Almost the second the panel snapped shut, Dragonfly whined to us the reason he had been trying to get back out.
“My new hat!” he whispered. “It got bumped off! It’s still in the closet! If he finds it, he’ll know we’re here and maybe shoot every one of us!”
4
Now what? It was still hard to keep my mind from acting like a whirlwind.
We were in a black attic in the upstairs of a haunted house. A fugitive with a rifle was also in the house and was already up the stairs. There wasn’t any way we could get out except through the closet in the room where he was.
What if he found Dragonfly’s hat? He’d know we’d been here—or were here—and what would he do to us? He had a rifle, and all we had was a rope, although we did have six times as many muscles as he had, and all of us had had experience using them in a life-or-death fight.
The rain on the roof made it seem safe for us to whisper, now that there were two doors separating us and the man. If he did hear anything, he might think it was only the storm outside. But how could we be sure one of the six of us wouldn’t whisper too loud? One or the other of us might even forget and talk with his out-loud voice, and our hiding place would be found!
Also, one of us had a sensitive nose that was allergic to musty odors, dust, ragweed pollen, and almost everything else that wasn’t fresh air. Any second while we were there in that dark attic, hardly daring to breathe, Dragonfly’s nose might start to tickle, and he would have to sneeze.
The attic had a wild-animal odor as if there were mice around. It reminded me of the mother raccoon and her babies who had once lived here. The chimney at that time had had a big hole in its side, opening into the attic, and she’d used it as a secret door to her hideout.
Right then, while I was thinking about the musty odor in the attic, I could tell that Dragonfly’s nose was smelling it. I heard him take in a trembling breath and knew he was trying hard not to do what I knew he was going to do. And then he did it.
Dragonfly sneezed!
There was sudden deathly silence in the attic and in the room on the other side of the closet. You could have heard a pin drop if it hadn’t been for the rain on the roof. The next minute seemed like an hour while we waited to find out what, if anything, Dragonfly’s smothered sneeze had done in the rifleman’s mind.
Just then Little Jim whispered the craziest idea I’d ever heard. “That was a single-shot rifle, I could tell. Let’s slide the panel open and go storming out and tackle him. He could shoot only one of us, and the rest of us could jump him and tie him up with our rope and—”
Big Jim’s shush was almost louder than Little Jim’s excited suggestion. One thing the little mouse-faced guy had said, though, gave me a spurt of hope. It reminded me that we did have a rope. It could come in handy if we had to get into a knock-down-drag-out fight with the fugitive. There might be a chance to use the rope as a lasso, the way cowboys of the Old West used to and the way today’s cowboys do in roundups.
By this time I was accustomed to the sound of rain on the roof and could distinguish between it and the faint movements of the man on the other side of the closet. I tried to imagine what he was doing.
Of course, I couldn’t see a thing—not until suddenly the closet door was yanked open and a shaft of light came through the crack in the sliding panel a few inches from the place where the small wooden peg was!
Since I was the closest to the crack, I could see the man peering in with his rifle ready to shoot. I really cringed then, thinking he had heard us and was coming in to get us.
His eyes flashed all around that closet from one corner to the other. I saw them focus on the shelf where the tinned goods and the camp stove were and heard him grunt, “Humph!”
He stooped a little so as not to bump his head and walked into the closet. But he stumbled over something on the floor and almost lost his balance. Then the man reached down to pick up what he had stumbled over, and it was Dragonfly’s cowboy hat!
And that was enough to scare us all half to death, but at the moment I was the only one of the gang who knew what had happened.
I kept on watching. I saw the rifleman frown at Dragonfly’s new, still-wet hat with its crushed crown and bent brim. I saw him take a quick look all around, then toss the hat out of the closet onto the air mattress. He was mumbling something under his breath.
And then, holding his rifle ready to shoot, he was moving cautiously back into and around the room as if he was expecting any minute to have to use the gun on somebody. He stood at the window, looking out toward the creek. Who, I wondered, is he waiting for?
He raised a raspy voice then and called in the direction of some other part of the upstairs, “Hey, you, Crimp! Where are you?”
I expected to hear another man’s answering voice from somewhere in the house-maybe from the basement—even though I knew the crushed-crowned, twisted-brimmed Stetson belonged to Dragonfly Gilbert and not to anybody named “Crimp.”
At the same time I seemed to remember a name I had heard in the newscast at our house, and it was Crimp the Shrimp!
At a time like that you don’t do anything. You can’t do anything except listen for all you’re worth and wait. It was a good thing it hadn’t been Dragonfly’s eyes that had seen his beautiful, new, still-wet Stetson with its crushed crown and twisted brim, or he might have called out, “Stop! Leave that hat alone! That’s my hat!” or something like that.
I think I’d never seen such a tired-faced man—as well as grim-faced. He was yawning as though he hadn’t had any sleep for two or three days and nights. I could see his face clearly now because he was standing again at the window that overlooked the creek.
Then he cocked his head to one side and listened. Two or three times he put his left hand up to his ear as though he was trying hard to hear any sound there might be.
He came and took another look into the closet, and I held my breath for fear he’d see through the crack I was looking through and see my eye. Again he turned his head sideways and listened in our direction with his left ear. Then I heard the heavy closet door squeaking on its rusty old hinges. A second later it went shut, and we were in the blackest dark I ever saw.
The second the door was shut, I heard the iron latch snap into place and also heard Dragonfly whisper, “We’re locked in! We’re in a trap for sure.”
This time he was right. For sure.
Of course, I didn’t tell him what I also knew —that his fancy Stetson was out in the bedroom with its crown crushed and its brim twisted. I only hoped the rifleman didn’t try it on and find out it was too small for a man and couldn’t possibly belong to Crimp the Shrimp.
We still hardly dared to breathe, and we almost were afraid to whisper. It was so quiet now on the other side of the closet that it was spooky.
Big Jim was the first to break our silence when he whispered, “Listen, everybody! Hear that?”
I listened as hard as I could, not knowing what to expect to hear but finding out a few seconds later.
Dragonfly let out a scared whisper. “There’s a wild animal in here!”
But there wasn’t. There wasn’t a wild animal. It would have been funny if there had been, because any boy who has ever lived with a father has probably been awakened many a dark night by that same-sounding sound, like somebody using a handsaw on a board or a two-by-four or maybe a log.
Snzzzzzzz—snzzzzzzz—snzzzzzzz—snzzzzzzz!
Our rifleman had been so tired and sleepy he probably had lain down and gone to sleep.
He and Crimp had maybe escaped from jail together. They had broken into a store somewhere and stolen some canned food and a camp stove and had been hiding here. Maybe Crimp had stolen a new cowboy hat too, I thought. He had left the house a while—maybe to get more supplies. The rifleman had gone, too, and had just gotten back. Now he was so tired he just had to have some sleep.
But soon Crimp the Shrimp might come running in from somewhere, and we would have two dangerous me
n just outside our attic jail.
One thing we had to be thankful for was that Big Jim had his flashlight. We could see into every gable of the attic to satisfy our minds that there weren’t any wild animals or ghosts. Our hardest part would be to keep still, to keep Dragonfly from sneezing, and to keep him from worrying about his hat out there in the closet, where I knew it wasn’t.
We had to get out of that attic as quick as we could. We had to run like lightning to Poetry’s house and phone the sheriff to tell him that two dangerous criminals were hiding in the haunted house. If only there had been a window in the attic, as there was in a lot of attics in the Sugar Creek territory, we could have opened it and climbed out.
Big Jim’s flashlight right then was playing on the repaired place in the fireplace chimney, which used to be the mother raccoon’s secret entrance into the attic from the roof of the house. As I remembered, she would climb the big sugar maple tree, crawl out on the overhanging branch, drop down onto the roof, scamper up the chimney on the outside, and then scramble down the inside like a fur-coated Santa Claus, bringing food to her coon babies.
And then I almost gasped aloud at what I saw right then. Whoever had repaired the big hole hadn’t done a very good job. The mortar they had used between the old bricks looked as if it hadn’t been a good mixture. Some of it had crumbled out already and was on the attic floor. It was almost as fine as dust. I quickly scratched at some of the mortared places, and it was like sand. That’s when I got what I thought was a bright idea.
“Listen,” I whispered as quietly as I could, “all we have to do is scratch out this old sandy mortar to loosen the bricks and take out enough bricks to make a hole big enough for us to crawl through. We can tie our rope around the chimney right here, let ourselves down inside, and come out in the fireplace below. Then we can slip out through the basement and beat it for home.”
Dragonfly would think of a reason why it wasn’t a good idea. “What about my new hat? How would we get it out?”
We had to ignore his worry, though. My plan sounded good to Big Jim, so in a minute, at his orders, we had our knives out and were working away as quietly as we could, scratching out the poor mortar. In only a few minutes we had the first brick out.
Poetry, the roundest one of us, was a little worried. He was afraid our escape hole wouldn’t be big enough for him. The chimney itself would be large enough, but maybe not the hole we were making.
Every few seconds we stopped to listen to see if we could hear our sleeping jailer snoring, and we still could. He must have been tired! Also, as everybody knows, rain on the roof makes anybody sleepy.
Brick number two came out in a little while, then number three. We were on number four when Big Jim’s knife slipped out of his hand and fell, not on the outside but on the inside of the chimney and landed with a clatter on the floor of the fireplace below. The sound it made as it landed was enough to have wakened the giant in the story “Jack and the Beanstalk. “
There was a snort from the rifleman’s nose like Dad’s nose sometimes makes when he’s been asleep and suddenly wakes up. It felt like ten whole minutes, although it was maybe only thirty seconds, before the rhythmic snoring was going on again and Big Jim had my knife and was digging away on another brick. In another few minutes, if all went well, we’d have a hole big enough for us to get through, and we’d soon be on our way out.
All went well until the last loose brick was removed, and then we discovered the opening was too small. It was big enough for Little Jim, Dragonfly, Circus, Big Jim, or me but hardly half large enough for Poetry.
It didn’t feel very good having my plan squelched. It had seemed a wonderful idea-swinging ourselves down on a rope and coming out into the fireplace downstairs. While we’d been working to get out the bricks—even while I was scared that if the man heard, he’d come after us—I was also imagining what an exciting story it would be when I told my folks about it and that it was my very own idea.
The light that came down the chimney and into the attic took away the spooky feeling we’d had when we were in the very black dark, and we could see each other without the flashlight on.
The expression on Poetry’s face as he studied the escape hole we had made was enough to hurt your heart. What he said right then showed what kind of boy he was, though, and how brave he was. “All right,” he whispered. “You guys go ahead. I’ll stay here and guard our prisoner!” Imagine pretending the rifleman out there was our prisoner!
Big Jim’s face was grim as he decided for us what ought to be done. “We’re not going off and leaving anybody here alone.” Then he said, “If we don’t hang together, we’ll all hang separately!”
Besides, we’d probably make so much noise going down we’d be sure to wake the fugitive up, and then what would we do?
Little Jim came up with a bright idea-bright and also brave. “Let just one of us go. I’m the littlest. I could get down easier and quicker and could run to Poetry’s house and phone the sheriff.” Of course, we wouldn’t think of letting that little guy do a thing like that.
“You couldn’t lift the trapdoor by yourself,” I discouraged him. “I could, but you couldn’t.”
Just saying that stirred up a whirlwind of shivers in my mind. What if I did it? And what if, while I was halfway down, somehow I got stuck in the chimney? Or what if the man heard me and came storming downstairs and caught me just as I landed in the fireplace?
Right in the middle of my mixed-up thoughts came another one. How on earth could a little round man, with a little round stomach that shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly, climb down and back out of a hundred million chimneys all in one night?
At that very second I got another idea. Maybe I could get up the chimney easier than down it and be outside the house quicker. I could scramble out onto the roof, swing myself up onto the overhanging branch, and work myself to the trunk of the tree and down without making much noise. Then I could run like a deer to Poetry’s and phone the sheriff to say that a dangerous criminal had five boys locked in the attic of the haunted house.
I put my head through our just-made opening and looked up. I got a few rain splatters in my face. Then I looked down and saw how far it was to the fireplace below and got a cringing feeling. What would happen if, when I crawled into the chimney and started to go up and out, I should slip and fall and go down and out!
One thing I noticed, though. There was a brick jutting out about an inch from the chimney wall opposite the hole we had made. If we would put a board across to that little jutting, I could stand on it and as easy as pie go up and out and down.
I whispered my idea to the gang and was a little surprised that Big Jim took me up on it. He thought there ought to be two of us, though —Circus, our acrobat, and me. If one of us got stopped, the other one could go on anyway. It’d be like having a spare tire in a car trunk in case of a puncture or a blowout.
And so it was decided.
“I’ll go first,” I said.
But the whole idea wasn’t any good unless we could find a loose board to use for a foundation for us to stand on. Where could you find a board in an attic unless you used one of the floorboards?
“There’s bound to be a loose board here somewhere,” Poetry whispered.
For a few stealthy minutes we followed Big Jim’s flashlight beam all over the dusty attic floor, feeling our way on hands and knees to see if we could find a board that wasn’t nailed down.
It was Dragonfly who found a loose board first. He hissed to us from the other side of the chimney, “Here’s one!”
The board was not only loose, it also was the right width and length to use as a platform for me to stand on in the chimney. In a few seconds we had it up and out.
And six boys let out six startled gasps at what we saw under the loose board when we took it up. My thoughts were gasping louder in my mind than the six gasps made by six surprised boys had sounded in my ears. What I was looking down at in the light of Big Jim’s fla
shlight was what at first just looked like an old flat box. But we brushed off the dust, and it was an album like the one we had just seen and heard in Old Man Paddler’s cabin!
The red roses in the middle of the top weren’t even faded. The violets around the outside edge were still blue, and the gold border still looked like gold. What on earth!
We had found Old Tom the Trapper’s album!
What we had found seemed so important that for a few seconds we forgot about being locked in an attic by a vicious criminal and our plan for me to climb up and go flying to Poetry’s house to phone the sheriff.
“Careful!” Big Jim cautioned when I started to open the album, but it was too late. I had accidentally released the spring of the music box. All of the sudden in that ghostly quiet we heard the very pretty strains of “Silent Night.”
I guess I never heard sweeter music in my life, but that wasn’t any time to enjoy it. Something else had been in the box too—a musty odor.
Dragonfly sneezed without having a chance to try not to, and the sneeze was a lot louder than is safe at a time like that.
5
Big Jim’s always quick mind took charge of his muscles. In a flash he had the musical album back in its hiding place, and he was lying full length over where the board had been, completely covering it. Closing the album’s beautiful flowered lid shut off the music, and in a second it was a silent day and all was calm —all, that is, except our nervous thoughts.
What, I worried, had the Christmas music and Dragonfly’s sneeze done to the rifleman?
We listened in the direction of the air mattress and couldn’t hear a thing except the sound of air blowing through a man’s nose. He really must have been tired.
Sure now that our almost thundery noise hadn’t wakened our jailer, we carefully stretched the board across the inside of the chimney, rested the other end on the jutting brick, and tested it to be sure it was going to be solid. It was.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36 Page 27