“I don’t like it,” I said. “I’ll bet Jibby has something in his mind that we don’t know anything about. I’m going with him. When Jibby Jones talks like a crazy man, you want to look out; he’s always talking sense then.” So I started to follow Jibby, but Wampus Smale called me back, and the three of them--Wampus and Tad and Skippy--talked to me and said we would all look silly if we let Jibby Jones scare us with a lot of nonsense talk. By the time they had talked enough, Jibby was going out of sight, so I made up my mind I would stick to the fellows. We picked up our tools and started for the dead pine tree. I was worried a little, even though it all looked as simple as crossing a room to pick up a paper. It seemed that there must be something about the green sand in the Run that meant more than we thought, or something else. I rather knew that Jibby would not go off to get a grain of sand for his collection just then, when the treasure was so near, unless he had something worth while in his mind. I remembered what he had said about the green sand being, perhaps, the marks to show the old land pirate’s men the way to the buried treasure--“Go up the Mississippi until you come to a creek five miles below Riverbank; go up the creek until you come to green sand in the creek bottom; then climb the right bank of the creek and find a signal pine, and dig under the pine.” That was what Jibby had thought out as the directions old John A. Murrell might have given back in 1835. I was worried, but I did not have the slightest idea what Jibby’s real idea of the trouble to come was. We walked over to the dead pine and talked for a minute about the best way to begin. Wampus wanted to take the pick and dig right into the baked soil, but Skippy had another idea of it. “When this pine was planted,” he said, “it must have been a very small one, and if Murrell’s men buried the treasure under it they must have buried it close to the tree. Then the tree grew, and now, probably, the treasure is right under the tree, or under its big roots. I think we can save time by taking the axe and cutting down the tree.” “Oh, now you are talking like Jibby Jones!” Wampus said, and it was easy to see that he was plumb disgusted with Jibby Jones. “Go ahead and chop, if you want to; I’m going to dig.” He raised his pick above his head and brought it down hard into the dry soil, and Skippy swung the axe and chopped into the dead pine tree. Almost that same instant Tad Willing jumped about four feet into the air and yelped like a scalded dog, and when he hit the ground he grabbed his ankle and yelped again, and then broke for the brick house at about forty miles an hour, batting at his head and yipping like an Indian. And Skippy and Wampus Smale were not far behind him.