Poetry’s bright mind thought of a way and it was, “We’ll make a ladder out of ourselves and push Tom up, so he can poke the letter through the crack between the logs,” which was a good idea.
A little later, we rounded a bend in the lake and Big Jim steered straight toward the beach in front of the old log icehouse, where we’d left John Till only a little less than an hour before. My heart was pounding fast and hard. I was feeling tense inside on account of Tom, wondering what was in the letter and also what Tom wanted to tell his pop.
Big Jim shut off the motor at just the right speed, and we glided up to the shore. After beaching the boat, and tossing the anchor onto the shore, we scrambled out, and right away were sneaking up close to the icehouse.
We moved quietly so we wouldn’t be heard, although John Till could have heard our motor when we were coming in, I supposed.
“Sh!” Big Jim said to us, he and Tom leading the way as we crept up closer. I didn’t know what would happen next, but in a jiffy I found out, ’cause Big Jim stopped the rest of us and sent Tom on toward the icehouse alone. I peered through the leaves of some wild chokecherry shrubs we were crouching behind. Then I heard Tom’s pathetic voice that had a kind of a quaver in it like he was scared, calling out, “DADDY.”
We listened to see if there was any answer, but couldn’t hear any, then Tom’s voice called again, a little louder, real close to the side of the old log house. I had both hands up to my ears, but there wasn’t a sound, except right that second I heard a very pretty wren’s song that sounded half like a fast mixed-up whistling tune and half like the spring water that trickles out of the rocks not far from the old swimming hole back at Sugar Creek.
Then Tom called still louder, “DADDY! It’s ME—TOM! I’ve got a letter for you from Mother!”
But say, that icehouse was as quiet as if it had been an extra large gravehouse in an Indian cemetery.
Tom turned around then and looked in our direction with a question mark on his face.
All of us came out into the open and went toward him, not knowing what to think. In a little while the police would be here, and it’d be too late for Tom to tell his daddy what he wanted to tell him or to give him the letter or anything. Right that very second, I heard a fast motor coming on the lake somewhere and wondered if it might be Santa’s big boat, bringing the police and Circus and Dragonfly.