Thumb and the Bad Guys by Ken Roberts Page A

delicate mechanism inside my thumb and it might break. It’s pretty
expensive. I’m supposed to be careful.”
    I tried to look disappointed.
    Big Charlie’s son, Little Charlie, was the first person in our village
to pretend to have a fake thumb so that we could fool tourists. When he left the
village to work back east, I was asked to pretend I had a fake thumb because I could
keep a straight face and look innocent when I lied.
    â€œCan you shift dirt?” asked Ms. Weatherly.
    â€œI guess so,” I said, leaving some doubt in case shifting dirt turned
out to be a hard job.

    Little Liam carried a chunk of dirt over to the drawer with a screen
bottom and dumped the dirt inside. I picked up the drawer and shook it so the sandy
dirt would rain through the bottom and anything bigger would stay inside. When the
dirt was gone all that was left on the bottom of the drawer were pebbles and rocks
and twigs. I dumped them onto the dirt pile and then kicked everything over the edge
of the cliff, down to the rocky beach below.
    My classmates took turns shoveling and sifting and kicking, but we
didn’t find anything that wasn’t supposed to be there. It didn’t feel like we were
doing school work but Ms. Weatherly did talk the entire time, explaining how
archeologists worked.
    I was glad there was no stakeout that night. I was exhausted, even if
I didn’t have to shovel dirt.
    We did an hour of math the next morning before heading back up the
mountain, dragging shovels. We didn’t walk quite as fast. We were all tired, and
searching for treasure didn’t seem so exciting any more. All we were doing was
moving dirt.
    In movies, when the heroes are about to be surprised, you can always
tell because the music gets faster and more tense. In life, there is no music. In
life, surprise comes suddenly, without warning.
    Susan found the pewter ring right after lunch. It was simple in design
and not very well made, but clearly from another century.
    With eighteen kids crowded around her, Ms. Weatherly cleaned the ring
with an old toothbrush and then slipped it onto her hand so that it wouldn’t be
lost. She made her hand into a fist so it couldn’t possibly slip off and then, to be
even more certain of not losing it, she held her fist up in the air.
    We all stared at that raised fist with the pewter ring as we made our
way back down Linda Evers Mountain to the village below. We walked faster, and not
just because we were going downhill.
    Ms. Weatherly walked right into the school and into my father’s
classroom. The rest of us followed and spread out around the walls, surrounding the
surprised primary grades at their desks.
    Dad looked at all of us, mystified.
    Ms. Weatherly waited until we were all inside and everyone could see
and hear. Then, still holding her hand up high, she marched over to my dad, who was
sitting at his desk, and she opened her hand right in front of his face and said,
“Look!”
    â€œLook at what?” asked Dad.
    â€œLook at what we found up on Black Bear Hump. We found this ring.
Susan and Thumb were right.”
    Dad stared at the ring and then slowly stood up.
    â€œExcuse us, class,” he said. “Ms. Weatherly and I have to make a phone
call.”

    12
CAUGHT!
    IT WASN’T HARD FOR ME
OR for Susan to escape on Friday night. We each just threw on a jacket
and walked out our front doors. Our parents were at the gym with most of the other
adults. Dad told me that they were meeting about the ring that Susan had found. A
professor of archeology from the University of British Columbia was planning to fly
up to see the site and the ring. If she said that what we had found was what we
thought, then a team of twenty students and professors would soon be digging up at
Black Bear Hump.
    We didn’t know where they would stay – probably on a research vessel
that would anchor in the bay. It was all pretty