The Brown Box Mystery by Paul Hutchens

Author:Paul Hutchens [Hutchens, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-57567-761-3
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 1998-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

Even as I ran stumbling along, dodging bushes and leaping over logs, through the fog and the tall grass, I was remembering that the two who had attacked us and stolen the just found little brown box were a lot bigger than we were.

“Those crazy girls!” Poetry, running ahead of me, exclaimed in an angry voice.

“Girls?” I shouted up to him. “What makes you think they’re girls?”

“Because,” Poetry panted back over his shoulder, “I caught one of them by the hair and pulled some of it out, that’s why.”

Well, those two thieves—boys or girls or maybe one of each—were as fast as a couple of red foxes with three bloodthirsty hounds after them. If only we could get to that car and head them off …

But my thoughts were like soap bubbles bursting into nothing. There was the explosion of a starting motor ahead of us near the branch bridge, and a headlight was turned on—one headlight. It turned this way and that, making a wide circle, then back, and the motor leaped into faster thundering life.

“It’s not a car! It’s a motorcycle!” I cried to Poetry ahead of me and to Dragonfly behind me.

“Let’s get the license number!” Poetry shouted.

I stumbled over a tree root right then and landed sprawling in the grass beside a sweet-smelling lilac bush. My mind was in a dizzying whirlwind of worry as I remembered another motorcycle I had seen and heard earlier in the day—one that had driven past our place at maybe sixty miles an hour and had had two long-haired riders on it. And that same motorcycle had stormed up the lane on the south side of our place, going through the gate into Harm Groenwold’s pasture and zooming out across that pasture toward Harm’s woods, following the branch in the direction of the Bay Tree Inn.

I scrambled to my feet, glad I had my sneakers on, so that my right big toe, which was a little sore, hadn’t gotten maybe even broken.

I shook my head to shake out the muddle that was in it, just in time to see the thundering motorcycle race across the board-floored branch bridge and up the hill past Poetry’s place and disappear in the foggy, foggy dew.

Now what? my mind asked me. And I didn’t have any answer. What can three boys who have been robbed of a treasure worth maybe a thousand dollars to the owner and a liberal reward to us—what can those three boys do at a time like that! In the mixed-up rough-and-tumble scuffle, we had also lost $3.50 worth of frogs.

The fog was beginning to turn into misty rain now, and if we didn’t get to Poetry’s place in a hurry, we would get soaking wet. We wouldn’t even have time to go back to where we had lost our frogs and look for them.

Grunting, panting out our disappointment, as mad as three wet hens, the Thompson, Gilbert, and Collins Frogs Legs Supply Company hurried up the gravel hill the motorcycle had gone racing up only a few minutes before.

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