Rufus M. by Eleanor Estes Page B

front of the drugstore he couldn't resist taking one or two good slides back and forth on the thick green ice that had piled up there. Many colors were reflected in the ice, red and blue ones from the big globes in the drugstore window and purple ones from the street lamp. "Well, I better go now and get the wood," said Rufus, and he made ready to take one last good slide.
    He ran a way to gain momentum and then he flopped down on his sled. As he was skimming along the ice, his eyes watching the glassy surface go slipping by, he thought he saw something shiny, something shiny frozen in the ice. He thought it looked like money. It looked like a lot of money—not just two cents.
    "Probably some old bottle tops," he told himself in order to keep his hopes under control. Nevertheless, he dragged his feet behind him so that he would slow up and he edged his sled backward toward the spot where he thought he had seen something shiny in the ice. He dug his toes and his fingers into the ice, getting a grip to pull himself backward. It might have been a mirage such as people see in the desert. They think they see something they want to see, like water or a city, when it isn't really there at all. But he hadn't even been thinking about money. He had been thinking only about getting the wood. Where were the shiny things? Maybe he had imagined them. No! There they were! There they were!
    Rufus stopped his sled. He stopped right over the shiny things so he could look at them from between the front runners of his sled. He stared at them for a long, long time. They were money. They were not bottle tops. There were two quarters, three dimes, and two nickels, spread out, frozen solid beneath the surface of the ice. Rufus felt as though he were glued to this spot. He gazed at them, fascinated, taking them in. The coins were there, and they couldn't get away. Nobody else could get them, either. He, Rufus, was on top of them on his own sled, nailing them down, laying claim to them like the miners in the Alaska goldfields.

    For a long time Rufus was content just to look at the coins. The flickering street lamp made the shadows on the ice ripple like the sea, and Rufus studied the coins as he might study a little school of fish.
    "Criminenty!" he murmured. He wiped his nose on the back of his black stocking mitten. "If it's only real," he said.
    He closed his eyes for a second. Then he opened them, first one and then the other. The money was still there all right, two nickels, three dimes, and two quarters. And he saw them with both his eyes open and even with just one eye open. He could buy the dinner with this much money, he thought. He laughed to himself when he thought of how surprised all the Moffats would be when he staggered in with a load of food.
    "How'm I gonna get it out?" he asked himself.
    He didn't have his knife with him. If he went home for it, somebody else might come along, somebody who did have his knife with him, and dig up this money. "Let's see now," he muttered. He'd have to figure some way of getting this gold, this money, out of the ice.
    Supposing he left his sled right over it, covering up the spot where the money lay embedded in the ice. No, that was a foolish idea. The sled would just attract attention and, besides, somebody might take his sled into the bargain and he didn't want to lose that. "I know what," he said to himself. He took off his black stocking mitten and tossed it about three yards beyond the money. People would be so busy seeing his mitten and wondering what it was that they wouldn't see the money. "A decoy," he murmured, using a word he had heard Joey say lately.
    Rufus hoped he wouldn't lose his mitten, either, but certainly with all this much money at stake he would have to risk something. He wondered if he had placed it in the right spot. He backed off a few paces and studied the decoy. Maybe a few inches farther ... He picked his mitten up, wiped his nose on the back of it again, and again tossed it