And sure enough he had.
Little Jim, who was beside me, holding onto his stick which he always carried with him when we were on a hike or out in the woods, whispered close to my ear and said, “I’ll bet he’s got a lot more money sewed up in a lot more fish, and is going to bury it in the sawdust where these were.”
I happened to have my high-powered binoculars with me so I quick unsnapped the carrying case they were in, zipped them out, raised them to my eyes and right away it seemed like I was only about one-third as far away as I was. I gasped so loud at what I saw—or rather who I saw—that my gasp was almost like a yell.
“SH!” Circus said to us, just like he was the leader of our gang, which he wasn’t, but I was myself—that is, I was supposed to be, ’cause our real leader, Big Jim, wasn’t with us, but was back at camp with Little Tom Till, the newest member of our gang.
“It’s Old Hook-nose, all right,” I said, and knew it was. I could see his stoop-shoulders, dark complexion, red hair, bulgy eyes, bushy eyebrows, and his hook nose.
“What if he finds we’ve dug up part of the fish and run away with them?” Little Jim asked in a half-scared voice.
“Maybe he won’t,” I said, and hoped he wouldn’t.
While I was watching John Till toss his stringer of fish up into the opening and clamber up after them, Circus was slashing open the fish and taking out the ransom money which was folded in nice flat packets of oiled paper like the kind my mom uses in our kitchen back home at Sugar Creek.
We also all helped Circus do what he was doing, all of us maybe more excited than we’d been in a long time, while different ones of us took turns watching Hook-nose do what he was doing.
I knew that in only a few jiffies he would be out of that icehouse again, and probably would go back to the big white boat he’d come to shore in, shove off and row out a few feet, and then there would be a roar of his motor and away he would go swishing out across the sunlit water, his boat making a long widening V behind him. Then we would sneak back and get the rest of the money.