“What do you do with Orlando when you are traveling?” Tad asked.
“We carry him in a green cloth bag, so he can’t see whether there are any one-legs or not,” Jibby said.
Then we all went home. I went with Jibby, because we live near each other.
“George,” he said, as we went along, “that Tough Customer was out behind Wampus’s woodshed, listening. I thought he would be. I picked out that woodshed on purpose, because the Tough Customer could hear us through the cracks in it. And we have no skunk at our house. We’ve got a black-and-white cat we call Orlando. But imagination is a great thing, George. I said it was. I imagined, for a while, that Orlando was a skunk.”
I laughed. I thought Jibby was trying to be funny.
“I didn’t want to bother Wampus and Tad and Skippy, George,” Jibby said, “but we’ve got some work to do tonight. Come to my house right after supper and bring a lantern. I have one, too.”
He would not say any more, so after supper I took my lantern and went to Jibby’s. We walked out to the old Murrell farm, and when we got there we went into the tumbledown old brick farmhouse and down into the cellar, where the dry well was. The old rotten boards were just as we had left them last Saturday, and Jibby Jones put them over the well, fixing them carefully, and sprinkled dry dirt all over them.
“I saw the natives make an elephant trap in India this way once,” he said. “I saw them catch a wild elephant. He was a tough customer.”
“You don’t think you’ll catch an elephant here, do you?” I asked him.
“No,” Jibby said, “but I expect I may catch a Tough Customer.”
So then we went home. The next morning we were all on hand at nine o’clock at Jibby’s, and we started for the Murrell farm. We hiked along at a good rate, saying “hep! hep! hep!” to keep in step, or singing something to keep step by. We had all the things Jibby had told us to bring, and he had a big market-basket with a lid.
“It is all right,” Jibby whispered to me once. “The Tough Customer is following us.”
About half a mile this side of the Murrell farm, Jibby said he was tired and sat down by the side of the road to rest. There was a long osage orange hedge there, and we sat with it behind us.
“Now, listen,” he said, when we were seated. “Before we get to work to dig that treasure, we’ll go to the Run and get some of that green sand for my collection. It won’t take half an hour; we’ll have plenty of time. Nobody is going to guess that the treasure is under the bottom of the old dry well in the cellar of the old brick farmhouse at the crossroads where the broken, dead pine tree is.”
“But—” said Wampus.
“You be still!” Jibby said. “Sometimes I think you talk too much. I’m hungry. I’m going to eat something.”
He opened the basket and gave us each a sandwich, and they did taste good! We sat there eating.
“But you said the treasure was under the pine tree,” Wampus said then.
“Yes, I said that, and that is where it is,” Jibby Jones said then, “but just now the Tough Customer was behind the hedge here listening, and I wanted him to think it was in the well in the cellar. But now we can talk; he is not here now. Look up the road.”
Sure enough, there was the Tough Customer, hobbling along in a great hurry, trying to keep out of sight and going toward the old Murrell place.
“Let him get in the house,” Jibby said, and then he opened the lid of his market-basket again and took out a green felt bag. He loosened the strings and a cat stuck its black-and-white head out of the bag.
“Good old Orlando!” Jibby said, and stroked the cat’s head.
He handed the bag to Wampus.
“You carry the cat, Wampus,” he said, “and when I ask for it you hand it to me. Now, come on, and let’s hurry.”
We did. We started up the road at a good clip, and when we reached the old Murrell place the Tough Customer was not in sight, but when we had stolen up to the house we heard a clatter of old boards and a yell, and we all piled into the cellar. The Tough Customer had stepped on the boards that covered Jibby’s elephant trap and they had tipped and fallen into the dry well and the Tough Customer had gone with them. He was swearing and jumping and trying to get out of the well, but it was too deep for him to get out without someone to pull him out or boost him out. When he saw us, he let loose all the language he could think of, and he told us all the things he would do to us if he ever got out of that hole.
Jibby stood and looked down at him.
“Wampus,” Jibby said, in his slow, drawling way, “hand me Orlando.”
Wampus handed Jibby Jones the green felt bag.
“Now, you boys had better get out of the cellar and, maybe, out of the house,” Jibby said, “because it may not be very pleasant when I put Orlando down the well. Orlando is hostile to men with wooden legs. Orlando don’t like wooden legs.”
“Look here!” the Tough Customer begged, changing his tone in an instant. “You’re not going
