I laughed. I thought he meant the bees had come down there, or that, maybe, Jibby had run into another nest of them, but it was not that, and it was worse than anything we had ever thought could happen. Jibby had been lying there on the bank by the green sands waiting for us when, all at once, he heard voices--men’s voices. They were the voices of men coming up the Run, and one or two were complaining that this could not be the right creek, and that they had come more than far enough up it, but others said they had better be sure and go a little farther to see whether there was any green sand. 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 Red-Headed 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. To-morrow 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--Hill-Billies 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.