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

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.

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.

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.