It only took us a few jiffies to read what was in the bottle, because we didn’t even have to take out the cork, on account of a piece of paper with black printing on it was rolled up inside, with the words as plain as anything visible right through the glass. Poetry read them out loud to us in his squawky voice and they were:
“Dear Fisherman Friend: This is one of the best places on the lake for Crappie fishing. Try it here Monday through Saturday an hour before and after sundown.... But on Sunday mornings at eleven and Sunday nights at 7:30, come to THE CHURCH OF THE CROSS, Bemidji, Minnesota, where we are fishing for men. We will be pleased to welcome you. Please leave this marker here for others to read, and remember that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, which means ‘you, me and anybody else.’”
The Pastor.
“P.S. Tune in the CHURCH OF THE CROSS radio broadcast every afternoon at 4:00 o’clock.”
Well, our boat was maybe only a few yards from where we’d first seen the bottle floating, which, as I told you, was not far from the shore, just straight out from the old Indian cemetery, so we took the oars which every motor boat ought to have in it, and rowed a few strokes back to where we thought the bottle had been floating before. Poetry was about to put it carefully back into the water when Dragonfly, whose mother, as you maybe know, believes it’s bad luck if a black cat crosses your path or if you break a mirror or walk under a ladder, and also that it is good luck if you find a horseshoe, piped up and said, “Let’s tie some other weight on it. I’d like to keep that horseshoe for good luck.”
“You’re crazy,” Poetry squawked. “That’d be stealing, and stealing would mean bad luck.”
Just that second there was a long-voiced high-pitched quavering cry of a loon from somewhere on the lake, and Dragonfly who’d been having a hard time getting used to a loon’s lonely cry, looked up quick like he had heard a ghost, while at the same time Circus let the horseshoe sink into the lake. A second later, there was the bottle floating on the surface of the water again, lying flat, which meant that the horseshoe was really on the bottom and the line was loose.
Right away, I adjusted the motor for starting, gave a quick sharp pull on the starter knob and away we all went again, racing up the shore toward the Narrows where we knew the river flowed from this lake into the one our camp site was on. In another ten minutes, we’d be there and Big Jim would help us decide what to do about John Till.
It was a wonderful ride and if we hadn’t been so excited, we would have enjoyed the scenery like we’d done once before when we were riding through the Narrows. The Narrows was almost a half mile long, and there was a little current but the river was flowing in the same direction we were going, so in only a few minutes we were on our own lake, and the pretty black-shrouded motor was carrying us fast straight for camp.
Poetry yelled something to all of us then, and it was, “You guys remember yesterday afternoon when it rained and we were in Old John’s cabin and found that little portable radio and when we turned it on, we heard a Christian program? I’ll bet that was the Church of the Cross program.”
Then Little Jim, who was sitting beside Dragonfly with one hand holding onto his stick and the other onto the side of the boat and with a tickled grin on his face, piped up and said, “Radio’s a good way to fish for men. It’s like casting with a terribly long line clear out where the fish really are.”
“Old John Till’s a fish, all right,” Dragonfly said, “only he drinks whiskey instead of water. I hope when we get him captured, he’ll have to go to jail the rest of his life.”