Sixteen-year-old Kit, in whom the spirit of adventure ran high, was watching suspiciously a trim-looking, red-wheeled, black-bodied truck, driven by a strange man, as it pulled up at the pasture bars and stopped. The man took out of the truck not a burlap bag, but a tan leather case and also something else that looked like a large box with a handle on it.
“Camouflage,” said Kit to herself, scornfully. “He’s going to fill them with our berries, and then make believe he’s selling books.”
Downstairs she tore with the news. Her twelve-year-old brother Tommy and his pal Jack Davis, nine, were out in the barn negotiating peace terms with a half-grown calf that they had been trying to tame for days, and which still persisted in butting its head every time they came near it with friendly overtures. Jack, whose mother had died and whose father had not wanted to be bothered with him, had come to live with the Craigs after Jean and Tommy had discovered him in Nantic a few days before Christmas, lost and alone. Tommy had immediately assumed responsibility for Jack and protected and bossed him as if Jack were his special property.
Jean and Doris, who was fourteen, had gone up to Norwich with Mrs. Craig for the day, and Mr. Craig was out in the apple orchard with Philip Weaver, spraying the trees against the attacks of the gypsy moths. At least, Philip held to spraying, but Mr. Craig was anxious to experiment with some of the newer methods advocated by the government.
Kit called her news to Tommy and he and Jack started off after the trespasser, while she went back to telephone Mr. Hicks, the constable. The very last thing she had said to Tommy was to put the vandal in the corncrib and stand guard over him until Mr. Hicks came.
“Don’t you worry one bit, Miss Kit,” the Constable of Elmhurst Township assured her over the phone. “I’ll be there in my car in less than twenty minutes. You folks ain’t the only ones that’s suffering this year from fruit thieves, and it’s time we taught these high fliers from town that they can’t light anywhere they like and pick what they like. I’ll take him right down to the judge this afternoon.”
Kit sat by the open window and fanned herself with a feeling of triumphant indignation. If Jean or Doris had been home, she knew perfectly well they would have been soft-hearted and lenient, but every berry on every bush was precious to Kit, and she felt that now was the appointed hour to catch the thief.
Inside of a few minutes Tommy and Jack came back hot and red-faced, but filled with the pride of accomplishment.
“We’ve got him,” Tommy said, happily, “safe and sound in the corncrib, and it’s hotter than all get out in there. He can’t escape unless he slips through a crack in the floor. We just caught him as he was bending down right over the bushes, and what do you suppose he tried to tell us, Kit? He said he was looking for caterpillars.” Tommy laughed. “Did you call up Mr. Hicks?”
Kit nodded, looking out at the corncrib. The midsummer sun beat down upon it pitilessly, at the end of the lane behind the bar.