astonished the scowling-faced woman. She turned her head quick in the
direction of the tent and her eyes landed on Tom who was waving at me
and yelling and running toward the creek, looking exactly like me in
his western-style blue jeans and maroon-and-gray-striped T-shirt. She
must have thought she was seeing double, or that there were two of me:
I was out in the nervous water in her red rowboat floating downstream
toward the Sugar Creek island; I was also on dry land running like a
deer toward the creek, waving my arms and yelling to me in the boat to
“Wait for me!”
The situation certainly couldn’t have made sense to her. For a minute
she stayed stopped stock-still and stared while Tom scurried down the
shore to a place about thirty feet ahead of me where there was a little
open space, half climbed and half skid down the embankment, plunged
into the water and came splashety-sizzle toward the boat.
It was then that I noticed he was carrying something with him, which
was making it hard for him to make fast progress. If my mind had had a
voice I think I could have heard it screaming an exclamatory sentence:
“_He’s got another water jug with a burlap bag wrapped around it. WHAT
on earth!_”
That woman in the straw hat with the little bundle of imitation wheat
straw across its right side, came to life and started on a fast run
toward the place where Tom had plunged in, like she was going to splash
in after him and try to get to the boat first, or else to stop him.
In almost less than no time Tom had hoisted his waterjug over the
gunwhale and set it down into the boat at my feet, then he swung
himself alongside and climbed in over the stern--which is the way to
climb into a boat without upsetting it.
“Hurry!” Little Tom Till panted to me. “Let’s get across to the other
side!”
I didn’t know what he was worried about nor what he wanted but I
figured he would tell me as soon as he could--that is, if he wanted to.
Besides I was in a hurry to get across myself.
I reached for the oars--and that’s when I got one of the most startling
surprises of my life. There weren’t any oars in the boat--not even
one! Not even a board to use for a paddle! All there was in the boat
was a water jug with burlap bags wrapped around it, one very _wet_,
red-haired, blue-jeaned, maroon-and-gray-T-shirted boy, and one _dry_
one. And all the time our boat was drifting farther downstream toward
the island.
In fact, right that very minute, the boat, which I had discovered was
an aluminum boat painted red and was very light, was caught in the
swift current where the creek divides and half of its current goes down
one side of the island and the other half down the other. There wasn’t
a thing we could do to stop ourselves from going one way or the other.
Swooshety-swirlety--swishety! Also _hissety!_ Those half-angry waters
took hold of our boat and away we went down the north channel, between
the island and the shore.
We weren’t in any actual danger as far as the water was concerned,
though, ’cause it was a safe boat. After awhile, we’d probably drift
close enough to an overhanging willow or other tree and we could catch
hold, swing ourselves out and climb to safety--or to the shore anyway.
BUT--say! We _were_ in danger for another reason.
* * * * *
That woman wasn’t going to let us get away as easily as that. She
leaped into fast life and began racing down the shore after us, yelling
for us to stop, which we couldn’t.
“What’s she so mad about, anyway?” I asked Little Tom Till.
His answer astonished me so much I almost lost my balance and fell out
of the boat: “There’s hundreds and hundreds of dollars in this water
jug. It’s the stolen money from the Super Market!”
Boy oh _boy!_ No _wonder_ there was a cyclone in that woman’s mind!
And no _wonder_ she didn’t want two red-haired boys in blue jeans and
gray-and-maroon-striped shirts in a rowboat to get away!
“She’s as mad as a hornet!” I said to Tom when, like a volley of rifle
and shotgun shots a splattering of very angry, very filthy words fell
thick and fast all around on us and on our ears from the woman’s very
angry, very harsh mannish-sounding voice.
“She’s not a _she_,” Little Tom Till answered. “She’s a _he_. He’s
been hiding out in the tent pretending to be a woman, wearing women’s
clothes and earrings and hats and using fancy perfumes and stuff.”
Every second the fast current was swirling us downstream closer and
closer to an overhanging elm, one that had fallen into the water from
the last Sugar Creek storm, and its top extended almost all the way
across the channel from the north shore to the island. I could see our
boat was going to crash into the leafy branches and we’d be stopped.
I knew if we could manage to steer around the tree’s top, we’d be safe
for quite awhile on account of there was a thicket that came clear down
to the water’s edge there and if the fierce-faced man wanted to follow
us any further, he would have to leave the shore and run along the edge
of the cornfield for maybe fifty yards before he could get back to the
creek again.
If only we had even _one_ oar, we could steer the boat near the island
where there was open water. We could miss the fallen elm’s bushy top
and----!
And _then_, all of a helpless sudden, we went crashing into the
branches _and there we stopped!_
That was when Little Tom Till came to life and proved that he had been
created as equal as I had, and maybe even more so. The very second we
struck, he scrambled to his feet, grabbing up the jug and the coil of
clothesline which was fastened to it and yelling to me, “Come on! Let’s
get onto the island!”
It certainly was a bright idea, ’cause the very second our boat hit the
tree, the current had whirled it around and one end struck and _stuck_
against the sandy bank of the island, and all we had to do was to use
the boat for an aluminum-floored bridge the rest of the way, which in
an awkward hurry, we did. In only a few jiffies we were across and out
and clambering up the rugged shore of the island into its thicket of
willows and tall weeds and wild shrubbery.
“We’re straight across from the sycamore tree and the cave!” Little Tom
Till cried. “If we can get across the channel on the other side of the
island, and into the cave and go through it to Old Man Paddler’s cabin,
we’ll be safe. Bob’s up there helping him cut wood this afternoon--only
he’s mad at me about something.”
The trouble was, the boat that had made such a nice bridge for us to
cross on, was the same kind of an aluminum-floored bridge for the
woman--the _man_, I mean. He could climb out onto the elm’s horizontal
trunk, drop down into the boat and get across as quick as anything.
Even as I scrambled up the bank behind my blue-jeaned,
red-and-maroon-shirted friend, I glanced back over my shoulder and saw
the brown slacks with the woman in them--the _man_, I mean--on the
trunk of the tree working his way along through the branches toward
the boat. In another second he would drop down into it, and in another
would be across and onto the island racing after us.
* * * * *
The chase was on--a wild-running, scared, barefoot-boy’s race ahead of
a short-tempered thief dressed in woman’s slacks, wearing a woman’s
straw-colored hat, dodging our way across that island which was a
thicket of willow and wild shrubbery, with here and there a larger
tree, and dozens of little craters hollowed out by the flood waters
which nearly every spring went racing across it. Banked against nearly
every larger tree trunk were piles of driftwood and cornstalks and
stuff the creek had carried from different farmer’s fields farther
upstream and deposited there.
I guess I never had realized what a jungle that island was. I had
been on it many a time when I was just monkeying around, looking for
shells, or with my binoculars studying birds. Once in awhile at night
in the spring or summer when it was bullfrog season, we would wade
in the weed-grown water along the edge of the riffles with lanterns
and flashlights looking for the giant-sized brown and dark-green
monsters whose eyes in the light were like the headlamps of toy
automobiles--bullfrogs, as you probably know, having long hind legs
with bulging muscles, which when they are skinned, are snow-white, and
when Mom fries them, they taste even better than fried chicken.
But _such_ a wilderness! And so many rough-edged rocks for a boy’s bare
feet to get cut or bruised on, so many briers to scratch him and so
many branches to fly back and switch him in the face when another boy
has just gone hurrying through ahead of him.
If we had been running from a real woman, or if only he had been
wearing a dress instead of slacks, he wouldn’t have been able to take
such long steps, and there would have been the chance he might get the
skirt caught on a branch or a brier and slow him down while we dodged
our way ahead of him in our mad race to the other side.
“We’re almost there!” Little Tom Till cried to me, panting hard from
carrying the jug as well as himself.
I could see the other side of the island now and the nervous, excited
water in the racing riffle between the island and the shore. I could
see the sycamore tree at the top of the bank and the mouth of the cave
just beyond.
Another few seconds and we would be there--and would be out in the fast
current on our way to safety. It had been a terribly exciting race, I
tell you, with Tom not letting me help carry the jug at all.
“It’s not heavy,” he panted. “It’s made out of plastic, the same as
the clothesline, and it’s as light as a feather. The money in it is
in little rolls with rubber bands around them. I saw him stuff ’em in
myself.”
The bottle’s mouth and neck weren’t more than an inch and a half in
diameter, I had noticed.
There were about a million questions I wanted to ask Tom, such as, how
come he knew the woman was a man? how’d he find out about the money in
the first place?--and several other things which my mind was as curious
as a cat’s to know.
And then, all of a sudden, we burst out into the open at the water’s
edge, with our pursuer only a few rods behind us, panting and cursing
and demanding us to stop.
And then I learned something else from that fierce-voiced villain as he
yelled at Tom, “You little rascal! I’ll catch you and your brother,
Bob, if it’s the last thing I ever do. He’s broken into his _last_
Super Market!”
_That_ was one of the saddest, most astonishing things I had ever
heard. It startled me into feeling a lot of other questions: Had Bob
Till himself broken into the Sugar Creek Super Market last week? Was
the man in woman’s clothes maybe a detective or secret agent who had
been camping out along the creek, watching Bob’s movements--his and
Tom’s?
Things were all mixed up even worse than ever. For a few jiffies, my
watermelon mystery wasn’t even important in my mind, as--quick as a
firefly’s fleeting flash--Tom, holding onto the jug’s handle with one
hand, plunged into the fast riffle without even bothering to look or to
ask me where the water was the most shallow, and a second later was up
to his waist and losing his balance and falling down.
Up he struggled, and down he went again, sputtering and wallowing
along, with me doing the same thing beside him.
And then all of a cringing sudden, Tom let out a scared cry, saying:
“Help! h-h-h-help!” as he lost his balance and went down--_really_
down, I mean. The coil of rope in his hand flew into the air like a
lasso straight toward me who, at that minute, was quite a few yards
from him. Part of the clothesline caught around my upraised hand with
which I was trying to balance myself, the line tightened as Tom went
down, still holding onto the jug’s handle--and then down I went myself,
like a steer at a rodeo, the water sweeping me off my feet.
And there we both were, struggling in the racing current--two
red-haired boys, one on each end of a brand new plastic clothesline.
Even as I went down I saw the willows on the island part and the
maddest-faced man I ever saw in my life came rushing toward us. Also,
I saw a puzzled expression on his face like he was wondering what on
earth, which one of us was Tom and which was me, and which of us had
the water jug with the money in it.
Just that second also, his woman’s hat caught on a branch, and off it
came and with it a wig of reddish-brown hair, and I noticed the man had
a very short haircut.
The woman was an honest-to-goodness man, all right--or _boy_, rather,
maybe about as old as Bob Till himself. He had dirt smudges on his
rouged cheeks like he had fallen down a few times in his mad race
across the island after us. He was panting and gasping for breath and
his woman’s blouse was torn at the neck.
Tom and I must have looked queer to her--_him_, I mean--with me like
a calf on the end of a lasso, and Tom now fifteen feet from me, with
the jug in one hand, struggling to stay on his feet, on account of I
was downstream farther than he and being sucked along with the current
while my feet fought for the pebbly bottom.
Right away, the mean-faced oldish boy seemed to make up his mind who
was who and what was what and what he ought to do about it. He made a
rushing plunge out into the water and a series of fast lunges straight
for Tom, who began to make even faster lunges toward the other shore
and the sycamore tree.
“Run! Swim! HURRY!” I yelled in a sputtering voice to Tom--which
he couldn’t on account of right that very fast-fleeting second,
his feet shot out from under him and he went down again
ker-flopety-splash-SPLASH!
I knew I could never wade back against the swift current to get to him
in time to help him. I’d have to get to the other shore QUICK, race
along the bank to a place fifteen or twenty feet above him and plunge
in again and hurry out to where he was, which I started to start to do,
and got stopped.
The current was stronger near that other shore and the water deeper. My
feet were sucked out from under me and again I went down, feeling as
I was pulled under, my end of the rope still wrapped around my hand,
which, also, without my hardly noticing it, I was holding onto for dear
life.
Right that second the bully caught up with Tom, made a lunge with his
right arm for the jug, seized Tom with the other, and there was a wild
wrestling match with water flying and curses and fast flying arms and
it looked like Tom was going to get the living daylights licked out of
him for sure.
Tom was trying to fight back, and couldn’t with only one hand and
because of the swift current. He was as helpless as Marybelle Elizabeth
in a chickenyard fight with Cleopatra.
Right then is when I remembered something important, and it was that
when a bevy of furious girls had been beating up on Dragonfly at the
spring, I had screamed bloody murder, given several wild loon calls,
bellowed like a bull and made a lot of other terrifying bird and animal
noises, and it had saved Dragonfly. Before I knew I was going to do it,
I was yelling and screaming every savage sound I could think of in the
direction of the one-sided fight, crying for help at the same time,
hoping some of the Gang might be somewhere in the neighborhood and hear.
And that’s when I heard Big Bob Till’s voice answer from the sycamore
tree side of the channel. A second later I saw him standing in the
black mouth of the cave. He held his hand up to his eyes, shading them
like he had been in the dark quite awhile and the afternoon sunlight
was too bright for them.
Then he seemed to see his little red-haired brother, Tom, getting
a licking within an inch of his life by a butch-haired bully. And
_that_ is when Bob Till, the fiercest fighter in all Sugar Creek
territory--except maybe Big Jim--came to life. It was like the cave
was a bow and Bob was a two-legged arrow being shot by a giant as big
as the one in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. I lost my balance
then and went down, the rope in my hand went taut, and the other end
was torn from Tom’s grasp, and the water jug, like a jug-shaped balloon
wrapped in burlap, plopped to the surface, swung away and came on a
fast downstream float toward me.
All I could see for a jiffy was Tom defending himself like a savage
little tiger, and Big Bob Till shooting through the air like a man from
a flying trapeze from the high bank out across the ten feet of excited
air down and out toward where Tom was in the clutches of the thief--and
then I was fighting to save myself from drowning because I was in water
over my head. My right hand still clung to the rope on the other end
of which was the floating, plunging water jug with stolen Super Market
money in it.
10
Before even another second could pass, Bob Till landed feet first
in the swift current, and even quicker than that was storming his
way through the six or seven feet of open water toward where his
little brother, Tom, was holding on for dear life to the very same
powerful-muscled overgrown man-sized boy who a little while before was
wrestling with him trying to get the water jug away from him. Say, that
little guy knew what he was doing.
“Oh no, you don’t! You great big bully!” Tom cried. “You don’t get
away so easy. Come on, Bob! It’s him--the thief! Help!... Help!...
_H-E-L-P!_”
And Bob helped.
Talk about a fierce, fast fist fight. That was one of the fiercest,
fastest ones I ever saw and heard. I mean _really_ heard in spite of my
own battle to keep myself from losing my own balance in the deep, swift
water I was in. If the rock bass and minnows and redhorse and other
fish that were down in the water somewhere had been watching that water
fight they’d probably have wondered what on earth--only they maybe
wouldn’t know very much about the earth but only the water, that being
where they lived.
Wham! Biff! Sock!... Wham ... wham ... wham!... Splash!... _SPLASH!_
Double-whamety ... _Pow!_
“You great big lummox!” Bob yelled at his opponent. “You _will_ try to
drown my little brother! I’ll teach you right now!”
The bully staggered backwards, his hands and arms waving in a lot of
fast directions as he tried to steady himself from falling. Then he
struck the water and went down--_and under_.
Bob seemed to know he had his man licked. He quick turned to his little
brother and half sobbed to him: “You poor little guy, fighting that big
bully all by yourself!”
“Big Bully,” as Bob had just called the fierce-faced man--who wasn’t a
man at all, and certainly wasn’t a woman, but was a powerful muscled
boy the size of Big Jim--came up from under the water with a bounce
like a cork plops back up after you’ve pushed it under. He came up
sputtering and shaking his head and struggling to keep his balance in
the rapids.
Spying the water jug floating on the surface down near where I was, he
started on a fast half-run, half-swim toward it and me.
One reason the jug hadn’t already floated on far beyond me was because
one end of the rope was still wrapped around one of my hands, and
I was holding onto it for dear life. The other reason was that the
middle of the rope which was down under the water was tangled up with
and wrapped around the bully’s legs. I knew it for sure when I felt
the rope tighten around my arm, and then felt myself being jerked off
balance--and then down I went again.
It certainly wasn’t any time to be thinking funny thoughts right
then--what with all the dangerous excitement I was in, and might not
get out of without getting badly hurt--but a ridiculous idea plopped
into my mind and stayed there for a fast flying second, and was: “I’m
like a cowboy at a Sugar Creek rodeo. I’ve just lassoed a wild steer
and my bronco has just thrown me off into a racing riffle, but I’m
going to hold onto him!”
Grunt and groan and puff and sputter and yell and scream and tremble
with excitement and hold on tight and fight and just about everything
else you can think of--we four were really in a struggle for
life--almost anyway.
I don’t know how many times I lost my balance and went down, nor how
many times I thought the bully was going to get the water jug away from
us and get away himself.
And then all of a sudden, right in the middle of everything, I saw
Bob’s powerful right arm swing in a long wide arc, and the fist on the
other end of it catch the painted faced tough guy on the jaw--and he
went down--and stayed down, and that part of the struggle was over.
I say _that_ part was over. We had another and a harder job on our
hands--and that was, to save the bully from drowning, ’cause Bob’s
hard-knuckled, experienced fist knocked him completely out.
I saw the scared expression on Bob’s face the very minute I heard his
frightened words come crying out of his mouth: “I--I--I’ve _killed_
him! What’ll we do _now!_”
“Keep his head above water!” I yelled back. “He can’t drown as long as
his head is above water!”
Bob made a lunge for the villain, clasped him the best way he could,
and began to struggle with him toward the sycamore tree side of the
channel--with Little Tom Till and me struggling along beside and behind
him, bringing the water jug filled with money.
* * * * *
Well, here I am quite a ways from the end of this mystery about the
stolen watermelon with only a few pages left, on account of the
friendly people who will make it into a book for you, might think it is
too long already.
I can’t take any more time now anyway on account of I have to get
started quick on the next story.
But it was just like it says in the Bible which our minister is always
quoting--and also my parents--where the words are: “_Be sure your sin
will find you out._” That is what the thief’s sins had done. The very
rope he had stolen, along with the money, had accidentally lassoed his
feet, making it easy for us to capture him.
The two gunny sacks which had been wrapped around the water jug came in
handy, too, ’cause we used them to make a litter to carry our prisoner
on from the sycamore tree to the tool shed in the woods behind Poetry’s
Pop’s barn. We unwrapped the wet sacks from around the jug, spread them
out on the ground, cut two poles, using Bob’s axe with which he had
been helping Old Man Paddler, slipped the sacks over the ends, making
a hole in each of the closed corners--and we had one of the finest
stretchers you ever saw.
Bob carried one end of the litter and Little Tom and I the other.
Boy oh boy, did we ever feel proud, even though we were worried some
because our prisoner was still unconscious. We knew he wasn’t drowned,
on account of he was breathing all right, but he was as pale as a sheet
of gray writing paper, except for the rouge on his cheeks.
Little Tom puffed out his story to me as we struggled and grunted
along, with me helping as much as I could by asking questions that had
been worrying me for quite a while: “How did you know he was the Super
Market thief?” I asked him, and he said, “I didn’t, at first. I wanted
to make a lot of money to get a present for Mother’s birthday tomorrow,
so I thought up the idea of selling a map to the girl scouts--so the
girls could draw a map apiece like we do when we go on our up-north
vacations. The green lady worked out a scheme for me to leave the map
in a big watermelon they had in the spring.” Tom’s face was as innocent
as a lamb while he was puffing out his story to me.
“Then what?” I asked him, and he said, “When I saw the melon--how big
it was, and how pretty, as big and as pretty as your Ida--I got a
sinking feeling in my stomach, wondering where they got it, and if it
might be yours, so I scooted up the hill, and hurried to your truck
patch to find out.
“I was feeling fine when I saw Ida was still there. I beat it back
to the spring, plugged the melon like I promised I would, put my map
inside and went home.”
“But how--” I began, wondering still how come he knew our prisoner was
a Super Market thief, but he cut in on me, adding, “I didn’t know till
this afternoon. I saw all the women’s clothes on the line behind the
tent, and thought she was a woman of some kind, so I gathered a dozen
eggs and went down to see if I could sell them to her. I was kinda
scared, on account of being afraid of strange women and girls, so I
sneaked up on the cornfield side, and accidentally saw her doing it.
That’s how I found out.”
“Saw her doing what?” Bob asked, and Tom answered, “She was rolling
paper money into small rolls and stuffing them into the spout--it
looked like hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
“I was so scared, I couldn’t move. I don’t know what kind of a noise
I made but she heard me, jumped like she was shot, quick squeezed the
last roll of paper into the jug, shoved it behind a suitcase, and
yelled at me, ‘What do you want?’
“‘That’s an awful lot of money,’ I said; ‘where’d you get it?’ And
that’s when the chase started.”
“But somebody _did_ steal Ida,” I said, and wondered what Tom would say
about that. “Somebody sneaked out into our truck patch last night and
took her,” I added.
Right that second our prisoner regained consciousness, opened his eyes,
and began to struggle to get his hands and feet free, and to sit up and
get off our litter, which made us drop him ker-plop onto the ground.