Up he struggled, and down he went again, sputtering and wallowing along, with me doing the same thing beside him.
And then all of a cringing sudden, Tom let out a scared cry, saying: “Help! h-h-h-help!” as he lost his balance and went down—really down, I mean. The coil of rope in his hand flew into the air like a lasso straight toward me who, at that minute, was quite a few yards from him. Part of the clothesline caught around my upraised hand with which I was trying to balance myself, the line tightened as Tom went down, still holding onto the jug’s handle—and then down I went myself, like a steer at a rodeo, the water sweeping me off my feet.
And there we both were, struggling in the racing current—two red-haired boys, one on each end of a brand new plastic clothesline.
Even as I went down I saw the willows on the island part and the maddest-faced man I ever saw in my life came rushing toward us. Also, I saw a puzzled expression on his face like he was wondering what on earth, which one of us was Tom and which was me, and which of us had the water jug with the money in it.
Just that second also, his woman’s hat caught on a branch, and off it came and with it a wig of reddish-brown hair, and I noticed the man had a very short haircut.
The woman was an honest-to-goodness man, all right—or boy, rather, maybe about as old as Bob Till himself. He had dirt smudges on his rouged cheeks like he had fallen down a few times in his mad race across the island after us. He was panting and gasping for breath and his woman’s blouse was torn at the neck.
Tom and I must have looked queer to her—him, I mean—with me like a calf on the end of a lasso, and Tom now fifteen feet from me, with the jug in one hand, struggling to stay on his feet, on account of I was downstream farther than he and being sucked along with the current while my feet fought for the pebbly bottom.
Right away, the mean-faced oldish boy seemed to make up his mind who was who and what was what and what he ought to do about it. He made a rushing plunge out into the water and a series of fast lunges straight for Tom, who began to make even faster lunges toward the other shore and the sycamore tree.
“Run! Swim! HURRY!” I yelled in a sputtering voice to Tom—which he couldn’t on account of right that very fast-fleeting second, his feet shot out from under him and he went down again ker-flopety-splash-SPLASH!
I knew I could never wade back against the swift current to get to him in time to help him. I’d have to get to the other shore QUICK, race along the bank to a place fifteen or twenty feet above him and plunge in again and hurry out to where he was, which I started to start to do, and got stopped.