III + 

The Climbing Rabbit + 

Maybe feeling sorry that Jibby had to go away was what made us feel so glad he had found that pearl and did not have to go. Teasing him had come to be part of the fun we counted on having, and, when we saw old Jib come out of his cottage, one or the other of us would nearly always say: “There’s Jibby⁠—let’s go tell him something about the river.” And between-times we thought up things to tell him. But all the time we were getting to like him more and more. + 

A couple of days after Mr. Willing had bought the pearl, Skippy and Wampus and Tad and I were under my folks’ cottage, because it was raining. There was always plenty to do on the island, enough kinds of fun each summer to keep us busy ten years, and on rainy days we could always sit under one of the cottages and whittle or talk or make mud statues. The rain was coming down in regular slats, as if it meant to rain all day and all night, and we were talking about one thing and another when Jibby Jones came dodging through the rain and looked in at us. + 

“Hello, Main Mast,” Skippy called out to him; “lower yourself and blow in out of the rain.” + 

Sometimes we called him “Main Mast” and sometimes we called him “Jibby”; he never cared what we called him. So he came in out of the wet and sat on a box. For a minute or two he watched us making mud animals, or whittling, or whatever we were doing. Then he said: + 

“Do you know whether anybody named M’rell ever lived in Riverbank, or down below Riverbank, or up here above Riverbank? A man named M’rell?” + 

“No,” I said, and Tad and Wampus and Skippy said the same. None of us had ever heard of anybody named M’rell. + 

“Nobody named that ever lived around here that I ever heard of,” Tad said. “Why?” + 

“I thought maybe you did know of somebody named M’rell that had lived somewhere around here,” Jibby said. + 

“Orpheus Cadwallader might know,” I said, for Orpheus was the caretaker of the island and knew nearly everybody up and down the river. And then we talked about something else, and that was a pity, for if we had asked Jibby another question about M’rell just then, we might have saved a lot of time in starting our hunt for the land pirate’s treasure. If we had asked him how he spelled M’rell, we might have saved weeks and weeks. So, after half an hour or so, Jibby spoke of M’rell again. + 

“When I was down on the St. Francis River⁠—” he began, and we all yelled, because the rivers Jibby had been on were getting to be a joke. You couldn’t mention a thing but it reminded Jibby of some river he had been on⁠—the Nile or the Hudson or the Amazon or some other river. It was all true enough, too, because his father wrote books about rivers and had been on most of the rivers in the world, and had taken Jibby there; but it was a sort of joke the way old Jibby was always dragging in a river, no matter what we were talking about. So he waited until we stopped hooting, and then he went on. + 

“It occurred to me,” he said, “that it was selfish of me to keep what I know about M’rell to myself, because you boys are so good to me. When I was down on the St. Francis River with father, there was an old negro named Mose, who said he was over one hundred years old. He used to paddle us around in a skiff when we went fishing for bass and he told us about M’rell.” + 

“Who was M’rell?” Wampus asked. “What has M’rell got to do with us?” + 

Now, I want you to notice, right here, that Jibby said “M’rell” and that we all said “M’rell” because he did. And the reason Jibby pronounced the name that way was because that old negro Mose had called it that. The name was really Murrell, when we came to find out. If we had seen that name written or spelled out, we would not have called it “M’rell”; we would have called it “Murr‑ell” more as if it was “Murl.” But Jibby called it “Mur‑rell,” more as if it was “M’rell.” And “Murl” and “M’rell” don’t sound at all alike. His way was as if it rhymed with “tell,” like: + 

“Listen, my children, and I will tell + 

A wonderful story about M’rell.” + 

The way we pronounced that name was as if it rhymed with “squirrel,” like this: + 

“Once there was a pretty squirrel + 

That was owned by John A. Murrell.” + 

Anyway, Wampus asked, “What has M’rell got to do with us?” and Jibby went ahead and told us, sitting there under our cottage out of the rain. + 

“It’s about a land pirate’s treasure,” he said. “Father says it is probably nonsense, and that there are a million chances to one that there is no treasure, and that if there ever was any I could never find it.” + 

“What is a land pirate?” Skippy asked. “I never heard of one.” + 

“Neither had I until I was down on the St. Francis River,” said Jibby. “That river is in Missouri and Arkansas, and it empties into the Mississippi just above Helena, Arkansas. Father was in Helena, Arkansas, studying that part of the Mississippi River, and that is one of the parts of the South where the land pirate did his pirate work⁠—around Helena and thereabouts.” + 

He stopped to chuckle. + 

“What are you laughing about?” I asked him. + 

“Why, about the Helenas,” Jibby said. “When father and I were on the Yellowstone River, at Billings, Montana, we happened to mention Helena, Montana, and the folks said, ‘Up here in Montana we don’t call it Hel‑e‑na; we call it Hel’na. The town in Arkansas is Hel‑e‑na, but ours is Hel’na,’ and when we got to Helena, Arkansas, and called it Hel‑e‑na, they said, ‘Down here in Arkansas we don’t call it Hel‑e‑na; we call it Hel’na. The town in Montana is Hel‑e‑na; but ours is Hel’na.’ + 

“At any rate,” Jibby went on, “the Mississippi at Helena is mostly muddy and not good for bass fishing, but the St. Francis is clearer, so we went up to the St. Francis to see what it was like and to catch some bass. And the old negro named Mose told us about this John A. Murrell, who was the greatest land pirate that ever lived, and had ten times as many men as any sea pirate that ever sailed the seas. He pirated all the way from Tennessee to Mississippi and Arkansas⁠—” + 

“But what has that to do with Iowa and us?” Wampus asked. “That’s about a thousand miles from here.” + 

“That is what I am coming to,” Jibby said. “It was away back in 1835, and around then, that John A. Murrell was a land pirate. And you want to remember that John A. Murrell was not a one-horse horsethief; he was a big land pirate. He had about one thousand men helping him. They stole slaves and horses and carried them away and sold them, and robbed and stole and broke every law there was. There were two sorts of Murrell’s men. Two hundred and fifty of them were the Grand Council, and did the planning, and furnished the brains, and seven hundred and fifty others did the mean work⁠—stole and robbed. But that was not all. There were hundreds and hundreds of people who seemed respectable who helped John A. Murrell. Some were in the gang and got part of the loot, and some were just afraid of him and helped him because they thought he would murder them and steal their slaves and cattle, and burn their houses and barns if they did not help him.” + 

“That don’t mean there is any treasure anywhere where we could get it,” said Wampus, who was always objecting to things. + 

“That’s what I’m coming to,” Jibby Jones said. “All through that country there were people who were afraid of John A. Murrell and his gangs, and they sheltered the pirates and fed them and hid them when the pirates were in danger. They were willing to hide the negroes and the horses the gang stole. And the sign that a man was a friend was one lone pine tree planted in the corner of a yard or of a farm or plantation. That was the sign of a friend’s place. Whenever any of the Murrell gang saw a lone pine in a corner, they knew it was safe to go there and ask shelter or food or a hiding-place. The land piracy was so huge and successful that John A. Murrell grew so bold he planned a gigantic uprising of negroes and Murrellers all over the South, to make a new nation and grab everything, but the news of it leaked out and he was caught and jailed. And not a cent of his money was ever found.” + 

“But how does that prove⁠—” + 

“Wait!” Jibby drawled. “The old negro Mose, when he was paddling us up and down the St. Francis River, said he wished he was young and spry again, because if he was he would go up the Mississippi to Iowa, and hunt for the land pirate’s treasure. He said his father had been John A. Murrell’s slave and bodyguard and private servant. He said he had a map hidden away in a safe place⁠—a map John A. Murrell’s own brother drew with his own hand and sent to John A. Murrell by a safe messenger, when John A. Murrell was in prison. But the messenger could not reach John A. Murrell, so he gave the map to Mose’s father.” + 

“What was the map?” I asked. + 

“Well, Mose said it was a map to show where the land pirate’s treasure was hidden,” Jibby said. “He said John A. Murrell’s brother came up North here, where he would not be known, and hid the treasure. And this is what old Mose said: ‘Riverbank⁠—that’s where all that money is hid away at. That’s what the map say⁠—Riverbank.’ And this is Riverbank, isn’t it? You’d call this ‘up North,’ wouldn’t you?” + 

I was excited right away, but Skippy whittled a few shavings off the stick he was whittling. + 

“Yes,” he said then, “but you didn’t see the map, did you?” + 

“No,” Jibby said. + 

“Well, I think it is mighty slim,” Skippy said. “Most likely it is just some negro talk. If the map does say ‘Riverbank,’ it may mean ‘river bank’⁠—the bank of any river anywhere. And anybody would be foolish to send all his treasure a thousand miles away, to be hidden. A man wouldn’t do that; it don’t sound reasonable. You might as well look for fish in the tops of trees as look for that pirate treasure anywhere around here.” + 

“Or rabbits,” I said, and Skippy and Tad laughed, but Wampus did not laugh. + 

“Rabbits do climb trees!” Wampus said, ready to get mad in a minute. + 

Jibby looked at Wampus in that solemn, slow way of his. + 

“I don’t believe rabbits climb trees, Wampus,” Jibby said. + 

We had been talking about rabbits before Jibby came in out of the rain, but I don’t remember what started us. I guess maybe I started it by saying it looked as if it might rain all day, and then Wampus said he remembered a worse rain⁠—the one when we had the school picnic. Then Skippy said he had to laugh when he thought of how Sue Smale’s black straw hat sort of melted in the rain that day, and the black ran down her face and on her yellow hair, because she had blacked the hat with shoe polish. Then Tad had said girls did things like that: they were silly. And I said, “Yes, you bet they’re silly, why, Sue says rabbits climb trees.” Then Wampus got mad and said, “Rabbits do climb trees; I know they do, because my Uncle Oscar saw one in a tree.” + 

So now Wampus told Jibby his Uncle Oscar had seen a rabbit up a tree. + 

“I guess it was a squirrel,” said Jibby. “Squirrels climb trees; rabbits don’t.” + 

“I guess my Uncle Oscar knows,” said Wampus, ready to get mad in a minute at anybody that said his Uncle Oscar did not know. “He told me, and he told Sue, and that’s why she said so. He was over in the Illinois bottom land last spring, when the river was high, rowing around in a skiff, and he saw a rabbit in a tree. It had climbed there. Uncle Oscar said so.” + 

“I don’t want to dispute any conclusion your Uncle Oscar drew from the fact that a rabbit was in a tree, Wampus,” said Jibby Jones, “but couldn’t it have been a squirrel? Squirrels climb trees.” + 

Tad shouted. It was too funny to see Jibby sitting there like a wise old owl telling us that squirrels climb trees. He might as well have said water was wet, we knew it so well. + 

“Aw!” said Wampus; “I guess my uncle knows a rabbit from a squirrel. It was a rabbit. It was a regular cottontail.” + 

Jibby blinked his eyes and thought this over. + 

“Perhaps it didn’t climb the tree,” he said. “Perhaps the water had been higher and the rabbit had been floating on a board and hopped off the board into the tree, and then the water went down and left the rabbit in the tree. Then, if your uncle saw a rabbit high up in the tree, he might have thought it had climbed there.” + 

“No,” said Wampus, “because the water was as high then as it had been; it was higher than it had been.” + 

“Did your uncle see the rabbit climb the tree?” Jibby Jones asked. + 

“No, it was there when he saw it,” said Wampus. “It was high up in the tree; twice as high as he could reach from his boat. He said it was the first tree-climbing rabbit he had seen, but that he understood just what had happened. The river had come up and surrounded the rabbit and the tree, and as the river got higher there was no place for the rabbit to go but up the tree. It just had to climb, so it climbed. So rabbits do climb trees. Because my uncle doesn’t tell lies, and I can lick any two that say he does.” + 

That seemed reasonable to me. I thought Wampus had proved it pretty well, and so did Tad and Skippy. When an uncle sees a rabbit up a tree and that uncle don’t lie and his nephew can lick any two that say he does lie, it seems a pretty sure thing that rabbits do climb trees. We admitted it. Tad and Skippy and I admitted it, but Jibby Jones was not that sort of admitter. + 

“It may be so,” he said, “because a lot of things that do not seem so are so. I never thought crabs could climb trees until father took me to Tahiti. I saw crabs climb trees and throw down coconuts there.” + 

“Oh, come off!” Wampus laughed. We all laughed. + 

“But I did,” said Jibby. “They climb trees and pick the coconuts, and throw them down, to break them open. And if the coconuts don’t break open, they carry them up the trees again and drop them again, until they do break.” + 

We thought he was trying to fool us, but he was as sober as a judge. Of course, we didn’t believe him; not until I asked my father and he said it was true. Then I had to. + 

“There is also,” said Jibby, “a fish that climbs trees. I have never seen one, but my father has. I think it was in Liberia. Perhaps not. And some fish fly.” + 

“Of course! We’ve all heard of flying fish,” said Wampus. “What do you think we are? Ignorant?” + 

“But here,” said Jibby Jones, “fish do not fly, and fish do not climb trees, and crabs do not climb trees. And I am not so sure rabbits climb trees.” + 

“You don’t mean to say my Uncle Oscar says what is not so, do you?” Wampus demanded, as mad as he could get. + 

“No, Jibby,” I said, “you must not say that, because Wampus’s Uncle Oscar isn’t that kind. He doesn’t tell lies.” + 

“I wasn’t saying he did,” said Jibby. “I don’t know him, but I believe he tells all the truth there is. I only say he saw the rabbit in the tree, but he did not see it climb the tree. The rabbit might have got into the tree some other way.” + 

“How, I’d like to know?” Wampus demanded. + 

“I don’t know,” said Jibby. “I wasn’t there. I only mean to say things sometimes seem to be so when they are not so. If there was such a tree as one that grows up in a night, and if that was a tree of that kind, the rabbit might have stepped on it without thinking it was that sort of tree. Then the tree might have shot up in a hurry, with the rabbit in its top. Then anybody, seeing the rabbit in the top of the tree, would naturally think it had climbed the tree.” + 

“There are no such trees,” said Wampus. “Trees don’t grow in a night.” + 

“And if there were such trees,” Skippy said, “it would not prove anything. If the rabbit stepped on a limb one inch from the ground that limb would still be one inch from the ground when the tree was a hundred feet high. Tree limbs don’t slide up the tree like that. If you hang a horseshoe on a limb five feet high today, and nobody touches it, it will be on the same limb and only five feet high a hundred years from now.” + 

Of course, this was true and we all agreed with Skippy, and got to talking about trees and why so many have limbs only high up. It is because the tender little first limbs die and break off. They get too much shade or animals eat them or something. Then we got to talking of what animals eat, and about caribou and elk, and about one thing and another, and we forgot all about rabbits. + 

About half an hour later, Orpheus Cadwallader came along in his rubber coat and rubber boots. He is the man that is watchman on the island and he is plump and pleasant and can tell some great stories of the river. We tried to coax him to come under with us and talk, but he said he had a trotline he wanted to run and couldn’t stop. He said the rain was about over; that it would be sunny in an hour. And it was. Somebody suggested that we go fishing, and we went. + 