BUT say, it was a queer feeling I had in my mind as we left the boathouse and went up the narrow, hardly-ever-used road to the top of the hill and followed that road through a forest of jack pine and along the edge of the little clearing. I was remembering what exciting things happened here the very first night we’d come up North on our camping trip. Poetry was remembering it too, ’cause he said in a ghost-like voice so as to try 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 here behind these 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 back seat of the car all the time and we didn’t know it for sure.”

“How’d he get his car unstuck?” Dragonfly wanted to know, even though the whole Sugar Creek Gang had probably been told it a dozen times, every time Poetry and I had told it to them. So I said to Dragonfly, “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 the 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 wanted to know, and 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 to the side of the road and came out 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 duck-like voice changed to a sound like a growling bear’s voice as he talked and sounded very fierce. There really wasn’t anything to worry about, though, ’cause 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 on an island, living all by myself. 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, living back at Sugar Creek.

It was fun the way Poetry and I initiated Dragonfly into our secret gang—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, and 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 looked half crazy standing there tied to the tree and with a grin on his face, watching Poetry stack a little stack of sticks in one place for our imaginary fire. We wouldn’t start a real fire on account of it would have been absolutely crazy to start one, nobody with any sense starting a fire in a forest on account of there might be a terrible forest fire and thousands of beautiful trees would be burned, and lots of wild animals, and maybe homes and cottages of people, and even people themselves.

A jiffy after 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 black man. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said; and there wasn’t, I thought—but all of a sudden there was, ’cause the very second Poetry had Dragonfly cut loose and was dragging him toward the imaginary fire, Dragonfly making it hard for him by struggling and hanging back and making his body limp so 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!” a couple of times, and then rush in and rescue Dragonfly, there was a crashing noise in the underbrush behind me, and footsteps running and then a terribly loud explosion that sounded like the shot of a revolver or some kind of a gun which almost scared the living daylights out of me, and also out of the poor black boy and the cannibal that was getting ready to eat him.

Say, 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 like 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 for a minute. Maybe we wouldn’t have been quite so frightened if we hadn’t had so many important things happen to us already on our camping trip, such as finding a 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 behind and beside Dragonfly and Poetry a little puff of bluish gray smoke and about seventeen pieces of shredded paper, and knew that some body had thrown a firecracker right into the middle of our excitement.

“It’s a firecracker!” Dragonfly yelled at us, and then I had an entirely new kind of scare when I saw a little yellow flame of fire where the explosion had been, and 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 even than I can write it for you, I dashed into the center of things, grabbed up our prune can and in less than a jiffy had the fire out, and then a jiffy later, I heard a scuffling behind me and a grunting and puffing; and looking around quick, the empty prune can in my hands, I was just in time to see Circus, our acrobat, scramble out of Poetry’s fat hands, and in less than another jiffy, go shinning 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 fat cannibal,” Circus said. He had a hurt expression in his voice and on his face, as he added, “Please don’t tell Barry I was such a dumb-bell,”—Barry being our camp director.

I forgave Circus right away when I saw he was really trying to join in with 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, telling what to take along on a camping trip. Besides,” Circus said down to us, “we can’t play Robinson Crusoe without having to eat food, 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 and said.

“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 wanted to know, and I said, “Keep still. My Man Friday doesn’t ask ‘Why?’” Dragonfly looked worried a little, but 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!” which Dragonfly did.

“And now, my left foot,” I ordered.

“That’s what the blackboy did in Robinson Crusoe, so Crusoe would know he thanked him for saving his life from the terrible cannibals, and that he would be willing to be his slave forever,” I said to Dragonfly. “Do you solemnly promise to do everything I say, from now on and forevermore?” I asked, and when 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 a sneeze, as he ducked his neck out of the way of my foot and rolled over and said, “I’m allergic to your foot,” which the dead cannibal on the ground thought was funny and snickered, but I saw a little bluish flower down there with pretty yellowish stamens in its center, and I knew why Dragonfly had sneezed.

My Man Friday, in rolling over, tumbled ker-smack into the cannibal and the two of them forgot they were in a game and started a friendly scuffle, just as Circus slid down the tree, joined in with them, and 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 jiffy later Circus rolled over and over, clear out of reach of the rest of us, and scrambled up into a sitting position and 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 an old envelope in Circus’s hands, and remembered that right here where we were was exactly where we’d found the kidnapped girl and 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 it in the newspapers.

Boy oh boy, when I saw that envelope in Circus’s hands, I imagined all kinds of things, such as it being a ransom note or maybe it had a map in it and would tell us where we could find the money and everything! Boy oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!...