Kate Barlow

Stanley starts to teach Zero writing and finds out that Zero is quite a quick learner. As a reward Zero digs Stanley ´s hole for an hour per day. Mr Sir´s face is swollen now and as a revenge he pours Stanley water in the dirt instead of pouring it in Stanley´s canteen. The main part of the last chapters of part 1 is about Kate Barlow. She was the one who robbed Stanley´s grandfather. She used to live in Camp Green Lake about 110 years ago and was a school teacher in the town when there was still a lake. A black man called Sam comes to the town every week by boat and sells onions. One day Kate complains about the roof of the school building and Sam offers to fix it. Somehow Kate likes Sam and asks him to fix more things in the school. One day she even kisses Sam which was not tolerated at that time. Hence, Sam is supposed to be hanged. Yet, Kate and Sam try to escape with Sam´s rowing boat, still they don´t have a chance since Charles Walker has a motor boat and is much faster. A few days later she shoots and kisses the sherrif who asked to kiss him as well after kissing Sam. That´s why she is henceforth called Kissin´Kate Barlow and it never rains again and the lake dries out. For years Kissin´Kate robs and kills a lot of people, still one day Charles Walker murders her. On the tube Stanley found were her initials. But he saw them before. On his mother´s and the Warden´s lipstick....

I like this part of the book since it somehow shows how smart Stanley and some of the other boys are. On the other hand it tells the story of a woman, namely Kate Barlow, who tried to make a differnce 110 ten years ago. On top of that you find out the reason why the boys really have to dig. They do not dig to build character, but to search the treasure Kate Barlow hid in the area of Green Lake. And now Stanley knows......