“Come on out,” he said. “If we are going to dig for that land pirate’s treasure to-day, we had better be burning out the bumblebees and getting at it. Bill Catlin was home this time, and he’s coming over. He wanted to know what we were going to do with the kerosene, and I had to tell him, and he’s going to make us give him half of all we find.” “Why? What right has he to make us do that?” I wanted to know, for I didn’t think Bill Catlin or anybody else had a right to any of that treasure when Jibby had been the only one to think of it being there, and when we had planned so hard to get it. “Treasure trove, that’s why!” Wampus said. And just then Bill Catlin came to the edge of the creek bank and looked down at us getting into our clothes. “Well, boys,” he said, “here I am. I hope we find enough to make us all rich and happy all the rest of our lives. Hurry into your duds and we’ll get busy.” Jibby Jones was putting on his pants as slow and deliberate as if he had all day to do it in, and right there I made a mistake. I ought to have kept my mouth shut until Jibby had his clothes on and his spectacles on and was ready to talk, because that is always the safe thing to do. But I had to say my say. “We don’t need any help,” I said. “We don’t want to divide this with anybody. Jibby Jones thought of the treasure being here, and it is going to be ours--all of it.” “That so?” Bill Catlin asked. “How about treasure trove, my son?” “What do you mean?” I asked. “All I mean,” said Bill Catlin, grinning, “is that it seems to me I’ve heard somewhere that there’s a law of treasure trove, and that half of any hidden treasure that is found on any man’s land belongs to the man that owns the land.” “All right!” I said, quick. “That settles it. Wampus’s father owns this land and you don’t.” “I lease it,” said Bill Catlin. “I rent it of Wampus’s father. As I look at it, that gives me everything that is on the land or in the land. Why, I could order Wampus’s father off this land if I wanted to, or the whole lot of you, for that matter. I could sue you for trespass this very minute, if I wanted to, for coming on this land. Sure, I could! I guess that makes me even better than the owner. I guess it entitles me to half the treasure we find.” What Bill Catlin said took all the wind out of my sails in a second. There was one sail it did not take the wind out of, though; that was the jib on Jibby Jones’s face--the nose he called his jib sail. Jibby was hitching up his trousers as if Bill Catlin or nothing in the world mattered a cent. “Is that so, Jibby?” Tad Willing asked.