Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36

by Paul Hutchens

  “Cloudburst up in the hills somewhere!” Circus said above the noise of the water.

  Even though my thoughts were sad, they were also glad as I thought about the nice quiet grave up in Old Tom the Trapper’s canine cemetery by the haunted house, where one of the finest dogs in the world was buried. Next week, maybe, we would come back and put up a marker, one that my cousin Wally would be proud of when he came to visit us next summer, if he did—and he probably would.

  Well, we couldn’t just keep on standing there thinking and feeling sad. We were carrying home a very pleasant surprise for Old Man Paddler.

  Little Jim broke into a run ahead of us then, calling back over his shoulder, “Last one there is a cow’s tail!” That’s when he stumbled. The album flew out of his hand, bursting open. As it fell, there in the quiet of the woods we heard the sweet music box music of “Silent Night.”

  Dragonfly had been running just behind Little Jim. He cried then with new excitement in his voice. “Look!” he exclaimed. “There’s a lot of money in it!”

  But there wasn’t a lot of money in the box. It was out of the box. Scattered all over in a little circle of maybe six or seven feet was what looked like hundreds of dollars in very old, extralarge bills—fives, tens, twenties, and also ones and even twos.

  Also, lying in a place by itself was a long, yellowish envelope that said on it in shaky handwriting “The Will of Thomas Alexander Bromley.”

  We quickly gathered up the scattered bills and made them into a little packet. I tied a piece of gauze bandage around them, and as soon as we had them in the album again and the lid closed and fastened—of course, the music shut itself off—we broke into a run for Old Man Paddler’s.

  This seemed even more important than capturing Crimp the Shrimp.

  I won’t have room in this story to tell you the rest of what happened that afternoon—not all of what happened at Old Man Paddler’s cabin, anyway. But the old man was as pleased as a boy is on Christmas morning when he gets the surprise gift he’s been hoping for a whole year that he would get.

  We didn’t even take time to take an apple apiece from the barrel, but as soon as we could, we went down through the old man’s cellar and into the cave and through it. All of us planned to stop at my house first to get Dragonfly’s clothes changed. If his mother got to worrying about him and came over to see what had happened to him, he’d be ready.

  We’d reached the north road corner and turned east to go the last eighth of a mile to the Collins place, when we saw the Gilberts’ car with Dragonfly’s mother at the wheel, stopping at our house!

  “Quick!” I said to Dragonfly. “Over the fence and through the orchard to the tool-shed. Follow me!”

  I broke into a run, and the little guy ran after me. If his worrywart mother saw him with soot-tarnished jeans and shirt, even though they were mine, she might start scolding him.

  “Hurry!” Dragonfly cried behind me, and I kept on doing it. There was no use letting him get his heart stabbed with sharp words for nothing. “Quick!” I ordered him. “Into the toolshed! I’ll run into the house and get your clothes!”

  Mom saw and heard me coming and flew into action. I had Dragonfly’s just-pressed jeans and shirt in my hand and was out the kitchen door and into the toolshed in a jiffy. And by the time the rest of the gang got there and Mrs. Gilbert was out of the car asking where her boy was, Dragonfly was just opening the toolshed door and coming out, looking like a million dollars in fresh-as-a-daisy clothes.

  “You had me worried half sick!” his mother exclaimed to him. “What with the terrible storm! Are you all right?” Then she saw the rest of us, and her eyes flashed from us to him, back again to us, and then to Mom, who with a very innocent face was standing in the kitchen doorway.

  Well, it seemed somebody ought to start explaining things. As fast as I could, I let loose about five hundred words explaining Crimp the Shrimp, the rifleman, the bloodhounds, the sheriff’s posse, the hole in the chimney, the music box, and especially my very fast descent down the sooty chimney. When I got to the place in the adventure where we had the fight with Crimp the Shrimp, the way I said it made it seem more dangerous than it was.

  “We licked him all to smithereens,” I finished, looking at Mom to see how clean I was in her mind’s eye in spite of so much ashes and soot on my clothes.

  For a few fast-talking minutes I had forgotten Dragonfly’s problem and was worrying only about myself. That’s when, all of a sudden, Dragonfly’s mother looked at her son, whose hands and face—like the rest of ours—was as clean as he could make it with Sugar Creek water and no soap. His were as clean as they usually are after an ordinary afternoon with the gang.

  I certainly was astonished at what she said to her nice, clean son. “And you, Roy, what were you doing while the rest of the boys were being heroes? Where were you when that dangerous criminal was half killing them? Didn’t you join in the fight, too? What did you do? Stay up there in the attic, afraid?”

  I had already explained that Poetry hadn’t come down the chimney because he was shaped like Santa Claus and the opening in the chimney had been too small. But since Poetry and Dragonfly were the only two of us to have clean clothes, she just naturally supposed her son had been a coward and hadn’t joined in the battle.

  Well, Dragonfly, like any other boy, wanted his mother to think he was important. He jumped in with a few words of his own just as soon as he could knock a hole through his mother’s wall of words. He stammered, “I c–c–climbed d–d–down the rope, too, and I t–t–tackled him with b–b–both hands. I didn’t get my clothes dirty. I didn’t have them on at the t–t–time.” He hardly ever stuttered that badly, but you couldn’t blame him.

  I heard his mother gasp at that, and a mischievous thought came into my mind. “You wouldn’t want him to get his clothes all tarnished with ashes and soot, would you, Mrs. Gilbert?”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but it was already out, and I knew what I had helped her think, when she exclaimed to Dragonfly, “You mean you took your clothes off and went down that chimney stark naked?”

  Things had gone far enough and maybe too far, so Mom, who had a good sense of humor, giggled a little, winked at me, and then explained everything to Mrs. Gilbert. In a little while everybody was satisfied.

  The day was over—all the adventure and the thrills and the dangerous excitement. Maybe there never would be another day like it in Sugar Creek history.

  After a while the rest of the gang went to their different homes, and only Dragonfly and his mother were left. She seemed very proud of her son, who had been the real hero in the capture of Crimp the Shrimp.

  A little later, when they were on their way to their car to go home to supper, I heard her say to him, “You even kept your new boots nice and clean. A little polish and they’ll look just like new for your trip to the Rockies.”

  I ran after them to get the gate open for Mrs. Gilbert, as a boy is supposed to do for a lady, and I quickly whispered to Dragonfly, “Straighten your hat a little. The brim’s got a twist in it. You want it to look just right for your trip to the Rockies, too.”

  He grinned at me and whispered back, “My heel doesn’t hurt a bit. Not even a little bit.”

  As their car moved away and went whirring up the road, I turned and hurried over to the rope swing. I got on, stood up, and pumped myself higher and higher and higher until I could see, over the rim of the hill, the reflection of the sun on the top of the Gilberts’ car on its way to their house.

  I looked across the road then to where Dragonfly had been standing a long time ago. It seemed long ago, anyway. And I remembered hearing him say, “I’m going to ride on the longest chairlift in the world. Clear up to the top of Ajax Mountain!”

  Right then my dream thoughts were interrupted by Mom’s cheerful voice sailing out across the lawn. “Bill! Come on in! I want you to sample a piece of fresh apple pie just before you take a bath and change your clothes!”

  Eve
n though, as you already know, one of my pet peeves is to have my dream thoughts interrupted, my most pet peeve is to be asked to take a bath when I have already planned to take one without being asked.

  But it seemed Mom’s idea was a good one, so I slowed myself down as fast as I could, swung out of the swing—letting the old cat take all the time it wanted to finish dying—and was off on a gallop past the plum tree toward the house, calling out in a loud voice for all the world to hear, “Hi-yo, Silver!”

  The Sugar Creek Gang Series:

  1 The Swamp Robber

  2 The Killer Bear

  3 The Winter Rescue

  4 The Lost Campers

  5 The Chicago Adventure

  6 The Secret Hideout

  7 The Mystery Cave

  8 Palm Tree Manhunt

  9 One Stormy Day

  10 The Mystery Thief

  11 Teacher Trouble

  12 Screams in the Night

  13 The Indian Cemetery

  14 The Treasure Hunt

  15 Thousand Dollar Fish

  16 The Haunted House

  17 Lost in the Blizzard

  18 On the Mexican Border

  19 The Green Tent Mystery

  20 The Bull Fighter

  21 The Timber Wolf

  22 Western Adventure

  23 The Killer Cat

  24 The Colorado Kidnapping

  25 The Ghost Dog

  26 The White Boat Rescue

  27 The Brown Box Mystery

  28 The Watermelon Mystery

  29 The Trapline Thief

  30 The Blue Cow

  31 Treehouse Mystery

  32 The Cemetery Vandals

  33 The Battle of the Bees

  34 Locked in the Attic

  35 Runaway Rescue

  36 The Case of Missing Calf

  Paul Hutchens

  MOODY PUBLISHERS

  CHICAGO

  © 1960, 1999 by

  PAULINE HUTCHENS WILSON

  Revised Edition, 1999

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, and 1994 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif. Used by permission.

  Original Title: Runaway Rescue at Sugar Creek

  ISBN-10: 0-8024-7038-6

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8024-7038-6

  We hope you enjoy this book from Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought-provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more information on other books and products written and produced from a biblical perspective, go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:

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  Printed in the United States of America

  PREFACE

  Hi—from a member of the Sugar Creek Gang!

  It’s just that I don’t know which one I am. When I was good, I was Little Jim. When I did bad things—well, sometimes I was Bill Collins or even mischievous Poetry.

  You see, I am the daughter of Paul Hutchens, and I spent many an hour listening to him read his manuscript as far as he had written it that particular day. I went along to the north woods of Minnesota, to Colorado, and to the various other places he would go to find something different for the Gang to do.

  Now the years have passed—more than fifty, actually. My father is in heaven, but the Gang goes on. All thirty-six books are still in print and now are being updated for today’s readers with input from my five children, who also span the decades from the ’50s to the ’70s.

  The real Sugar Creek is in Indiana, and my father and his six brothers were the original Gang. But the idea of the books and their ministry were and are the Lord’s. It is He who keeps the Gang going.

  PAULINE HUTCHENS WILSON

  1

  It was a very lazy, sunshiny early summer afternoon, and I was sitting on the board seat of the big swing under the walnut tree, thinking more or less about nothing. I never dreamed that, before the week would pass, I’d be head over heels in the middle of the red shoe mystery.

  My reddish brown mustached father had just climbed down our new extension ladder, which had the Collins name painted on it. He’d been checking the top of the swing to see how safe it was, and he said, “Well, Son, you don’t need to worry. Everything up there is all right. Just don’t let the whole Sugar Creek Gang swing on it at one time.”

  He took the ladder down, slid the two sections of it together, and carried it toward our truck, which at the time was standing in the shade of the plum tree near the iron pitcher pump. There he lifted that ladder as if it was made of feathers instead of aluminum and laid it in the back of the truck. He was very proud either of our new ladder or of his powerful biceps. I couldn’t tell which.

  He climbed into the truck’s cab then, started the motor, and began to drive toward the gate that leads out onto the gravel road.

  “Where you going with that ladder?” I called to him. He was just driving past the mailbox that had “Theodore Collins” painted on it when he called back to me, “One of our neighbors wants to borrow it for a few days.”

  With that, he was off down the road, a cloud of white dust following him.

  I stood up on the board seat of the swing and pumped myself one- or two-dozen times and then sat down to coast, enjoying the feel of the wind in my face and the flapping of my shirt sleeves. Swinging like that gives a boy one of the finest feelings he can have—even if he hardly ever gets to have it very long if his folks are at home.

  In fact, that very second Mom called from the east window of our house for me to come and help her with a little woman’s work. She wanted the house to have a good cleaning before she left for Memory City tomorrow to spend a week at my cousin Wally’s house.

  It was while I was dusting the lower shelf of our lamp table that I noticed the birthday book in which Mom keeps a record of all the names and birthday dates of people she sends cards to every year. Just out of curiosity, I leafed through to see whose birthday would be coming soon and gasped in surprise when I saw Mom’s own name. Then I remembered her birthday was next Saturday, the day she would be coming home from Memory City.

  That meant I’d better set my brain to working and think of something nice to get for her—something extra special.

  Mom must have heard me gasp, because she looked up from the kitchen floor where she was spreading wax on the linoleum and said through the open door, “Anything wrong?”

  I started whisking my dustcloth a little faster and whistling and hardly bothered to answer, saying with a half yawn, “Oh, nothing. Just something I thought of.” And I watched for a chance to put the book back where it had been.

  Anyway, it was while I was on my way Saturday afternoon to get a birthday present for Mom that Poetry and I stumbled onto the mystery—the red shoe mystery, that is.

  The very special entirely different kind of gift I had decided on was up in the hills not far from Old Man Paddler’s cabin. We were trudging happily along when what to my wondering eyes should appear but somebody’s red leather slip-on shoe lying in the mud at the edge of the muskrat pond.

  That spring-fed pond, as you may already know, is about halfway through the swamp. The sycamore tree and the mouth of the cave are at one end, and the woods near Old Man Paddler’s clapboard-roofed log cabin are at the other end.

  Even from as far away from the shoe as I was at the time, which was about thirty feet, I could tell it wasn’t anybody’s old worn-out, thrown-away shoe. It looked almost new, as if it had been worn hardly at all. It had a low heel and was the kind and size a teenage girl might wear.

  I was so surprised at what I was seeing that I stopped and stood stock-sti
ll, and Poetry, who was walking behind my red wagon in the path, bumped into it with his shins.

  For a few seconds, Poetry staggered around trying to regain his lost balance. Then he lost it completely, upsetting the wagon at the same time, and scrambled, rolled, and slid down the slope toward the pond’s muddy bank. And also toward the red shoe.

  “What on earth!” his ducklike voice managed to squawk at me. “Why don’t you let me know when you’re going to slam on your brakes like—”

  “Look!” I exclaimed. “Right behind you at the edge of the pond! There’s a red shoe. There’s been a murder or a kidnapping around here somewhere!”

  As soon as I said that, I began to think that probably that was what actually had happened. Somebody had kidnapped a girl and was taking her along the path through the swamp—maybe to the haunted house far up in the hills above Old Man Paddler’s cabin. When they stopped here to rest a few minutes, the girl had broken away from him and started to run. She had stumbled over something, maybe her own feet, had fallen, and, like Poetry, had rolled down the slope. Her shoe had gotten stuck in the mud and slipped off when she tried to pull it out. But she had kept on running.

  I suppose one reason my imagination was running away like that was because the swamp was a very eerie place, even in the daytime. That spongy, tree-shaded, sometimes-flooded tract was where the six members of the Sugar Creek Gang had had quite a few exciting and dangerous adventures in the past.

  I never will forget the dark night Big Jim’s flashlight spotted old hook-nosed John Till’s head lying out in the quicksand about thirty feet from the high path we were always careful to stay on when we were going through. That is, we thought it was his head lying there but found out a split second later that the rest of him was fastened to it. Somehow he had gotten off the only path there is and had been sucked all the way up to his chin in the mire.

  That was a feverish time, I tell you. His calls for help and his scared eyes in the light of the flashlight were enough to make any boy’s hair stand on end.