XII + 

The Worm Mine + 

The next morning we all went down to the shaft-house, which was the old shack near Mosquito Hollow, and set to work in the worm mine. Jibby’s idea was that we should mine some first-class worms and then set a trotline in the river and bait it with the worms, and twice a day we would “run” the trotline and get the fish. Then we would sell the fish to our folks and to the other families on our island. And, every day when we were not running the trotline, we would be catching fish with poles, and we would sell those fish, too. And before the summer was over, we would, maybe, have enough money to have Wampus’s motorboat mended. + 

Well, I don’t know how that would have worked out, because we did not raise the money that way. We got it by solving the mystery of the stolen cider that we had heard the Rat talking to the Tough Customer about. But the credit belongs to Jibby Jones⁠—I guess you will see that. + 

It was Skippy Root’s father that offered the reward, because the barrels were his barrels. They had been stolen from his wholesale grocery house down in Riverbank. + 

The reward was twenty-five dollars, and there was something funny about the whole business, and my father and Mr. Root and Mr. Smale, and Tad’s father and Mr. Jones knew the joke and laughed about it a lot up on Birch Island where we were spending the summer, but they did not tell us or anybody. The notice in the paper only said, “$25 Reward for information leading to the recovery of five barrels stolen from the Root Wholesale Grocery,” or something like that. But I’ll tell you what the joke was. We found out later on. + 

One of the things Mr. Root sold in his wholesale grocery was cider⁠—sweet cider⁠—and he sold it by the barrel, but he had five barrels of sweet cider that turned hard while it was in his grocery cellar, and it was against the law to sell hard cider or to have it around, so he thought he had better get rid of it. He didn’t want to go to jail. Nobody does, I guess. + 

So one day Mr. Root went out onto the platform back of his grocery and he said to his truck-driver: + 

“Joe, I’ve got five barrels of cider in the cellar that has turned hard, and I want to get rid of it. I want you to haul those five barrels down to the river tomorrow and empty that hard cider into the river and bring the barrels back. I don’t want any hard cider around here.” + 

“All right, Mr. Root,” Joe said; “I’ll do it tomorrow.” + 

Well, that was all right, but it happened that there were a lot of men in the alley near the platform just then, standing around and looking at a trained bear an Italian had, and one of them must have heard Mr. Root and wanted hard cider, for that night the grocery cellar was broken into and five barrels were stolen out of it. But the joke was that the thief did not get the five barrels of hard cider; he got five barrels of molasses. He made a mistake. He took the molasses and left the hard cider. So the next day Joe dumped out the cider and Mr. Root offered a reward for the molasses. But nobody came for the reward, and it looked as if all that molasses was gone forever. And the thing Mr. Root and father and all the men laughed about was how surprised the thieves would be when they broached a barrel to have a good drink of hard cider and found it was molasses. They thought the thieves would be pretty badly surprised and scared, because, instead of taking five barrels of cider that Mr. Root did not want, they would have taken five barrels of molasses he did want. They would be mighty worried thieves. + 

But nobody found the molasses or caught the thieves and everybody forgot all about it. + 

We worked inside the shack at first, digging deeper and deeper, and we got pretty good worms and quite a lot of them. + 

“But say!” Wampus said, all of a sudden. “Say! Anybody can come into our mine and mine worms; we don’t really own it. We don’t know who does own this ground down here at this end of the island.” + 

Jibby stroked his nose awhile and thought. + 

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve got to find out about that. Mostly, miners can mine wherever they want to. The man that owns the land owns the surface, but, when a prospector locates a mine and sinks his shaft, he can mine anywhere he wants to, underground. I don’t know whether a worm miner has that right or not. I know it is true of mineral mines, but a worm isn’t quite a mineral; it is an animal. Anyway, I think we had better stake out a claim here, because that is what miners always do.” + 

So we staked out a claim, stakes at the four corners, so that it took in the whole of Mosquito Hollow. It turned out to be all right, anyway, because Skippy’s father owned the shack and the hollow, but we felt better when we had our claim staked out. It was more regular and like real miners. + 

We got the shaft about as deep as we thought it needed to be, and the next morning we began to tunnel. We aimed the tunnel so it would go under the back of the shack toward Mosquito Hollow, because that was the best worm-bearing ore on the island, and, as soon as we began to tunnel, Jibby got a saw and a hatchet and some nails and sent some of us to get driftwood planks and boards, to use as mine timber to shore up the tunnel with. + 

Almost as soon as we began to run the tunnel out toward Mosquito Hollow, we struck better worm ore, and it got better all the time. Out of two spadefuls of ore we could refine enough worms to last a boy for a whole day’s fishing, even if the white perch were stealing his bait as fast as he could put it on the hook. In half an hour after we had begun to tunnel, we had enough worms to last the six of us a week. + 

“That’s enough,” Jibby said. “We’ll quit now and put up a sign on the shack⁠—‘Five Friends’ Worm Mine. Keep Out!’⁠—and not mine any more until we need more worms.” + 

I didn’t like that idea; none of us did. Mining worms was more fun than fishing or anything else, and we all hated to stop, but it was Wampus who thought of the big idea. + 

“Look here,” he said, leaning on his spade, “what’s the use of quitting? We’ve got a worm mine here that is the best and only in the world, and we’ve got the richest worm ore anybody could ever find. It is the driest season for twenty years, and worms are harder to get than they ever were. That’s so, isn’t it?” + 

It was, and we all said so. + 

“All right, then,” Wampus said, “now is the time to mine worms. Now is the time everybody will be glad to buy worms. Now is the time when we have the only worm mine in existence, but in a week or so somebody will hear of the Five Friends’ Worm Mine and start another worm mine somewhere, and then there will be more and more worm mines started and everybody will be selling worms.” + 

“Selling them?” said Skippy. + 

“Sure!” Wampus said. “I said ‘selling them’ and I mean ‘selling them.’ Why, right here on Birch Island, we can sell a can of worms a day to every family on the island. How many? Twenty families? And some will need two cans. Say twenty-four cans a day. And, leaving out Sundays, there are about sixty-five days that the families are up here⁠—that makes one hundred and thirty dozen cans of worms for the season. If we only got ten cents a can, that would be one hundred and fifty-six dollars.” + 

“Ten cents a can for worms like these!” exclaimed Tad, holding up a big one. “They are worth a cent apiece! If we put one hundred in a can we ought to get a dollar a can.” + 

“That would be one thousand and fifty-six dollars, then,” Wampus said. “And only for what we sell on this island. Oh, boy! And think of how many people go fishing from town who don’t spend the summer on this island⁠—hundreds!” + 

“From town?” Skippy cried. “What do you say ‘from town’ for? From all up and down the old Mississippi! From all over the United States, everywhere! Yes, and in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America people go fishing, don’t they? If we are going to sell worms.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Canned ones,” I said, “packed in cans with holes in the lids, like pepper-boxes, so the worms can breathe.” + 

We were all getting excited⁠—all except Jibby Jones. All Jibby said was: + 

“Aluminum cans, because, if there are holes in the lids and the earth in the cans is moist, cans made of tin would rust.” + 

“And, anyway,” said Wampus, jumping at that idea quick, “aluminum cans would be better than tin; they would be lighter to ship and lighter for fishermen to carry. When we get to shipping tons and tons of worms, the difference in the weight of the cans will save us hundreds of dollars in freight. And I say we ought to have a special can with a wire handle, like a lard pail, only smaller, so boys could carry cans of our worms easily when they go fishing.” + 

“Sure! Of course, we’ll do that,” I said, “and we ought to have a patent lid⁠—one that will come off and fit on again, like the lid of a baking-powder can.” + 

“And with letters stamped on it,” said Skippy. “It ought to be stamped ‘Five Friends’ Mine⁠—Best Quality Fishing Worms⁠—Riverbank, Iowa.’ ” + 

“Yes,” said Wampus, “when they were our best quality, but you don’t think we are going to throw away all the medium and small worms we get out of the mine, do you? No, sir! We’ll have three grades⁠—Best Quality, Prime Quality, and Family Quality. They will be one dollar a can, seventy-five cents a can, and fifty cents a can.” + 

“Except the half-size and the trial cans,” said Tad. + 

“Yes, and except the pails of bulk worms, assorted,” said Skippy. “We’ve got to have some put up that way, and maybe some in kegs and some in barrels, for general stores in the places where they don’t catch anything but goggle-eyes and mudcats. These would be the cheapest we would sell. They would be for stores where boys would come in with their own old rusty tomato cans and say, ‘Say, mister, gimme two cents’ worth of fishing worms.’ ” + 

Well, we went on planning about the worm mine that way for two or three days and we kept right on digging the tunnel out under Mosquito Hollow and timbering it up. Here and there we ran into sand, which has no worms in it, and then we shifted the direction of the tunnel a little. Jibby said the proper way was to follow the worm-veins wherever they went. + 