“I don’t know,” Poetry said, “reinforcing it, maybe,” which, it turned out, he was. Right away another thicker layer of plaster of Paris was put on, and then it was ready to let harden.
After awhile, when they were sure it was solid, they would just lift it up and there would be a perfect plaster cast, a foot and a half long, of the tire marks, which, whenever they found the kidnapper’s car, would help them prove that he was really guilty.
We couldn’t stay there all night, though, ’cause tomorrow the gang had a lot of things to do and see, and besides when a boy wants to be in good health, he has to have plenty of sleep at night, so the firewarden decided to drive us back to camp, while the police looked all around the place where we’d found the little girl, and also in Santa’s boathouse for other clues. We gave them the yellow scarf with the paint on it, and went with the firewarden back to our camp to try to get some excited sleep.
Boy oh boy, it had been a great experience! About an hour later, after waking up all the gang and telling them the news, we were in our tents again ready to sleep. The big hot round rock in the pail in the center of the tent certainly had helped keep the tent warm, and when I was in my sleeping bag again, as warm as toast, I felt that I had really done something important in life... Before I went to sleep again, I got to thinking about that little kidnapped girl, knowing how glad her parents would feel when they got the news which they maybe already had, and were maybe already on their way up here to see her. Of course, if she was really sick, and had been mistreated terribly by the kidnapper, she would maybe have to be in the hospital quite a while.
For a few minutes just before I dropped off to sleep, I was listening to the waves lapping against our sandy shore, and was thinking and thinking and thinking. I knew that if I had been up and was standing by the shore looking out on the moonlit water, the rolling waves would maybe look just like our oats field does down along Sugar Creek when the wind is blowing ... waving and waving and rolling and rolling and rolling and looking very wonderful; and for a minute I could see my pop sitting up on our big binder, driving along, and maybe singing a song which nearly always, when Pop sang or whistled, was a hymn we used in our church.... It might be the one that goes:
“Bringing in the sheaves,
Bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing
Bringing in the sheaves ...”
Then I remembered Poetry’s Bible verse and it was, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”.... It was absolutely silly, I thought again, for anybody to sow a lot of sin in his life and not expect to reap a harvest of the same kind, and the verse also said God couldn’t be mocked, which maybe meant that every man would be punished for living a sinful life. Then I imagined different things, such as Pop saying to Mom, “I wonder how Bill is getting along up North,” and Mom would say, “Oh fine—I hope. I wonder if he is warm enough. It gets so cold up there at night, and you know how he is—he kicks the covers off in his sleep, and lies there and half freezes without even waking up.” And Pop would remember that I had my sleeping bag, and Mom would sigh and they’d go to sleep. They really were wonderful parents, I thought ... and the waves of the blue water lake rolled and rolled and tossed around some, and then a great big pair of horns stuck themselves up out of the lake, and then a cow’s face, and then a whole cow splashed and splashed, and the water turned all blue all around the big blue cow and Mom tried to stop him from swishing around so much on account of he was splashing around in her washing machine and getting too much bluing on her clothes...