several times, before that night was finally over, i thought how much more sensible we had been if we had curled ourselves up in our cots in the tent and gone sound asleep.
it’s better to be in bed when you have your night clothes on than scouting a watermelon patch or splashing in a pool of spring water or crouching shivering behind ragweeds and goldenrod and black-eyed susans in a fence row, or searching with a flashlight for a wad of oiled paper which somebody has stuffed into a watermelon.
especially is it better to be in bed, like any decent boy should be, than to be lying on your stomach under an evergreen tree with pine needles pricking you and you don’t dare move or you’ll be heard by somebody you are straining your eyes to see, while he does the most ridiculous thing you ever heard of at the very spring where you yourself were just an hour ago.
boy oh boy, let me tell you about what happened, the second time poetry and i went to the spring that night.
when we came to the beech tree, on whose close-grained gray bark the gang and maybe thirty other people had carved their initials through the years, we stopped to look the situation over. there was a stretch of moonlit open space about twenty yards wide between us and the leaning linden tree which is at the top of the incline leading down to the spring.
the shadowy hulk of the old black widow stump in the middle of the moonlit space looked like a black ghost. i kept straining my ears in the direction of the linden tree wondering if there might be anybody down at the spring; also i kept my ears and my eyes focused in the direction of the pawpaw bushes away off to the left where the girls’ camp was. i could smell the odor of wet ashes and i knew that the girls had had a campfire near the black widow stump—there being an outdoor fireplace there for picnickers to38 use for wiener roasts, steak fries, and for making coffee—and also for giving a picnic a friendly atmosphere. i was only half glad to notice that the girls had put out the very last spark of their fire, ’cause i hated to have to admit that a flock of girls knew one of the most important safety rules of a good camper, which is: “never leave a campfire burning, but put it out before you go.”
from the beech tree we moved east maybe a hundred feet, then made a moonlit dash for the row of evergreens which border the rail fence that skirts the top of the hill above the bayou.
“okay,” poetry panted when we got there. “we’ll work our way down from here. as soon as we get to the bottom, we’ll turn on the light and start looking for our clue.”
and then i heard something—a noise out in the creek somewhere, as plain as a dog star sunrise. it was the sound of an oar in a rowlock.
poetry and i shushed each other at the same time, straining our ears in the shadowy direction the sound had come from.
at the same instant, we dropped down onto the pine needles under the tree.
“it’s somebody in a boat,” poetry whispered. “he’s pulling in at the spring.”
i could see the boat now, emerging from the shadow of the trees down the shore. it had come up the creek from the direction of the sugar creek bridge.
now the boat was being steered toward the shore. i knew if it was anybody who knew the shoreline, he wouldn’t stop directly in front of the spring, ’cause the overflow drained into the creek there and it would be a muddy landing. below it, or just above it, was a good place.
“there’s only one man in it,” poetry said. even in the shadowy moonlight, i could tell it was a red boat and one we’d never seen before.
then i did get a startled surprise, and my whole mind began whirling with wondering what on earth in a gunny sack! no sooner had the prow of the boat touched the gravelled shore than whoever was in it was up and out and beaching the boat, wrapping the guy39 rope, which is called a “painter,” around the small maple that grew there. then he stepped back into the boat, stooped, picked up something in both hands—something dark and long and——!
“hey!” my mind’s voice was screaming, while my actual voice was keeping still. “it’s a gunny sack! it’s the old brown burlap bag we saw in the watermelon patch a half hour ago!”
in a minute the man was out of the boat and disappearing in the path in the shadow of the trees we knew about. a second later, he emerged at the opening in the board fence, worked his way through, and moved straight toward the spring, lugging the burlap bag with the melon in it.
“let’s jump him!” i whispered to poetry.
poetry put his lips to my ear and whispered back, “nothing doing. detectives don’t capture a criminal before he commits a crime. they let him do it first, then they capture him!”
“he’s already done it,” i said, “at the melon patch!”
“if you’ll be patient,” poetry whispered back, “we’ll find out what we want to know.”
we kept on watching from behind the evergreen while the man at the spring hoisted his burlap bag over the cement lip of the pool and let it down inside. he stayed in a stooping, stock-still position for several jiffies, then began doing something with his hands.
“he’s about the size of big jim,” i whispered to poetry.
“or circus,” he answered.
“big jim,” i insisted—only i knew that neither of them would steal a watermelon and bring it here by night in a boat.
just then i shifted my position a little on account of i had been sitting on my foot and it was beginning to hurt. it was a crazy time to lose my balance and have to struggle awkwardly to keep from sliding down the incline, but that is what i did, and for a few anxious seconds i was looking after myself instead of watching the mysterious movements at the spring.
when, a jiffy later, i was focusing my vision in his direction, the man or extra large boy—whichever he was—had left the spring and was on his way back to the boat. for a split second we lost sight of him in the shadows, then we saw him again with his40 back to us at the boat, heard the painter being unwrapped from the tree.
in only a few more seconds the boat was gliding out into the creek—but only a few feet, for right away the oarsman steered it toward the shore and it became only a dim outline in the shadow of the trees that grew along the steep incline.
poetry, beside me, sighed an exasperated sigh and said, “well, it wasn’t any of our gang, anyway. look!”
i had already seen—first the flash of a match or a cigarette lighter, then a reddish glow in the dark, and i knew somebody was smoking a cigarette or a cigar. that’s how i knew for sure it wasn’t any of the gang.
“i’d like to get my hands on him, for just one minute,” i said to poetry. “both hands—twenty times—in fast succession.”
“you wouldn’t strike a woman or a girl, would you?” he answered.
“what? who said it was a woman or a girl? he had on a pair of trousers, didn’t he?”
“girls wear slacks, don’t they? and lots of girls smoke, too.”
“and shouldn’t,” i answered.
we crept from our hiding place, scrambled down to where the boat had been beached and looked to be sure the oarsman—or oarswoman or oarsgirl—was out of sight. then we slipped through the fence to look into the cement pool to see the melon and also to look around for the wad of paper i had tossed away when i had been here before.
i tell you it was an interesting minute—or three minutes, i should say—’cause that’s all the time it took us to discover some thing very important—very, very important!
say, did you ever have a flashlight strike you full in the face and blind you for a few seconds? well, the white light from the match or cigarette lighter and the reddish glow from the cigarette or cigar fifty yards down the shore, sort of blinded me—not my eyes, but my mind. i couldn’t think straight for a minute. it was poetry’s suggestion, though—that the thief might be a woman or a girl—that really confused me.
41 i guess all the time i had had it in the back of my mind that the thief was bob till—but what if the person in the boat was a girl! no wonder i couldn’t think, i thought.
it was the perfume that sent my mind whirling. we noticed it the very second we had crawled through the fence. it was so strong it made the whole place smell as if somebody had upset the perfume counter in the sugar creek dime store and half the bottles of cologne and fancy perfumes had been broken.
if dragonfly had been with us, i thought, he’d have sneezed and sneezed and sneezed, on account of he is allergic to almost every perfume there is.
well, that was our chance to make a quick search for the wad of oiled paper which is what we had come there for in the first place. i remembered just about where i had tossed it and in only a few seconds poetry hissed, “here it is! here’s our clue!”
his excitement about the thing and his being so sure, had built up my mind to expect to see something wonderful inside that oiled paper. anybody who would go to the trouble to steal and deliver a watermelon secretly in a boat at night, would probably leave something in the melon worth a hundred times more than the melon itself.
there in the shadow of the linden tree, to the music of the bubbling water in the spring, and the singing of the crickets, poetry held the flashlight while my trembling fingers unfolded that crumpled piece of oiled paper, and spread it out.
“there’s printing on it!” poetry exclaimed under his breath.
and there was—actually was!
“what does it say?” i exclaimed.
“it says—it says, ‘eat more eatmore bread. it’s better for you. the more eatmore you eat, the more you like it.’”
it was disgusting; very disappointing also.
“smell it,” poetry exclaimed, which i did, and say!
boy oh boy, there was really a perfume odor around the place now! if dragonfly had been there, i thought again—or rather, started to think and didn’t get to finish, ’cause all of a sudden from the crest of the hill i heard a rustling of last year’s dry leaves, saw42 a flashlight leading the way and a spindle-legged barefoot boy in red-striped pajamas coming down the incline to the spring. imagine that! dragonfly in his night clothes! what on earth!
poetry and i slipped behind an undergrowth of small elms where we couldn’t be seen, and listened and watched as dragonfly came all the way down, went straight to the cement pool, shined his flashlight inside, then his hands began to work fast like he was in a big hurry and also like he was scared, and wanted to do what he was doing and get it over quick. he certainly was nervous and he seemed to be having trouble getting what he wanted to do, done.
poetry’s fat face was close to mine. i decided i could whisper into his ear and only he would hear me, so i said, “look! he’s got a knife! he’s going to plug the melon. he—”
poetry jammed his fat elbow into my ribs so hard it made me grunt outloud.
dragonfly jumped like he was shot, dropped his knife into the spring, started to straighten up, lost his balance, staggered in several moonlit directions, then ker-whammety-swish-splash—into the water he went just like i myself had done an hour or so ago.
and there he was, like i myself had been—a very wet boy in some very wet, very cold water, struggling to get onto his feet and out of the pool, and sneezing and spluttering because he had probably gotten some of the water into his mouth, or nose, and maybe even into his lungs.
and now what should we do?
we didn’t have time to decide, ’cause right that second there was a sound of running steps at the top of the incline and two shadowy figures with flashlights came flying down that leaf-strewn path, and somebody’s voice that was as plain as day a girl’s voice cried, “we’ve got you, you little rascal!”
those two girls swooped down upon dragonfly, seized him by the collar and started dunking him in the pool of very cold water, dunking and splashing water over him, and saying, “take that—and that—and that! we knew if we waited here, you’d be back!”
then all of a sudden, there was a hullabaloo of other girls’ voices at the top of the incline and a shower of flashlights and excited43 words came tumbling down with them. it seemed like there must have been a dozen girls, only there probably weren’t. like a herd of stampeding calves, all of them swarmed around our little half-scared-half-to-death dragonfly who was shivering and probably wondering what on earth. they were pulling him this way and that, as if they would tear him to pieces.
things like those i was seeing and hearing that minute just don’t happen. yet they were happening, and to one of the grandest little guys that ever sneezed in hayfever season—our very own dragonfly himself.
i didn’t know what he had done, nor why, but it seemed like anybody with that many people swarming all over him like a colony of angry bumblebees, ought to have somebody to stand up for him. if it had been a gang of boys beating up on that innocent little spindle-legged guy, i probably would have made a headfirst dive, football style, into the thick of them and bowled half a dozen of them over into the cement pool. then i’d have turned loose my two double-up experienced fists on them, windmill fashion, and poetry would have come tumbling after.
but what do you do when your pal is being torn to pieces by a pack of helpless girls? as i have maybe told you before, my parents had taught me to respect all girls, kind of like they were angels—which most of them aren’t—and only one i ever saw in the whole sugar creek territory is anywhere near like one, and she is one of circus’s many sisters, whose name is lucille. also i wouldn’t have the heart to fight a weak-muscled helpless creature which men and boys are supposed to defend from all harm and danger. right that minute, though, while they were dunking dragonfly in the spring and shoving him around and calling him names, it didn’t seem like girls were such helpless creatures. certainly it was dragonfly who needed the protection from harm and danger!
i decided to use my mind and my voice, instead of my muscles. i remembered that when i myself had been the striped cowboy riding a watermelon, i had scattered the girls in every direction there is, by letting loose a series of wild loon calls which sounded like a woman screaming or a wildcat with a trembling voice trying44 to scare the wits out of its prey. so, while i was still crouched in the shadows beside and behind poetry, i lifted my face to the sky and let loose six or seven blood-curdling long-toned, high-voiced, trembling cries, making the loon call, the screech-owl’s screech, and a wolf’s howl, over and over again, and at about the same time.
poetry, catching on to my idea, joined in with a series of sounds like a young rooster learning to crow, and a guinea hen’s scrawny-necked squawking, screaming song, which made me decide to bark like a dog and also to let out a half-dozen long-toned, high-pitched wailing bawls like circus’s pop’s hound, old bawler, makes when she’s on a red-hot coon trail.
we probably sounded like the midway of a county fair gone crazy, especially when all of a sudden poetry, who could imitate almost every farm noise there is, started in bawling like a calf, and i went back to the loon call and the screech-owl’s screech. then we began shaking the elm saplings we were under, making them sway like a windstorm was blowing and a cyclone would be there any minute.
things happened pretty fast after that, and the noise got even worse ’cause, all mixed up with dragonfly’s sneezing and poetry’s and my eardrum-splitting noises, were the different-pitched screams of the girls. all of a sudden there was a flurry of skirts and slacks and running feet, and in a flash of several jiffies the girls were tumbling over each other on their way up the incline, past the base of the leaning linden tree, and were gone! in my mind’s eye i was watching them making a helter-skelter dash for the pawpaw bushes and their tents.
and that is how we practically saved dragonfly’s life that very first night of this story, which is only the beginning—and which made the mystery we were trying to solve seem more mysterious than ever.
