Runaways by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

disappeared from view behind the gas station, Dani stayed right where she was. But then the noises, which were floating back across the highway, took on a shriller and more desperate sound. Changed into the high-pitched shrieking of someone who was scared to death, or maybe getting pounded to a pulp. A picture appeared before Dani’s eyes, a picture of Stormy sinking down to the ground under a rain of ferocious blows, and suddenly she was running too. She didn’t have the slightest idea what she was going to do when she caught up with them, but somebody had to do something—in a hurry.
    She could tell now that the yelling was coming from Gus’s garage, but as she rounded the station, dodging old tires and car parts, the howls had a different pitch and tone. By the time she dashed into the garage she was beginning to wonder if the howler was still Stormy. And sure enough, it wasn’t.
    The first thing Dani saw when her eyes had adjusted to the dim light of the garage was Gus standing beside his famous grease pit holding something big and heavy down over the edge. Dani had heard all the stories about how strong Gus was, but if she hadn’t seen it herself she wouldn’t have believed that anybody could dangle a big kid over the edge of a grease pit by the back of his khaki shorts. But that was what Gus was doing. Standing there straddle legged, holding the struggling, howling Ronnie with just one hand, he was grinning his snaggletoothed grin while, on the other side of the pit, Stormy grinned back, still clutching the cigar box to his chest.
    When Gus finally pulled Ronnie out of the pit and put him back on his feet he slunk off across the highway, stopping only once to glare back threateningly at Dani and Stormy. Dani knew the threat was a real one, so the second Ronnie disappeared into the hotel she grabbed Stormy and headed for home. Stopping only long enough to rescue Linda’s pitcher from under the hotel awning, they made it back to Dani’s house without any more Grabler trouble. Linda was cooking dinner in the stifling heat of the kitchen so they sat on the back steps, drank up what was left of the lemonade, counted their money and talked about what had happened. Talked and snickered every time they thought about Ronnie and the grease pit. After a while Dani stopped laughing.
    “Okay,” she said. “It was pretty funny but it won’t last, you know. Old Ronnie might be scared off for the time being, but he’d be right back if we tried it again.”
    Stormy gulped, swallowed another snicker and stared at her. “I know,” he said. “He’ll wait until Gus is busy, and then—”
    “Well, anyway,” Dani said, “we were pretty lucky to get out of the lemonade business while we were still ahead. I mean, four dollars is better than nothing, even if it’s not going to make much of a difference in …” She looked back through the screen door to where Linda was doing something with hamburger that smelled pretty good. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she went on, “… in the running-away fund.”
    Stormy sighed. “I know. But it was a good idea. Gus thought the lemonade stand was a real good moneymaking idea.”
    “Yeah.” Dani chuckled sarcastically. “He sure did. Greasy Gus, the world-famous moneymaking expert.”
    Stormy frowned uncertainly. “Gus is my—”
    “I know,” Dani interrupted. “Gus is your friend.”
    Stormy’s frown deepened and for a while no one said anything more. Stormy was still probably trying to decide whether to slug Dani for calling Gus greasy. And Dani? Dani was thinking that whatever you thought about Gus, he had been a pretty good friend to Stormy when Stormy really needed one.
    Thinking about needing friends led to wondering about why Stormy had gotten himself into such a mess. How he’d had the nerve to snatch the money box from right under the nose of someone as big and mean as Ronnie Grabler.
    Of course it might have been that Stormy was just too dumb to know what a