Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36

by Paul Hutchens

  But I knew that God is in charge of nature and people and everything. Sometimes He does let us get into tough spots. But as the verse says, if His people seek His help, we’ll find it. And right then we needed His help a lot.

  One thing was sure, we had to have a ladder and quick. And we had to go and get it.

  “What kind of a ladder was it?” I yelled across to Elsie, wondering if it was an old-fashioned, heavy wooden extension ladder or one made of aluminum like ours at home, which would be easy for four boys or even two to carry.

  But Elsie was still in a faint, and Big Jim was bending over her. I could hardly see them through the driving rain.

  6

  Rain, rain, go away,

  Come again some other day.

  That was part of a poem we’d had in the second reader. There was also a poem in it about the wind:

  I felt you push, I heard you call,

  I could not see yourself at all …

  O wind a-blowing all day long,

  O wind that sings so loud a song.

  But the rain couldn’t be ordered around like that, and the wind wasn’t singing any song. In less than a minute and a half, Poetry, Little Jim, Dragonfly, and I were as wet as drowned rats.

  Even as we streaked down the hill to the cabin and the ladder, I carried in my mind’s eye a picture of Big Jim back up there on the ledge, pulling Elsie with him back into the depression in the cliff to get out of the downpour. Circus’s cheerful voice had called out just as we left, saying, “Don’t worry about me! As long as my horse doesn’t throw me and I can keep holding on, I’ll be all right.” Then he yelled above the storm, “Let ’er rain!”

  I knew he was brave and had good sense. If he could, he’d stay with one leg on each side of the twisted juniper trunk, even though the top of the tree was tossing in the wind like a bucking bronco at a rodeo.

  It didn’t seem necessary for Little Jim and Dragonfly to get any wetter and maybe blown over in the wind and hurt on a stump or something, so when we passed an overhanging rock and all stopped a few seconds to get our breath, I told them to stay there. Then Poetry and I hurried on down the same trail I’d been on and back on already.

  “It’s an aluminum ladder!” Poetry cried when we sloshed around to the back of the cabin and saw it. It was not standing against the porch roof edge but was blown over and on its side against the rock wall that surrounded the old man’s patio. If it had been blown over the low wall, it would have been thirty feet below.

  “That’s our ladder!” I yelled.

  Now I knew what Dad had done with the ladder that day last week when he loaded it into the truck and drove away with it. He’d driven the extralong way around through Harm Groenwald’s lane to Old Man Paddler’s cabin so the old man could paint his woodshed and the cabin. And here it was, just waiting for us to carry it up to where Big Jim, Elsie, and Circus were waiting to be rescued.

  I tell you it was a long, hard climb with that ladder, even though it was only about half as heavy as a wooden ladder would have been. The rain swooshed down on our bare heads. We could hardly see where we were going and maybe wouldn’t have known except that we knew the right direction was uphill instead of down. A half-dozen times we had to stop to catch our breath, and once we stopped to pick up ourselves and the ladder after we both fell down.

  It certainly wasn’t any time to enjoy nature as a boy likes to do when he’s out in a woodsy place. And of all things in the world, it wasn’t any time for Poetry to start quoting a poem. But once, when the rain had let up a little, I heard him yelling as we puffed along with Poetry at the back end of the ladder and me at the front:

  “I saw God wash the world last night

  With His sweet showers on high,

  And then when morning came,

  I saw Him hang it out to dry.”

  It was a pretty poem, one I’d heard him quote at the Sugar Creek Literary Society, which meets once a month on winter nights in the Sugar Creek School.

  So while we grunted and puffed and worried along, all the time getting nearer and nearer our rescue place, I let myself think about the rest of the poem, which Mom said is maybe the nicest nature poem she’d heard in a long time. The other four stanzas tell how, after the rain, blades of grass are all washed clean and so are all the trembling trees and the hills. The white roses are a cleaner white and the red roses more red since God washed their faces and put them to bed. Even the birds and bees were cleaner.

  It was the last stanza I liked best, and which, because of the rain and wind, I couldn’t hear Poetry quote very well, but it went something like this:

  “I saw God wash the world last night,

  And I would He had washed me

  As clean of all my dust and dirt

  As that old white birch tree.”*

  After I’d first heard the poem last winter at the Literary Society, every time I saw a birch tree I remembered the poem and felt kind of proud of the One who not only made all the growing things in nature but had worked out a plan for taking care of them—covering them over with a nice white blanket in winter and in summer washing them every now and then with rainwater, the best kind of water there is for washing anything, Mom says.

  When we reached the overhanging rock where Little Jim and Dragonfly were, they dashed out to help us. But four boys carrying a light ladder is hard work, so we made them stop slowing us down and hurried on to the place where our end of the rope was still tied to the elm tree.

  The first thing I strained my eyes through the filter of falling rain to see was Circus, down on the outcropping astride his juniper bronco. And my heart almost stood still. Our acrobatic, wonderful, almost-best boy in the whole territory wasn’t there! The twisted trunk of the evergreen was still there, but Circus himself was gone!

  What on earth had happened? And why? Had he lost his hold and fallen to the bottom and been killed on the rocks down there? I looked over the edge.

  “Up here!” I heard Circus’s cheerful voice call. “Not down there! I climbed up here to get in out of the rain!”

  I looked and what to my wondering eyes should appear but Big Jim and Elsie and Circus, crowded into the hollow in the cliff that had been the lair of old Stubtail, the wildcat.

  I also saw how Circus had managed to get there. The rope, one end still tied to the elm tree on our side, was hanging in a long loop down into the canyon. The other end was tied around the larger juniper growing on the ledge. I knew in a flash how Circus had managed it. Big Jim had secured his end, and Circus had caught hold of the rope and worked his way up hand over hand, the way mountain climbers do.

  “Hurrah!” I heard Little Jim cry happily. “It’s letting up! The rain’s almost over! Look! The sky’s starting to be blue!”

  I looked toward the sky above the cliff wall and saw a wide blue field of sky as large as five acres of flax in bloom. In another few minutes, the afternoon sun would be shining again on the just-washed world.

  It’s a wonderful feeling, I tell you, to look at what a summer rain can do to the Sugar Creek territory. It makes it look clean and green and smell fresh and fragrant.

  It washes a boy’s heart a little, too—mine, anyway. And if he has his shoes on, he wants to take them off and go wading in the puddles, whooping it up and having the time of his life.

  We tied our end of the rope to the top rung, and it took Big Jim and Circus only a few minutes to pull the ladder across to their side. We did have to be sure the spring locks were really locked before they began to pull.

  That was when I noticed for the first time that Elsie was wearing a pair of brown shoes that looked as if they had rubber soles.

  Poetry must have seen what I saw, because right then he said in my ear, “She was carrying the red shoes when she sneaked out of her upstairs window. They’d have made too much noise, and she needed rubber soles for climbing.”

  “Yeah,” I said back to him, “and she hadn’t changed shoes yet when their car whammed into the bridge.”


  It looked as if our mystery was beginning to untangle itself.

  Elsie had come to, and getting her across the extension ladder wasn’t half as hard as we’d thought it might be. In fact, she didn’t even need any help. It was as if she’d had a lot of experience climbing and doing athletic things.

  I might have guessed that from the way she’d managed to get into and out of Old Man Paddler’s upstairs window and also out of her own upstairs window at home, wherever that was.

  I was surprised, though, that she didn’t try to run away. That is, I was surprised until she said, “Let’s hurry. Where does that doctor live, and how can we get to him the quickest?”

  She looked pale, and her voice was trembling. Was it beginning to get husky? It did sound that way.

  Big Jim made a quick decision. “One of us had better run on ahead and phone the doctor and have him meet us at Poetry’s house. That’s the closest place after we get through the cave.”

  “I will,” Circus volunteered. He started to go, then winced, gritted his teeth, and reached down with both hands to his right knee.

  Well, at a time like that, you can’t wait around to decide who gets to do what. You have to decide who and what and get going. Circus couldn’t make a fast run on ahead because he had wrenched his knee in his fall. Poetry was too big and slow. Little Jim and Dragonfly were out because of being the smallest. Big Jim had to stay and help Elsie, who had a twisted ankle beside being sick from the squirrel bite. So it got to be my job to race on ahead to the nearest phone, which would be at Poetry’s house.

  Even as I ran lickety-sizzle for the cabin and the shortcut cave passageway that would take me to the sycamore tree and to Poetry’s backyard, I remembered that once, a long time ago, I’d raced to our house and phoned Dr. Gordon in time to save Circus’s father’s life after he’d been bitten by a black widow spider. That’s in the first story there ever was about the Sugar Creek Gang. It’s called The Swamp Robber.

  At Poetry’s house I found a note on their back door, the one they use most.

  Dear Leslie,

  We had to go to town for groceries. You know where the key is. Get yourself a snack if we happen to be late for supper.

  Mother

  I tried the door and found it locked. So, also, was every other outside door of the house. Now what? I could see the telephone on the wall not more than three feet from my face through their south window, but it was inside the house, and the window was closed and also locked!

  Should I maybe break a window and climb in?

  I decided to run home. Our house wouldn’t have the door locked. And if it did, I’d rather break into it than into somebody else’s house. I took out the pencil stub I always carry in my right pants pocket along with nails and stuff, and I scribbled a note below Poetry’s mother’s signature, telling the gang I’d gone home and why.

  Then I took the shortcut through the woods, over the fence into our orchard, past the mound of dirt and the hole where the spruce tree would be set, around the corner of the house, and past the rain barrel that always stands there to catch the water that comes down the spout. I hardly noticed that it was full and running over from the rain that had just stopped a few minutes ago.

  Mixy, our old black-and-white cat, was taking a catnap under the back step. When I came storming around the corner, she came to life and ran like a scared deer for the plum tree. She scooted up it as if I was a neighbor’s dog.

  I went into the house, letting the screen door slam behind me. There was no need to slow down and shut it like a gentleman. That’s what I have to do when my folks are home.

  I swooshed across the kitchen floor and into the living room and across its green rug to the telephone. First I stopped and listened, the way you’re supposed to on a party-line phone, to see if anybody else was talking. If they are, it means the line is busy.

  And the line was busy. So were two or three or four women. I couldn’t tell how many, because they were all talking at the same time with maybe nobody listening to anybody.

  Before I could interrupt to tell them I had to have the phone to call Dr. Gordon, I heard one voice that sounded like Dragonfly’s mother’s kind of excited tone saying, “Whatever are we coming to! So many teenagers are running away, over half of them girls! I just can’t understand it!”

  A lower-pitched, husky voice that sounded like Shorty Long’s mother started to answer and got interrupted by Little Jim’s mother. These three ladies alone sounded like seven or eight.

  I broke in then, saying, “Excuse me, everybody, but I’ve got to have the line! I have to call a doctor. I—”

  I mean I tried to break in. It was like trying to be heard above a zoo full of chattering monkeys. But I did hear something important, and I knew what had got them all stirred up to talk so much.

  Somebody’s girl over in Parke County had run away from home last night, and there had been a terrible auto accident at the covered bridge. Two teenagers had been killed, a third was in the hospital, and the other one had left her red shoes in the wrecked car and was gone nobody knew where.

  Some of the things the women were saying stuck in my memory even though I wasn’t trying to listen and maybe knew more about what they were talking about than they did.

  “Just think,” Dragonfly’s mother squeaked. “I read in a magazine the other day that over three hundred thousand children run away from home every year, and twenty-four thousand of them go to California.”

  “Do you suppose they were running away to get married? That’s what everybody’s saying.”

  “Not all of them,” Little Jim’s mother disagreed. “Not the Mayfield girl. She’s too young. The radio just said … Oh, you didn’t hear it? Well, it said her mother was a heavy drinker and was at the tavern when—”

  That’s when I really broke in. I started banging the phone and yelling loud enough to be heard as far away as the north road. “I’ve got to have the phone! We found Elsie up in the hills, and she’s been bitten by a squirrel with hydrophobia, and I’ve got to call Dr. Gordon!”

  Two of the voices answered me, saying, “Oh. Is that you, Bill?”

  “Yes!” I yelled. “It’s me, and I’ve got to call the doctor! Are you going to let me or not?”

  * William L. Stidger.

  7

  I certainly hated to scream into the phone like that, but how else could I get their attention? Maybe that’s the reason my little sister, Charlotte Ann, used to cut loose with such bloodcurdling screams now and then. It was the only way she could get her father or mother or busy big brother to realize she needed help. After all, she couldn’t talk or anything yet.

  Anyway, I got what I wanted, a chance to phone Dr. Gordon and tell him what I had to tell him and ask him to come quick. Because of all the other things that had almost stopped me that afternoon, I half expected the doctor’s phone to be busy or that he wouldn’t be at his office but out on a call somewhere.

  But he answered right away in a strong, businesslike voice. “Thanks for calling, Bill,” he said. “I’ll be right there!” Even before he hung up, I heard him give an order to his nurse about something or other to pack in his bag.

  Now I would make a beeline back to Poetry’s house in time to tell the gang and Elsie, when they got there, that the doctor was on his way.

  But I was only as far as our kitchen door when the phone rang our number. Deciding it might be important and hoping it wasn’t one of the neighborhood mothers who had listened in and wanted to know more about where we’d found Elsie—and how was she, and had she really been bitten by a squirrel who had hydrophobia, and was she hurt in the accident, and how bad—I slid to a stop, rushed back, and said into the phone, “Hello. Bill Collins speaking!”

  It was a good thing I had answered. It was my own deep-voiced father calling from halfway home from Memory City. There had been a bad storm, and a flash flood had washed out a bridge on the main road. I was to go ahead and do the chores and get myself a snack if he and Mom and
Charlotte Ann didn’t get home in time for supper.

  Then Dad lowered his voice and asked, “You get the work done—you know—between the cherry trees?”

  I hated to tell him the whole truth, so I decided to tell him only part of it, not wanting him to be disappointed. I would tell him the rest of the truth when he got home. Besides, it still might not be too late, after Elsie was taken care of, to hurry back to where we’d left the birthday gift in my red wagon only a few feet from Tennyson’s chattering brook.

  So I said, “Not quite yet. But it’s a beauty! It’ll look fine growing there!”

  The telephone operator cut in then to tell Dad his three minutes were up, so he hung up.

  Away I went again, through the kitchen to the back door and out, letting it slam shut any old way it wanted to. I ran past the ivy arbor at the side door, across the grassy yard and past the plum tree, past the rope swing under the walnut tree, and through the gate. Then I dashed past “Theodore Collins” on our mailbox and was off down the road.

  Except that I wasn’t running now. This time I was on my bike, pedaling furiously, knowing I could get to Poetry’s house faster by riding on the road than if I took the shorter way on foot through the woods.

  I wondered if we had acted fast enough to save Elsie Mayfield. My conscience told me I had acted as fast as I could, and so had the rest of the gang. But was it fast enough?

  With the wind in my face and my shirt sleeves flapping, it felt a little like swinging in the high rope swing, but this wasn’t any time to enjoy a fast bike ride. Pedal, pedal, pedal. Round and round and round my wheels flew.

  I passed the north road, which, if I had turned right on it, would have taken me to the Sugar Creek bridge. I sped on to the hill and down it, across the little branch bridge, and up another hill toward Poetry’s house. Sugar Creek was to my right, Poetry’s woods to my left. On beyond were their barnyard and tool-shed and, still farther on, the sycamore tree and the cave.