“Sure,” I answered. “He’s a smart coon. He knows where half of our parents are supposed to meet us.”
Zip-zip-zip, crunch-crunch-crunch, swish-swish-swish, over logs and around chokecherry shrubs and papaw bushes and brush piles and colonies of Canada thistle, and on and on and on we ran. We were getting onto higher ground all the time and still going in the direction of Old Man Paddler’s clapboard-roofed cabin.
The living daylights that had been knocked out of me beside the bale of high-nitrogen hay had come back in again, and I was feeling wonderful. I had been born and bred in a bramble patch, and getting knocked out in a fight was something I was getting used to. After a while, when we had caught the coon, we would see Old Man Paddler, and would I ever have a fine story to tell Dad when I saw him! It would be hard to tell him about the fight, though, without mentioning the truck being in the orchard.
“In the orchard!” he would say. “How did it get there? I left it in the barnyard!”
That was as far ahead as I got to think right then, because things began to happen fast up ahead of us. Most of the fog was gone here in the hills. I could see quite a ways in every direction. And right that minute I saw something run across a little strip of moonlight and disappear in the shadow of the evergreens that bordered the path leading from Old Man Paddler’s spring to his cabin. It went so fast I couldn’t have decided what it was even if I had been a lot closer, but it looked the height of an extra-large timber wolf. The only thing was, it seemed to be running on its hind legs.
At almost the same time, both hounds’ voices changed again, sounding as though somebody had thrown a blanket over them and they were being smothered.
“They’ve caught him on the ground!” Circus cried. “Let’s get there quick, or they’ll tear his fur to shreds!”
We really ran then, getting to where the hounds were in only a few seconds, all of us scolding the dogs at the same time and ordering them to stop. We knew they’d puncture that coon’s skin with their big sharp teeth, and it wouldn’t be worth more than half as much at the produce house. Also, those hounds might get their own ears slit. Coons can do that to a dog’s ears in a flash of a second in a face-to-face fight, and sometimes a hound gets the living daylights scratched out of him.
“Why, look!” Circus cried. “He’s caught in a trap.”
And that’s exactly what his dad’s flashlight showed us was the truth. That middle-sized, furry ringtail had its left hind leg caught in the jaws of a savage-looking, double-springed steel trap.
I noticed that the ring on the other end of the trap’s steel coil chain was fastened to a forked stick.
In seconds, Circus and his dad had both old Jay and his dog pal Black and Tan by their collars and were holding them back from whatever they wanted to do to the coon.
Poetry exclaimed then, “They’ve already killed it! It’s already dead!”
And it wasn’t any huge, fierce-fighting coon at all, I thought, if it could get licked as easily as that. Actually, it wasn’t much bigger than a big fat possum and maybe wouldn’t weigh more than ten pounds. And it wasn’t moving a muscle.
“That’s the trap I had set down by the spring!” Circus said. “For muskrats.”
“No wonder he couldn’t climb very high up the linden tree,” I thought to say, “with that big steel trap fastened to him.”
“Yeah, no wonder,” Poetry answered. “Poor little guy. He must have had a hard time dragging that trap all the way through the swamp. He’s all covered with mud.”
Neither Circus nor his dad said anything. They were studying the coon, maybe looking it over for size and teeth marks, hoping its fur wasn’t badly damaged by the hounds’ teeth.
Pretty soon, after both dogs had been petted and praised a little for doing such nice nose work, and after they had acted pleased half to death by being liked so well, we had the coon out of the trap and were on our way to Old Man Paddler’s cabin. It was just ahead of us farther up the hill, and we were supposed to meet Dad and Poetry’s dad there as soon as they could come from helping in the church basement.
In only a little while we came to within sight of the light in the old man’s window. Even though I’d been there dozens of times, there was always something about going up to see that kind old man that made me feel fine. Also, there was always something about a light in a country window at night that made me feel fine, especially in the Collins family’s kitchen window when Dad and I were on our way home from somewhere and it was suppertime.
The light in Old Man Paddler’s kitchen window meant he was still up and maybe even waiting for us, having heard the hounds and seen our lights. Or else he might be reading or writing letters. Anyway, we knew that as soon as we got there he’d want us to drink a cup of sassafras tea with him.
Another reason I was feeling fine inside was that I knew—even though the coon was only a middle-sized one—that its fur would bring twice as much as a muskrat’s. Circus could have it skinned and could sell it tomorrow and have at least two dollars to give to the Alaska missionary offering tomorrow night.
Thinking that, though, started me to thinking about Tom Till again, and it was just like a giant had blown out the lamplight in my mind.
As we trudged along, Mr. Browne, carrying the muddy coon, was quite a ways ahead of Poetry and me. Circus, carrying the empty trap, was quite a ways behind us. Poetry wasn’t satisfied about something or other, and he said so when we came to the evergreen border and the path that led to the old man’s spring. “There’s something fishy about a coon dragging a trap like that clear through the swamp and getting mud all over itself like that. Coons are as careful as a house cat about keeping their fur clean.”
“That swamp’s pretty muddy in places,” I said.
He answered, “Yes, but coons don’t stand on their heads or roll around on their backs in the mud.”
“Hear that?” I whispered, all of a sudden having heard a voice behind us somewhere.
We both listened, and it was somebody singing. Singing!
“It’s Circus,” Poetry said. “Listen a minute.”
The voice was coming from away back at the farther end of the row of evergreens, but the words were almost as clear as if they were coming from a tape deck:
“There’s a light in the window of heaven—
It is shining for someone tonight;
And the Father is watching beside it—
He’s keeping it shining and bright.”
Of course, I’d know Circus’s voice anywhere. He had one of the best boy-soprano voices in the whole territory. And to hear it echoing out across the Sugar Creek hills at night—well, it sent a little glad feeling all through me.
“I’ll bet he’s going to sing tomorrow night,” Poetry decided, “and he’s practicing.”
I already knew that was the truth.
It certainly was a pretty song. I couldn’t get all the words, but hearing it while we were close enough to Old Man Paddler’s cabin to see the light in his window made me think about God for a minute. And my mind’s eye was seeing Him waiting up in heaven beside His window, looking for someone to come home and keeping the light burning for anybody who didn’t know the way. Without knowing I was going to do it—and forgetting for a second or two that Poetry was there with me—I heard my own voice saying to Somebody I liked better than anyone else, “I hope Little Tom Till gets saved soon. He’s a pretty neat little guy. But maybe You already know that.”
Poetry, not knowing who I was talking to, said, “Yeah, I know it. But how come he dragged that coon all the way up here? Why didn’t he take it on home with him?”
“How come what?” I asked, absolutely astonished.
“You don’t really think a coon would stand on its head and roll over on its back in a muddy swamp, do you? No sir, that coon was dragged up here by somebody. He found it in the trap down by the spring, killed it, and half carried and half dragged it all the way to where the hounds almost caught up with him. It was too heavy
for a boy Tom’s size to carry all that way, so it kept touching the ground every so often. And that’s how the hounds managed to trail it. When they almost caught up with him, he left it and beat it out into the woods somewhere.”
And then is when I remembered the shadow I had seen of something as big as a timber wolf, running on its hind legs across a strip of moonlight toward the same evergreens we were in right that very second.
What Poetry had said made sense, but for some reason I didn’t want it to. Of course, if Tom would steal a muskrat, he could do the same thing to a coon. “But he went on home after he left our house,” I objected. “We saw him go ourselves.”
“We saw him start home,” Poetry said. “But he was headed down the path to the spring on the shortcut to the bridge when we last saw him.”
“I don’t want to believe it,” I countered, and I didn’t.
While we were all in the old man’s cabin, waiting for two of our fathers to get through at the church and come to where we were, Circus’s dad decided it would be a good idea to skin the coon. Then they could carry it along with them on the rest of the hunt, and whoever had to carry it wouldn’t get too tired.
“That’s certainly a fine fur,” Old Man Paddler said. “It looks like a brother to one I caught myself night before last out back of the woodpile.”
He chuckled a little and added, “Can’t quite get over being a boy. My twin brother, Kenneth, and I used to trap this whole territory.”
Pretty soon Theodore Collins and Leslie Thompson’s father came driving up the lane. And because Dad’s long, shaggy eyebrows were too low for my comfort, I right away was in the middle of telling him what had happened at the house and in the orchard with the bales of high-nitrogen hay. To my relief, Dad—being the kind of father who sometimes forgets his keys himself—didn’t have even one discouraging word to say about the whole thing. “I’m just glad you are alive. You are, aren’t you?” he asked.
Poetry answered for me by pinching me till I said, “Ouch!” to prove I was not only alive but still able to fight a little.
“You have your mother’s keys now?” Dad asked. As I handed them over, he said, “Thank you, my son. You’re a very thoughtful boy. You found them in the orchard, I believe.”
My heart was as light as a feather as we talked. It was wonderful not to get scolded for something I had already made up my mind I would never do again if I could help it. “I found them in the bramble patch where I was born and bred,” I answered.
He put his arm around me partway—as he does when he likes me and thinks it won’t hurt me to know it—and he said in a friendly, sarcastic voice, “You must have changed your pants down there somewhere.”
“The funny thing about it is, I did,” I said, not having told him that part of the story yet.
Poetry cut in with: “The ‘funny thing,’ is right.” And he launched into a fast-talking story of how ridiculous I looked changing my clothes in the shade of the old apple tree beside a bale of high-nitrogen hay.
“We’ll get going on those trees in the morning,” Dad said, “after you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Poor trees. They’ll be pretty hungry, having their breakfast right beside them all night and not being able to eat even one little root-ful.”
“You’re a fun father,” I said. “I’d rather have you for a father than any father I ever had.” I was really feeling fine. Maybe he would even let me go on hunting with the rest of them.
The “rest of them” were out by Old Man Paddler’s woodshed at the time, and only Poetry had listened in on our father-and-son visit.
But Dad quickly proved he was another kind of father, too, not being able to change his mind on something he thought was important. And since Poetry’s father was not able to change his either, pretty soon their two boys were getting ready to start in a hurry toward home.
“So your mother won’t worry,” Dad said, “if she asks about her keys, tell her I have them.”
Circus, in spite of being worried about the furs being taken from his traps and knowing why Poetry and I really had to go home—which was because we were growing boys and needed a lot more sleep than grown-up persons do—said, “I’m pretty young myself. I’ll go along with you,” which Mr. Browne agreed to.
The three of us soon started down the little path between the evergreens to the old man’s private spring. As soon as we were alone, Circus said, “On the way I’m going to take a look at the traps along the bayou. Want to go along?”
And that’s how come we found out that foggy moonlit night exactly who had been taking fur from his traps. And did we ever find out. And were we ever surprised! I mean surprised!
10
It had been a wonderful night as well as a wonderful afternoon. Both of them had been packed with enough excitement to satisfy any ordinary boy, but for some reason I was still like old Jay on a lost coon trail. I was on the trail of a trapline thief, and I wouldn’t be satisfied till I treed him.
Just as the three of us started following our own noses down the path between the evergreens, I heard Mr. Browne’s voice giving the hunter’s call from somewhere on the other side of the cabin. For a second I turned and looked back up the hill to watch. The three men with the two hounds were starting off in the direction of the old man’s apple orchard, where they hoped the dogs would get into a face-to-face fight with a North American marsupial that had been helping herself to some of the neighbors’ chickens and which would probably decide to get licked as soon as the dogs started the fight—as you are supposed to do when you get into a fight in an apple orchard.
We stopped at the old man’s spring for a drink, then started on, walking in the small circle of light made by Dad’s flashlight, which we still had. We hadn’t gone more than fifty feet in the direction of the sycamore tree when we heard running steps behind us.
A second later something shot out of the shadows into the moonlight, heading straight toward us like a big timber wolf running on its hind legs.
When you’ve already had one fight and gotten licked, and your chin hurts, and you’re kind of tired, anyway, and have had your epidermis pricked with pins and Canada thistles, and have been in a whirlwind of excitement all day and all night so far, and something—you can’t tell what—is running toward you across a stretch of foggy moonlight like a timber wolf on its hind legs—well, you really wonder what will happen next.
And then, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a boy in a coonskin cap carrying an air rifle and a gunnysack, and it was Little Tom Till himself. “Quick!” he panted. “Somebody’s going to follow your trapline tonight, Circus, and take all your muskrats. We’ve got to stop him.”
Tom was so excited and out of breath from running that he couldn’t talk straight. But he made enough sense for us to understand he had found out someway that somebody was going to follow Circus’s trapline and steal everything that was already caught, and maybe he was already doing it.
It didn’t make sense, though, for Tom to be telling us, when that very afternoon I had seen him take a muskrat himself. Probably right that very minute he had four dollars in one of his pockets, which I had seen Mr. Black give him for four muskrats not more than three hours ago.
Away we all went, though, as fast as we could. We didn’t stop to figure out how four kind of smallish boys could capture a thief if we suddenly came upon him while he was taking anything out of a trap—or how we could manage to hold him if he turned out to be two or three giant-sized boys as big as the ones that had swarmed all over us in our orchard.
Just as we ran past the sycamore tree and headed in the direction of the colony of Canada thistle, Circus asked Tom, “How do you know somebody’s going to do it?”
Tom was running ahead of the rest of us at the time. “Can’t you run any faster?” he answered from over his shoulder. “Come on, everybody!” And that little guy started to run even faster as he led the way for us back toward the Sugar Creek bridge and the bayou, where Circus had most of his traps.
At the spring, Circus looked at the place where he had had his double-springed trap set for a muskrat and had caught a ten-pound coon instead. We stopped just long enough to decide we would go to the place where somebody had taken a muskrat out of a trap that afternoon, and there we would hide in the thicket and wait.
“Who do you think it’ll be?” I asked as we crossed the little rivulet and went on up the other side of the bayou. I was wishing Big Jim was with us. He could really lick his weight in wildcats. Why hadn’t we thought to go and get him before we started on such a dangerous adventure? I wondered.
While we were waiting there in the dark in that thick thicket, it seemed the whole Indian summer night was alive with sounds. If it hadn’t been such a tense time, with wondering what on earth was going to happen, I think I would have enjoyed sitting there.
There were still a few crickets that hadn’t quit chirping. Two or three of them were right close to the log we were sitting on. For a second I let my mind’s eye watch one of those cute little black insects as he vibrated his forewings together, sounding like a baby chicken just learning to peep and being afraid to.
Every now and then, from somewhere up the bayou, a night heron let out a spooky, “Quoke-quoke,” which sounded as if he had had too many frogs and minnows for supper and was trying to swallow backward.
Right in the middle of my listening and thinking, a boy’s elbow pressed into my side, and Poetry hissed, “Sh! Somebody’s coming! From the direction of the spring!”
I looked as best I could through the tall weeds and saw a flashlight go on and off as fast as a firefly’s fleeting flash. A second later I heard somebody coming along the path we ourselves had been on fifteen minutes ago. In only a few seconds we would know who it was. We had agreed that, as soon as anybody came, we would flash our lights into his face, and all of us would see him at the same time.
Every few seconds we saw the flashlight go on and off as he came nearer and nearer. We didn’t dare move, or we might be heard ourselves, and we hardly dared breathe.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 25-30 Page 45