Well, for about a day I guess Bony thought he was about the smartest kid
that ever lived. Anyhow, he acted that way and the reason was that his
house had been burglared and mine and Swatty's houses hadn't been. But
that wasn't our fault.
Swatty didn't say much because he thought maybe the burglar would come
around and burglar his house and then he would be as good as Bony. But
the burglar didn't go to any more houses, and me and Swatty got pretty
sick and tired of hearing Bony bragging about the burglar climbing right
in at his window and almost falling over his bed, and about how--if he
had wakened up--he would have gone into his father's room and got his
father's shotgun and shot the burglar.
We got pretty sick of hearing about the reward Bony's father had
offered, and about how the policemen came to the house and looked at
Bony's bedroom window and everything and wrote it all down.
“Garsh!” Swatty said; “it ain't nothing to brag about to be burglared!
The way you talk you'd think nobody in the world could be burglared but
you. If I wanted to I could write to my uncle in Derlingport and he'd
send down a burglar to burglar my house in a minute. And he'd burglar
Georgie's house, too. And my uncle would send down a real burglar, too.”
That was a good one on Bony, because the newspaper said the policemen
said the burglar that bur-glared Bony's house wasn't a real burglar but
only “local talent.”
“Well--well--” Bony said, “well, if your uncle can send down so many
real burglars, why don't he do it, and not leave you sitting there
talking about what he can do all the time?”
“Aw! if you say much more about your old burglar I will write to my
uncle to send some down,” Swatty said.
“Aw! and if you did he wouldn't get nothing! What'd he get at your
house? I bet he wouldn't get any cardinal's signet ring.”
Well, I guess that made Swatty pretty mad. I guess we had heard about
all we wanted to hear about that old signet ring, so Swatty started to
go away, and he said to me:
“Come on! he thinks there ain't nothing in the world but that old signet
ring. I bet it was brass, anyway.”
But the cardinal's signet ring wasn't brass, because it said in the
newspaper it was gold.
I guess I knew plenty about that signet ring before the burglar ever got
it, because once Bony told us about it when we were at his house and he
would have showed it to us, only his mother would not let him.
It had been in the family from generation unto generation. So when
Bony's mother would not let us see it because her hands were in the
dough and boys are too careless, Bony told us what it was like and said
he guessed it was worth a million dollars, or maybe a hundred, anyway,
because it was solid gold and had a red, carved stone in it, and the
cardinal had given it to his son, and he had given it to his son, and it
had always been in the family. So I said:
“Aw! 't ain't so! Because cardinals couldn't give anything to their
sons; they don't have any sons to give anything to.”
“Well, this cardinal gave this ring to his son, so he did,” Bony said.
“This cardinal had a son.”
“No, he didn't!” I said. “I guess I know about cardinals. They don't
have any sons. They can't have sons. That's the law.”
Well, Bony didn't know what to say, because he knew I was right, because
I read a lot of books and he don't. So, if it hadn't been for Swatty I
don't know what we would have done about it. I guess me and Bony would
have been mad at each other forever, or had a fight or something, but
Swatty had just been listening and spoke up.
“Aw!” he said; “that ain't nothing to fight about. The cardinal's signet
ring could be an heirloom from generation to generation and the cardinal
needn't have any son either. He could give it to his grandson, couldn't
he?”
“Of course he could!” Bony said. “That's what he did.”
“Sure he did!” said Swatty. “That's how all cardinals do. When they want
to start an heirloom going they look around for a son to give it to, and
when they haven't any sons they give the heirloom to their grandsons.”
Well, the burglary was about Monday of the last week of school, and
about Tuesday we were sick and tired of it--me and Swatty was--but we
didn't know how to shut Bony up, because we couldn't have burglars come
to our houses just because we wished they would. So Tuesday after school
when I went home my sister Fan was out in the side yard, where the vines
grow on the porch, and she was down on her hands and knees.
Fan had been looking pretty sick for a good while and it was because
Herb had gone back on her, or her on him. I felt mighty sorry for her,
even if she was my sister, and mother said she was worried and that the
only thing to cheer Fan up would be to send her somewhere, far from the
scene. So Fan had said she would go.
So there she was on her knees in the grass and when she saw me she said,
“Georgie!”
“What?” I said.
“Georgie,” she said, “I lost a ring here--one with just one diamond in
it--”
“I know. The ring Herb gave you.”
“Yes. If you find it for me, George,” she said, “I'll give you--I'll
give you ten dollars.”
Well, I tried to divide three into ten, and you can't do it, so I said:
“Maybe I can find it for fifteen dollars,” because that would be five
dollars apiece for me and Swatty and Bony.
Fan looked at me, and then said, “Very well, find it if you can,
please.”
And that wasn't like Fan, because what she would mostly say, would be,
“You little imp, you know where that ring is! You get it this instant or
father will attend to you.”
So I knew she was pretty sick about Herb.
Well, as soon as Fan said that I skipped out the back way, over
to Swatty's, and asked him for the ring, because we had had it in
pardnership, and I had let him have it awhile. I told him what I wanted
it for and he said:
“I ain't got it. I thought you or Bony had it; I gave it to Bony.”
So we went over to Bony's house, and the minute we said “ring” he was
scared stiff. “It was stole,” he said. “The burglar stole it out of my
pants pocket, but I didn't say nothing because I guessed the police
would get it back again.” So that was a nice one, wasn't it? So me and
Swatty were mad at Bony and we wouldn't talk to him or let him play with
us unless we got the ring back, and none of the policemen caught
Bony's burglar. Bony's father printed a reward of fifty dollars in the
newspaper, but my father said that whoever caught the burglar would
n't be half as lucky if he caught him as he would if he ever got fifty
dollars out of Bony's father, because my father would be blessed if he
believed Bony's father had ever seen fifty dollars at one time. So maybe
the policemen knew that. Anyway, they did not catch the burglar. I guess
folks thought he would never be caught, and he never would have been
if it hadn't been for me and Swatty and Mamie Little. I guess he would
never have been caught if Mamie Little had known how to spell “sulphur.”
The burglar got plenty of other things from Bony's house, too, but the
signet ring is the thing I'm telling about because it was the signet
ring that helped Swatty to catch the burglar. That and Mamie Little,
only Mamie Little didn't know she helped until I told her, and then she
didn't understand any better than she did about the sulphur bag. I guess
nobody will know unless I tell it. So I'll tell it.
Thursday afternoon I went past Mamie Little's yard about five o'clock
and she was trying to fix up a couple of old boxes to make a playhouse
and I leaned on the fence and was glad I was there, because nobody else
was there to see me. So I said: “Aw! that's no way to make a playhouse
out of boxes!”
“Oh, dear!” she said. “I know it ain't. I want this one on top of the
other one but I can't lift it.”
“I bet I could lift it!” I said.
“I know you could,” she said. “Boys are stronger than girls.”
“If you don't tell anybody,” I said, “I'll come in and lift it for you.”
So I went in and lifted it, and she was glad. She said it made a dandy
upstairs for her playhouse, and she said boys were fine, because they
were so strong. So I felt pretty good. So she took a hammer and began to
nail some nails, to make shelves and things, and I told her girls didn't
know how to nail, and she said she knew they didn't.
So I took the hammer, and just then I saw Swatty coming. So I threw down
the hammer mighty quick and said:
“I got to go now. My mother wants me, but if you want me to I'll come
over Saturday and we'll fix up the playhouse nice.”
So she did want me to; and I said I'd come and I felt gladder than I
had ever felt before, and I dodged behind the lilac bushes and got out
of her yard the back way, and Swatty did not see me. So that was all
right.
Well, I guess there was diphtheria or scarlet fever or something in town
then and, anyway, my mother and lots of the kids' mothers made us wear
sulphur bags. That was so we wouldn't catch it, whatever it was. They
were little bags about as big as a watch, and there was sulphur in them
and aseophidity, or asophedeta, or asofiditty, or whatever you spell it.
It smells pretty rank but it keeps away whatever you might catch.
Well, going to school Swatty met me and he said:
“Say, let's go fishing down the Slough, tomorrow.”
“I can't, Swatty,” I said, because I wanted to do what I had said I
would do for Mamie Little, only I didn't want to tell Swatty that, so I
said: “I've got to stay home and work.”
“Pshaw!” Swatty said, only he said it “Pshawr!” like he always does. “If
you can't go I won't go, either! If you can't go I'm going to stay home
and split the wood I ought to split.”
“Well, I can't go,” I said. So we went into the schoolhouse and into our
room. Mamie Little was there. She had just hung up her hat and she was
standing by her desk, nearly across the room, and she looked fine, her
cheeks were so red and her eyes were kind of sparkly. There were only
one or two there besides us.
So, while she was standing by her desk she sort of picked at her dress
on her chest a couple of times the way I had been picking at my shirt
front, and I was glad to think she had a sulphur bag, too, like I had.
It was nice to think we both had the same, only she didn't know I had
one.
So I whistled a little whistle--“Wheet!”--and she looked at me. I
guess she smiled at me. I felt mighty brave. So I started with the
deaf-and-dumb alphabet, pointing at my eye for “I,” and rubbing my hands
across each other for “h” and I spelled out “I have a” and she nodded
her head at each word to show she knew what I was spelling. So I spelled
out “sulphur,” because what I wanted to tell her was “I have a sulphur
bag, too,” but when I got to “sulph” she shook her head and I had to
begin again, because she couldn't understand.
I was standing up and she was standing up and she was standing so she
looked right at me, and I spelled and spelled. Sometimes I began at the
beginning and spelled “I have sulph” and sometimes I spelled “sulphur”
over and over, but she just shook her head each time and smiled and
waited. She was awfully interested, and more and more scholars came in,
and pretty soon they were all watching me and trying to spell what I was
spelling, but nobody did, I guess. Mamie Little got awfully interested
and she was mighty eager to find out what I was trying to spell. Then,
all at once, I knew why she couldn't tell; it was because she didn't
have any sulphur bag on. So, all at once, I felt mighty cheap! There
she was, thinking I had something awfully important I was trying to tell
her, and she didn't have a sulphur bag, and I was making a fool of her
before the whole school, because what would she think of me telling her
I had a sulphur bag if she didn't have one? And making such a fuss about
it, as if it was something wonderful like telling her her father was
dead, or something.
Then, all of sudden, I remembered I was going to her yard the next day,
to help her with her playhouse, and I felt worse than ever. The first
thing she would want to know would be what I had tried to spell out,
and if I told her she would think I was crazy to make so much fuss about
such a thing, and if I did not tell her she would be mad at me forever
and maybe talk about me to the other girls. I couldn't bear to think
about it and I couldn't help thinking about it. So, after school, I
hurried away as fast as I could, and when Swatty caught up with me I
told him I had changed my mind and that I would go fishing with him. So
that is how Mamie Little helped catch Bony's burglar. If it hadn't been
for Mamie Little not knowing how to spell “sulphur” I wouldn't have gone
fishing, and Swatty wouldn't have gone either, and the burglar wouldn't
have been caught.
So Saturday morning I got in enough wood for all day and it wasn't
much, because it was summer and the kitchen wood was all I had to get
in. Then I hunted up a new tin can, because when we get through fishing
we always throw the old one into the Slough, because by that time the
worms that are left are pretty; bad. Sometimes, if the can has been
in the sun, they are even worse than that. So I got a new can and went
around to the other side of the barn and the spade was there yet, from
the last time I had dug worms, so I dug some more.
Just then Swatty came into the yard and he was ready to start. So my
mother came to the back door with some sandwiches and things in a box,
and I said:
“Aw! I don't want to carry a big box like that! Aw! I just want a couple
of sandwiches in my pocket!”
“Georgie!” she said. “You take this box! You 'll be glad enough of
everything that's in it!”
Me and Swatty went up over the hill and down past the Catlic church to
South Riverbank and we stopped at the pump on the corner and had a good
drink and cooled off our feet in the mud under the pump spout, because
the sidewalks were hot.
The water in the Slough wasn't high and it wasn't low. Once the Slough
ran through to the river at this end but now it was all filled in with
sawdust from the sawmill, and a big conveyor blowpipe kept blowing more
sawdust into the Slough from the mill, and all the surface of the Slough
was floating sawdust. Then, a little further along, it was water-lily
leaves. Then, further along, it was plain Slough for miles and miles and
miles.
The water was three or four feet down from the top of the bank and the
bank was covered with pretty good grass, and all along the Slough there
was a path worn, because kids and fellows had fished in the Slough ever
since there was a Riverbank, and before that the Indians had fished in
it, I guess. Everywhere, close to the edge of the bank in the shade of
the trees, there were places worn smooth-like an old chair seat--where
fellows had sat and fished for years and years until they were regular
fishing places. When you saw one of them you knew it was a good fishing
place and that there was a bent root, all worn smooth and sometimes
almost worn in two, part way down the bank, to rest your feet on.
It was all quiet and still, like a fishing place should be, except for
the “urr-urr” of the mills away off, or the “caw caw!” of crows or, once
in a while, somebody knocking the ashes out of a pipe against a root,
across the Slough or a little splash when somebody caught a fish. Then
everything would be quiet again.
So me and Swatty walked along down the path, because we thought we would
go as far as we had ever been, or farther, this time. Once we stopped
and ate 'most all of my lunch. It was nine o'clock but we were mighty
hungry. Then we went on.
We got two or three miles down the Slough and most of the fishing places
were empty there and I wanted to stop but Swatty said: “Aw! come on!
Let's go on down to the point!” so we went.
The point wasn't much of a point but you felt more out in the Slough
when you were on it. There was a big water maple at the end of it, with
fine roots to sit on, and I sat on some of the roots and fished and
Swatty sat on some others and fished. It was good and hot and the Slough
smelled warm and weedy and we liked it, because that was part of the
regular fishing smell. There was just a little ripple and the corks
bobbed up and down gently and we set our poles among the roots and just
leaned back and felt good. Over across the Slough was another point, but
more rounded and bigger, and it was green and cool looking, with grass
and three big elms on it, and back in the fields a cow's bell jingled
once in a while, and the crows cawed, and the sawmill hummed away off in
the distance, and it got hotter and hotter. I watched my cork until
it seemed to lose itself in the ripples and my eyes got sleepier and
sleepier and, the next thing I knew, I woke up and Swatty wasn't there!
Neither was my cork!
The first thing I did was give my pole a yank and out came a jim-dandy
goggle-eye sunfish, just about as good as I ever caught. I held him so
the stickers wouldn't sting me and got the hook out of him and strung
him on a piece of twine and I was tying the string to a root so the
goggle-eye would be in the water when somebody down the Slough a ways
hawked, clearing the tobacco out of his throat, and I looked around and
saw Swatty coming back to the point, not making any noise. He held up a
finger for me to be quiet and then he climbed out onto the roots of the
maple and sat down.
“I caught a dandy goggle-eye, Swatty,” I whispered.
He leaned over toward me.
“Don't make any noise!” he whispered. “Bony is over on that point.”
I looked and I saw him. It was pretty far across the Slough and Bony
couldn't hear us if we whispered.
“Well, he can't hear us, can he?” I whispered back.
“No,” Swatty said and then he climbed over beside me and sat on a root.
“There's a man down there,” he said and he pointed.
“I heard him spit.” I whispered. I began to feel scary because there was
n't any use for Swatty to be so whispery unless there was something to
feel scary at, was there?
“He's got Bony's father's signet ring,” Swatty whispered. “Anyway, I
guess he's got it. He's got a ring like what Bony says his father's ring
is like. He's fishing and he's got the ring on his thumb.”
Well, then I knew what Swatty had done. While I was asleep he had
sneaked down to see what luck the man was having and he had seen the
ring.
“Gee!” I said.
Swatty sat awhile with his forehead wrinkled and looked at the Slough
and he was thinking.
“Garsh!” he said; “I'd like to be the one to get that fifty dollars. I
wish I knew for certain it is Bony's father's ring. Fifty dollars is a
lot of money. If I had it I'd put it in the bank.”
“What bank?” I asked him. “The Savings Bank or the Riverbank National?”
“I guess maybe I'd put half in one and half in the other,” Swatty said.
“Then if one bank busted I'd have half left, anyway.”
“Well, if one did bust maybe you'd get some of your money back,” I said.
“My father had money in a bank once and it busted and he got part of it
back.”
“That's so,” Swatty said. “If I put in twenty-five and the bank busted
maybe I'd get back fifteen of it. That would be forty dollars I'd have,
even if the bank did bust. I'd like to have it.”
So we sat there awhile and the crows cawed and the cowbell jingled and
it was quiet, but we didn't catch any more fish.
“If we hadn't got mad at Bony he would be over here,” Swatty said after
a while.
“Well, what if he was?” I said.
“Well, he could sneak up and see if that ring is his father's ring,
couldn't he?” said Swatty.
“Well, then,” I said, “why don't you call to him to come over?”
As soon as I said it I knew it wasn't much to say, because it was two
or three miles back to the end of the Slough and four or six miles
Bony would have to go to get around to us, and he wouldn't come anyway
because he'd think maybe we wanted to lick him or something. And if we
shouted what we wanted him for, the burglar would hear us and would get
away from there mighty quick.
“I'm going over and get Bony.”
“How are you going to get him?” I asked.
“I'm going to row over,” he said. “You stay here and watch that man and
I'll go over and get Bony.” Well, I guessed that if he said he would,
he'd find some way to row over whether there was a boat or not, because
that was the way Swatty was. When he wanted to do anything he did it. So
I looked down the Slough and I could see the end of the man's fishpole
sticking out over the water and his cork floating and Swatty climbed
onto the bank and took his fishpole and went up the Slough. He had to
go pretty far before he found a boat and the boat he found was not much
good. It was an old flatboat and one end was busted some and it was
water-logged. Swatty had to stay away up in one end to keep the busted
end out of water and he paddled the best he could with a piece of fence
board. He paddled out to the middle of the Slough and stopped there and
pretended to fish a while and then he paddled a little nearer Bony and
pretended to fish a while longer, and then he paddled to shore near
where Bony was and got out of the flatboat and went up to Bony. For a
while they sat together and I guessed Swatty was talking to Bony about
the ring and the fifty dollars and the man, and coaxing Bony to come to
our side of the Slough and see if it was his father's ring the man had
on his thumb.
So all the time I kept looking three ways--at Bony and Swatty, and at
my cork, and at the end of the man's fishpole--and all at once when I
looked the man's fishpole wasn't there. It was gone!
So I looked harder, but it was gone, no matter how hard I looked. So
then I knew Swatty would give me a whale of a licking if he came back
and found out I had let the man get away while he was fetching Bony, and
I climbed off the root and up the bank and I was just starting to run,
to go where the man had been, when I saw him. He was right in the middle
of the path near where he had been fishing and he was bent down with
his back toward me, picking up fish, because the string he had had them
strung on had broken. He was stringing them again and as he picked them
up I could see the ring on his thumb.
Pretty soon he had all his fish strung again and then he straightened
up and took a chew of tobacco and looked up into a tree that was right
there, and I looked up and saw he had put his fishpole up the tree, so I
guessed maybe he fished there pretty often, or was coming back sometime.
So then he slouched off. I watched him.
He was big but he wasn't very old. Maybe he was twenty or thirty. His
clothes were pretty old and faded and he looked lazy in the arms and
legs and when he walked he walked tired. He went down the path a ways
and then he climbed over the fence there was along there and I went
across the path and watched him from behind another tree. It was a
ploughed field there and he walked in a furrow clear across the field to
the road that was on the other side and climbed over another fence. So I
climbed up on my fence and watched to see where he would go. There were
three little houses across the road and he went into the one on the end
toward town. So then I guessed that was where he lived and I got down
off my fence and went back to the point.
Swatty and Bony were in the boat and Swatty was paddling it as well as
he could but it was only halfway across. Then, all at once, Swatty began
to paddle harder. He paddled as hard as he could and then, I guess, he
said something to Bony and Bony began to bail out the boat as fast as he
could. Then Bony began to cry. I could hear him where I was and Swatty
shouted at him and looked over his shoulder to see how far he had to
paddle. Then Swatty dropped his paddle stick and began to bail with
his hat like he was crazy. And before I could see it, almost, the old,
rotten flatboat took a dive and Swatty and Bony were in the water.
Bony yelled and went under but Swatty came right up, spitting water and
kicking out with his hands. It was a good thing he was barefoot.
Well, Swatty looked all around as soon as he got the water out of his
eyes but he couldn't see Bony. So he dived for him.
There's one place nobody ever swims and that is the Slough. All you have
to do is to look down into it anywhere and you know why. All you see
when you look down is seaweed--tons and oceans of it--all tangled and
twisty, and old trees and branches sticking around in it to get caught
onto. When the Slough is low you can't row on it because the seaweed
grabs your oars and holds on like it was some mean man trying to drown
your boat. It scares you. And all in among the seaweed are tough weeds
and water-lily stems and water vines. There have been plenty of boys
drowned in the Slough, I guess. So Bony had got caught in the weeds and
vines and things.
Pretty soon Swatty came to the top but he didn't have Bony, but his arms
were covered with seaweed. He spit out water and scraped the seaweed
off his arms and then he took his nose in his hand and dived again. That
time he got him. He got him by one leg and he swam for shore dragging
Bony behind him and the seaweed strung out behind Bony. His head was all
covered with it.
I was crying pretty hard, I guess. So Swatty told me to shut up and
he turned Bony over on his back and began scraping the seaweed off his
face, and Bony's face was scratched a good deal from the rough weeds and
maybe from where I had dragged him up the bank on his face. I thought he
was dead but Swatty didn't. He leaned down and listened to Bony's heart
and said all he needed was to be pumped out. So he started to pump him
out.
Swatty got down on his knees a-straddle of Bony and took Bony's hands
in his and pumped him the way he had heard you ought to pump a drowned
person. He pushed Bony's arms clear back until they touched the ground
over his head and then he drew them forward until they touched the
ground again, and he kept right at it. Every once in a while Swatty
would shake his head to shake the water out of his ears but he went
right on pumping. So I stood and blubbered.
Well, no water pumped out of Bony. Swatty pumped and pumped but no
water came out of Bony's mouth and pretty soon Swatty stopped and took a
couple of deep breaths.
“Garsh!” he said; “I thought he would pump easier than that!”
So he pumped him again a few times and then stopped again. It looked as
if it wasn't any use.
“I know what's the matter,” Swatty said. “We've got to prime him. There
ain't enough water in him to start unless he's primed. When our cistern
is low at home we have to prime it before the water starts pumping up,
and that's what we've got to do.”
Well, I guessed that was so. Our cistern pump was that way too. So I
took my bait can and washed it out good and clean and got a can of water
and I primed Bony. I poured a little water in Bony's mouth and Swatty
pumped.
“Prime him some more,” Swatty said.
So I primed him some more. It didn't seem to do any good.
“Aw, prime him a lot!” Swatty said, so I poured all the water I had in
the can into Bony's mouth and went and got some more.
“Keep on!” Swatty said. “He'll start pretty soon. We've got to get the
water pumped out of him.”
So I was priming Bony again when somebody behind us said:
“What are you trying to do to that boy?”
I looked around, and Swatty looked around. It was the man with the ring
on his thumb.
“He's drowned,” Swatty said, “and we're trying to pump him out.”
The man took ahold of Swatty's shoulder and threw him almost into the
fence. He stooped down and grabbed Bony and threw him across a big maple
root, face down, and began to pump and pretty soon Bony began to pump
out. The man pumped him pretty dry and then he put him in the sun and
began to rub him good and after a while Bony opened his eyes. To see him
open his eyes was one of the best things I ever saw. I was mighty glad I
had helped to undrown him.
Bony was pretty much wilted. Me and Swatty didn't know how we would ever
get him home but we didn't have to.
“About one more can of water in this kid and he would have been gone for
good,” the man said. “Now, you help him onto my back and I'll get him
home for you.”
We got Bony onto his back and Bony hung around his neck and the man held
Bony's legs under his arms. He climbed the fence with him that way and
started off across the ploughed field and me and Swatty went after him.
We didn't even think about taking our fishpoles along. We went across
the field and the man stopped at his house and called his mother and
she gave Bony some whiskey in hot water while the man went over to a
farmer's house and got a team and a wagon. So, while he was gone Swatty
said to Bony:
“Is it?”
He meant the cardinal's signet ring, and was it it.
“Yes, it's it,” Bony said, but not very loud. He was pretty much drowned
yet.
So we all went back to town in the farmer's wagon; me and Bony and
Swatty and the man and the farmer kid that was driving. So Swatty sat
with the farmer kid and talked to him.
“That man saved Bony's life,” Swatty said. “Who is he?”
“Him? He's Lazy Joe,” the farmer kid said. “He's Lazy Joe Mulligan. He
don't do nothing but fish and loaf.”
So then Swatty knew who the burglar was.
We drove up to town and Swatty told the farmer kid where to drive and
pretty soon we came to Bony's house. The man, Lazy Joe Mulligan, looked
pretty funny, you bet, when we drove right up to the house he had
burglared. He put his hand in his pocket and when he pulled it out the
ring was gone.
“Come on!” Swatty said to me.
“Where to?” I asked him.
“Down to Bony's father's to get that fifty dollars,” Swatty said. So we
went.
Well, I guess we forgot to tell Bony's father about Bony being drowned
and pumped out. We just told him we had the burglar up at his house and
that we wanted the fifty dollars, and he rushed out and up the street
and got a policeman and hurried to his house. Lazy Joe was there yet,
telling Bony's mother how he had pumped Bony out, but the farmer kid was
n't there, because Bony's mother had sent him down to get Bony's father.
She wanted Bony's father to give Lazy Joe five dollars or something for
pumping Bony out.
Then me and Swatty and Bony's father and the policeman came in and
Bony's father was saying: “Officer, arrest him! He's the man that stole
my property,” while Bony's mother was saying: “Edward, give him five
dollars or something! He's the man that saved your son's life.”
“How is that?” asked Bony's father, and he was pretty much mixed; “I
thought this was the burglar.”
“He is the burglar,” said Swatty. “He's got the cardinal's ring in his
pocket right now. I seen it, and Georgie seen it, and Bony seen it.”
Then Lazy Joe didn't know what to say. Then he said:
“I'll give everything back.”
So that was how they fixed it. Bony's father saved fifty-five dollars.
He saved the five dollars he ought to have given Lazy Joe for saving
Bony's life and he saved the fifty dollars he ought to have given
Swatty. So all me and Swatty knew next was that we were out on the
street and we didn't have anything to show for catching the burglar. All
we had was what Bony's father said. What he said was:
“Get out of here, you little rats! Be thankful you haven't my child's
death on your shoulders!”
Well, I was going, but Swatty stood right there.
“No, sir!” he said. “I won't go. You can cheat us out of fifty dollars
reward, maybe, but you've got to give back the diamond ring this burglar
has that belongs to Herb and Fan. You got to give that back, because it
ain't yours.”
“Have you got a ring like that?” the policeman asked Lazy Joe.
“Yes,” he said, and he took it out of one of his pockets. So Swatty took
it and we skipped out. We went right over to my house, because it was
dark by now, and I went to Fan and told her we had her ring for her. I
didn't know what I would say when she asked me where I got it, but she
didn't ask. She just went to her drawer and got out fifteen dollars and
gave it to me and didn't say anything. Only when I went out of the room
I heard her bed creak sudden, and I knew she had sort of thrown herself
down on it, broken-hearted, like in a novel.