“Hey, look!” Dragonfly, who saw it first, said. “Wally acts like he’s scared. Look at him go!”
We looked, and sure enough the balloon was bobbing up and down, and even diving clear under. Then it plunked clear under for a long jiffy before bouncing back up and shooting almost a foot into the air, then landed with a kersmack on the water again.
Nobody had had any bites for awhile before that, but we had enough fish for one day, and so Big Jim said, “Let’s go back to camp and get supper,” which was a good idea. We would come back tomorrow.
“What’ll we do with Wally?” Poetry said.
“He’s been a swell friend,” Dragonfly said. “He ought to have some kind of appreciation.”
Then Little Jim piped up good and loud and said, “Let’s give him his liberty!”
Well, we had enough larger fish, and Wally really deserved some kind of a reward for helping us catch so many fish to take home to Sugar Creek, so we pulled anchor and rowed out toward where Wally was making the balloon fish bob around in such a lively style. As soon as the boat had eased along side, I, who was closest to it, reached down my hand, caught hold of the balloon, and started to haul Wally in toward the boat, but right away my line went tight like it was fastened onto a log or snag down on the bottom of the lake. I gave a tug, but not too hard ’cause I didn’t want the line to scale off any scales from Wally’s tail, it being as hard on a fish to lose some of its scales as on a barefoot boy to stump his toe and knock the skin off.
“He’s tangled up on something,” I said, and gave another small pull and then—WHAM! There was a fierce wild lunge down there somewhere, and I felt a scared feeling racing up and down my spine. I knew Wally didn’t have that much strength. Say, it felt as big as an excited pig running in our barnyard back at Sugar Creek—or a dog or something.
I had hold of the line as well as the balloon, and the line was cutting into my hands. I couldn’t think straight, but didn’t dare let loose.
Snow-in-the-face, for the very first time, got excited and yelled something to Eagle Eye in the Indian language, and then to us in English, which was, “SOME GREAT BIG FISH HAS SWALLOWED HIM....”—which made sense.