sleeping bag trouble II

When we visited the shack when we were kids, sometimes the condition of the place was not so great. It might not have been clean, had perhaps too many rodents, snakes or bats, or sometimes it already had some people staying in it and was deemed too crowded. It also smelled of gasoline lanterns, smoke, kerosene, old mattresses and maybe sometimes rat poison. I think one time we went we set up a family size canvas tent just right in front of the shack. It was a sort of light blue and yellow. Or maybe it was a faded blue. It was reasonably comfortable and with its zip up door flap and screened window openings perhaps also more insect-rodent-snake-bat-free than the shack. If it was pitched on grass sleeping on the ground, covered in tent canvas, in a thick down sleeping bag was actually pretty comfortable. At some point maybe it felt too busy or crowded by the shack so the tent was moved over by the dam which was a bit more isolated. At some point after that point, someone was doing some target practice over by the dam and when they came back to the tent, they noticed that somehow the tent had bullet holes in it. I remember hearing the story and seeing the patched holes, but I never figured out exactly how that happened. Did the bullets ricochet somehow or was someone just shooting in the wrong direction? Some cousins, possibly an aunt and uncle, and family friends were also visiting the shack that summer so there were a fair number of kids around getting into fun and getting into trouble. During that time a kid got a fish hook embedded in their scalp when someone else didn't look behind them when they cast the line. Our cousin also enjoyed swinging a tent pole around and my brother got in the way and stopped it with his forehead (he still has the round scar). It was an amazing and fun time for us kids, but not without risk. One day at about lunchtime, someone noticed that my brother was unaccounted for. My mother and father started looking for him but couldn't find him. They told others, and everyone started looking for him. We called his name and started looking around in the swampy area near the shack, down the logging roads, the thick undergrowth near the dam. Our parents started to get very worried. They blew the car's horn hoping to attract his attention if he was lost. A child could wander off into the woods and easily get lost. They could fall on a steep hillside. There were black bears in the area so they could get between a bear and her cub. There was the lake, the culvert under the dam and the creek. A kid could easily slip into the water when reaching for a frog or tadpole and drown, or be pulled into the culvert and held underwater by the current. There are so many possibilities. Someone drove into town, or maybe the few miles to the nearest house with a phone and contacted the police. A couple of local cops came and turned on the siren to try to attract his attention if he was in trouble. People looked in the tent, under the bunkbeds in the shack, even in the attic where the gasoline lanterns were stored. I remember my dad stripped down to his underwear, moving around in the dark tinted water near the shore of the lake, feeling around in the mud hoping he would not find a little boy's body. I don't remember who, but someone went back into the tent and actually felt the sleeping bags which were laid out on the floor of the tent. They found my brother asleep in the bottom of the thick down filled sleeping bag, insulated from the sound of the police siren, the yelling of his name and everything else. He had a nice nap and had no idea what everyone was so excited about. I can imagine the relief of my parents, thinking how grateful they must have been not to have lost 50% of their progeny, but they also must have been at least a little bit annoyed at the trouble he'd caused. The next day we went into town and got compasses and whistles at the hardware store. We had lectures about safety and were told if we got lost in the woods or were in danger we should blow the whistle three times in a row, wait a bit then blow the whistle three more times. We were told to be very careful around the swamp and the lake and always tell someone where you were going, even if it was just to take a little nap. After we got the whistles and some other things in town, we came back to the car to find a police officer writing a parking ticket. The parking meter had expired while we had the safety lectures. It turned out to be one of the cops who had come to help look for the lost child. My parents thanked him again and told him we'd just been bying whistles and compasses and talking about safety and the police officer laughed and made some joke about whether my brother was sleepy and tore up the ticket.