I tried to tell this to the fellows, but they did not pay much attention. They were in a hurry. We all piled in among the trees and down the bank of the Run, and there was Jibby Jones. He was sitting on a large flat rock, in the cool shade, and on the rock were about forty nice little mud pies he had made and put there, each one nice and cool and soppy, all ready to plaster on our bee stings!
Jibby Jones looked up when we came piling down to where he was.
“I’ve got forty-two made,” he said. “I thought I would make sixty, but you came sooner than I thought you would. Help yourselves.”
We did. We grabbed the mud plasters and slapped them on the hot bee stings, and Jibby Jones helped us. Oh, boy! but that cool wet mud felt fine! Jibby plastered the stings on Wampus Smale’s back himself, and Wampus never said a word about anyone talking foolish talk. He just said:
“Ah! that feels good! Oh! that feels good! Put on another fresh one, Jibby.”
XXII
A New Swimming-Hole
By and by we began to sting less and to feel better.
“Did you bring the tools?” Jibby asked, innocently.
“I should say not!” Skippy said. “What was the use? A bee can’t sting an axe.”
“Those bees could,” I said. “I expect that spade will be all swelled up like a balloon by the time we see it again.”
That made Wampus laugh, which was a sign he was feeling better, too. I told Jibby I knew now why he wanted to know if Bill Catlin was a good-natured man.
“Yes,” Jibby said, “I thought you would figure it out sooner or later.”
“Well, the next time,” I said, “don’t be so polite. Don’t treat us as if we had any sense at all. Make a picture of a bee and shove it in our faces.”
“Yes, do!” Skippy said. “I’d rather, any day, have a picture of a bee shoved in my face than have a real bee shove itself in my neck.”
That made us all laugh, and Jibby washed the mud off Wampus Smale’s back, and when Wampus had put on his clothes we sat down and had lunch. I never ate anything that tasted better, and when we had finished we lay back for a while, just feeling good. Jibby Jones laughed.
“Laughing at us?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m laughing at myself. I’m thinking what a silly I was to begin collecting sand from everywhere, and thinking one grain from each place would be enough. I’ve been looking at this sand through my magnifying-glass, and one grain won’t do.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Look at it,” he said, and he tossed me his magnifying-glass.
The minute I looked at the sand through the glass I saw what he meant. Each grain stood out like the setting of a ring, and each grain was transparent, and sparkled, but not one grain was green! About half the grains were yellow and the other half were blue. It was only because they were so small and so mixed together that the sand looked green, because yellow and blue mixed makes green. I handed the glass to Wampus, and he looked and passed it on until we had all seen that the green sand was not green sand at all, but yellow sand and blue sand mixed.
After a while Jibby yawned.
“Well,” he said, “if we are going to get that treasure, we had better be stirring ourselves. Wampus, is Bill Catlin a good-natured man or is he—”
“Aw, quit!” Wampus said, and turned as red as his bee stings. “Bill Catlin is all right. He will lend us a can of kerosene quick enough.”
So we fixed it that we would go up to Bill Catlin’s and get an oil can and some kerosene. Jibby said he would not go.
“Bill don’t know me,” he said, “and he might get frightened if he saw my nose.”
That was a joke, of course, and we coaxed Jibby to go with us, but he would not go. I think he wanted to punish us for not paying attention to him when he tried to tell us in his own way about the bees. He made one excuse after another. He said he looked such a silly that Bill would be afraid to trust us with kerosene if he was along. He said a lot of things like that. Finally he said we had better go without him.
“You needn’t take so long,” he said, “because you can all run fast. I know, because I heard you running.”
We left him lying there and went up through the woods to Bill Catlin’s. He was not at home, but his wife was a nice lady and let us have a gallon can full of kerosene. We stopped to eat a few grapes in Bill Catlin’s vineyard, to keep them from going to waste, and then we started across a field toward the woods again, but we had hardly climbed the fence when we saw Jibby coming toward us. He was on a slow lope, and he waved us back, so we stopped short and waited until he came up to us.
“Wait!” he said, and then he waited until he got his breath. “We’ve got to be careful now. The enemy is at the green sands.”
I laughed. I thought he meant the bees had come down there, or that, maybe, Jibby had run into another nest of them, but it was not that, and it was worse than anything we had ever thought could happen.
Jibby had been lying there on the bank by the green sands waiting for us when, all at once, he
