of it, but it was no use. He said he must think. Finally, he did say he expected he could do all the thinking necessary before Saturday, if he found a first-class place to think in. That sounded foolish to me.
“Can’t you think in one place as well as in another?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, “of course not! There’s a best place for everything, and there ought to be a best place to think in, too. For the kind of thinking I have to do I need a first-class thinking place.”
So that afternoon we walked around looking for a thinking place for Jibby Jones. We tried about thirty different places, and Jibby would sit down and try them, but they did not satisfy him. Then we would try another, and finally he said Wampus Smale’s woodshed would do; he said it was as good as any man needed to think in.
“It is warm and clean and smells of sawdust and damp bark,” Jibby said, “and the boards of the walls are wide enough for the air to ventilate through. I guess I can think first-rate here.”
It sounded foolish to us, but you can never tell when Jibby is being foolish and when he is not, but mostly he is not, so we all sat down and tried to think. We changed from one seat to another, and when Jibby sat with his back to the wall that is right close to the alley he said that was the best place of all for high-grade thinking, and that we would come there every afternoon and do our thinking. So, every afternoon, after school, we went there and Jibby sat and thought.
But the rest of us mostly talked. Jibby said he did not mind our talking, and sometimes he joined in. We talked about the treasure, and about old John A. Murrell, and so on, and we planned to go out and get the treasure on Saturday, but whenever any of us came near saying where the treasure was hidden, Jibby said “Hush!” and shut us up.
It came along to Friday afternoon, and we had planned pretty much everything. Wampus was to take a spade, and Skippy was to get a pickaxe, and Tad was to take an axe. Jibby told me to have a length of rope ready.
“And I’ll have my mother put up lunch for us,” he said, “for we may spend the whole day. We will all meet at my house at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. We’ll need a big lunch, because if we dig a lot we’ll be mighty hungry—”
He stopped short.
“Pshaw!” he said. “I forgot to feed Orlando!”
“Orlando?” I asked, for this was the first time I had heard of any Orlando. “Who’s Orlando?”
Jibby looked at me.
“My goodness!” he exclaimed. “Didn’t I ever tell you about Orlando? That’s because we’ve had Orlando so long I never think much of him, I guess. Orlando is my father’s pet skunk.”
We did not say anything. Mr. Jones is an author, and an author is liable to have almost any kind of pet. They are funny folks, mostly, I guess.
“My father caught Orlando when Orlando was no bigger than a cat’s kitten,” Jibby Jones went on. “He caught Orlando in Pike County, Pennsylvania, and he raised Orlando on a bottle, and Orlando is as affectionate as a kitten. If you catch a skunk young and treat it right, it is the most affectionate pet you can have, and it makes the best kind of watchdog—if you can call a skunk a dog. We keep Orlando in the cellar, and I have to feed Orlando when my father does not. And father is away today and I forgot to feed Orlando. I’ll have to go home now and feed Orlando.”
“Gee whiz!” Skippy said. “That’s a funny kind of pet. Don’t it ever—well, you know!—perfumery?”
“Oh, no, indeed!” Jibby drawled. “That’s where you do Orlando a great wrong, Skippy. If a skunk is fond of you, and knows you, it never bothers you that way. It is only when a skunk is hostile to you that it bothers you that way.”
“Has—has Orlando ever been hostile?” Wampus asked.
“Yes, once,” Jibby said. “When we were in Kalamazoo, Michigan, my father was sick and a one-legged barber named Horace L. Spurting used to come to the house to shave father. We had a peach tree in the side yard and the peaches were ripe, and one evening Horace L. Spurting thought he would steal a couple of peaches, and he climbed the fence and sneaked up to the tree, and Orlando was taking a nap under the tree, and Horace L. Spurting stepped on Orlando’s tail. For three days Horace L. Spurting was unconscious, and we had
