That woman wasn’t going to let us get away as easily as that. She leaped into fast life and began racing down the shore after us, yelling for us to stop, which we couldn’t.
“What’s she so mad about, anyway?” I asked Little Tom Till.
His answer astonished me so much I almost lost my balance and fell out of the boat: “There’s hundreds and hundreds of dollars in this water jug. It’s the stolen money from the Super Market!”
Boy oh boy! No wonder there was a cyclone in that woman’s mind! And no wonder she didn’t want two red-haired boys in blue jeans and gray-and-maroon-striped shirts in a rowboat to get away!
“She’s as mad as a hornet!” I said to Tom when, like a volley of rifle and shotgun shots a splattering of very angry, very filthy words fell thick and fast all around on us and on our ears from the woman’s very angry, very harsh mannish-sounding voice.
“She’s not a she,” Little Tom Till answered. “She’s a he. He’s been hiding out in the tent pretending to be a woman, wearing women’s clothes and earrings and hats and using fancy perfumes and stuff.”
Every second the fast current was swirling us downstream closer and closer to an overhanging elm, one that had fallen into the water from the last Sugar Creek storm, and its top extended almost all the way across the channel from the north shore to the island. I could see our boat was going to crash into the leafy branches and we’d be stopped.
I knew if we could manage to steer around the tree’s top, we’d be safe for quite awhile on account of there was a thicket that came clear down to the water’s edge there and if the fierce-faced man wanted to follow us any further, he would have to leave the shore and run along the edge of the cornfield for maybe fifty yards before he could get back to the creek again.
If only we had even one oar, we could steer the boat near the island where there was open water. We could miss the fallen elm’s bushy top and——!
And then, all of a helpless sudden, we went crashing into the branches and there we stopped!