Summer of the Monkeys Read Online Free PDF Page B

wouldn’t even look at me. He just jogged along with his head down as if I wasn’t even there.
    I was the happiest boy in those Ozark hills; and I figured I was pretty close to being the richest boy, too. All I had to do was catch those monkeys. Right then that didn’t seem like any chore at all.
    Several times I stopped and tried to do a little arithmetic in thedust of the country road. Smoothing out a place with my hand, and using my finger as a pencil, I tried hard to figure out how much money the monkeys were worth. I didn’t have too much trouble adding up a column of two dollar monkeys. It was that hundred dollar monkey I had trouble with. Every time I added him to the pot, something went wrong. I’d get so rich and excited I couldn’t figure anything right.
    Rowdy didn’t help the situation in the least. He couldn’t understand what I was doing down on my knees in the middle of the road, fiddling around in the dust. He would get curious and come sniffing around to see what was going on. All he did was walk around in my figures and mess things up until I couldn’t tell what the monkeys were worth. I finally gave up and decided I’d let Daisy figure it out for me. She was good with arithmetic.
    The road from Grandpa’s store ran by our farm. As I came walking along, singing my head off, Papa called to me from the field where he was planting corn. I climbed the rail fence and walked over to him.
    Papa smiled and said, “Say, it looks like you were right about those monkeys. Right after you left for the store, I went to get Sally Gooden, and I think I saw a monkey in every sycamore tree down there. I can’t understand it. As far as I know, we’ve never had any wild monkeys around here.”
    “They’re not wild monkeys, Papa,” I said. “They got away from a circus train that was wrecked over on the railroad. Grandpa told me all about it. He said that there were about thirty of them. They’re worth a lot of money, too. The circus people are offering a reward for them.”
    “So that’s where they came from,” Papa said, looking relieved. “I’m glad to hear that. I was beginning to wonder what was going on around here. Did you say they’re offering a reward for the monkeys?”
    “They sure are,” I said, “and it’s more money than I ever heardof. They’re willing to pay two dollars apiece for all of those monkeys but one; and they’ll pay a hundred dollars for that one.”
    I really bore down on it when I told Papa about that hundred dollar monkey.
    Papa just stood there for a second, staring at me; then, uttering a low whistle, he turned and looked toward the river bottoms.
    “Say-y-y, that is a lot of money,” he said. “I didn’t know monkeys were worth that much money.”
    “I didn’t either, Papa,” I said. “It beats anything I ever heard of. All of that money for a bunch of little old monkeys!”
    Papa frowned and said, “There must be more to this than we know about. I can understand a fellow paying two dollars for a monkey, but whoever heard of anyone paying a hundred dollars for one.”
    “Papa,” I said, “Grandpa says those monkeys have been trained for acts in the circus, and it takes a long time to train a monkey. That’s why they’re so valuable.”
    Papa was like me. He couldn’t get that hundred dollar monkey off his mind.
    “I don’t care how long it takes to train a monkey,” he said, “a hundred dollars is a hundred dollars. Why, you can buy a good mule for that much money, and if you talk just right, they might even throw in the harness.”
    “There’s a catch to this reward business, Papa,” I said. “The monkeys have to be caught alive, and not harmed in any way.”
    “I see,” Papa said, nodding his head. “I figured there was a catch somewhere. When it comes to making money like that, there’s always a catch. It would be simple to shoot those monkeys; but taking them alive, I don’t know about that. It could turn out to be a tough