I had a weird feeling as we left the boathouse and went up the narrow, hardly-ever-used road to the top of the hill. Then we followed that road through a forest of jack pine and along the edge of a little clearing. I was remembering what exciting things had happened here the very first night we’d come up North on our camping trip.
I think Poetry was remembering too, because he said in a ghostlike voice to make the atmosphere of Dragonfly’s initiation seem even more mysterious to him, “Right here at this sandy place in the road is where the car was stuck in the sand. And right over there behind those bushes is where Bill and I were crouching half scared to death, watching him.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and he had the little Ostberg girl he’d kidnapped right in the backseat of the car all the time, and we didn’t know it.”
“How’d he get his car unstuck?” Dragonfly wanted to know, even though the whole Sugar Creek Gang had probably been told a dozen times by Poetry and me.
So I said, “Well, his wheels were spinning and spinning in the sand, and he couldn’t make his car go forward. But it would rock forth and back, so he got out and let air out of his back tires till they were almost half flat. That made them wider and increased traction. And then, when he climbed back into his car and stepped on the gas, why he pulled out of the sand and went lickety-sizzle right on up this road.”
“You going to initiate me here?” Dragonfly asked.
I started to say, “Yes,” but Poetry said, “No, a little farther up, where we found the little girl herself.”
We walked along in the terribly sultry afternoon weather. Pretty soon we turned off the road and came into a little clearing that was surrounded by tall pine trees. I was remembering how right here Poetry and I had heard the little girl gasping out half-smothered cries. And with our flashlights shining right on her, we’d found her lying wrapped up in an Indian blanket.
“She was lying right here,” Poetry said, “right here where we’re going to initiate you.” Poetry’s ordinarily ducklike voice changed to a growling bear’s voice. He sounded very fierce.
There really wasn’t anything to worry about out here, though. We knew the police had caught the kidnapper, and he was in jail somewhere, and the pretty little golden-haired Ostberg girl was safe and sound with her parents again back in St. Paul.
“But they never did find the ransom money,” Poetry said, which was the truth. “And nobody knows where it is. But whoever finds it gets a thousand dollar reward—a whole thousand dollars!”
“You think maybe it’s buried somewhere?” Dragonfly asked with a serious face.
“Sure,” Poetry said. “We’re going to play Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island both at once. First we save our man Friday from the cannibals, and then we quit playing Robinson Crusoe and change to Treasure Island.”
Well, it was good imagination and lots of fun, and I was already imagining myself to be Robinson Crusoe living all by myself on an island. In fact, I sometimes have more fun when I imagine myself to be somebody else than when I am just plain red-haired, fiery-tempered, freckled-faced Bill Collins.
It was fun the way Poetry and I initiated Dragonfly into our secret game—anyway, fun for Poetry and me. This is the way we did it.
I hid myself out of sight behind some low fir trees with a stick in my hand for a gun. Poetry stood Dragonfly up against a tree and tied him with a piece of string he carried in his pocket.
“Now, don’t you dare break that string!” Poetry told him. “You’re going to be cooked and eaten in a few minutes! You can pretend to try to get loose, but don’t you dare do it!”
I stood there hiding behind my fir trees, getting ready to shoot with my imaginary gun just in time to save Dragonfly from being cooked.
Dragonfly did look funny standing there tied to the tree and with a grin on his face, watching Poetry stack up a little pile of sticks for our imaginary fire. We wouldn’t start a real fire. Nobody with any sense starts a fire in a forest, because then there might be a terrible forest fire. Thousands of beautiful trees could be burned, and lots of wild animals, and maybe homes and cottages, and even people themselves.
When the stack of sticks was ready, Poetry set the big prune can on top. Then he turned to Dragonfly and started to untie him.
“Groan!” Poetry said to him. “Act like you’re scared to death! Yell! Do something!”
Dragonfly didn’t make a very scared native boy. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said.
And there wasn’t, I thought.
But all of a sudden there was. As soon as Poetry had Dragonfly cut loose, he dragged him toward the imaginary fire. Dragonfly was making it hard for him by struggling and hanging back and making his body limp so that Poetry had to almost carry him. And just as I peered through the branches of my hideout and pointed my stick at Poetry and was getting ready to yell, “Bang! Bang!” before rushing in to rescue Dragonfly, there was a crashing noise in the underbrush behind me.
I heard footsteps running and then a loud explosion that sounded like a gun going off, which almost scared the living daylights out of me—and also out of the poor boy and the cannibal that was getting ready to eat him.
When I heard that shot behind me, I jumped almost out of my skin, I was so startled and frightened. Poetry and poor little pop-eyed Dragonfly acted as if they were scared even worse than I was.
When you’re all of a sudden scared like that, you don’t know what to say or think. Things sort of swim in your head, and your heart beats fiercely. Maybe we wouldn’t have been quite so frightened if we hadn’t had so many important things happen to us already on this camping trip, such as finding the little kidnapped girl in this very spot the very first night we’d been up here—and then the next night catching the kidnapper himself in a spooky Indian cemetery.
I was prepared to expect almost anything when I heard that explosion and the crashing in the underbrush. And then I could hardly believe my astonished eyes when I saw right beside Dragonfly and Poetry a little puff of bluish-gray smoke, and I knew that somebody had thrown a firecracker right in the middle of our excitement.
“It’s a firecracker!” Dragonfly yelled.
And then I had an entirely new kind of scare. I saw a little yellow flame where the explosion had been. And then I saw some of the dry pine needles leap into flames, and the flames start to spread fast.
I knew it must have been one of the gang who’d maybe had some firecrackers left over from the Fourth of July at Sugar Creek.
Quicker than I can write it for you, I dashed into the center of things, grabbed up our prune can full of water, and in seconds had the fire out.
Then, seconds later, I heard a scuffling behind me and a grunting and puffing. Looking around quick—the empty prune can was still in my hands—I was just in time to see Circus scramble out of Poetry’s pudgy hands and go shinnying up a tree, where he perched himself on a limb and looked down at us, grinning like a monkey.
I was mad at him for breaking up our game of make-believe and for shooting off a firecracker in the forest, where it might start a terrible fire. So I yelled up at him and said, “You crazy goof! Don’t you know it’s terribly dry around here and you might burn up the whole Chippewa Forest?”
“I was trying to help you kill a cannibal,” Circus said. But he had a hurt expression in his voice and on his face as he added, “Please don’t tell Barry I was such a dumbbell.” Barry was our camp director.
I forgave Circus right away when I saw he was really trying to join in our fun and just hadn’t used his head, not thinking of the danger of forest fires at all.
“You shouldn’t even be carrying matches to light a firecracker with,” Poetry said up at him.
“Every camper ought to have a waterproof matchbook with matches in it,” Circus said. “I read it in a book that told what to take along on a camping trip. Besides,” he said down to us, “we can’t play Robinson Crusoe without having to eat, and how are we going to eat without a fire?”
I knew then that he’d guessed what game we were playing and had decided to go along.
“We don’t need you,” I said. “We need only my man Friday and a cannibal that gets killed—”
“And turns into a goat,” Poetry cut in to say.
“Only one goat would be terribly lonesome,” Circus said. “I think I ought to go along. I’d be willing to be another goat.”
Well, we had to get Dragonfly’s initiation finished, so I took charge of things and said, “All right, Poetry, you’re dead! Lie down over there by that tree. And you, Dragonfly, get down on your knees in front of me and put your head clear down to the ground.”
“Why?” Dragonfly asked.
And I said, “Keep still. My man Friday doesn’t ask, ‘Why?’”
Dragonfly looked a little worried. But he did as I said and bowed his head low in front of me with his face almost touching the ground.
“Now,” I said, “take hold of my right foot and set it on the top of your neck—no!” I yelled down at him. “Don’t ask, ‘Why?’ Just do it!”
Dragonfly did.
“And now, my left foot,” I ordered.
“That’s what the boy did in Robinson Crusoe, so Crusoe would know he thanked him for saving his life from the terrible cannibals and that he would be his slave forever,” I said to Dragonfly. “Do you solemnly promise to do everything I say from now on and forevermore?”
Dragonfly started to say, “I do,” but got only as far as “I—” when he started to make a funny little sniffling noise. His right hand let loose of my foot, and he grabbed his nose and went into a tailspin kind of sneeze. He ducked his neck out of the way of my foot and rolled over and said, “I’m allergic to your foot.”
The dead cannibal on the ground thought that was funny, and he snickered, but I saw a little blue flower down there with pretty yellowish stamens in its center, and I knew why Dragonfly had sneezed.
My man Friday, rolling over, tumbled ker-smack into the cannibal. The two of them forgot they were in a game and started a friendly scuffle, just as Circus slid down the tree and joined in with them. All of a sudden Dragonfly’s initiation was over.
He was my man Friday, and from now on he had to do everything I said.
Up to now it was only a game we’d been playing. But a minute later Circus rolled over and over, clear out of reach of the rest of us, and scrambled up into a sitting position. He said to us excitedly, “Hey, gang, look! I’ve found something—here at the foot of the tree. It’s a letter of some kind!”
I stared at the old envelope in Circus’s hands, remembering that right here was exactly where we’d found the kidnapped girl. I remembered that the police hadn’t been able to find the ransom money and that the captured kidnapper hadn’t told them where it was.
In fact, he had absolutely refused to tell them. We’d read that in the newspapers.
Boy oh boy, when I saw that envelope in Circus’s hands, I imagined all kinds of things, such as its being a ransom note, or maybe it had a map in it that would tell us where we could find the money and everything! Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy!