Jibby put everything that was left of the lunch back in the basket and crept up the bank of the Run and hid the basket. Then he edged along down to where the men were and took a peek at them from the top of the bank. There were ten of them, seven white men and three negroes, and one of the white men had red hair and a scar over his eye. The negroes were loaded down with bags and bundles. They had stopped, and the negroes were complaining that they had carried that stuff far enough for one day. They said there was no hurry, and that the treasure would not get away after it had remained right in one place almost a hundred years, they guessed, and that it was no use working black men to death, anyway.
Then the Redheaded Bandit swore.
“You-all look mighty sharp you don’t let anything happen to that provender,” he said. “I’m a bad man when I get riled. I’m the great-grandson of my great-grandfather, and he killed more men than there are kinky hairs on all your worthless heads, and I don’t mind killing three more blacks right now, and I’ll do it if you let that food stuff get harmed.”
The other men growled and scowled at the blacks, too, then, and the negroes mumbled and scolded in low voices.
“Tell you what, Jim,” one of them said, “I reckon I feel about like these darks feel. We don’t know that this creek is Murrell’s Run nohow. We might go up and up and get to nowhere in the end. You’s pushin’ us too hard and steady, Jim. Tomorrow is another day.”
“Yes, and who knows how long we’ve got to be huntin’ for that treasure, Jake?” the man called Jim answered. “We ain’t got none too much food fora big gang like this, Jake. We-all can’t be skirmishing around the country for food, Jake, when we’re on an exhibition like this.”
He meant expedition.
“No,” Jake said, “but we can’t walk up every creek to the No’th Pole, Jim, either. We ain’t no Stefanssons or Pearys.”
They did not look like it, either, Jibby said. The seven whites looked like the mountaineers he and his father had seen in the Ozarks—Hillbillies they call them down there. They looked like the laziest lot that ever lived.
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Jake,” Jim said then. “Let the darks dump their stuff here, and we’ll go on up the creek a ways and sort of speculate around. That’s fair.”
“You white folks want to walk our foots off!” one of the blacks said then, but he put down his load.
“Hey, there, you!” Jim shouted. “Heft that stuff down easy, can’t you? Ain’t I told you often enough there’s dynamite in that bag?”
“I shore did heft it easy, boss,” the negro said. “I don’t heft no dynamite down hard.”
They talked awhile longer, and the white men decided to let the negroes stay to watch the dunnage, and they started off up the creek. The three black men stretched out on the yellow sand in the sun and got ready to go to sleep, and then Jibby stole away and came for us.
“Aw, pshaw!” Wampus said. “That ends it! Those men have dynamite and everything and they’ll get that treasure, and we’re beaten out of it!”
“Maybe!” Jibby said. “I don’t know yet. I remember when I was in New Orleans with my father and we went down to the levee and a bale of cotton rolled over.”
“What has that got to do with it?” Wampus asked.
“Why, a negro was asleep, stretched out on the ground,” Jibby said, “and the bale of cotton rolled on top of him and across him and then off of him again.”
“Did it kill him?” Skippy asked.
“No,” Jibby said. “That isn’t it. I was just telling you how one of those Southern negroes sleeps when he stretches out in the sun. This one just brushed his hand across his face and said, ‘Shoo fly! go ’way!’ and went on sleeping. Sleeping is the best thing some of those negroes do.”
“Well, what?” I asked.
“Nothing much,” Jibby said. “I was only thinking that the coming of this gang of treasure-hunters is the best luck we’ve had yet. We only guessed there was treasure here; now we know it. Now all we have to do is get rid of these men.”
“And that is so easy! Only ten of them!” I said.
“Well, I am surprised at you, George,” Jibby drawled. “You talk as if they were ten bumblebees.”
“But how are we going to get rid of them?” Wampus asked.
Jibby fondled his nose gently.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “they won’t like it here and will go away without being asked to go.”
Well, I didn’t like it much, but Jibby picked up the oil can and started for the woods along the Run, and, of course, a fellow could not hang back, so we all went. When we were near the edge of the bank, we all got down and wiggled forward until we could look over the edge and down at the place where the three negroes were asleep. They were sound asleep, too—plenty of sound, if you mean the sound of snoring.
The bank was about twelve feet high there, but not straight up and down. It slanted toward the creek and was covered with grass and weeds and a few small bushes as creek banks usually are. The dunnage of the treasure-hunters was piled in one pile close to where the foot of the bank met the sandy stretch on which the three black men were asleep. We looked down awhile, and then wiggled back
