“‘That’s an awful lot of money,’ I said; ‘where’d you get it?’ And that’s when the chase started.”
“But somebody did steal Ida,” I said, and wondered what Tom would say about that. “Somebody sneaked out into our truck patch last night and took her,” I added.
Right that second our prisoner regained consciousness, opened his eyes, and began to struggle to get his hands and feet free, and to sit up and get off our litter, which made us drop him ker-plop onto the ground.
We were busy for the next few minutes, but between grunts and groans and our thief’s filthy language flying thick and fast against our ears, Tom managed to say, “Your prize melon’s all right, and still not plugged. I saw her in the tent back over there by the cornfield, when I dashed in for the jug.”
That’s when our big bully of an overgrown boy growled into the middle of everything that was happening and said, “Maybe I took it myself. I was going to use a watermelon for a piggy bank instead of the water jug—now are you satisfied?” And he started in twisting and fighting and trying to get away again—and couldn’t.
But now I do have to quit writing.
Several nights later, when Poetry and I were in our cots in the tent under the plum tree, while the drumming of the cicadas was so deafening we could hardly hear ourselves talk, we had one of the happiest times of our lives telling each other everything that had happened.
“Who’d have dreamed Muggs McGinnis would have been hiding out right in our territory?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered across the moonlit four feet of space between our cots, “imagine me being a good enough detective to capture him all by myself—Tom and Bob helping a little, of course.”
When I finished saying such a boastful sentence, it seemed like maybe I had been a pretty important hero. It felt fine to be one. But Poetry spoiled my puffed-up feeling by saying, “It was Little Tom Till’s keen mind that solved your mystery for you. That guy, Muggs, actually was getting his drinking water from your iron pitcher pump and from the spring with his jug. I, myself, thought of that!”