“Here are some marks on these magnolias,” said Moses, after prowling about for awhile. “Right opposite each other. A ship on this, and a square on the other. Do you suppose there’s a treasure hid between them?”
Jimmy studied the deep scars in the smooth trunks attentively. “Uncle Amasa always said that pirates didn’t bury treasure,” he said. “They spent it all. No; I reckon that’s just a mark to show where the next fellows were to land, and what they’d find when they got here.”
“I bet there’s treasure,” said Moses, excitedly. “Let’s come up here every morning, and dig until we’ve dug all round the landing, and see if we don’t find it!”
Jimmy looked at him with paternal indulgence. “Don’t you get work enough on the ark to suit you?” he asked. “Come on into the woods a bit and see what they meant by these marks.”
They went up a pine-needle-covered slope and gained a tiny little cleared plateau, and saw an orderly line of live fig trees. If the boys had been southern born, this might have told them that they were looking at the place where people had lived, but they knew nothing about the habits of fig trees, and they did not even guess that the late crop of brown fruit which hung to the branches was good to eat. Experience with sundry prickly pears had made them cautious where they had at first been venturesome, and they left the figs alone. A few silvery boards strewed the cleared ground, and at a little distance a row of strange little wooden edifices, like the dog tents of soldiers, were falling into decay. Moses bent down and peered into one of them.
“Why, they’re graves!” he exclaimed, in an awed voice. “I wonder why they were covered like this.”
“To keep animals from rooting up the dead, I reckon,” answered Jimmy, who was practical. “The people from the boat must have come and lived here and waited for their friends a long time, and died of some fever, one by one, so that each fellow was decently buried. That’s all I can make of it, and I reckon that satisfies me. Don’t it you?”
“No, it don’t,” said Moses, decidedly. “I want to hunt for the treasure.”
Jimmy looked at the younger boy thoughtfully, without answering. He saw that the vision of treasure had filled Moses’ imagination so that the terrible parallel that these lost graves and relics of a boat foreshadowed, for their own desolate plight farther down the bayou did not even occur to him. Nothing could be gained by pointing it out, moreover, so he kept his peace. He examined the ground carefully, and searched the bottom of the creek, when they finally returned to their skiff; but the sands of many years had sifted back and forth, and he saw nothing.
“Mebby he got away,” he muttered, “when there wasn’t any one left to look after. Lord A’mighty, I hope so.”