For a long time I lay awake, in our dark tent, smelling the smell of mosquito lotion and hearing the noise of Dragonfly’s snoring and the regular breathing of Poetry and Circus, and thinking a lot of things. I hadn’t said my prayers yet, and I was already in my sleeping bag, with the zipper zipped up--although I’d prayed with the rest of the gang around the fire when Eagle Eye prayed outloud for all of us. But it kinda seemed like it had been a dangerous day, as well as a very wonderful one, and God had taken good care of all of us boys and that I ought to tell Him so. Of course, I could just talk to Him without kneeling, like I sometimes do, but this seemed like it was extra important, so very quietly I zipped open my sleeping bag, squirmed myself into a kneeling position, and while a mosquito sang on my right ear without stinging me, on account of the ear had mosquito lotion on it, I said a few extra special words to God, and wound up by saying, “And please don’t let John Till murder Little Tom’s mother. Please save him as quick as You can, and if there is anything I can do to help You, let me know, and I’ll try to do it.” A little later, while I was lying warm and cozy in my bag, listening to Dragonfly’s crooked nose snoring away like a handsaw cutting through a board, it seemed like there was kind of a warm secret between God and me, and that it might not be very long until Tom would have a new daddy.... Then I dozed off into sleep, and right away, it seemed, I was mixed up in the craziest dream I ever was mixed up in. My dream was about hook-nosed John Till, Little Tom’s pop, and it seemed he was all tangled up in the kidnapping mystery. In the last part of the dream, John had a bottle of whiskey in one hand and was standing beside the sink in the old cabin, pouring the whiskey over a stringer of fish. He kept on pouring and pouring--in fact, the whiskey bottle sort of faded out of the dream and John was pumping the old iron pitcher pump, which, quick as an eye-wink, was standing at the end of the board walk in our back yard at Sugar Creek, and whiskey instead of water was coming in big belches out of the pitcher pump’s mouth, and was splashing down over the fish which were in our water tank, where our cows and horses drank.... All of a sudden I noticed that the stringer of fish had all changed and that there wasn’t a walleye or a northern pike among them, but only big dark brown ugly bullheads, and they weren’t on the stringer any more, but were swimming around and playing and acting lively in our water tank filled with whiskey. Poetry who has standing beside me in my dream said to me in my ear, “Look, Bill--the whiskey’s changed all the fish into bullheads.”