“Stove?... That’s a water pail!” Poetry exclaimed.
“That’s where I want my suitcase,” I said, and started to move it, but Circus yelled, “Don’t touch it. You’ll get burned. It’s a stove!”
In the flickering light his monkey face looked ridiculous, and I, knowing how mischievous he was, said, “You’re crazy,” and started to take hold of the handle of the pail, and did, and let go in a fierce hurry. The handle was hot, and there was a lot of heat coming from the outside of the pail and a whole lot coming from the inside. It was pretty dark in the tent so I carried the candle from the corner, and looked in, and—would you believe it?—Well, I wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t seen it, but there it was—one of the big round rocks Poetry and I had rolled into the fire a couple hours ago. It was still as hot as anything, and would maybe stay hot nearly all night.
Pretty soon, I had crawled into my sleeping bag, and with Poetry in his, right beside me, and Dragonfly and Circus on the other side of the tent in theirs, we were ready to try to stop talking and go to sleep. Circus snuffed out the candle, and we all were quiet as we could be for awhile, which wasn’t quiet. We could also hear the rest of the gang—which was Big Jim and Tom Till and Little Jim and also Barry Boyland—still talking over in their tent maybe fifty feet away on the other side of the camp fire.
In spite of having been scared by my own imagination, I was awful sleepy and in a few jiffies was so sleepy I knew that in a minute I’d be gone. I was so sleepy I knew I wouldn’t be able to say a very good good-night prayer to the Heavenly Father. It was better for a boy to do most of his praying when he is wider awake anyway, but I managed to say a few words which I meant from the bottom of my heart, and they were that the little girl’s parents wouldn’t go crazy on account of their little girl being stolen. I also prayed for little Snow-in-the-face and maybe a few other things.
Our gang hardly ever prayed together, on account of boys being bashful about doing it, but each one of us nearly always prayed by himself. Once in a while, though, we did when it was something extra important, and we thought maybe God wanted us to ask Him about it.
It certainly was a wonderful feeling—lying there in my cozy sleeping bag, warm as toast, listening to mosquitos buzzing around my face but not getting bit even once on account of I had mosquito lotion on my face and even on my ears, all of us being very careful, like the directions on the bottle said, not to get any on our lips or too near our eyes. Besides, there weren’t any mosquitos in the tent on account of the window in our tent had mosquito netting built into it and it was mosquito proof.
I certainly was glad I hadn’t told anybody I thought anybody had been kidnapped and was maybe in Santa’s boathouse. I didn’t want to seem ridiculous to anybody except to Poetry and myself; for some reason, though, I wished I had been right, on account of, as my pop once said, anybody doesn’t like to believe he is wrong, even when he is.
I drifted away into a half dream, and it seemed like I could hear the washing of the lake wavelets on the shore, and they were mixed up with Dragonfly’s snoring. Also it seemed like somebody was near me with a saw and was sawing wood, and the pile of sawdust was getting higher and higher, and Poetry and I were standing ankle deep in it. Then, I took off my shoes to get the sawdust out of them, and they were filled with green and white paint. Then somebody started pounding and making a slapping noise beside me, and I woke up, and it was Dragonfly’s twisting and turning in his sleep and slapping at his face and ears. So I said to him, “’Smatter?” He answered back to me in a whining whisper and said, “These crazy mosquitoes are driving me wild. They are the biggest mosquitoes in the world!”
“Didn’t you put on any lotion?” I hissed back to him, and he said, “No, I’m allergic to it. It makes me sneeze!” Right that second he sneezed twice, so I said, “You’re probably allergic to mosquitoes, too.”