We were all ready to start then, and Wampus picked up the can of kerosene and waded across the creek, and Tad and Skippy Root and I followed him. Jibby sort of waited for Bill Catlin while Bill slid down the bank, and just then we heard voices of men. The men were coming up the creek, and we knew them by their voices. They were the Jim and Jake and the rest that had been up the creek before--the tough customers that had come all the way from Arkansas to hunt for the Murrell treasure. They were coming back. I ran up the bank of the creek in a hurry, and so did Wampus and Tad and Skippy. I thought sure there was going to be trouble if those men caught us, and I looked through the trees toward the road, all ready to run for it. What I saw made me look twice. “Gee whiz!” I said. “Look there, will you!” It was enough to make any one look. What Wampus had said to his folks must have leaked out, or something, for it looked as if every man and boy in Riverbank was coming up the road toward the dead pine to dig for that land pirate’s treasure. It looked like ten thousand, but I guess it was only about a thousand men and boys. There were old men that could hardly walk, and boys that were so young they could hardly walk, and middle-aged men, and even a few women and some girls, and they all had spades or picks or shovels. There were plenty of boys--dozens of them. And our old friend, the Tough Customer tramp, was right there in the front of them all. I was still looking when Jibby Jones and Bill Catlin climbed the bank to where they could see that great army of treasure-hunters coming up the road. Jibby was talking to Bill Catlin, telling him who the men were that were coming up the creek, and the minute he saw the crowd on the road he thought of something. None of the rest of us would have thought of it, but Jibby did. “Mr. Catlin,” he said, “just look at that crowd! They’re coming to dig for treasure, and I shouldn’t wonder if all the rest of Riverbank came next. It is like a rush to the gold fields, or to the oil fields. Everybody that can come is coming. Why don’t you make some money out of it?” “Money? I’m always glad enough to make money,” said Bill Catlin, “but how can I make money out of that crowd?” “You can’t out of all of them,” Jibby said, “but you can out of some of them. You could make, anyway, a dollar apiece out of a lot of them. It’s the kind of treasure trove we can go half and half on. You have a right to keep all the people off this part of your farm, and you have a right to charge them a dollar apiece for letting them come on it and dig for treasure. If you say so Wampus and George and Skippy and Tad will do the collecting. We’ll collect a dollar apiece and give you half of it.” Bill Catlin thought it over and said: “All right; that’s a go.”