“That don’t mean there is any treasure anywhere where we could get it,” said Wampus, who was always objecting to things.
“That’s what I’m coming to,” Jibby Jones said. “All through that country there were people who were afraid of John A. Murrell and his gangs, and they sheltered the pirates and fed them and hid them when the pirates were in danger. They were willing to hide the negroes and the horses the gang stole. And the sign that a man was a friend was one lone pine tree planted in the corner of a yard or of a farm or plantation. That was the sign of a friend’s place. Whenever any of the Murrell gang saw a lone pine in a corner, they knew it was safe to go there and ask shelter or food or a hiding-place. The land piracy was so huge and successful that John A. Murrell grew so bold he planned a gigantic uprising of negroes and Murrellers all over the South, to make a new nation and grab everything, but the news of it leaked out and he was caught and jailed. And not a cent of his money was ever found.”
“But how does that prove—”
“Wait!” Jibby drawled. “The old negro Mose, when he was paddling us up and down the St. Francis River, said he wished he was young and spry again, because if he was he would go up the Mississippi to Iowa, and hunt for the land pirate’s treasure. He said his father had been John A. Murrell’s slave and bodyguard and private servant. He said he had a map hidden away in a safe place—a map John A. Murrell’s own brother drew with his own hand and sent to John A. Murrell by a safe messenger, when John A. Murrell was in prison. But the messenger could not reach John A. Murrell, so he gave the map to Mose’s father.”
“What was the map?” I asked.
“Well, Mose said it was a map to show where the land pirate’s treasure was hidden,” Jibby said. “He said John A. Murrell’s brother came up North here, where he would not be known, and hid the treasure. And this is what old Mose said: ‘Riverbank—that’s where all that money is hid away at. That’s what the map say—Riverbank.’ And this is Riverbank, isn’t it? You’d call this ‘up North,’ wouldn’t you?”
I was excited right away, but Skippy whittled a few shavings off the stick he was whittling.
“Yes,” he said then, “but you didn’t see the map, did you?”
“No,” Jibby said.
“Well, I think it is mighty slim,” Skippy said. “Most likely it is just some negro talk. If the map does say ‘Riverbank,’ it may mean ‘river bank’—the bank of any river anywhere. And anybody would be foolish to send all his treasure a thousand miles away, to be hidden. A man wouldn’t do that; it don’t sound reasonable. You might as well look for fish in the tops of trees as look for that pirate treasure anywhere around here.”
“Or rabbits,” I said, and Skippy and Tad laughed, but Wampus did not laugh.
“Rabbits do climb trees!” Wampus said, ready to get mad in a minute.
Jibby looked at Wampus in that solemn, slow way of his.
“I don’t believe rabbits climb trees, Wampus,” Jibby said.
We had been talking about rabbits before Jibby came in out of the rain, but I don’t remember what started us. I guess maybe I started it by saying it looked as if it might rain all day, and then Wampus said he remembered a worse rain—the one when we had the school picnic. Then Skippy said he had to laugh when he thought of how Sue Smale’s black straw hat sort of melted in the rain that day, and the black ran down her face and on her yellow hair, because she had blacked the hat with shoe polish. Then Tad had said girls did things like that: they were silly. And I said, “Yes, you bet they’re silly, why, Sue says rabbits climb trees.” Then Wampus got mad and said, “Rabbits do climb trees; I know they do, because my Uncle Oscar saw one in a tree.”
So now Wampus told Jibby his Uncle Oscar had seen a rabbit up a tree.
“I guess it was a squirrel,” said Jibby. “Squirrels climb trees; rabbits don’t.”
“I guess my Uncle Oscar knows,” said Wampus, ready to get mad in a minute at anybody that said his Uncle Oscar did not know. “He told me, and he told Sue, and that’s why she said so. He was over in the Illinois bottom land last spring, when the river was high, rowing around in a skiff, and he saw a rabbit in a tree. It had climbed there. Uncle Oscar said so.”
“I don’t want to dispute any conclusion your Uncle Oscar drew from the fact that a rabbit was in a tree, Wampus,” said Jibby Jones, “but couldn’t it have been a squirrel? Squirrels climb trees.”
Tad shouted. It was too funny to see Jibby sitting there like a wise old owl telling us that squirrels climb trees. He might as well have said water was wet, we knew it so well.
“Aw!” said Wampus; “I guess my uncle knows a rabbit from a squirrel. It was a rabbit. It was a regular cottontail.”
Jibby blinked his eyes and thought this over.
“Perhaps it didn’t climb the tree,” he said. “Perhaps the water had
