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 water98 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!”
99 “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 map100 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.
101 we were busy for the next few minutes, but between grunts and groans and our thief’s filthy language flying thick and fast against our ears, tom managed to say, “your prize melon’s all right, and still not plugged. i saw her in the tent back over there by the cornfield, when i dashed in for the jug.”
that’s when our big bully of an overgrown boy growled into the middle of everything that was happening and said, “maybe i took it myself. i was going to use a watermelon for a piggy bank instead of the water jug—now are you satisfied?” and he started in twisting and fighting and trying to get away again—and couldn’t.
but now i do have to quit writing.
several nights later, when poetry and i were in our cots in the tent under the plum tree, while the drumming of the cicadas was so deafening we could hardly hear ourselves talk, we had one of the happiest times of our lives telling each other everything that had happened.
“who’d have dreamed muggs mcginnis would have been hiding out right in our territory?” he asked.
“yeah,” i answered across the moonlit four feet of space between our cots, “imagine me being a good enough detective to capture him all by myself—tom and bob helping a little, of course.”
when i finished saying such a boastful sentence, it seemed like maybe i had been a pretty important hero. it felt fine to be one. but poetry spoiled my puffed-up feeling by saying, “it was little tom till’s keen mind that solved your mystery for you. that guy, muggs, actually was getting his drinking water from your iron pitcher pump and from the spring with his jug. i, myself, thought of that!”
poetry yawned, rolled over and sat up on the edge of his cot in the moonlight, looking like the shadow of a big fat grizzly, yawned again and said, “i think i’ll go get a drink. i can’t seem to remember whether i got one the other night or not. want to go along?”
i quick was sitting up on the edge my own cot, and demanding “oh no, you don’t!”—saying it so loud it could have been heard inside the collins’ downstairs bedroom—and was, on account of a second later a thundery voice boomed out across the lawn from the window near the telephone, “will you boys be quiet out there? you’ll wake up your mother, bill. i’ve told you for the last time!”—which is one of the most interesting sounds a boy ever hears around our farm.
102 poetry was still thirsty, though, so i said, “i’ve had years of experience pumping that pump. i know how to do it without making it squeak. i’ll get you a drink, myself.”
with that, i crept out of bed and moved out through the moonlight toward the pump platform.
that’s when i heard pop talking to somebody—to mom, maybe, i thought—and moved stealthily over to the living room window to see if maybe he was saying anything about poetry or me or about the exciting experiences we had had capturing muggs mcginnis.
but say! pop wasn’t talking to mom at all, but to somebody else—to the best friend a boy ever had and the most important person in the universe, the one who had made the stars and the sky and every wonderful thing in the whole boys’ world. i’d heard pop pray many a time at our dinner table and in prayer meeting at church, but only once in awhile when he was all by himself.
it seemed like i ought not to be listening but i couldn’t move now or pop’d hear me, so i waited awhile—and part of his kind of wonderful prayer was:
“... pour out thy love upon muggs mcginnis, and upon all the lost boys in the world. help them to find out in some way that christ loved them and poured out his blood upon the cross for the forgiveness of their sins....
“bless our son, bill, and our precious little curly-haired charlotte ann, so filled with play and mischief, and help mother and me bring them up to love thee with their whole hearts, and to always try to do what is right....”
mom must have been right there beside pop, cause when he finished, i heard her say, “thank you, theo. i can go to bed now without a worry in the world. i’ve given them all to him.”
and pop answered, “i’ve decided you’re not going to have even one hour of insomnia tonight—not even one.”
mom yawned then, and said while she was still doing it:
“the way i feel now, i may not even have one minute.”
i crept away then and moved out through the drumming of the cicadas and the cheeping of the crickets toward the moonlit iron pitcher pump, feeling fine inside and glad to be alive.
