“Listen,” Poetry whispered.
But I didn’t even have to try to listen. The sound of the truck starting was loud enough to be heard twice as far away. I heard it not only with my ears but also with my conscience, because just that second the motor roared and the headlights went on, sending two long streams of foggy light across the barnyard and the tulip bed. And I began to remember an order Dad had given me in the afternoon, which was to get Mom’s ring of keys out of the truck.
A sickening feeling scattered itself all over me and up and down my spine as I realized I was going to be partly to blame for somebody’s stealing our truck. I had to do something quick!
It wasn’t until I had galloped downstairs and was out by the tulip bed in the glaring headlights, yelling to the driver to stop and trying to flag him down with my overalls, that I realized I was wearing only a shirt and underwear—and, of course, my shoes and socks. And, for some reason, my cap.
I had seen pictures of boys waving handkerchiefs and shirts and things, trying to flag a train. I had read stories about that happening, and in the stories the trains always stopped. But this wasn’t any train with a sensible engineer at the throttle. It was a truckload of baled hay with a driver who didn’t seem to care what he ran into or over.
The driver started honking his horn at me, socking my ears with six or seven quick, sharp blasts followed by a fierce long one that was like a mad bull charging. The bright lights kept right on coming straight toward me, too, and I had to jump aside to keep from getting run over.
Then I accidentally stepped into the soft dirt of the tulip bed and fell down, and it looked as if it was going to be the end of a forgetful red-haired boy.
“Quick!” Poetry screamed. “Roll over! Roll over!”
And I did, twice, stopping only when I hit the pump platform, and I was safe.
The driver swerved right to miss the plum tree and went on toward the walnut tree and the open front gate.
Poetry’s presence of mind was really good at a time like that. He’d gotten to the gate first, and he slammed it shut so that the driver couldn’t get through. In a minute now, I thought, as I scrambled to my feet and started toward the center of things, there’d really be trouble, and it wouldn’t be all mine.
Before I could get halfway there, though, the driver swung the truck to the left and steered it across the front yard—running over the rosebush under which Old Bushy-Tail had been digging that afternoon—then headed straight for the wooden gate that led to the orchard. That gate, thank goodness, was already shut, so we’d have the driver in a trap.
The only thing was, he wasn’t slowing down but was going faster every second, as if he couldn’t see the gate in the fog.
I was running after him, still waving my overalls and shouting. And Poetry was running along behind or beside me, hollering and waving Dad’s flashlight. Both of us were yelling, “Stop! Stop, thief!”
And then, whamety-swishety-crash! That truck with Mom’s keys in the ignition tore through our old wooden gate as if it had been made out of toothpicks, smashing it into maybe a hundred pieces of splintered lumber, and rumbled on out into the orchard.
If I hadn’t been so mad and so scared and so worried and feeling so guilty for having forgotten to get Mom’s keys, I might have laughed at what began to happen then. It was as funny as anything. The ropes Dad had used to tie on the bales of hay must have slipped loose. The first thing I knew, a bale had toppled off and onto the ground right between two big apple trees, two of the hungriest ones we had. And as the truck bounded on down through the orchard over the rough ground, every few dozen yards another bale of hay tumbled off.
But it wasn’t any time to laugh—not for very long, anyway. In almost no time the truck came to the edge of the blackberry patch and started through it. It stopped a second later, unloading two more bales of hay at once because it had stopped so suddenly.
I knew what had happened. It had run into the old log that was in the center of the berry patch and on which, many a time, I had sat down to rest when I was picking berries and needing to eat a few for strength and so the pail wouldn’t be too full to take to the house.
When the truck whammed into that log, it not only stopped, but the motor stopped, too. Maybe the driver thought his Halloween trick was finished and it was time to get out and run. Anyway he shoved open the door and leaped out.
Dad’s powerful flashlight beam hit him full in the face at the same time. And I saw who it was—Big Bob Till himself. He had landed right in the middle of the thickest part of the blackberry patch, where the briars were the scratchiest.
I don’t know how I happened to remember right that second the story of Brer Rabbit and the fox, but I did. Remember how the sly old fox thought he could punish the little bunny by throwing him into the bramble patch? Well, when I saw where Big Bob Till had landed, and thought how good it was for him to get a little punishment for all the Halloween tricks he had been playing that night, I started yelling what Brer Rabbit had yelled to Mr. Fox: “Born and bred in the bramble patch! Born and bred in the bramble patch!”
Poetry, hearing me, started yelling the same thing. For some reason I began to feel happy that Big Bob Till’s epidermis was getting pierced by a lot of sharp, pointed instruments, so I kept on yelling, “Born and bred in the bramble patch! Born and bred in the berry patch!”
And that’s where and when our fierce, fast fistfight started.
With two or three leaps, Bob Till was out of that blackberry patch and making straight for me. He got to me before I could have said “Jack Robinson Crusoe,” and in a second both of his fists started landing all over me, as a lot of filthy words thundered into my ears.
“Try to make a Sunday school sissy out of my little brother, will you! Well, I’ll show you, you little red-haired brat!”
For some reason, his calling me that helped me. I ignored his fast-flying fists, lowered my red head, and charged like a billy goat straight for his stomach, my own fists flying as fast as a windmill on a stormy day.
And then out of nowhere, it seemed, there came a sound of rushing feet, and a whole swarm of bigger boys were all over Poetry and me. One of them got Poetry down not more than ten feet from me and starting whamming him—wham, wham, wham-wham—wham!
Just as I told you when I started this story, I was angry enough to have licked my weight in wildcats. But, of course, you can’t lick a wildcat with just a hot temper—or a great big bully, either, who for some reason seemed as big as the giant in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. You have to fight with your fists and your feet and with every ounce of your eighty-seven pounds.
Maybe I could almost have licked Big Bob Till by himself, but he had all those other ruffians helping him, and in only a very few minutes I was getting the stuffings knocked out of me there in the foggy moonlight.
Then somebody’s fist, which seemed even bigger than the one the giant had, landed on my chin, followed quick by what seemed a hundred others, and I knew I was licked. Sock—wham—whoosh—double-sock—stars! I actually saw stars, too. They were scattered all through my mind, and they seemed to be strung together with streaks of lightning.
Even while I was falling, I realized it wouldn’t be good sense to fight anymore. I landed on a bale of high-nitrogen hay that happened to be there, then on the ground itself. Circus’s dad had said it was a perfect night for coon. It would probably be a good night for possum too. Anyway, I did have sense enough to decide to do what I would have done naturally if I had been a North American marsupial—I would play possum. And I didn’t have to pretend I was a dumb animal, when I was already a dumb boy for having left the keys in the truck in the first place.
Then I must have blacked out completely, because when I came to my senses, I thought I was hearing beautiful music. As soon as I knew enough to know what kind it was, I knew it was old Jay and Black and Tan whooping it up on a trail somewhere down along the bayou. Being still a little bit mixed up in my mind, it seemed I ought n
ot to play possum any longer, or Black and Tan, who would trail North American marsupials as well as raccoons, might think I was one. Besides, who wanted to be sold to Tim Black at the produce house for only a little more than a muskrat was worth?
Bob and the other boys that had been in the fight were gone, and only Poetry and I and good old Circus were there. Circus quickly told me how, as soon as they could, he and his dad had come back with the car to get Poetry and me. Seeing the truck with its lights on in the blackberry patch, they stopped to find out why. And that had scattered the gang of rough boys, who beat it to their own car, parked in the ditch by the roadside, and they had driven away.
Poetry, who was sitting on a bale of high-nitrogen hay and holding his jaw, asked, “Where is the big lummox who socked me in the stomach?”
Well, we couldn’t stay there in that foggy moonlight talking about a lost fight, when Blue Jay and Black and Tan were whooping it up on a hot trail down along the bayou, so I got to my feet to see if I was all right. I was, except that I had to look around to find my overalls, which had been such a failure as a flag for stopping the truck.
When I had them on, I said to Poetry, “Let me have the flashlight, will you?” A little later I was working my way through a lot of sharp-pointed instruments, being especially careful of my epidermis, to Dad’s truck. Shining the light inside, I saw Mom’s key ring hanging there with the key still in the ignition switch.
Boy oh boy, you can guess I put those keys into one of my overalls pockets as quick as I could, sighing a big sigh of relief at the same time.
Then, feeling finer than I really should have, I was in the mood for another adventure. Circus’s dad and the hounds were already on the way, and in a jiffy Poetry and Circus and I would be down along the bayou where they were.
The only thing was, I still had to go back to the house to get my everyday jacket, as the dampness of the night would make Mom make me put it on if she were there.
Also, I didn’t have my boots, and it would be wet and sloppy in some places. It didn’t feel good to have to waste so much time, but I knew I’d have to have the jacket and boots. So away we ran through the orchard and through the splintered gate to my house.
There, I realized that I’d have to leave a note for my folks, or they’d see the truck was gone and also see the broken gate, and Dad might even see the truck itself out in the blackberry patch, and Mom would be worried sick.
“Don’t worry about anything funny you see around the place,” my note stated. “I didn’t get hurt a bit, and everything is fine. I changed my clothes like you told me to, and I’ve got my boots on, and my jacket—which I don’t need, because I’m plenty warm yet. If you’re thirsty, just take the wire off the pump. I didn’t have time to do it myself.”
Hurry—hurry—hurry, my mind kept saying to me as Poetry held the flashlight while I wrote and old Jay and Black and Tan kept on whooping it up down along the bayou, having the time of their lives.
It seemed almost an hour, although it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, before I had the note finished and we could be on our way. Those minutes had gone even slower than when I had stood on the chair in the afternoon!
“Come on!” I exclaimed to Circus and Poetry as we started on the gallop toward our mailbox.
In a little while we came to the spring, where the dogs were, and they were having trail trouble. Their noses told them a coon had been there somewhere, but it was as if he had been a ghost coon. The smell of his tracks had evaporated, and all they could do was run around in worried circles up and down the creek and around the Black Widow Stump, where Circus’s dad had almost lost his life. Then they ran along the rail fence, where in the afternoon Poetry and Dragonfly and I had seen Little Tom Till steal the muskrat out of the trap.
For a while it looked as if the hounds had lost the scent for good, but a little later, after maybe fifteen minutes, old Jay struck it again about halfway between the spring and the bridge, and the chase was really on.
Over the fence, across the north road, and over the fence on the other side we went as fast as those dogs’ noses could take us. In about seven minutes we came to the place where I had taken the flip-flop into the colony of Canada thistle. This time I managed to dodge them.
As we swished past, Poetry puffed out part of the poem again, saying, “And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.”
The farther we went, the more I realized we were following the same trail we had followed that afternoon. Circus and I were side by side for a minute, and I said to him, “I wonder if they’re following Little Tom Till’s boot tracks again.”
When I said that, he almost shouted at me, “Why do you have to believe the worst about one of my best friends?”
I guess I hadn’t realized just how much he really liked that little red-haired guy.
Then we both stopped. Right that minute the dogs were having trouble again, whining and whimpering around an old rail fence, trying to decide how come they couldn’t smell which side the coon had gone on.
I decided then would be a good time for me to nose out the Little Tom Till trail I was on myself, by telling Circus what had happened at the produce house in town that night—although maybe, I thought, his father had already told him part of it.
It took me only a few minutes to give Circus the whole story. I finished by saying, “And Little Tom Till picked up that money and put it in his pocket!”
“I don’t believe it,” Circus answered me, leaping over a log only a second before I did.
The two of us sat down on it to rest awhile.
“But I saw it with my own eyes!” I answered. “I actually saw those muskrats come tumbling out of that gunnysack, and I saw Mr. Black pay Tom Till a dollar apiece for them!”
“You forget that Tom didn’t carry that gunnysack into the produce house the first time. His father did. You told me that yourself.”
“But I saw Tom Till steal one this afternoon right on the other side of the bayou! If he could steal one, he could steal four!”
“I still don’t believe it,” Circus answered stubbornly. “Old Jay wouldn’t be dumb enough to trail a pair of wet shoes, because there wouldn’t be enough coon scent on them to fool him.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. “He trailed Tom until he had to take to a tree to keep from getting caught on the ground, didn’t he?”
“Dad says no. Not the way they make coon-skin caps nowadays. They treat them with chemicals and stuff, and there wouldn’t be any coon scent on them like there would be in Daniel Boone’s days, when they made them out of raw furs.”
“But I saw Tom Till take a muskrat out of your trap,” I insisted.
Circus answered with something that helped me to realize what a nice person he himself was: “Tom wouldn’t do a thing like that to me. He’s my little brother.”
Just then old Black and Tan, about a hundred yards ahead of us in the direction of the swamp, let out a long, quavering bawl, which meant he had hit the trail again and it was really hot.
Away we went after him.
Even as we galloped on, I was thinking how much Circus really liked that little guy, and for some reason I got a warm feeling inside of me. It seemed kind of wonderful that anybody could like anybody else that well, and for a minute it seemed it wouldn’t be right for me to say or do anything to keep Circus from loving Little Tom Till, whom he was making believe was his little brother. I also was remembering something Dad had planted like a seed in my mind one day: “Everybody has to love something or somebody. God made people that way.”
Right then, to my surprise and also to my worry, I heard both hounds bark “treed.” First Blue Jay’s trembling, high-pitched wail changed to a short, deeper-voiced, excited bark that seemed to say, “Hey, you slow-running, only two-legged human beings! I’ve got him treed! Hurry up and come and get him!” Then old Black and Tan joined in with his own changed voice, saying the same thing, and my mind was interested in the chase again, wonderin
g what would happen next.
It took only a little while to reach the swamp. And there, to my absolute astonishment, everything was almost exactly as it had been in the afternoon. The only difference was that this time there were two hounds instead of one, making twice as much excited noise and barking up the same linden tree Tom had been up.
Circus’s dad was shooting his strong spotlight up through the foggy air into the branches of the leafless tree, and I shot my eyes up to where the light was focused, to see what I could see. That little saucer-shaped light darted from the trunk out along every gray branch, zigzagging back and forth until the whole tree had been searched. And there not only wasn’t any nice gray brown, black-checked, ring-tailed coon up there anywhere, but there was nothing at all.
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The coon must have come down the tree almost as quick as it had gone up—if it actually had gone up in the first place, which I doubted.
“What did I tell you?” I whispered to Circus when we had all decided there wasn’t any coon up there. “The dogs followed his boot tracks to the tree again.”
Circus didn’t even answer me. Instead he said to the hounds, “Listen, you! You’re barking up the wrong tree! Let’s get going!” Then he let out a long, high-pitched hunter’s call, which, as that kind of call always does, sent an excited chill zigzagging around in my mind and all over me.
Mr. Browne let out the same kind of call, and the dogs looked up at both their masters with questions in their eyes. Then, when we all started on deeper into the swamp, they left the linden tree and ran ahead of us down the creek.
We hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when, just as he had done in the afternoon, old Jay came to excited hound life with another bawl, saying in hound language, “I’ve found it, and it’s one of the biggest coons that ever lived along Sugar Creek!” A second later, Black and Tan’s voice was bawling the same thing.
Away we all went again, bounding through the swamp as fast as we could.
“Hey!” Poetry exclaimed from beside or behind me somewhere. “He’s headed for the hills again, toward Old Man Paddler’s cabin!”
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 25-30 Page 44