"Well, what do you know about that?" I said.
Bert just stood looking at it and then he said, "That's no rain water."
"Sure it is," I said; "what else do you suppose it is?" "Something's wrong," he said.
All of a sudden he reached in through the wet bushes and pulled something out. "Look at that," he said.
It was a sort of a little college pennant on a stick.
"Those fellows went to Catskill didn't they?" Bert asked me, kind of quick.
I told him, "Yes, I thought so."
"Lucky for them," he said, "that's off their tent. Come on, hurry up."
We didn't try to go through the old creek bottom, but even alongside it we began coming to big puddles, and pretty soon we were wading through water up to our waists. Even a hundred feet away from it, the land was like a lake and we just plodded and stumbled through water. I knew now that the rain itself could never have done that. Pretty soon we must have got over into the old creek bed, because we stumbled and went kerflop in, and the next thing we knew, we were swimming.
"Let's get out of this, but try to keep near it," Bert said, "so we'll know where we're going. This has got me rattled. I don't know what's happened or where we're at. I don't even know if we're north or south of the creek bed."