Poetry’s and my eyes met and we grunted to each other. “That’s only an old bread wrapper. We threw it away last night,” I said to Little Jim.
“You shouldn’t have,” Little Jim answered, and came loping over to where we were, with the happiest grin on his face you ever saw. He held the oiled paper out to us. “Look! There’s a note in it. See!” he cried.
You could have knocked me over with a watermelon seed, I was so astonished. The oiled paper said, “Eat more Eatmore,” all right, but as plain as day there was something sealed in between two layers of the wrapping paper. The thought hit my mind with a thud—there was something very important in that paper!
“Let’s get out of here quick,” Big Jim said. Taking the paper and ordering: “Follow me!” he started on a fast run up the path which led through the forest of giant ragweed toward the old swimming hole.
Zippety-zip-zip, plop-plop-plop, my bare feet went in the cool damp winding path through the ragweed following along with the rest of the Gang.
The minute we reached the place where we had had so many happy times each summer, we heard voices from up the creek.
“Girls!” Circus exclaimed disgustedly. “Let’s get out of here!”
I looked in the direction the sounds came from and saw a boat with three or four girls in it. In less than a firefly’s fleeting flash, we were up and gone, scooting through the rows of tall corn headed for the east end of the bayou.
“We’ll have our meeting in the graveyard,” Big Jim said. “They’ll be afraid to come there.”