Watermelon Mystery at Sugar Creek by Paul Hutchens (graded readers .TXT) đź“•
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- Author: Paul Hutchens
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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.
The current was stronger near that other shore and the water deeper. My feet were sucked out from under me and again I went down, feeling as I was pulled under, my end of the rope still wrapped around my hand, which, also, without my hardly noticing it, I was holding onto for dear life.
Right that second the bully caught up with Tom, made a lunge with his right arm for the jug, seized Tom with the other, and there was a wild wrestling match with water flying and curses and fast flying arms and it looked like Tom was going to get the living daylights licked out of him for sure.
Tom was trying to fight back, and couldn’t with only one hand and because of the swift current. He was as helpless as Marybelle Elizabeth in a chickenyard fight with Cleopatra.
Right then is when I remembered something important, and it was that when a bevy of furious girls had been beating up on Dragonfly at the spring, I had screamed bloody murder, given several wild loon calls, bellowed like a bull and made a lot of other terrifying bird and animal noises, and it had saved Dragonfly. Before I knew I was going to do it, I was yelling and screaming every savage sound I could think of in the direction of the one-sided fight, crying for help at the same time, hoping some of the Gang might be somewhere in the neighborhood and hear.
And that’s when I heard Big Bob Till’s voice answer from the sycamore tree side of the channel. A second later I saw him standing in the black mouth of the cave. He held his hand up to his eyes, shading them like he had been in the dark quite awhile and the afternoon sunlight was too bright for them.
Then he seemed to see his little red-haired brother, Tom, getting a licking within an inch of his life by a butch-haired bully. And that is when Bob Till, the fiercest fighter in all Sugar Creek territory—except maybe Big Jim—came to life. It was like the cave was a bow and Bob was a two-legged arrow being shot by a giant as big as the one in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. I lost my balance then and went down, the rope in my hand went taut, and the other end was torn from Tom’s grasp, and the water jug, like a jug-shaped balloon wrapped in burlap, plopped to the surface, swung away and came on a fast downstream float toward me.
All I could see for a jiffy was Tom defending himself like a savage little tiger, and Big Bob Till shooting through the air like a man from a flying trapeze from the high bank out across the ten feet of excited air down and out toward where Tom was in the clutches of the thief—and then I was fighting to save myself from drowning because I was in water over my head. My right hand still clung to the rope on the other end of which was the floating, plunging water jug with stolen Super Market money in it.
BEFORE even another second could pass, Bob Till landed feet first in the swift current, and even quicker than that was storming his way through the six or seven feet of open water toward where his little brother, Tom, was holding on for dear life to the very same powerful-muscled overgrown man-sized boy who a little while before was wrestling with him trying to get the water jug away from him. Say, that little guy knew what he was doing.
“Oh no, you don’t! You great big bully!” Tom cried. “You don’t get away so easy. Come on, Bob! It’s him—the thief! Help!... Help!... H-E-L-P!”
And Bob helped.
Talk about a fierce, fast fist fight. That was one of the fiercest, fastest ones I ever saw and heard. I mean really heard in spite of my own battle to keep myself from losing my own balance in the deep, swift water I was in. If the rock bass and minnows and redhorse and other fish that were down in the water somewhere had been watching that water fight they’d probably have wondered what on earth—only they maybe wouldn’t know very much about the earth but only the water, that being where they lived.
Wham! Biff! Sock!... Wham ... wham ... wham!... Splash!... SPLASH! Double-whamety ... Pow!
“You great big lummox!” Bob yelled at his opponent. “You will try to drown my little brother! I’ll teach you right now!”
The bully staggered backwards, his hands and arms waving in a lot of fast directions as he tried to steady himself from falling. Then he struck the water and went down—and under.
Bob seemed to know he had his man licked. He quick turned to his little brother and half sobbed to him: “You poor little guy, fighting that big bully all by yourself!”
“Big Bully,” as Bob had just called the fierce-faced man—who wasn’t a man at all, and certainly wasn’t a woman, but was a powerful muscled boy the size of Big Jim—came up from under the water with a bounce like a cork plops back up after you’ve pushed it under. He came up sputtering and shaking his head and struggling to keep his balance in the rapids.
Spying the water jug floating on the surface down near where I was, he started on a fast half-run, half-swim toward it and me.
One reason the jug hadn’t already floated on far beyond me was because one end of the rope was still wrapped around one of my hands, and I was holding onto it for dear life. The other reason was that the middle of the rope which was down under the water was tangled up with and wrapped around the bully’s legs. I knew it for sure when I felt the rope tighten around my arm, and then felt myself being jerked off balance—and then down I went again.
It certainly wasn’t any time to be thinking funny thoughts right then—what with all the dangerous excitement I was in, and might not get out of without getting badly hurt—but a ridiculous idea plopped into my mind and stayed there for a fast flying second, and was: “I’m like a cowboy at a Sugar Creek rodeo. I’ve just lassoed a wild steer and my bronco has just thrown me off into a racing riffle, but I’m going to hold onto him!”
Grunt and groan and puff and sputter and yell and scream and tremble with excitement and hold on tight and fight and just about everything else you can think of—we four were really in a struggle for life—almost anyway.
I don’t know how many times I lost my balance and went down, nor how many times I thought the bully was going to get the water jug away from us and get away himself.
And then all of a sudden, right in the middle of everything, I saw Bob’s powerful right arm swing in a long wide arc, and the fist on the other end of it catch the painted faced tough guy on the jaw—and he went down—and stayed down, and that part of the struggle was over.
I say that part was over. We had another and a harder job on our hands—and that was, to save the bully from drowning, ’cause Bob’s hard-knuckled, experienced fist knocked him completely out.
I saw the scared expression on Bob’s face the very minute I heard his frightened words come crying out of his mouth: “I—I—I’ve killed him! What’ll we do now!”
“Keep his head above water!” I yelled back. “He can’t drown as long as his head is above water!”
Bob made a lunge for the villain, clasped him the best way he could, and began to struggle with him toward the sycamore tree side of the channel—with Little Tom Till and me struggling along beside and behind him, bringing the water jug filled with money.
Well, here I am quite a ways from the end of this mystery about the stolen watermelon with only a few pages left, on account of the friendly people who will make it into a book for you, might think it is too long already.
I can’t take any more time now anyway on account of I have to get started quick on the next story.
But it was just like it says in the Bible which our minister is always quoting—and also my parents—where the words are: “Be sure your sin will find you out.” That is what the thief’s sins had done. The very rope he had stolen, along with the money, had accidentally lassoed his feet, making it easy for us to capture him.
The two gunny sacks which had been wrapped around the water jug came in handy, too, ’cause we used them to make a litter to carry our prisoner on from the sycamore tree to the tool shed in the woods behind Poetry’s Pop’s barn. We unwrapped the wet sacks from around
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