Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 13-18

by Paul Hutchens

  As soon as we were both behind the bushes, where nobody at camp could see us, he turned on his flashlight and shined it all around where Bob and Tom had been standing.

  “What’re we looking for?” I asked.

  He answered as he always does, “A clue.”

  “What kind of a clue?” I asked.

  And he replied, “I’ll tell you just as soon as I find it.”

  Well, I certainly didn’t expect we’d find anything, but all of a sudden I heard a sound from up the shore like footsteps coming, so I said in a husky whisper, “I think I heard a clue coming from somewhere.” Then, up the path and not far away I saw a flashlight blink on and off.

  We crouched low, hardly daring to breathe, knowing that somebody was coming for sure and wondering who it was and what he wanted. Was it Bob Till or maybe old hook-nosed John Till himself?

  Right that second, though, I saw something white lying where my feet had been a moment before. It looked like a folded white handkerchief, so I stooped down, reached out my hand to touch it, and it was an envelope.

  Little Tom’s mom’s letter, I thought. Bob dropped it and is coming back to look for it.

  Poetry and I kept even quieter than we had been. He did not know, of course, what I’d just found and tucked into my pajama pocket. We had not taken time to dress—I was in my green-and-white striped pajamas and Poetry in his purple ones.

  We both had the weird feeling that for some reason we should get ourselves out of there, which we did. We sneaked back maybe fifteen feet before deciding to stop and wait to see who it was and what he was looking for and why, if we could.

  In a few excited moments, whoever was coming was right where we ourselves had been and was flashing his flashlight on and off all around where a little while before I’d picked up the envelope. I could see he wasn’t very tall—not as tall as big John Till—so I decided it might be Bob again.

  Poetry had hold of my arm so tight it actually hurt, which showed, even though he was usually calm in a time of excitement, that this time he was pretty tense himself.

  I certainly didn’t know what to do and would have been afraid to do it even if I had. But I wouldn’t have had time to do much of anything. Right that second, whoever it was stopped searching, and I heard his footsteps going on past in the direction of Santa’s dock, which was several hundred yards farther on.

  I thought of the envelope in my pocket and remembered that it wasn’t mine and that I ought to call out to whoever it was and say, “Hey, there, mister, whatever you’re looking for, I’ve got it. Whatever it is!” But I didn’t.

  Then Poetry and I were alone with ourselves, and the only sound was the friendly lapping of the waves against the dock posts and the washing of other waves against the sandy shore. Away out on the lake was a great big shimmering silver spot of moonlight, which was very pretty. Still farther was the shadow of the trees on the little island on the other side of which we had caught our walleyes and where Wally had lost his life. Right that minute he was maybe half digested in the stomach of a big ugly-snouted northern pike.

  I could feel my heart beating with excitement, but there was something else I was feeling too. It was the envelope I had in my pocket, which I quick took out.

  I whispered for Poetry to turn on his light, which he did, and this is what we saw on the envelope, written in pencil that was kind of smeared the way pencil marks on a letter are when a boy has carried it around in his pocket or in his hands awhile. We saw written in a big awkward scrawl the name Bob Till. But there wasn’t anything else, not even an address—and no postage stamp.

  Quick as anything, not stopping to think that that letter was private property and he had no right to open it, Poetry had a paper out of the envelope and was unfolding it, and I was holding his trembling flashlight on it to see what it said. It was a sheet of white typewriter paper, and there wasn’t a thing on it, not even a pencil mark.

  “It’s another invisible-ink map,” Poetry said, and I remembered the other one we’d found. I told you about it in another story. When we’d warmed it up, it had turned out to be a map, showing where the little kidnapped girl had been found and which way two broken twig trails led. And we had followed them and finally found the ransom money in the old icehouse.

  “And here’s a note,” Poetry whispered, as a little folded piece of paper with writing on it tumbled out.

  That note, which was also printed in pencil, said,

  Dear Bob:

  Santa’s away tonight. Get my boat which is tied to his dock and pick me up at the Indian cemetery at 10 o’clock and we’ll get the rest of the ransom money. If I’m not there, wait till I come.

  Your Dad

  Well, when I saw what Poetry’s trembling flashlight showed us was written on that unfolded piece of paper, you could have knocked me over with a question mark. Our mystery had come to life again, and we were going to have another exciting adventure before our vacation was over. Hurrah! Boy oh boy!

  Poetry spoke first, saying excitedly, “I’ll bet Bob’s going down to get the boat right now! We’ve got to stop him!”

  “Why?” I said.

  And he said, “Stop him and make him tell us where his dad is. Then we or the police can capture him.”

  “Bob wouldn’t tell us,” I said, being sure he wouldn’t.

  “Well, for pity’s sake, we must do something!” Poetry exclaimed.

  When I said, “What?” he said, “Get the gang and beat Bob to the cemetery!”

  That made as good sense as anything I could have thought of, especially since right that minute I heard a motorboat somewhere and guessed that Bob had already started the powerful black-shrouded motor that was on the boat John Till had had and which the police had left at Santa’s dock.

  We didn’t have time to decide anything right then, though. Almost as quick as a lightning bug can flash its light on and off, we heard somebody running toward us from the direction of Santa’s cottage. A second later, two forms came puffing out into the moonlight and into our camp. It was Big Jim and Circus, who should have been staying all night in Santa’s cabin just to sort of look after things for him.

  I thought of Tom Till and hated to have him know what was going on, which he would if there was a lot of boy noise and the whole camp should wake up and come scrambling over each other down to the dock in crazy-looking pajamas, talking and wondering, What on earth?

  So Poetry and I shushed Big Jim and Circus, and the four of us started to tell each other what we knew.

  “Somebody took John Till’s boat!” Circus puffed. “Hear him? There he goes now!”

  About two hundred yards from shore, I saw the shadow of a boat in the moonlight, heard the roar of a powerful motor, and knew we’d have to hurry to get to the Indian cemetery first.

  “Let’s step on the gas and get going,” Circus said as soon as we’d told them about the note we had found.

  Poetry asked, “What kind of gas—outboard motor or station wagon?”

  Big Jim, knowing that most of the Sugar Creek Gang had more bravery than good sense and that we sometimes did dangerous things without thinking first, said, “This is another job for the police.”

  But Poetry spoke up and said, “Let’s be policemen ourselves! By the time we phone them and they could get there, it’d be too late.”

  Which it would be, I thought. So we decided we ought to try to get to the cemetery first by driving there as fast as we could in the station wagon.

  What to do about Tom was our first problem, and we wouldn’t have much time to try to solve it. Some of us simply had to get going to the cemetery to be there before Bob could get to The Narrows and zip through them into the lake where the cemetery was.

  It was half past nine right that second, and Bob was supposed to meet his dad there at ten. If only we could get there before either one of them did—and hide somewhere in the bushes. Then maybe we could sneak up on them and get both of them at once—because it looked as if Bob was in on the b
usiness of being a helper to the kidnapper too.

  Barry and Little Jim and Tom were the only ones left in Barry’s tent. Barry must have heard our excited talk, because his tent flap plopped open and out he came, wanting to know what on earth all the excitement was about. We told him and showed him the note, and then he also heard Bob’s motor on the lake. We didn’t stop to try to figure out why John Till had written to Bob instead of just telling him where to meet him.

  And then Little Jim and Tom came tumbling out of Barry’s tent in our direction, and Dragonfly came out of the other tent, and there we all were—too many and some of us too little to go on a kidnapper hunt.

  Barry took charge of things quick. He said, “You boys all stay right here and look after camp. I’ve a phone call to make—and I want to see the fire warden a minute.”

  And I guess I never was so disappointed in my life as I was right that minute.

  “Is there a fire somewhere?” Tom Till asked quick, sniffing to see if anything smelled like smoke.

  Dragonfly did the same thing and sneezed just as if he had actually smelled something he was allergic to.

  A bit later, Barry in the station wagon was driving down the lane toward Santa’s boat-house, and I knew that in a few seconds he’d be pulling up a steep hill, following the sandy trail at the top, and going like mad down a winding road through the forest to the fire warden’s house, which you know about if you’ve read Screams in the Night.

  There he’d make a terribly fast phone call to the police—or else let the fire warden’s wife do it while he and the fire warden beat it on to the Indian cemetery. They’d probably stop before they got there, though, and sneak carefully up along the lakeshore to where Bob’s boat would be coming in. Then, if they could, they’d capture both Bob and his dad.

  I felt terribly disappointed inside, as if I’d just blown up a very pretty big balloon and somebody had stuck a pin into it. I didn’t know there was going to be more excitement where we were than where Barry and the fire warden would be.

  9

  The station wagon had no sooner disappeared and the whirring sound of its motor faded away, leaving us with Barry’s orders to go back to bed ringing in our ears, than I remembered the blank sheet of typewriter paper I had in my pocket and which we hadn’t bothered to show to Barry.

  Little Jim and Tom Till didn’t know anything about what was going on, and, being sleepy anyway, they seemed glad to get back to their tent and make a dive back into the sleep from which they had dragged themselves a little while before.

  Dragonfly was suspicious, though, and when he noticed Poetry and Big Jim and Circus and me talking together, he got a stubborn expression in his voice and aimed a question at us. “You guys got a secret of some kind?”

  We didn’t want him to start any fuss. Besides, sometimes he wasn’t such a dumb person to let in on a secret. So for a little while we left Little Jim and Tom Till alone in their tent, and the five of us went into the other tent, lit a lantern, unfolded the piece of typewriter paper, and warmed it over the hot top of the lantern.

  In only a few minutes we were again looking at a map of the territory. It showed the camp where we were and the place where the little Ostberg girl had been lying, just like the other map we’d found. Also some other places were identified, such as Santa’s boathouse, the fire warden’s cabin, and the broken twig trail, which led off in different directions.

  “Both maps are alike,” Circus said, and it looked as if they were.

  Poetry traced the faint markings of the new map with his pencil so that we could study it better.

  “What do you suppose Bob had two maps for?” Dragonfly asked.

  And Poetry answered by saying, “He maybe had only one at first, but when he lost it—the one we found last week—he or his dad made another one.”

  “Yeah,” I said, with a question mark in my voice, “but why draw them in invisible ink?”

  “Maybe so nobody would think they were maps.”

  “But how could Bob himself know the different places if he couldn’t see the lines and different marks?” I asked, wondering.

  It was Dragonfly who answered my doubt by saying, “Oh, he probably had what they call an ‘original’—and as soon as he’d memorized it, he drew another one in invisible ink and tore the first one up!”

  His idea made sense, I thought and said so, and so did Poetry.

  But we weren’t getting anywhere—and weren’t supposed to, anyway. It certainly didn’t seem fair that Barry hadn’t let us go with him, but he was camp boss and that was that, and we were supposed to crawl back into our sleeping bags and go to sleep. Imagine that! Right while Barry and the fire warden and maybe the police were capturing old hook-nosed John Till and his son Bob! Imagine it! It was terribly disappointing.

  And then all of a sudden Dragonfly gasped and said, “Gang! Look!” He was holding up the new map between his dragonflylike eyes and the light. His voice had contagious excitement in it, so we all looked quick to see what he saw. But it wasn’t anything—only two crude-looking fish away off on the part of the map that was supposed to represent a lake.

  “A couple of fish,” I said, disgusted with him for getting us excited over nothing. “That’s to show you there is a lake there.”

  “Yeah,” he said, still excited, “but look where they are! They’re right over there where that island is where we caught our walleyes today.”

  Big Jim answered by saying, “Maybe they’re supposed to locate a good fishing place.”

  And then Dragonfly got an idea that sent our minds whirling like summer cyclones at Sugar Creek. He said, “You know what that is? That’s where the island is, and that’s where John Till has been catching the big fish to put the ransom money in, and that island’s where maybe the rest of the money is right this very minute. I’ll bet that’s where they’ll go to get the rest of it, if Barry or the police don’t catch ’em first!”

  Well sir, you could have knocked me over with an invisible-ink map when Dragonfly gave us that wonderful idea. It sounded exactly right, and it seemed a shame that I hadn’t thought of it first.

  In fact, for a minute it almost seemed I had, because all of a sudden I was remembering what I’d thought in the afternoon when Poetry and I had been exploring that island looking for clues. Also I remembered that island was where I’d wanted to go to hunt for treasure in the first place when I’d thought of playing Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday and also Treasure Island.

  I just knew that Dragonfly and I were right, so as quick as a flash I said, “If we really want to capture Bob and old John Till, we’d better beat it over to that little island and be hiding there somewhere when they get there and capture them ourselves.”

  Big Jim answered me in a tone of voice that sounded as if he thought I was only about half bright. “Who wants to get the living daylights knocked out of him in the middle of the night? When you saw him the first time, didn’t he have a big hunting knife?”

  I remembered that he had. In fact, in my mind’s eye I could still see that wicked-looking knife with its five-inch-long blade that looked as if it could not only make a quick slice into the stomach of a fish but could do the same thing to a boy. When Big Jim said that to me like that, it seemed maybe he was right and that I was very ignorant for wanting to be brave without using good sense.

  “Besides,” Big Jim said, “those two silly-looking fish on the map don’t mean a thing. We’d better all get some sleep, or we’ll be as tired as wrung-out dishrags tomorrow.”

  Well, that was orders, and a boy is supposed to obey anybody who has a right to be his boss, such as a schoolteacher or a camp leader or either one of his parents or somebody he is working for. Big Jim didn’t always get obeyed, though, because our gang nearly always voted on important things to decide what to do.

  So right away Poetry, who thought my idea wasn’t so bad after all, spoke up and said, “I move we all get into Barry’s big boat and go roaring over to that island, beach
the boat on the sandy shore of the cove behind some willows, and be there waiting when Bob and his dad come—if they do.”

  “Second the motion,” I said quick.

  But Big Jim exploded our idea by saying, “It’s Barry’s orders to go to bed.”

  It certainly wasn’t easy to go to bed when there was so much excitement we’d rather be mixed up in, but orders were orders. So pretty soon I was in my sleeping bag in the tent with Dragonfly and Poetry. Big Jim and Circus had decided to go back to Santa’s cabin to spend the rest of the night as they’d planned to do in the first place.

  Pretty soon, in spite of feeling excited and wondering whether anybody would catch John Till and Bob, I must have dropped off to sleep, not even knowing I was going to do it. A certain poem says, “No boy knows when he goes to sleep.” It seemed like even in my sleep I could hear an outboard motor roaring out on the lake, first coming close to us, then fading away, and then a little later coming back again.

  Once, when I was half awake and half asleep, I heard Poetry turn over beside me, and then I heard him whisper, “Bill, listen, will you? Somebody’s out there in a motorboat going back and forth in front of our dock.”

  It took a while for me to realize where I was and why, and then I was actually listening to a motorboat out on our lake, sounding as if somebody was doing what Poetry said he was.

  Poetry sat up, scrambled over to the tent flap, and worked it open.

  In another second I had my red head beside his, and we were both looking out across the moonlit water and seeing a dark, fast-moving boat out there.

  “He’s crazy!” Poetry said in my left ear, and I said to him in his right one, “He’s just cutting big wide circles.”

  It seemed silly for anybody to do what he was doing. So, because it was a crazy night anyway and so many odd things had happened on our fishing trip, Poetry and I squeezed our way through the tent flap and went down to the dock to see what on earth anybody was doing out there, just going round and round like that.