Chapter 4 THE PARK WAS ABOUT two blocks square, with a fountain in the middle and a small swimming pool for the little kids. The pool was empty now in the fall, but the fountain was going merrily. Tall elm trees made the park shadowy and dark, and it would have been a good hangout, but we preferred our vacant lot, and the Shepard outfit liked the alleys down by the traeks, so the park was left to lovers and little kids. Nobody was around at two-thirty in the morning, and it was a good place to relax and cool off. I couldn't have gotten mueh cooler without turning into a popsiele. Johnny snapped up his jeans jacket and flipped up the eollar. "Ain't you about to freeze to death. Pony?" "You ain't a'woofin'," I said, rubbing my bare arms between drags on my eigarette. I started to say something about the film of ice developing on the outer edges of the fountain when a sudden blast from a oar horn made us both jump. The blue Mustang was oircling the park slowly. Johnny swore under his breath, and I muttered, "What do they want? This is our territory. What are Soos doing this far east?" Johnny shook his head. "I don't know. But I bet they're looking for us. We picked up their girls." "Oh, glory," I said with a groan, "this is all I need to top off a perfeot night" I took one last drag on my weed and ground the stub under my heel. "Want to run for it?" "It's too late now," Johnny said. "Here they come." Five Soes were eoming straight at us, and from the way they were staggering I figured they were reeling pickled. That seared me. A eool deadly bluff eould sometimes shake them off, but not if they outnumbered you five to two and were drunk. Johnny's hand went to his back pocket and I remembered his switehblade. I wished for that broken The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton 47