“Sure,” Dragonfly piped up and said, “and that’s the reason why every boy in the world who is in a boat or a canoe on a lake or a river ought to wear a life vest, or else there ought to be plenty of life preservers in the boat or the canoe, just in case.”
“Hey!” Little Jim piped up and squeaked in his mouse-like voice. “Your On-onda-something or other has come to life away down the creek!” And sure enough, it had, for away down the creek, maybe fifty feet further, there was another V moving along toward the Sugar Creek bridge, which meant I hadn’t killed the musquash at all, but only scared it, and maybe my rock hadn’t even hit it at all, and it had ducked and swum under water like Ondatra zibethicas do in Sugar Creek and like loons do in Pass Lake in northern Minnesota.
“I’m thirsty,” Circus said, and jumped up from where he had been lying on his back with his feet propped up on a big hollow stump. That hollow stump was the same one, I thought, where his pop had slipped down inside once and had gotten bit by a black widow spider which had had her web inside.
Right away we were all of us scurrying down the steep hill to the spring and getting a drink apiece of water, either stooping down and drinking like cows or else using the paper cups which we had in a little container on the leaning tree that leaned over the spring and which we’d put there, instead of the old tin cup which we’d battered into a flat piece of tin and thrown into Sugar Creek.
All of a sudden, we heard a strange noise up at the top of the hill, and it sounded like somebody moving along through last year’s dead leaves and at the same time talking or mumbling to himself about something.
“Sh!” Dragonfly said, shushing us, he being the one who nearly always heard or saw something before any of the rest of us did.
We all hushed, and sure enough I heard it. It was a man’s voice, and he was talking to himself or something up there at the top of the hill.
“Sh!” I said to different ones of us, and we all stopped whatever we had been doing or saying, and didn’t move, all except Little Jim who lost his balance, and to keep from falling the wrong direction which was in a puddle of cold clean water on the other side of the spring, he had to step awkwardly in several places, jumping from one rock to another and using his pretty stick-candy-looking stick to help him.
We kept hushed for a jiffy and the sound up at the top of the hill kept right on—leaves rasping and rustling, and a man’s voice mumbling something like he was talking to himself.
All of us had our eyes on Big Jim, our leader. I was looking at his fuzzy mustache, which was like the down on a baby pigeon, and was wondering who was up at the top of the hill, and thinking about how I wished I could get a little fuzz on my upper lip, and wondering if I could make mine grow if I used some kind of cold cream on it, or something like girls do when they want to look more like older girls than they are.