The Boys Return Read online

  He did not want to be found torn limb from limb in the loft of an old garage, with all his fingers and toes nibbled off. He did not want his parents saying, “Didn't we have a boy who looked something like that—before the cougar ate his chin?”

  Caroline had to know he was up here! Wally stared desperately out the window, but all he could see was the back door of the house after Caroline had run inside and closed it. Was she going to wait till morning to tell anybody?

  Whump, went the sound from below.

  Huff, huff, huff.

  Whump… whump… whump.

  Wally closed his eyes. We who are about to die salute you.

  Fourteen

  911

  Caroline banged the door shut behind her, her heart exploding in her chest, her eyes huge. Should she get Eddie? Tell her father? Call 911? What?

  She didn't do any of those. She screamed. She just opened her mouth and let loose with the most piercing, ear-splitting scream she could manage. Then she took a deep breath and waited.

  She didn't have to wait long. There was a two- or three-second pause, and then the house was filled with the sound of running feet.

  “Caroline?” came her father's voice from upstairs. “Where are you? What's happened?”

  In panic, Caroline screamed again.

  “Caroline!” cried her mother.

  “Hey, Caroline, what's the matter?” yelled Eddie, and then they were all flocking into the kitchen.

  “The cougar!” Caroline gasped. “It's in the garage.”

  “What?” cried Coach Malloy.

  “Where's Wally?” asked Beth.

  “He's in the garage too,” said Caroline.

  “What?” yelled their father. He ran to the back door and peered out the window. The garage door was closed. The night was still. He turned around and stared at Caroline. “How do you know?”

  “I saw it go in, and shut the door behind it, and Wally's in there! Up in the loft!”

  Coach Malloy grabbed his jacket, and then Eddie's baseball bat lying next to the door. “Jean, call 911,” he instructed, and opened the back door.

  “Wally?” he yelled. “Wally?”

  No answer.

  Coach Malloy whirled around and faced Caroline again. “What is he doing in the garage at this time of night?”

  “W-waiting for the cougar,” explained Eddie excitedly. “We were trying to catch it, and we did!”

  “Girls!” cried their mother, but then she was speaking into the phone. “Yes. Six-eleven Island Avenue. We have a boy trapped in a garage with a cougar…. Yes, a cougar! Oh, please hurry!” She hung up.

  “Wally?” Mr. Malloy yelled again, standing in the clearing between the house and the garage.

  And then a face appeared at the loft's open window.

  “Wally!” everyone cried at once.

  Whump came from inside the garage, as the cougar threw its weight against the door. Whump!

  “D-Dad!” cried Beth. “What if it gets out?”

  “What if it gets me?” croaked Wally in a stage whisper. “Can you get me down?”

  “Don't jump!” Mr. Malloy warned. “It's too far. Eddie, get the tall stepladder.”

  “It's in the garage,” said Eddie. “The folding ladder?”

  She nodded.

  There was the distant sound of a siren.

  “The police are on the way,” Mrs. Malloy said.

  “Can cougars climb ladders?” Wally asked plaintively. “Because if they can, it's going to come up here.”

  “Do you have anything you could put over the opening to the loft, Wally?” Mr. Malloy said.

  “I already put a window screen over the hole, but it doesn't fit,” Wally said, and leaned even farther out the window.

  “Don't jump!” Coach Malloy called again. “Here they are now!”

  A patrol car, lights flashing, came speeding across the road bridge at the end of Island Avenue, followed by a fire truck and the rescue vehicle. As they rolled into the driveway, lights came on in neighboring houses.

  Two policemen got out and came over.

  “You sure you've got the cougar in there?” one asked.

  “I'm not sure of anything, but my daughter says we do. And there's a kid up there who needs to come down,” Coach Malloy said, pointing toward Wally, who was now sitting on the window ledge, one leg dangling over the side.

  Whump, thump, came from inside the garage, followed by loud huffing.

  “Pleeeease?” came Wally's plaintive cry.

  “Get that kid down,” the policeman said to the firemen. They removed a ladder from their truck and braced it against the side of the garage. Another car pulled up and Tom Hatford got out.

  “Hey, Tom, you the sheriff's deputy tonight?” one of the policemen called.

  “Yeah, I'm on duty,” Mr. Hatford said. “What have we got here? What's this about a cougar?”

  “Girl says she's got a cougar trapped in the garage, and there's a boy in there with him. We're getting him out right now,” the second officer said.

  Mr. Hatford looked over to where the firemen were putting up the ladder. His mouth dropped. “Wally?” he said.

  “Dad?” said Wally.

  Mr. Hatford ran over to the barn and stood staring up at his son.

  “Hold on there, now,” said the fireman who was climbing the ladder. “You're one brave kid, and you're doing just fine.”

  When he reached the top, he guided Wally's foot off the sill and onto the second rung. Then the fireman backed down, with Wally in front of him.

  Tom Hatford walked over to George Malloy. “If I live to be a hundred, I will never understand our kids,” he said.

  “We won't even live to be a hundred, Tom, with them around! I lost a year of my life tonight just thinking about Wally in there with that animal,” said Coach Malloy. “‘ Trying to catch a cougar,'” they said. But both men gave Wally a hug when he reached the ground.

  Whump! Whump! The sounds from inside the garage were getting louder, and everyone could hear the cougar's breathing.

  “Anybody got a tranquilizer gun?” one of the policemen asked. He looked over at the men from the rescue squad.

  “ 'Fraid not,” one of them said.

  A gaggle of boys appeared, running up the hill from the river. Jake and Josh and Danny and Bill, Steve and Tony and Doug—and Peter, still wearing his bunny slippers. Mrs. Hatford, with an overcoat thrown on top of her nightgown, was not far behind. They got there just in time to see Wally descend the ladder.

  “Wow! What happened?” asked Steve.

  “We got the cougar!” yelled Caroline. “I locked him in the garage.” And then she lost control. “Oh, it was so awful! He almost had me by the throat, but—”

  “Caroline! Can it!” warned Eddie.

  The policeman spoke into his radio, asking the dispatcher to send the animal control truck with a tranquilizer gun. Then a car pulled up with a photographer and a reporter from the newspaper, and they came right over to where Wally and Caroline were standing.

  “Who actually captured the cougar?” the reporter asked as the photographer adjusted his camera.

  “We all did,” said Eddie. “We all planned it, even though Caroline was the one who locked the garage door. So we all get the credit.”

  “Who's we?” the reporter asked, and everyone took turns telling the story.

  The photographer arranged the twelve kids in two rows outside the door of the garage and took a picture, then another and another, and asked the Hatfords and Malloys for permission to print them.

  “I guess I can speak for the Bensons, since we've got their boys for the night,” Mrs. Hatford told them.

  Whump! Thump!

  The photographer suddenly backed away and stared at the closed doors of the garage.

  The animal control truck pulled up.

  “Okay, now, I want everybody up on the porch,” said one of the men from the truck after talking with the officer. “I'm going to go up the ladder
into the loft and see if I can fire a tranquilizer dart from up there. I need you officers to cover for me in case, when we open the door later, the cat's not down.”

  Up went the man with the tranquilizer gun, and for some time nothing happened.

  “Can't get him in my sights,” he called out to a fireman who stood on the ladder outside the loft window. “Keeps pacing. He's nervous, all right.”

  Finally there was a pop as the gun went off.

  “Got his thigh,” the man called. And then, a few minutes later, “Okay. He's down. You can open the door.”

  Caroline and her sisters stood behind the railing of the small back porch with the nine boys from across the river. When the garage doors were opened at last, out came the cougar, carried in a sling by four sturdy men, who placed it in the back of the panel truck.

  Everyone streamed off the porch to see the cougar, and the Hatford and Benson boys went down the line giving high fives to all the Malloy girls. The Malloy girls went down the line giving high fives to all the guys.

  “Do you think we know even one tenth of what these kids are up to half the time?” Mrs. Hatford asked Mrs. Malloy.

  “I doubt it, and I don't think I want to know,” Caroline's mother replied. “How do they think of these things? How can they possibly get into so much trouble without our knowing?”

  “That wasn't trouble at all!” Caroline crowed. “We caught the cougar and saved Buckman!” She dramatically raised her arms to the sky.

  “And next thing we know, you'll say you saved Western civilization,” said her mother. “Come down from whatever planet you're on, Caroline Lenore, and go to bed. It's been quite a day.”

  Fifteen

  The Great Hullabaloo

  COUGAR CAPTURED BY KIDS, ran the banner headline in the newspaper the next morning. The boys had the pages spread out across the breakfast table.

  Oh, how Wally wished they were in school right now so that he could tell all about it! There under the headline was a photo of twelve kids, including Peter in his bunny slippers. The Benson boys were back, and together (well, the girls did help a little) they had captured the beast that had stalked Buckman since last November.

  He imagined standing up before Miss Applebaum and the whole class and recounting the terrifying ordeal in the garage. He had done something he had never done before—something no one else would ever do again, probably. Then he thought of Caroline, who would stand up next and tell how she—Caroline Lenore Malloy—had captured the beast single-hand-edly, and his own part didn't seem quite so wonderful.

  “Man oh man oh man!” said Steve. “I wish this story would make the paper down in Georgia! Wouldn't we be something then!”

  “Hey, look at the grin on your face!” Danny said, ribbing Bill as they studied the photo. “And you weren't even there when the cougar was caught.”

  “Well, neither were you!” Bill shot back.

  “But we were all in on the planning, so we all get the credit,” said Tony.

  “It was my idea in the first place,” said Steve.

  They had all read the story, but Mr. Hatford read it again, this time aloud:

  “Police, firemen, rescue squad, and animal control officials were called to the residence of George Malloy, 611 Island Avenue, last night when one of his daughters trapped a cougar in their garage.

  “A fourth grader, Caroline Malloy, 9, witnessed the cougar entering the open door of the garage on the property they rent from the Bensons and locked the animal inside. Wally Hatford, also in fourth grade, was in the loft of the garage at the time and had to be rescued by firemen. Jack Werner, of Animal Control, then entered the loft through the window and tranquilized the agitated animal.

  “The cougar is believed to be the same elusive creature, dubbed the ‘abaguchie,' which has stalked residents of Buckman for the past several months. It is thought to be responsible for the deaths of several area pets.

  “The Malloy girls, in conjunction with the Hatford boys and the visiting Benson brothers, presently of Georgia, had hatched a scheme for capturing the cougar. Authorities believe the animal was drawn to the garage by the smell of a fried chicken dinner the children had consumed several hours earlier in the garage.

  “ ‘We don't condone any private citizen taking it upon himself to capture a wild animal,' Officer Lou Hanson said. ‘Cougars are dangerous, and although they usually live solitary lives and keep their distance from humans, more and more wild animals are roaming closer to towns as man encroaches on their natural habitat. Cougars, of course, are rare in West Virginia, and it's possible that this one was owned by someone who had no license to harbor a wild animal and who did not want to notify authorities when the cougar escaped. We're just grateful that the ordeal is over and no one was hurt, but we've got to give the kids credit for quick thinking.' ”

  Mr. Hatford, however, wasn't about to credit anybody. Now that his son was safely home again, he thought of all that might have happened.

  “Wally, what were you thinking?” he demanded.

  “That I was about to die,” Wally answered simply.

  “The cougar could have killed you! Maimed you forever!” Mr. Hatford looked around the table at his three oldest sons. “I don't know whether to ground you for a month or send the whole lot of you to Siberia!”

  It was Jake who showed quick thinking now. “How about if we put in ten hours at the police station, mopping floors or washing windows or whatever they need us to do?” he suggested. Anything was better than being grounded.

  “Sold!” said his father. “I'll tell them you're coming. But what I don't understand is if you boys were going to try a cockeyed stunt like that, why Wally? Why not one of you older boys?”

  “We drew names,” said Jake, “and Wally got picked.”

  Mrs. Hatford suddenly swooped down and put her arms around Wally as he took another bite of Cocoa Puffs. “Oh, Wally, if anything had happened to you, I don't know what I would have done,” she murmured. “I'd miss you so much!”

  Wally stared straight ahead as she planted a kiss on his cheek and his brothers giggled. She'd miss him? She would actually miss him? She almost sounded as though she'd miss him more than anyone else in the family.

  Mr. and Mrs. Benson arrived shortly after that, having heard the early-morning news. Mrs. Benson was still in her slippers.

  “My gracious, is everyone all right?” she cried.

  “We put them together for five days, Tom, and look what happens!” said Mr. Benson, giving each of his sons a grateful hug. “They're in the newspaper. On the radio! TV! The works!”

  “TV?” yelped Danny delightedly.

  “It was on the early news, and they'll repeat it again at eight-thirty,” said his mother.

  “Well, I'm staying home from work today, so I'll see it too!” Mrs. Hatford turned on the TV and they watched six commercials before the local news was repeated.

  “The cougar captured yesterday in the garage at six-eleven Island Avenue has been checked over by wildlife experts and is on its way to a remote area of the Smoky Mountains, where it will be set free,” the commentator said. “Its capture was part of a scheme by twelve local children to trap the animal, and though things didn't go quite according to plan, the cougar was locked in the garage long enough for animal control officials to tranquilize it and remove it from the premises. Buckman salutes the twelve plucky kids who hatched the scheme, but the final word from the mayor is, ‘It's okay this time, but don't let it happen again.' ”

  “Can we go to the Malloys' now?” Steve asked. “We want to show them the newspaper.”

  “The Malloys read newspapers too, you know,” Mr. Benson said. “Why don't we take all you kids to the movies?”

  “We'd really rather see the Malloys,” said Tony.

  “Then yes, by all means, go!” Mrs. Hatford said, glancing at the continuing rain outside the window. And then, to Mr. and Mrs. Benson, she added, “They are so wired this morning, I won't be able to keep them in the house.
Please stay and visit—we can have the kitchen all to ourselves.”

  Grabbing their jackets, the boys ran outside into the misty rain and headed for the footbridge. The water had been rising in the Buckman River and was only six feet below the bridge.

  “If it keeps on raining like this, the river will flood,” said Danny. “Remember that time it got up almost as high as the footbridge?”

  “Come on!” Steve said. “I see the girls outside.”

  Indeed, the Malloys were waiting for them, standing out in the yard in their yellow slickers. They looked like crossing guards, Wally thought. He had only come over here because the other guys wanted to come, but he knew that Caroline would be unbearable.

  She was.

  “Did you see? Did you see?” she called excitedly, running forward to meet them. “My picture's right there on the front page, and—”

  “We're all on the front page, Caroline,” said Eddie. “Pipe down, will you?”

  “So, what do you think? Was it a good idea or was it a good idea!” Steve bragged.

  “Okay, so it was a good idea!” said Jake irritably. Now Steve was getting unbearable.

  “I didn't even get a chance to put the chicken out,” said Eddie. “The cougar must have been really hungry to go for those leftover food scraps and bones.” The twelve of them moved inside the garage to keep dry.

  “Wally, weren't you scared up there in the loft?” Beth asked him. “I'd have been terrified.”

  “Oh, I don't know,” said Wally. “I figured I'd get down sooner or later.”

  “Weren't you scared, Caroline, when you shut the door?” asked Bill.

  Caroline dramatically placed her hand over her heart. “Absolutely, positively terrified!” she answered. “My entire life flashed before my eyes. All the roles on Broadway I would never play. ‘Do it for the good of Buckman,' I told myself, even though I might be clawed to death.”