We passed the Little-Jim tree and went on to the spring again, then moved cautiously through the woods toward the rail fence that bordered the north road, having to pass not more than forty yards from the pawpaw bushes on the way. Dragonfly managed to sneeze several times just as we were parallel with the girl scout camp, which proved that his mind as well as his nose was allergic to perfume, ’cause he certainly wasn’t close enough to their camp to smell them.
“Girls aren’t anything to be sneezed at,” Poetry was smart enough to think of to say to Dragonfly; and Dragonfly sneezed again.
At the rail fence, we went through—or under or over—the different rails—whichever different ones of us decided to do, and in a fast jiffy were on our way across the bridge, in the direction of the Tills’ house.
The minute we reached the other side of the bridge Little Jim cried suddenly, “Look! There’s the boat I bet they used last night!”
I looked downstream in the direction Little Jim was pointing and saw the red stern of a rowboat half hidden under the low-hanging branches of a willow.
A thousand shivers started racing up and down my spine when I realized that our mystery was coming to even more life than it had come to last night when we had seen the boat stopping at the spring.
At that very same instant I saw, back on the shore, half-hidden among the trees, the forest-green roof of a wall-type tent. What on earth? I thought. Not only were there a flock of girls camping near the pawpaw bushes in the woods above the bridge, but here on the other side of the creek and below the bridge was somebody else camping! I was remembering last night and the mysterious something-or-other I had seen somebody carry to the spring from the boat. This very same boat, maybe!
Poetry beside me remarked, “There’s where the woman lives—the one that was smoking the cigarette last night.”
“There’s where the man lives, you mean,” I disagreed.
Beside the tent was a gun-metal gray pickup truck that looked like it was maybe ten or fifteen years old. At almost the same instant, there was the sound of a motor coming to roaring life, and right away the truck was moving. It went backwards first, then swung left and began bumping along in the little lane toward the highway.