In a few minutes we were all up in the mulberry tree, each boy on a limb, gobbling up whole handfuls of the juiciest, biggest, blackest mulberries you ever saw.
When we’d eaten all we could, we started back toward home. We’d stayed a little longer than we should have, I guess, because with the tall trees making so much shade it was kind of spooky in the old swamp. But we decided to go through anyway because it was so much closer that way.
Then, just as it had happened that other afternoon, it happened again. We heard a heavy, crashing noise as if something big was running away. We stopped dead in our tracks.
Next we heard a fierce growl, and something charged right past, so close it almost ran into us. We heard dogs barking fiercely and chasing whatever it was that was running away. We started to run!
Gasping, panting, scared half to death, we came out into the open on the other side of the swamp, and we didn’t stop running until we’d reached the spring.
That was the second time we’d seen it, whatever it was. Circus said it was his dad’s big hounds chasing a rabbit. Big Jim said it might have been a fox but that it was the dogs that made all the noise. Little Jim sighed and believed Big Jim. Poetry said that, whatever it was, it was a coward because it was always running away. Dragonfly said he’d seen it clearly and that it weighed 500 pounds and was black and had long hair and its eyes were small and brown—or maybe gray.
We all tried to believe Big Jim, for he was nearly always right. None of us believed it was a bear, and we couldn’t always trust Dragonfly’s eyes. They saw so many things that just weren’t there. So I said, “I think it had purple eyes with yellow stripes in them.”
That made us all laugh, and we got over being scared almost right away.
Just then we heard a shot behind us, and we all jumped. Then there was another shot.
“It’s my dad,” Circus said.
And in a minute Circus’s dad did come swinging along toward us, carrying his gun in one hand and a squirrel in the other. His two big dogs were running along beside him with their long tongues hanging out and panting and looking happy and satisfied, just the way a boy looks after he’s been swimming or won a baseball game.
Even though I felt sorry for the squirrel, I felt glad because I knew the Brownes would have something to eat for supper. Circus’s mother liked squirrel soup better than anything else in the world, Circus told me once.
“Hello, boys!” his dad said cheerfully.
“Hello,” we said. The last time I’d seen him, he was on his knees in the big brown tent with my dad’s arm around him.
Then he said to Circus, “I guess we’d better run along home now, Son, and get the chores done and supper over. Your mom wants to go to the meeting tonight.”
I looked at Little Jim, and he looked at me, and Dragonfly kind of hung his head. He was the only one of our gang now that wasn’t born again, I thought. He’d gone with us to the tent meetings several times, but he didn’t seem to understand things.
On the way home, Dragonfly said to Little Jim and me, who were walking and running and playing leapfrog together, “What do they do to you when you go forward in the tent?” Imagine his saying that!
“Nothing,” Little Jim said. “You just make up your mind you want to be saved, and you invite Jesus into your heart. The minister, or somebody else who knows, shows you what it says in the Bible, and you just tell Jesus you’re a sinner and that you believe He died on the cross for you and that you receive Him as your Savior right now.”
Dragonfly looked serious a minute, then he jumped over Little Jim like a jackrabbit over a log and said, “I’ve told Him that already.”
“When?” I asked.
“About two hours ago when I was sliding down out of the old sycamore tree, like Zaccheus did in the Bible.”
At that minute Circus, who didn’t know what we were talking about, came running toward us like a ferocious wild animal, and in a jiffy we were all tumbling over each other on the grass like puppies playing, and we didn’t get to say anything more to Dragonfly.
Just before we parted at my house, however, I saw Dragonfly ask Little Jim something that I couldn’t hear. Then Dragonfly started running down the road as fast as he could with Little Jim right at his heels.
7
It began to look as if the idea of a bear being in our neighborhood was only in my imagination because I’d been reading about bears in my dad’s library and was just hoping one was there. Dad found a big hole in the fence where the pigs had been getting out. The only strange thing was that two of the pigs never came back in—and none of the neighbors had seen them.
The gang didn’t get to meet again until the last of that week, because it was harvesttime and we had to cut oats.
I was always glad when a lot of men were working for us. They always stayed for dinner, and that meant we’d have the best dinners in the world—pie and cake and fried chicken, which was a favorite dish. And it wouldn’t be any old red rooster, either, but a young spring chicken. I never did eat any chicken that was tougher than our old red rooster, and for some reason I didn’t enjoy it very much.
Dad hired Circus’s dad and Circus and a stranger to help us with the work. The strange man had a hooked nose and a puffy face and pig eyes and looked like a drinker. He had just moved into the neighborhood and needed work. He lived on the other side of Sugar Creek. He had two rough boys who hadn’t been to Sunday school in their whole lives, although they’d lived in towns where there were plenty of churches.
Dad hitched four horses to our harvester, and pretty soon there was a happy humming and roaring of machinery, and the fun began. It was hard work, but we liked it. Circus and I did almost as much work as his dad and the stranger, whose name was John Till. We became hot and tired and sweaty and felt like real men. Dad had hired me, too, and was going to pay me as much as he would have paid anybody else.
Circus seemed a little worried though. Once in a while he would look over at his dad and the stranger as if he was afraid of something.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
He said, “Nothing, only Dad used to know John Till before Dad was saved.”
Circus kept on watching his dad, and every now and then I could see him looking disgustedly at John Till.
Once he said to me, “See that big bulge in John Till’s hip pocket?”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Whiskey,” Circus said and wiped the sweat off his face and started working harder than ever.
Everything went along all right until about three o’clock in the afternoon, when Circus’s dad and the strange man stopped for a while and went over to a little bunch of elderberry bushes along the fence, where we kept the water jug. My dad was away across on the other side of the field.
From where we were, we could see them taking turns drinking out of the jug the way working men do, pouring out a little water before and after drinking, so the next man won’t get any of his germs if he has any.
Suddenly, Circus let out a yell and started running across the field toward them, screaming, “Stop! Don’t you dare give him that whiskey!”
I felt the blood start to race in my veins and my heart pound, and then I was running as fast as I could right after Circus. The sweat was pouring down my face and getting into my eyes. My hat blew off. Circus was ahead of me, running as I’d never seen him run in all my life.
I knew Circus’s dad used to like whiskey and that, even though he had been saved last Monday night, he might yield to temptation and drink again. Circus knew it too.
Already we were too late. Circus’s dad took the bottle from the hook-nosed man and lifted it to his lips. And just that minute Circus got there, with me right at his heels. I’d never seen Circus so angry. I remembered that night in my room when he had looked so fierce and had said what he did about whiskey advertising.
Circus let out a yell and made a leap for the bottle, trying to get it away from his dad and screaming, “Don’t, Dad! You�
�re a Christian!”
But John Till’s big arm shot out, and his rough, hard hand grabbed Circus’s shirt collar. He whirled him around the way a giant would a little toy and shoved him back.
And Circus’s dad took another drink.
Then my red-haired temper caught fire. I was so mad at John Till and the devil and whiskey and sin that I could hardly see. I made a dive for that man with both fists flying. And even though I couldn’t see anything but the man’s pig eyes and hooked nose, I could feel my fists striking his nose and chin and stomach.
Then something struck me on the jaw, and things began to whirl around and around, and I fell flat on the ground. That was the last I knew for awhile.
When I came to, I was lying in the shade of the elderberry bushes. I could smell the sweet perfume of the big white clusters of flowers. Circus was sitting in the shade beside me, holding a sore knuckle to his lips. Circus’s dad was there too, crying.
And I heard my dad’s big voice say angrily, talking to the hook-nosed man, “You’re fired! Here’s your money, and don’t ever set foot on my farm again until you can act like a human being!”
Then my dad cut loose with the grandest sermon against whiskey you ever heard. He said that if it was right to sell it or drink it, it was also right to kill people by running into them with cars or to murder them on purpose. When people were drunk they couldn’t drive straight, and you never could tell when a drinking man was going to lose control and kill somebody.
“You whiskey guzzler!” my dad thundered. “Here’s a father who is trying to go straight, who’s given his heart and life to God, and you try to get him to go back and join the devil’s army. Don’t you have any respect for decency and law and order? Don’t you have any respect for the man’s children, who need a Christian father and what money he can earn for food and clothing? Don’t you know, John Till, that someday you’ve got to stand before the judgment bar of Almighty God? And that the wages of sin is death?”
I felt proud of my dad!
He gave the man a full day’s pay and sent him home.
Well, that was our introduction to the Till family. You can see that John Till’s two rough boys wouldn’t like the Sugar Creek Gang very well. The boys’ names were Bob and Tom. We found out afterward that they were named after Bob Ingersoll and Tom Paine. My dad says Bob Ingersoll was an atheist, which means he didn’t believe there is a God; and Tom Paine was a deist, which means he didn’t believe the Bible is God’s Word.
John Till was an atheist himself, and he certainly acted like it.
Circus’s dad was very sorry about yielding to temptation, and he asked my dad to forgive him, which my dad did. He said that when he saw the bottle of whiskey he wanted it so badly that it seemed he’d go crazy if he didn’t have it. That’s what liquor does to a man when it gets hold of him. That’s why a boy shouldn’t take even one little tiny drink, because one drink is the devil’s bait to get you to walk into his trap.
Well, Dad and I and Circus and Circus’s dad were all Christians, so my dad said, “Let’s have a little prayer meeting right here and pray for John Till and for each other and ask God to give Dan here strength to say no next time.”
In a jiffy we were all down on our knees in the shade of the elderberry bushes, with the sweet-smelling flowers all around us and with crickets cheeping in the grass and the hot wind rustling the leaves—and with a great big lump of ache in our hearts.
We took turns praying. I can’t remember what I said. But whatever it was, I meant it, even if I didn’t know how to pray very well.
It was a grand prayer meeting, and I’ll bet God looked down at us and liked us better than ever for having it out there under the elderberry bushes, which He’d made to grow there. Maybe He’d put them there on purpose, He liking His people so well.
8
If I don’t watch out, I’ll get to the end of this story without telling you how Little Jim killed the bear. But I have to explain all these other things first because they’re what is called the setting of the story. Also, I’ll have to tell you something about Bob and Tom Till because they’re in the story too, especially Tom. Besides, the bear isn’t the only important thing in this book, not by a long shot.
Bob was fourteen years old and bigger than Big Jim. He had even shaved once or twice. Tom had red hair like mine and was as mean as anything. The first time we saw the boys was one day about a week after my dad fired their dad for giving whiskey to Circus’s dad.
Our gang had been in swimming and having a great time. We were out dressing in the shade of a big peach-leaf willow when we heard somebody laughing up in the woods. Well, after swimming we’d planned going up on the hill near the big rock where we knew there were a lot of ripe wild strawberries just waiting for hungry boys to come and pick them.
We’d been the only boys in our neighborhood for a long time, and it seemed the strawberries and the creek and all the woods belonged to us. The fact is they belonged to Old Man Paddler, and he’d given us permission to pick berries or do anything else we wanted to there.
“It’s the Till boys,” Dragonfly said. “They’re up there eating our strawberries.”
We finished dressing in a hurry and started on the run through the woods. Then we sneaked up behind some bushes and watched them. But there weren’t only the two Till boys. There were four or five other boys who lived in town and belonged to the same tough gang the Till boys had belonged to before moving into the country.
They were gobbling up our strawberries as fast as they could and laughing and hollering and swearing and saying many things that none of our gang ever said because Big Jim wouldn’t stand for it and because it was wrong.
I think it was their swearing that made us disgusted more than the fact that they were eating our strawberries. They were all barefoot, but none of them looked like the boy in the poem we’d learned at school that says:
Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy with cheek of tan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
With thy lips, redder still,
Kissed by strawberries on the hill.
None of our gang felt like a poem either. We just lay there watching, with our tempers like fuses burning shorter and shorter toward a half dozen sticks of dynamite, each one expecting to explode any minute.
Little Jim’s fists were doubled up because he couldn’t stand to hear anybody swear. And before any of us knew what he was going to do, he darted out into the open and yelled, “You boys stop that swearing!” Then he ducked into the bushes and crouched down beside Big Jim.
Well, that started their fuses burning too.
There wasn’t any use to stay hidden, so Big Jim gave the signal, and we all stepped out to where they could see us. And as soon as they saw us, they knew who we were. I guess nearly everybody in the whole county had heard about us.
There wasn’t a one of us who didn’t think we could lick those boys, but Big Jim didn’t want us to fight unless we had to. He had his hat pulled down low over one eye and looked pretty fierce. I could see he had his eye on the biggest Till boy and was figuring how easy it would be to lick him.
Getting ready to fight is a funny thing. You feel scared and angry at the same time. And yet you aren’t really scared. And you can’t even see straight for wanting to punch the other fellow’s nose.
As I said, they knew who we were and didn’t like us. You see, when a boy gets about half grown up and doesn’t go to Sunday school or church, he thinks every boy who does go is a sissy. Anyway, the Till boys’ dad must have seen us having that meeting under the elderberry bushes, because the smallest one called out to us, “Hello, there, you prayer meeting sissies!”
I felt sorry for those boys for being so ignorant, but just the same it didn’t feel very good to be called that. I could tell that my fuse was just about burned to the end.
“We’re not sissies!” Dragonfly shouted back.
I looked at Poetry to see how he felt, and his fa
ce was as red as a beet. “Those are our strawberries!” he yelled.
“Oh, they are, are they?” Big Bob Till called back. “If they are, why don’t you come and get them?” Then he said sarcastically, “We extend to you a cordial invitation to come up and help yourselves. Or maybe you believe in praying for them!”
We all waited for Big Jim to decide what to do. I’d already decided which one of the boys I was going to fight if I had to.
Pretty soon Big Jim said to us, “You boys wait here a minute.” Then he stepped out and marched right up the hill toward them.
He said, “Fellows, it isn’t a question of whether we’re afraid to fight.” He was so angry his voice was shaking, and I knew he was just itching to sock that big bully in the jaw. Instead, he made the grandest speech.
“There isn’t a man among us that’s got a drop of coward’s blood in him. But the Sugar Creek Gang doesn’t believe in fighting, and we won’t unless we have to. We have permission from the owner of the woods to pick strawberries here, and we ask you if you will please leave and not make it necessary for us to use force.”
That, I said to myself, is self-control, the kind Bill Collins needs. I felt proud of Big Jim.
But Bob Till just looked disgusted. “You’re a bunch of Sunday school and prayer meeting sissies!” he shouted. “You’re afraid to fight!” He took a step toward Big Jim with his fists doubled up. Then he turned around to his gang and said, “Come on, gang, let’s lick the daylights out of them.”
And just like a swarm of angry bumblebees, the town boys charged down the hill at us, with their fists flying and their mouths spilling nasty words and calling us all kinds of filthy names.
Now, I ask you: What’s a fellow going to do when he knows he shouldn’t fight but when the other fellow needs a licking more than he needs anything else? When I’d needed a spanking and my dad gave me one, it had done me good. So I made up my mind quick as a lightning flash that since that mean-faced, red-haired Till boy who was just my size needed a licking, I was going to give it to him.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6 Page 13