That was when Little Tom Till came to life and proved that he had been created as equal as I had, and maybe even more so. The very second we struck, he scrambled to his feet, grabbing up the jug and the coil of clothesline which was fastened to it and yelling to me, “Come on! Let’s get onto the island!”
It certainly was a bright idea, ’cause the very second our boat hit the tree, the current had whirled it around and one end struck and stuck against the sandy bank of the island, and all we had to do was to use the boat for an aluminum-floored bridge the rest of the way, which in an awkward hurry, we did. In only a few jiffies we were across and out and clambering up the rugged shore of the island into its thicket of willows and tall weeds and wild shrubbery.
“We’re straight across from the sycamore tree and the cave!” Little Tom Till cried. “If we can get across the channel on the other side of the island, and into the cave and go through it to Old Man Paddler’s cabin, we’ll be safe. Bob’s up there helping him cut wood this afternoon—only he’s mad at me about something.”
The trouble was, the boat that had made such a nice bridge for us to cross on, was the same kind of an aluminum-floored bridge for the woman—the man, I mean. He could climb out onto the elm’s horizontal trunk, drop down into the boat and get across as quick as anything.
Even as I scrambled up the bank behind my blue-jeaned, red-and-maroon-shirted friend, I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the brown slacks with the woman in them—the man, I mean—on the trunk of the tree working his way along through the branches toward the boat. In another second he would drop down into it, and in another would be across and onto the island racing after us.
The chase was on—a wild-running, scared, barefoot-boy’s race ahead of a short-tempered thief dressed in woman’s slacks, wearing a woman’s straw-colored hat, dodging our way across that island which was a thicket of willow and wild shrubbery, with here and there a larger tree, and dozens of little craters hollowed out by the flood waters which nearly every spring went racing across it. Banked against nearly every larger tree trunk were piles of driftwood and cornstalks and stuff the creek had carried from different farmer’s fields farther upstream and deposited there.
I guess I never had realized what a jungle that island was. I had been on it many a time when I was just monkeying around, looking for shells, or with my binoculars studying birds. Once in awhile at night in the spring or summer when it was bullfrog season, we would wade in the weed-grown water along the edge of the riffles with lanterns and flashlights looking for the giant-sized brown and dark-green monsters whose eyes in the light were like the headlamps of toy automobiles—bullfrogs, as you probably know, having long hind legs with bulging muscles, which when they are skinned, are snow-white, and when Mom fries them, they taste even better than fried chicken.
But such a wilderness! And so many rough-edged rocks for a boy’s bare feet to get cut or bruised on, so many briers to scratch him and so many branches to fly back and switch him in the face when another boy has just gone hurrying through ahead of him.
If we had been running from a real woman, or if only he had been wearing a dress instead of slacks, he wouldn’t have been able to take such long steps, and there would have been the chance he might get the skirt caught on a branch or a brier and slow him down while we dodged our way ahead of him in our mad race to the other side.