I kept my eyes peeled for the sight of a brown tent, which as soon as we would see it we would go bashfully up to it and ask if anybody had lost a billfold. Then we would have them describe it to us and if it was like the one we had, we would give it to them. While we were there we would get a closer look at the small-footed woman, who had been wearing overalls last night and had been digging in the cemetery. There would probably be an automobile also, since there had been one last night.
But say, we walked clear to the bridge and there wasn’t even a sign of a tent anywhere.
Poetry got an idea then and it was, “Let’s go down to the old sycamore tree and through the cave up to Old Man Paddler’s cabin and ask him. He’ll know where their camp is. They couldn’t camp here anyway without his permission.”
So away we went on across the north road and along the creek till we came to the sycamore tree, which as you know is at the edge of the swamp not far from the cave. Pretty soon we were all standing in front of the cave’s big, wooden door, which Old Man Paddler keeps unlocked when he is at home because the cave is a short-cut to his cabin—the other end of the cave being in the basement of his cabin.
Big Jim seized the white door knob like different ones of us had done hundreds of times. In a jiffy we would be in the cave’s first room and on our way through the long, narrow passage to the cabin itself.
“Hey!” Big Jim exclaimed in a disappointed voice, “It’s locked!”
“What on earth?” I thought, but I remembered that sometimes the old man had the door closed and locked for quite a while when he was going to be away, or when he was on a vacation, or maybe when he was writing something or other and didn’t want any company.
So we turned and went back to the spring again and on up the creek in the other direction to see if we could find the tent we were looking for.
After walking and looking around for maybe ten minutes without finding any tent, we came to another of Circus’ favorite elm saplings near the rail fence, which, if you follow it, leads to Strawberry Hill. On the other side of the fence was Dragonfly’s pop’s pasture where there were nearly always a dozen cows grazing.
It was while we were waiting for Circus to get up the tree and down again that I heard a rumbling noise a little like thunder mixed up with the sound of wind blowing. I looked up quick to the southwest sky expecting to see a rain cloud already formed and the storm itself getting ready to come pouring down upon us. But the big, yellow, cumulus cloud was still where it had been, only it seemed a lot bigger, and some other queer-shaped clouds had come from somewhere to hang themselves up there beside it to keep it company. Those other clouds had probably carried a lot of their own rain water to give to it so it would have enough to give our Sugar Creek farms a “real soaker,” as Mom always called a big rain.