“Sure,” Poetry said. “We’re going to play Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island both at once. First we save our Man Friday from the cannibals, and then we quit playing Robinson Crusoe and change to Treasure Island.”
Well, it was good imagination and lots of fun, and I was already imagining myself to be Robinson Crusoe on an island, living all by myself. In fact, I sometimes have more fun when I imagine myself to be somebody else than when I am just plain red-haired fiery-tempered, freckled-faced Bill Collins, living back at Sugar Creek.
It was fun the way Poetry and I initiated Dragonfly into our secret gang—anyway, fun for Poetry and me. This is the way we did it....
I hid myself out of sight behind some low fir trees with a stick in my hand for a gun, and Poetry stood Dragonfly up against a tree and tied him with a piece of string he carried in his pocket.
“Now, don’t you dare break that string!” Poetry told him. “You’re going to be cooked and eaten in a few minutes! You can pretend to try to get loose, but don’t you dare do it!”
I stood there hiding behind my fir trees getting ready to shoot with my imaginary gun, just in time to save Dragonfly from being cooked. Dragonfly looked half crazy standing there tied to the tree and with a grin on his face, watching Poetry stack a little stack of sticks in one place for our imaginary fire. We wouldn’t start a real fire on account of it would have been absolutely crazy to start one, nobody with any sense starting a fire in a forest on account of there might be a terrible forest fire and thousands of beautiful trees would be burned, and lots of wild animals, and maybe homes and cottages of people, and even people themselves.
A jiffy after the stack of sticks was ready, Poetry set the big prune can on top, then he turned to Dragonfly and started to untie him.
“Groan!” Poetry said to him. “Act like you’re scared to death! Yell! Do something!”
Dragonfly didn’t make a very scared black man. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said; and there wasn’t, I thought—but all of a sudden there was, ’cause the very second Poetry had Dragonfly cut loose and was dragging him toward the imaginary fire, Dragonfly making it hard for him by struggling and hanging back and making his body limp so Poetry had to almost carry him, and just as I peered through the branches of my hideout and pointed my stick at Poetry and was getting ready to yell, “BANG! BANG!” a couple of times, and then rush in and rescue Dragonfly, there was a crashing noise in the underbrush behind me, and footsteps running and then a terribly loud explosion that sounded like the shot of a revolver or some kind of a gun which almost scared the living daylights out of me, and also out of the poor black boy and the cannibal that was getting ready to eat him.
Say, when I heard that shot behind me, I jumped almost out of my skin, I was so startled and frightened. Poetry and poor little pop-eyed Dragonfly acted like they were scared even worse than I was.