Close to where they had landed, I saw now a little pile of stones, which is all the grave marker there was for a dog hero that had been one of the finest, even if the one of most uncontrollable, quadrupeds there ever was.
For a second I felt hot tears stinging my eyes as I recalled some of the wonderful experiences we’d had with Alexander. It hurt my heart that never again would that beautiful copper-colored dog live and move and have his being—not at Sugar Creek or at his home in Memory City, Indiana, or anywhere. All that was left of him was lying down there under a pile of stones.
Near the pile of stones, a small stream trickled down the canyon, and I realized that Old Man Paddler was right. A flash flood would fill that narrow gulch with roaring water that would wash those stones away as though they were chips from a woodpile.
I looked toward the sky and noticed how blue it was except in a few places. In one place in particular there was a heavy buildup of sky-high, yellowish white clouds.
Each of us was thinking his own thoughts, and I supposed maybe they were more or less alike until Dragonfly all of a sudden spoke up in his worried voice, asking, “Where does a dog’s soul go after it dies? Is there such a thing as a dog’s ghost?”
Poetry scoffed at the idea of a dog having a ghost. “Of course not! Whoever heard of such a thing?”
“My mother,” Dragonfly answered. “She heard a strange dog’s voice howling in the direction of the swamp last night. It might have been Alexander the Coppersmith’s! Hey! Listen! Hear that! There it is now!”
There was a ghostlike quaver in his scared voice. A second later when I did hear a faint bark or bawl or howl of a dog far away in the hills somewhere, it sent a shower of shivers up and down my spine. Right away there was another long howl, a little louder. For some reason it did sound almost exactly like the dog voice of Alexander the Coppersmith.
We were all so quiet for a few tense seconds that you could have heard a hummingbird’s buzzing wings.
Then Big Jim said gruffly, “Imagination! Let’s get going!” He led the way toward the rim of the canyon.
Dragonfly held back. There was a pained expression on his face, and I remembered the blister on his heel.
Even Little Jim hesitated. I saw his lip quiver, and, being close to him at the time, I heard him say under his breath, “He died to save me.” It was a little like being in church. The words made me remember a sermon I’d heard once about Jesus dying on the cross.
“All right, boys—Bill, Poetry, Circus! We’ll go down and get him. Dragonfly, you and Little Jim wait here. We’ll be right back.”
In a little while, the four of us older, bigger boys—I was the littlest of the four, the most slender, anyway—had the exhuming done, the corpse in one of the burlap bags, and a stretcher made out of the other one. And then the six of us were on our way to the haunted house and the little enclosure under the sugar maple tree where Old Tom the Trapper and his twin Dalmatian dogs were buried.
I noticed as we ambled along, the four of us bigger boys acting as pallbearers, that Dragonfly was limping quite a bit now. Maybe that was one of the reasons Big Jim hadn’t asked him to help carry the dog. Little Jim was carrying the spade and Dragonfly the shovel.
After a while, though, when Little Jim begged to be a pallbearer, I carried the spade, and Dragonfly and I followed along behind. “Your foot hurt pretty bad?” I asked him.
That little guy must have hated to admit that such pretty cowboy boots could give him a sore foot. He winced, stopped, stopped limping, and skipped a little as if to say, “Certainly not,” and kept on walking.
“Listen,” I said to him. “You’ve got to be sensible. Here. The gang doesn’t need to know it.” I pulled him aside behind a little clump of blue spruce, leaned the spade against one of them, and taking out of my pocket a couple of Band-Aids, ordered him, “All right, sonny, let’s have a look.”
It helped me feel important to make Dragonfly take off his fancy right boot and let me put a Band-Aid on the raw place on his heel. It felt even better to hear him say a little later as we were walking along and he wasn’t limping even a little, “Maybe I’m your almost-best friend.”
Then Dragonfly took a deep breath, sneezed a long, friendly, neighing sneeze, let out a “Hi-yo, Silver!” and started off on the gallop to catch up with the others.
That’s your reward, doctor! I said to myself. And you can’t charge him, because you got more out of it than he did.
Pretty soon we were at the haunted house, not far from where I myself had lain at least half a dozen times just before the gang had buried me with leaves or sprinkled dirt in my face.
“Look what last week’s windstorm did!” Dragonfly called out from where he was at the time, which was behind a small spirea shrub in full bloom.
Just mentioning last week’s rain and windstorm carried my mind back to the fallen ponderosa bridge across the canyon. I took a look at what Dragonfly had called to us about. There, all twisted and bent out of shape, was the big H-shaped metal cap that I remembered had been on the top of the fireplace chimney.
My eyes flew to the roof of the old house. Sure enough, the brick chimney top up there was without its cap.
Little Jim piped up then and said, “That’ll make it easier for Santa Claus to get in next Christmas.”
I noticed he had a faraway expression in his eyes as if it were already December the twenty-fourth and time for eight imaginary reindeer to start drawing an imaginary old man in an imaginary sleigh from the North Pole to the rooftops of a hundred million houses all over the world.
“Let’s get going,” Big Jim ordered then.
He made a very dignified, sober-faced undertaker, saying to me, the grave digger, “Right over there, Bill. In the southwest corner under the elderberry bush where it looks like the gophers or moles have already started digging for us.”
I looked under the elderberry bush, then stopped more stock-still than I had when Poetry had halted me a half hour ago. I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Big Jim had said that gophers or moles had already started to dig there, and at first that was what it did look like. There was a little mound of yellowish clay to prove it.
Yellow clay! my astonished mind exclaimed. The same color of clay and the same type there had been—and still was a little of—on the shovel we had gotten from behind the apple barrel in Old Man Paddler’s toolshed!
“What on earth!” I couldn’t help exclaiming.
Poetry, who was standing and staring at what I was standing and staring at, let out an exclamatory whistle that also said, “What on earth!” or maybe, “What in the earth!”
From where Big Jim was, maybe it did look like the work of moles or gophers, but from where Poetry and I were—three feet from the little mound of earth—it was as plain as the crooked nose on Dragonfly’s face that the pile of yellow clay could have been put there by a spade or a shovel.
It was a very fresh mound of earth, as if whoever had been digging and possibly burying something or somebody here had done it only yesterday or last night. Or even maybe that very morning.
Right that second the sun went under a cloud, and there was a rumble of thunder and a rustling of leaves in the trees as a noisy wind came sweeping through the woods. It was nature telling us that in a little while there would be an old-fashioned Sugar Creek thunderstorm.
While I was all mixed up in my mind as to who or what had been digging in Old Tom the Trapper’s dog cemetery and who or what—if anything—had been buried there, and while the thought came that we would have to hurry and get Alexander buried again before the storm broke or we’d be like six drowned rats, Poetry cautioned me with his eyes and a shake of his head and with one forefinger to his lips.
I knew he was warning me not to tell the rest of the gang what he and I were suspicious of. We would not even mention the yellow clay on the shovel or the fact that the little mound of soil under the elderberry bush was the same kind of clay.
Just then it began to rain, the
first drops large and scattered.
“Quick, everybody!” Big Jim ordered us. “Make a dive for shelter!”
We left our canine corpse in its gunnysack coffin under the elderberry bush and shot like six two-legged arrows straight for the front door of the haunted house.
Big Jim had the key, having gotten it from Old Man Paddler, but it wouldn’t unlock the rusty lock, and we couldn’t wait long enough to keep on trying it, so we scurried around to the sloping cellar door, lifted it, and went down. Then we climbed the inside cellar steps, pushed up the trapdoor, and came out in the kitchen.
We hadn’t any sooner let the trapdoor down again than the storm struck—really struck. The sky was like a big dome-shaped sieve with a million holes in it, and thunder and lightning broke loose as if they were trying to tear the world apart and scatter it all over everywhere.
As soon as our eyes got accustomed to the dimness, we walked around in the different rooms. Everything in the downstairs of the old house was the same as when we had visited it last. We stopped a while in the big living room, where the fireplace was, and talked about what an exciting time we’d had one snowy winter day when we’d been lost in a blizzard and had finally staggered into the house and started a fire here just in time to keep from freezing.
Little Jim, not knowing how serious Poetry’s and my thoughts were, was in a playful mood. He made a beeline for the fireplace, stepped up on the long foot-high hearth, looked into the fireplace and up and exclaimed, “Boy! Is it ever big inside!”
Then he swung around and exclaimed to us, “Here’s where Santa Claus landed when he came down the chimney with a bound! Here, little round man,” he called to Poetry, the roundest one of us, “come lay a finger aside your nose and give a nod and see if you can get back up again.”
Poetry, not enjoying being reminded that he needed to go on a diet for a year, ignored Little Jim’s joke and went instead to the window. There he looked out at Old Tom the Trapper’s canine cemetery and at the muddy mound of dirt under the elderberry bush.
Not wanting Little Jim to feel squelched because nobody paid any attention to what he thought was a bright idea, I sat down on the fireplace hearth, stretched myself across it, looked in and up, and was surprised that I could see all the way to the top of the chimney. It certainly was big enough for a little round man to get down, even if he had a sack of toys on his back.
I ducked out again quickly. Since there was no cap on the top of the chimney and the damper was wide open, I’d gotten quite a few drops of rain in my face.
Poetry and I watched for a chance to get alone so that we could talk. Pretty soon we were by ourselves in the kitchen, standing on the trapdoor.
“Listen,” he whispered. “Let’s keep it a secret about the yellow clay for a while. We don’t want to turn out to be a couple of chumps if that mound of dirt was made by a mole or a gopher. Or if maybe Old Man Paddler himself used the shovel somewhere and forgot to clean it.”
We agreed and shook hands on it. Both of us felt better, although I kept wondering and also hoping our suspicions were right—especially when I remembered what I’d heard on the radio at home about somebody having escaped from prison and being armed and extremely dangerous.
Little Jim, who was still in a playful mood, all of a sudden came into the kitchen. “Let’s play Goldilocks and the Three Bears!”
Well, there wasn’t much of anything you could do, shut up in an empty house without any checkers or caroms or Ping-Pong to play. So to help ourselves pass the time while the storm was wearing off its temper outdoors, we took Little Jim up on his idea.
Big Jim started in by growling, “Somebody has been tasting my soup!”
Circus pretended to be the mother bear and complained about his soup having been tasted, too.
Then Little Jim piped up with tears in his mouselike voice, saying, “Somebody has been tasting my soup and has eaten it all up!”
Then we went into the living room, and Big Jim started growling about somebody having sat in his chair. A little later, we did what Goldilocks did—we went upstairs to the bedroom. And there we got the surprise of our lives.
There actually was a bed up there! It was not a bedstead with springs and mattress, but on the floor—near the window overlooking the creek—was a plastic air mattress with a built-in headrest. It was inflated and ready for anybody to sleep on. Folded at its foot was a blanket.
Little Jim didn’t seem to realize that the mattress being there was anything unusual. Certainly he wouldn’t think what Poetry and I were thinking! To him, this olive-colored air mattress was just something that made the game of Goldilocks and the Three Bears seem more real.
Quick as a flash he was across the room and stretched out full length on the mattress. His curly head was resting on the built-in pillow, and his high-pitched complaining voice was half sobbing, “Somebody has been sleeping in my bed—and here she is!” He didn’t even wait for Big Jim or Circus to growl their complaints about somebody having slept in their beds first.
Now, I thought, Poetry and I had better tell the rest of the gang about our suspicions. I opened my mouth to say, “Somebody’s using this old house for a hideout,” but I got Poetry’s right elbow in my ribs and a sharp shush in my ear. Then he whispered, “Let’s wait till we dig under the elderberry bush and see what’s buried there. Just as soon as it quits raining.”
Big Jim was bothered, though, about the air mattress. All of a sudden he went to the closet we all knew about, unfastened the iron latch, and swung open the heavy oak door.
And there on a shelf was a row of canned goods and a two-burner camp stove. Also on the shelf was an aluminum cook kit with a plate, cup, frying pan, and a stewpan.
What on earth! Who was living in this old house and why?
Little Jim, still in his dreamy-eyed make-believe world, exclaimed, “Now we can start over again with somebody eating our real soup.”
It was already beginning to get lighter outside, which meant that in a little while the rain would be over. We could go back downstairs and outdoors and hurry up and get Alexander the Coppersmith buried.
But behind me right then, Dragonfly whispered, “Gang! Come here! Look! Somebody’s coming!”
In a scramble of six excited boys and twelve nervous feet, we rushed to the window and looked out. Running toward the house like a scared cottontail and carrying a rifle was a tall man in gray jeans. I could see he was bareheaded. His hair was mussed up, and he looked as if he needed a haircut almost as bad as a boy who hasn’t had one for two months.
Boy oh boy oh boy! Talk about showers of shivers going up and down a boy’s spine! When I saw that man carrying a rifle and hurrying through the rain toward the house, it was like a giant whirlwind coming into my mind. Who was the man? Where had he come from? Why was he running so fast? And why was he living here in this old house?
Was the man with the rifle the same person who had sneaked into Old Man Paddler’s tool-shed, borrowed his shovel, dug with it in Old Tom the Trapper’s canine cemetery, and buried something there? Or maybe dug up something? Was he the fugitive from justice the radio newscaster had been talking about so excitedly?
Another thought was tossed high in the whirlwind in my mind. Was there any kind of reward offered for the man, and if there was, would the gang be able to capture him and claim it?
It certainly seemed that long-legged rifleman making a wet dash for the house we were upstairs in was bringing with him a lot of danger. A whole lot of it!
“Looks like we’re going to have company,” Big Jim said as calmly as he could, maybe so as not to scare any of us any worse than we already were.
The window overlooking the creek also overlooked—right below us—the sloping outside cellar door. And a minute later, I heard the cellar door open, heard steps hurrying up, heard the trapdoor squeaking on its hinges, and I knew that the man with the rifle was already in the kitchen.
Then he was in the living room. And then we heard his heavy steps
on the stairs on his way up. Six boys were caught like rats in a trap.
“Quick!” Big Jim ordered. “Everybody in the closet!” He shoved us in ahead of him, and in seconds we were all inside and had the door shut.
“We’re in a trap now!” Dragonfly whined in a scared whisper.
“Sh!” Big Jim cautioned us and none too soon, for I could hear the rifleman’s heavy step at the head of the stairs. Any second now he would come down the long hall to the room we’d just left.
“We are in a trap!” Dragonfly persisted. “How can we get out?”
Again Big Jim shushed him. Then he whispered a command to all of us: “Follow me! But be quiet!”
His flashlight was focused on the row of wooden pegs on the side wall of the walk-in closet—pegs that we had decided the first time we were here had been used for coat hangers by Old Tom the Trapper years and years and years ago.
“Remember this?” Big Jim asked but didn’t wait for us to answer. There wasn’t time. His light was focused now on a small wooden peg on the wall by itself, just high enough for a little boy to use for his clothes.
And then I remembered.
Big Jim gave that low wooden peg a sideways yank. The whole back panel of the closet moved, and there in front of us was the dark attic where, on our first visit to the haunted house, we had seen the fiery eyes of a furry wild animal. But that’s another story.
“Everybody in, quick!” Big Jim whispered his order.
As fast and as quietly as we could, we scrambled into the attic. I was glad the sound of rain on the roof was loud enough so that maybe the man now clomp-clomping toward the room we had just left couldn’t hear us.
There was a bit more noise than there should have been on account of Dragonfly’s high-heeled boots clattering on the board floor —but also for another reason. I actually had to force that little guy to go in ahead of me. He kept struggling and whispering in protest, trying to get back out into the closet. We didn’t find out why until we were all inside and Big Jim had slid the panel back in place and we were standing in the black dark, trembling with excitement and hoping whoever was in the room where the air mattress was didn’t know about the secret panel.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36 Page 26