Jibby Jones

He did not bother to try to see what the Arkansawyers did, but we saw. They were standing in the road, looking at the sheriff and the badge on his coat, and were talking among themselves when Bill Catlin went up to the sheriff and spoke to him and pointed to the Arkansas men. The sheriff nodded his head, and looked down to see that his badge was in plain sight, and then he started for the seven Arkansas men, going pretty fast. Those seven men took one look at him and at Bill Catlin and turned and ran across country, jumping the fence and getting away from there as fast as they could.

That was the last we ever saw of them. I don’t know what was on their minds, but they must have had mighty guilty consciences about something. Guilty consciences have no use for a sheriff.

There were plenty of bumblebees left by the old pine tree, and the Tough Customer had to keep batting at the holes in his shirt that he had made to see through, but Jibby had the best of that because he was wearing his tortoiseshell rimmed spectacles, and no bee, not even a bumblebee, can sting through glass. He picked up a spade and began to dig, and he had hardly stuck spade into the ground twice before he had hit a metal box. He jammed the spade in again, and pried on the handle and up came the box. He did not wait there. He grabbed the box and ran.

The Tough Customer could not see very well, but he knew somebody was getting something that he was not getting and he pulled his shirt from his head. It was a bad mistake. Jibby was gone and the treasure box was gone, but the bees were not all gone. One of them told the Tough Customer so and told him quick and hard, and for the next minute the Tough Customer was not thinking of treasure; he was thinking of bees.

Jibby came running to where we were, and the whole of Riverbank⁠—or all those that had come out to hunt treasure⁠—came running after him, to see what he had found. They got to us just as we had all crowded around Jibby and when he was stamping on the box with his heel to break it open. It broke open easy enough.

I jumped at it and grabbed for the gold money that was in it. It was not much; it was only one hundred gold pieces⁠—ten-dollar pieces⁠—one thousand dollars in all, but Jibby was opening a faded piece of old paper that had been in the box.

The writing on the paper was so old we could hardly read it, but we did make it out. This is what it said:

John⁠—I have abided in this locality twenty years now, but no word from you and very poor living here, so mean to go to California, thinking shall do better gold mining than farming. Am taking that which you left with me and will keep it twenty more years, as you said to do, before I touch any of it. If you hunt me look for me near a signal pine as agreed. I am leaving one thousand dollars in case you come and need it to pay expenses. It is part of what you sent.

Murrell

So that was what the land pirate’s treasure amounted to, but one thousand dollars is a lot better than nothing. I believe one man from Riverbank did go to California to look for a signal pine and to hunt for treasure under it, but probably he did not find it. There are millions of pine trees in California, or trees that would do for pine trees.

When we counted up, we found we had taken in eight hundred and fifty-six dollars from the Riverbank treasure-hunters, and we got half of it, which was eighty-five dollars and sixty cents apiece for Jibby Jones and Wampus and Skippy Root and Tad and me, because we had to give Bill Catlin his half first. And then we got two hundred dollars apiece of the one thousand dollars that was in the box that Jibby had dug up. We didn’t send it to Jim from Arkansas, even if he was John A. Murrell’s great-grandson. I’ll tell you why.

When Jibby was opening the box, the Tough Customer and nearly all the Riverbankers came crowding around to see what Jibby had found, and when they saw, one of the men said:

“Pshaw! Only a thousand dollars! That don’t amount to much.”

“No,” I said, “and we can’t keep it, anyway, because in this country hidden treasure has to be given back to whoever the first owner was, or to his heirs, and we know who the first owner was and we know who his heir is.”

Right there Jibby Jones surprised us.

“No,” he said, “we don’t know. We’re going to keep this money ourselves, because we don’t know who the real owner was, and we never can find out.”

“Why can’t we?” I asked him.

“Because nobody in the world knows who the first owner was,” Jibby said. “John A. Murrell never did own it; he stole it. The man he stole it from was the real owner, and John A. Murrell never did have any right to have it. And how can you ever find out who owned it away back in 1835? Nobody could do that. So it is ours and we’ll keep it.”

And we did. We were just starting back for town when all at once Jibby Jones stopped short.

“Wait!” he said. “I’ve almost forgotten something. I’ve got to go back to the creek.”

“My land!” Wampus said. “What for?”

“To get two grains of that green sand for my collection of grains of sand,” Jibby said. “You can never tell what will happen. Tomorrow, or before I have a chance to get a specimen, my father may decide to go to Chile