Before I ducked, though, I’d looked in the direction of the boathouse which was up against the edge of a steep hill, and I saw a tiny glow like somebody had drawn on a cigarette or cigar and it had made it glow in the dark.
I knew it couldn’t be any of our camping party ’cause not a one of us smoked, not even Barry.
Then we heard the boathouse door creaking on its hinges and I knew I was beginning to be scared.
“It’s a man smoking,” Poetry hissed in my ear, but I didn’t want to believe it. “Maybe it was a lightning bug,” I said. There were several of them flashing their spooky little lamps on and off out near Santa’s boat.
“Lightning bugs’ lights are a yellowish green,” Poetry said, “and that was a reddish glow.”
I knew he was right but wished in spite of wanting a mystery that whatever it was, it wasn’t some criminal. Then I heard what sounded like a stifled cry again and knew it _wasn’t_ any loon, but said to Poetry, “It’s a loon’s echo, maybe.”
I had the flashlight in my hand and without thinking, but just doing what I wanted to, shot its long white beam right straight toward the boathouse, up against the hill. Before I could even think Poetry had reached out a hand and grabbed my arm and smothered the light against his fat side, but not before I saw what I saw, which was a dark shadow of something dart behind the boathouse.
“Don’t scare whatever it is,” Poetry said. “Give me time to think what to do,” Poetry, as you know, being the one of our gang which wanted to be a detective and knew more about being one than any of the rest of us.
We were both ducked behind the wood rick again and our knees were on a pile of sawdust, which maybe had been left there when somebody had maybe cut the wood with a buzz-saw. Even with a scary mystery just around the corner, Poetry quoted something he had memorized, which was.
“If a wood-saw would saw wood, How much wood would the wood-saw saw If the wood-saw would saw wood?”
“I thought you wanted to think,” I said to him.
“I am,” he said. “I think best when I have what books call a ‘poetic muse.’ Did you notice what I noticed?” he asked me.
“What?” I said, and he said, “That the boathouse has had a new coat of paint since we were here, last year.”