[Illustration: “THIS IS MY BIG SUIT.”] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JIBBY JONES A STORY OF MISSISSIPPI RIVER ADVENTURE FOR BOYS BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR G. DOVE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge ------------------------------------------------------------------------ COPYRIGHT, 1921 AND 1922, BY THE SPRAGUE PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS I. Oliver Parmenter Jones II. The Pearl-Diggers III. The Climbing Rabbit IV. Do Fish Climb Trees? V. The Fishing Prize VI. The Prize-Winner VII. The Tough Customer VIII. The Red-headed Bandit IX. The Abduction of Rover X. The Treasure Hunt XI. Where is Greenland? XII. The Worm Mine XIII. The Viking Ship XIV. Uncle Beeswax XV. The Grape Tree XVI. Congo Magic XVII. Grains of Sand XVIII. Pirate’s Treasure XIX. The Tough Customer appears XX. Orlando XXI. Winged Enemies XXII. A New Swimming-Hole XXIII. Treasure Trove XXIV. The Treasure ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ILLUSTRATIONS - “This is my big suit” - “I guess he’s got a real nose for fish” - Slapping our knees and chanting away like lunatics - Skippy and I threw an end of the rope into the well and pulled the Tough Customer out Drawn by Arthur G. Dove ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JIBBY JONES CHAPTER I OLIVER PARMENTER JONES Everybody knows that the Mississippi River is just about the biggest river in the world, and we boys who live on the shore of it are mighty proud of it--proud of the river and proud of living on the edge of it, where we can swim in it and look at it and fish in it and row boats on it. If we wanted to we could say to each other, “Come on! Let’s go down and swim awhile in the biggest river in the world, or, anyway, the almost biggest!”