I certainly felt queer. “Somebody’s stolen it,” I said to Poetry. I was running my hands frantically through all the pockets of my trousers and my shirt and all the other clothes I’d had on during the day.
We flashed the flashlight all around the tent and into every corner, where the envelope might have fallen out of one of my pockets. “We’ve got to find it,” Poetry said. “Where do you suppose you lost it?”
“Lost it? Somebody’s sneaked in here and stolen it.”
“Hey!” Poetry said, like he had thought of a bright idea. “When did you remember looking at it last?”
My thoughts galloped back over the evening, and the afternoon, and I couldn’t remember.
“What pocket did you have it in last?” Poetry asked, and I thought a jiffy, and said, “Why, my shirt pocket where I keep my New Testament. I put it there when I—”
And then I stopped talking, gasped out loud. I’d thought of something. “Maybe we—maybe it dropped out of my pocket back there in the cabin when we were climbing out of the window.”
Then Poetry said, “Yeah, or maybe you left it out on the front porch, and that’s why John Till didn’t come back to try to stop us. Maybe he found it on the floor out there and picked it up—if it was what he’d been looking for—”
My acrobatic goat came to life then, and groaned and turned over and tried to go back to sleep. But Poetry was more excited than I was. He said, “Bill Collins, we’ve GOT to find that map, and I don’t think we lost it around here anywhere.”
“Let’s all go back to sleep,” my Man Friday said.