Watermelon Mystery at Sugar Creek - Paul Hutchens (the false prince .TXT) 📗

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