Jibby Jones : $b A story of Mississippi River adventure for boysButler, Ellis Parker
General
Jibby Jones : $b A story of Mississippi River adventure for boys
Butler, Ellis Parker
Adventure and adventurers -- Juvenile fiction; Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Mississippi River -- Juvenile fiction
“Certainly,” said Jibby Jones. “So I imagined I was standing there
looking at the signal pine. Then I knew there was just one place where
the treasure could be--it would be planted right at the root of the old
signal pine. For that is what John A. Murrell would order: ‘Plant a
signal pine at the corner of the farm, and bury the treasure at the foot
of the pine.’ Even if John A. Murrell was dying, he could tell exactly
where the treasure was, in a few words, and nobody could miss it. He
might be in Asia, and he could send a man directly to it. ‘Go up the
Mississippi until you come to a creek about five miles below Riverbank,
Iowa. Go up the creek until you come to green sand. Climb the bank on
your left and find a signal pine in the corner of a farm. Dig at the
foot of the pine.’”
Well, this might be wonderful imagination or it might be plumb nonsense,
but out there in the dark, walking home past the cemetery, it sounded
great to us. We all told Jibby he was a wonder, and he said he was not,
that it was just ordinary common sense.
“I don’t say the treasure is there,” he said modestly, “because some one
may have dug it up, but if it is anywhere it is there, at the foot of
that signal pine tree.”
“But I’ll say you used some imagination,” said Skippy.
“Oh, no!” Jibby said, still more modest. “That wasn’t much. I don’t call
that much of anything. But maybe I can show you, sometime, what
imagination is worth.”
So then we went on talking about the treasure and the 1804 dollar, and
how we must not talk about it outside, but Jibby Jones said it would be
all right to tell our fathers and mothers about it, because they would
not tell. We let Wampus Smale take the 1804 dollar home, because he said
his mother had a silver wash that she used to dip silver things in to
make them as bright as new. The 1804 dollar was not worn smooth--it was
as sharp as if it had just come from the mint--but it was as black as
iron, and we thought it would be a good thing to have it brightened.
We did not see how we could get out to the old Murrell farm to dig the
treasure--if it was there--before the next Saturday, so we decided on
that, and then we went home.
The sad thing happened the next morning--Sunday morning--when we were
all going to Sunday school together, and the Tough Customer was to
blame. He lost the 1804 dollar for us.
When Wampus got home that Saturday night, his folks were at supper and
his father made him go and wash up and come right to the table, so he
did. When he sat down at the table his father and mother were talking
about Mary--their hired girl--and the man she had in the kitchen just
then.
“Well,” Wampus’s mother was saying, “I did not like the looks of him,
but Mary said he was her cousin, so I said she could give him some
supper in the kitchen.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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