I had the flashlight in my hand and without thinking, but just doing what I wanted to, shot its long white beam right straight toward the boathouse, up against the hill. Before I could even think Poetry had reached out a hand and grabbed my arm and smothered the light against his fat side, but not before I saw what I saw, which was a dark shadow of something dart behind the boathouse.
“Don’t scare whatever it is,” Poetry said. “Give me time to think what to do,” Poetry, as you know, being the one of our gang which wanted to be a detective and knew more about being one than any of the rest of us.
We were both ducked behind the wood rick again and our knees were on a pile of sawdust, which maybe had been left there when somebody had maybe cut the wood with a buzz-saw. Even with a scary mystery just around the corner, Poetry quoted something he had memorized, which was.
“If a wood-saw would saw wood,
How much wood would the wood-saw saw
If the wood-saw would saw wood?”
“I thought you wanted to think,” I said to him.
“I am,” he said. “I think best when I have what books call a ‘poetic muse.’ Did you notice what I noticed?” he asked me.
“What?” I said, and he said, “That the boathouse has had a new coat of paint since we were here, last year.”
“I saw a shadow move,” I answered him. I was trembling inside and listening toward the boathouse.