Little Jim piped up with a bright idea which was, “Let’s dig up all the fish real quick, stuff ’em in my gunny sack and beat it home to camp, and take the money out on the way maybe—or else take the fish home for dinner.” I looked at his excited bluish eyes, and forgot that he was a goat, and thought how much I liked him. “Boy!” he said, with a swell grin on his mouse-like face. “Won’t Mr. Ostberg be tickled to have his money back for the mission hospital!”
Here I’d been thinking about what a BIG reward I, Bill Collins, was going to get for finding the money, and Little Jim wasn’t thinking of himself at all, but of the folks in another land who needed the gospel for their souls and a doctor’s help for their bodies. What a swell guy, I thought.
But say, this story is long enough—and that’s really all of it, anyway, that is, all about how we actually found the ransom money, so I’ll have to wind up the whole thing in another paragraph or two. That wasn’t all the exciting adventures we had on our Northern camping trip, though, ’cause a new and very dangerous adventure began to happen to us even before we got out of that old icehouse that day.
While we were digging and finding fish with sewed-up stomachs and stuffing them into Little Jim’s gunny sack, to take home to camp, all of a sudden I thought I heard a noise outside.
“Sh!” I said to us. “Somebody’s coming!”
We all stopped stock still and listened, and sure enough I had heard a noise. Out on the lake there was the sound of a high-powered outboard motor that sounded like it wasn’t any more than a hundred yards from shore.
I could imagine that somebody on the other side of the lake had seen us and was coming roarety-sizzle across to stop whatever we were doing.
Little Jim grabbed up his stick and Poetry’s grip tightened on his scout knife handle till the knuckles on his hand turned white, he was holding it so tight.
“Quick!” I said to all of us, “let’s get out of here with what we’ve got, or it’ll be too late!”
I grabbed up the gunny sack, lugged it toward the exit, all of us getting there at about the same time. Boy oh boy, if only we could get out and make a dive for the woods and start to camp without being seen.