“There’s another one!” Circus, our acrobat, exclaimed.
“There’s three of them!” Dragonfly shouted, his pop-eyes large and round and excited.
“Five of them, you mean,” Big Jim, our fuzzy-mustached leader cried out. “They’re all coming down!”
We watched five black-winged rockets drop out of their silent circles down toward the earth in the direction of the sycamore tree, near which is the mouth of the cave and beyond which is the Sugar Creek swamp.
“Something’s dead down there,” Dragonfly decided and sniffed with his crooked nose. “Smell it?”
His face took on a mussed-up expression, and he let out two quick long-tailed sneezes.
I sniffed too but didn’t smell anything except the perfume of the creamy yellow flowers of the leaning linden tree. But I knew Dragonfly had a very keen sense of smell and could sometimes smell things the rest of us couldn’t, having what his doctor called “very sensitive olfactory nerves.” All of a spine-chilling sudden, a cold fear blew into my mind, and I thought I knew what those sharp-eyed turkey buzzards had spotted from their spaceflight.
They had seen—and maybe smelled too—somebody’s dead white-faced heifer!
Wandering Winnie the Pooh! my sad mind told me, and without waiting for anybody else to say it first, I yelled to us, “Come on, everybody. Let’s go see what’s dead!”
3
I hadn’t any sooner called out to us, “Come on, everybody! Let’s go see what’s dead!” than I took off on the run, leading the way on the little brown path that paralleled the creek all the way from the leaning linden tree to the Sugar Creek bridge. The rest of the gang ran with, behind, beside, and in front of me, all of us in an excited hurry to find out what was what and why.
As I ran and panted and worried, my mind’s eye was seeing a red-bodied, white-faced Hereford calf lying somewhere out in the swamp, maybe caught and killed by a wild animal such as the one you’ve probably already read about in the book called The Killer Cat.
“Wandering Winnie!” Little Jim sobbed behind me.
In only a few minutes, we reached the rail fence at the north road, climbed through the rails, dashed across the road and up the embankment on the other side, and went flying on.
At the branch, we leaped across a narrow place and galloped onward. In only another few minutes we would get to where we were going, and then we would find out what those turkey buzzards had left their silent circles for.Would we really find Little Jim’s dumb dogie killed and half eaten by some wild animal? Had she maybe wandered out into the swamp, got herself tangled in a wild grapevine, and strangled to death, or what?
In a little while we would know.
My mind was running ahead of our twelve fast-flying feet as they flew us on toward the place where we had last seen the turkey buzzards, just before they disappeared among the trees of the swamp. One of the things I thought was: When those big black birds were away up yonder in the Wynken, Blynken, and Nod world, what had their keen eyes spotted down in our territory that made them come shooting down from so far so fast?
After what seemed too long a time, we came puffing to a stop at the sycamore tree close to the mouth of the cave where we had had so many wonderful summer and winter experiences. One of those worrisome experiences had been one dark, spooky night when I was all alone and had got myself stuck inside the tree’s hollow and, half scared to death, had had to stay a long time, listening to the ghostlike sounds that haunted the swamp at night.
The path through the swamp was cool and damp, and there was a dank smell everywhere as we swung onto it and followed each other along, Indian style.
In another few minutes we reached the spot not far from the center, where there is a large muskrat pond and where on one of its shores there is a little knoll we called the Giant’s Head. The “giant” had a lot of long, green, mussed-up hair, which, of course, was long, green bluegrass.
It was the sunniest place in the whole swamp, and nearly always we would plop ourselves down there on top of the Giant’s Head to tell each other stories and to watch the wildlife in the pond. There would be muskrats making long V-shaped water trails as they swam back and forth across. There would be mud hens upending themselves in headfirst dives, looking for breakfast or dinner or supper on the bottom. There would be dragonflies like baby-sized airplanes, skimming along just above the surface of the water, starting and stopping, and darting off in different directions, looking for their own breakfast, dinner, or supper in the air. There would be lazy turtles with nothing to do all day but sun themselves on long, lazy logs that jutted out from the shores. Things like that.
The sounds in the swamp were as interesting to a boy’s imagination as the things he saw. Right that minute, while my eyes were searching all over everywhere for the turkey buzzards, the tree frogs were having the time of their lives, making noise like a thousand boys blowing balloons at a county fair.
“You know what tree frogs whooping it up in the daytime means, don’t you?” Poetry asked me, and when I said, “What?” he answered, “It means there’s a lot of moisture in the air. Frogs like things wet, and damp air makes them happy, because maybe it’s going to rain.”
“Look!” Dragonfly’s excited voice exclaimed wheezily. He was short of breath from running and maybe also because it was the beginning of his hay fever season. “There they are!”
And there they were! All five of those naked-necked turkey buzzards were helping themselves to the carcass of something or other.
I was almost afraid to look for fear I’d see Wandering Winnie or what would be left of her if it was Winnie.
Circus, as quick as if he’d been started by the starter’s gun in a hundred-yard dash, sprang into a run toward where the buzzards were gorging themselves, shouting, “Shoo! Scat! Get away from there!”
The buzzards were not scared enough to take to the air, though, but hopped awkwardly away to a place about fifteen feet from the brown whatever-it-was.
The rest of us had also been running and yelling and screaming the same excited orders. All of us except Little Jim, that is. He held back, his eyes glued to something I myself had already seen—something brown, out in the center of where the five birds had just been.
“It’s a gunnysack with something in it!” Big Jim announced from where he and the rest of us had just stopped.
We were on our side of the woven-wire fence that separated the safe part of the swamp from the dangerous side. It was a new fence our Sugar Creek fathers had set there to keep animals or human beings from accidentally straying off the path and out into the quicksand. Anything or anybody getting into it could sink all the way down to his hips and waist and shoulders and over his head to what would be the end of his life in this world.
Maybe you’ve read the book called The Mystery Cave. It tells how one night, before there was any protecting fence, the Gang had seen a man’s head lying out there in the quagmire—except that the head had a man’s body fastened to it, and the body itself was down under the quicksand. The man who was yelling for help at the time was old John Till, the neighborhood’s alcoholic, who was also Big Bob Till’s father. If we hadn’t saved his life that night, he would have died before he became a Christian, which is the worst time in the world to die, our minister says, on account of then it’s too late to repent and believe and be saved from your sins.
Big Jim was right. That brown something-or-other was a large gunnysack. It also had a hole in one side of it, and my startled and worried eyes saw something red the buzzards had pulled partway out!
I didn’t get a chance to wonder much about what or who was in the gunnysack, because Little Jim let out a sobbing yell, crying, “It’s Winnie! Look, everybody!”
Everybody was already looking and staring and wondering what on earth and feeling sorry for Little Jim, because what we were seeing was not only the red hide of a Hereford calf but a white face as well.
In my mind it was clear as a sunshiny day that somebody—may
be even a half-dozen somebodies—had stolen Little Jim’s dogie, taken her somewhere and butchered her, stuffed her head and hide in a big gunnysack, carried or dragged the gunnysack here, and tossed her over the fence out into the quicksand.
Poetry’s detective-like mind came up with the answer I myself was thinking right then, and his squawky voice said to us, “They thought she would land in the quicksand and sink down out of sight forever, and nobody would ever know what had happened.”
“But they missed it,” Circus cut in to say, “and the gunnysack landed at the edge of the mire instead of in it.”
Dragonfly broke in then with an excited stammer. “And—and the turkey buzzards looked down and saw it and—and—and—and—” He stopped stuttering to sneeze three times in a fast row.
And that’s when Little Jim said, “Whoever threw her out there had to be somebody who knows where the quicksand is! Somebody who knows the territory like a spelling book!”
That, my mind told me, was the truth. It had to be somebody who had a map in his mind, knew where Little Jim’s folks lived, knew about the path that goes through the swamp …
I didn’t dare say what my mind was also saying to me inside of me, and that was: The rest of Wandering Winnie—the part that wasn’t in the burlap bag out there—has maybe already been cut up into steaks and roasts and ground into hamburger and might even be in somebody’s freezer somewhere.
I didn’t dare say it, because of what it might do to Little Jim’s heart. One of the meanest things ever a boy can do is to do or say anything that will give anybody a hurt heart.
While we were standing there looking through the woven-wire fence, and while the buzzards on the other side of the quicksand were waiting for us to get gone so they could come back and begin again on their lunch, Big Jim said grimly, “You’re right, Little Jim. Whoever stole her and threw the gunnysack out there had to be somebody who knew the quagmire was here.”
I was startled to hear Little Jim’s quick answer, which he just then blurted out: “Bob and Tom Till didn’t do it!”
“Nobody said they did!” Big Jim answered him, but I noticed his jaw muscles were working and his eyes were squinting as he focused them on the dead head of what had been the most beautiful white-faced heifer a boy ever saw.
We all knew that even though many people in our part of the county knew about the quicksand, nobody would know it better than the Till family on account of Old Hook-Nose’s having almost lost his life there—though the gang didn’t call him “Old Hook-Nose” anymore. Mr. Till was a brand-new person ever since he had become a Christian.
But Bob Till had been one of our worst boy enemies, and Little Tom, his red-haired brother, had been mine for quite a while, having whammed me in the nose and given me a black eye in the Battle of Bumblebee Hill.
But you just can’t stand and think and wonder and worry for a very long time at one time—not if you are a boy. Your mind and muscles have to do something about something even if you don’t have any idea what.
We began moving around in silent circles, studying the ground, looking for clues.
“Footprints!” Dragonfly, from about twenty feet away, cried. “Whoever was here was wearing boots! I’ll bet he was a boy about my size! My foot just fits into the prints!”
Circus looked up from his own silent circle and scolded, “Hey, you! Don’t do that! Don’t step in those footprints! Wait’ll we see what kind of shoes or boots or what!”
But already it was too late. Dragonfly had stepped into every one of the four tracks he had found in the mud beside the fence. Every single one of them! There wasn’t a heel or toe print that was clear enough for us to tell what kind of boots or shoes whoever had been here had had on.
Look as we would and as we did, all over everywhere all around, we couldn’t find another track that was clean enough to study. For a few disappointing minutes we kept on searching the ground like six turkey buzzards looking for something we could swoop down upon as a clue.
Then Big Jim came up with an idea. “At least we could study the gunnysack to find out whether it was a new one or an old one and what kind it was,” he said. “And later maybe find out who bought it.”
It was a good idea.
“How, though,” Circus asked, “are we going to get it without risking our lives?”
It was a good question to which nobody had a good answer—not until we’d used our six minds on it awhile. And you could hardly believe what we came up with.
It was Little Jim who thought of it first. He had been looking through his tears at what the buzzards were waiting to come back and start scavenging on again, when it seemed as if somebody had turned on a light in his mind.
“Look!” he came out with. “See that long tree branch hanging out over the quicksand? Whyn’t one of us just climb the tree, crawl out on the limb till he gets straight up over the gunnysack, and—if he had a rope with a hook on it—he could reach down and hook it onto the sack. Then he could bring the other end of the rope back, and we could pull the sack back to the fence.”
“Anybody got a rope with a hook on it?” Big Jim asked us.
Of course, not a one of us had.
Poetry said, “Our house is the closest to here. Let’s go home and get a rope. We can make a hook out of number nine wire and see what we can do.”
That made good sense. It was the best idea anybody had thought of until then.
I guess maybe I should have guessed that that very hot, stuffy afternoon, and the big thunder-heads we’d seen building up in the northwest away beyond the bridge, andthe tree frogs’ noisy choir practice meant that an old-fashioned thunderstorm was getting ready to happen.
Anyway, almost as quick as it would take a boy to say, “Jack Robinson Crusoe,” there was a rustling of the leaves of the maples and elms and ash and willows and a rumble of thunder that was so loud and so close that it half scared me out of what few wits I had at the time.
“It’s going to rain!” different ones of us said to the rest of us.
And it was. Really was.
Really did, I mean.
“Quick!” Big Jim ordered us. “Everybody beat it to the cave, or we’ll be as wet as six drowned rats!”
Right that second there was a blinding flash and a crash of thunder. The rain came pouring down. It was as though the sky was an upside-down sieve with a million holes in the bottom.
Like greased lightning, six boys made a wild dash for the sycamore tree and the cave, where, if we could get there in time, we would be safe from becoming six drowned rats.
And, boy oh boy, it was a good thing we did run to the cave for shelter. If we hadn’t, we might have missed finding the clue—one that set six minds to work on the mystery of the stolen calf at Sugar Creek.
If you’ll keep on reading, you’ll see what happened next—something I didn’t even know myself, as twelve fast-flying feet carried us pell-mell toward a shelter in the time of storm.
And if you don’t happen to know what pell-mell means, all you have to do is look it up in the dictionary. You will find out it means that, if you are running the way we were running right that minute, you are racing “in a headlong hurry.”
I didn’t know the word myself until Poetry, who reads a lot, asked me, “How do you like running pell-mell like this?”
I could tell from his tone of voice that he had just learned the word himself and wanted me to know he knew it, so I said, “What’s pell-mell?” And he told me.
Anyway, while we were pell-melling ourselves through the thunder and lightning and wind toward the shelter of the cave—even while I was worrying about Little Jim’s dumb dogie, wondering who would be mean enough to steal her and butcher her and do with the carcass what had been done to it—I was also very happy.
Any boy is happy when he is in the middle of something like what we were in the middle of right that exciting, stormy, helter-skelter, pell-mell minute.
4
Anybody only as far away as the sycamor
e tree, looking toward six boys sitting side by side just inside the mouth of the cave, could have imagined that cave’s mouth was the wide-open mouth of some giant who had six lower teeth and no upper teeth at all.
What a storm it was! We could hear its roar and, through the rain that was coming down in blinding sheets, could see the little brown path that leads into the swamp. Now it wasn’t a footpath but was a yellowish stream of excited water tumbling pell-mell into the shadowy trees and bushes and hanging grapevines.
“I’ll bet those buzzards wish they had a nice cave like this to get into. What do you suppose they’re doing out there now?” somebody asked.
Because none of us knew what a turkey buzzard does in a storm, we changed the subject.
I didn’t know that Dragonfly, who was the next-to-the-shortest lower tooth, had pulled himself out of the giant’s jaw, until I heard him call from back inside the cave, “Look what I found! Somebody’s been smoking in here!”
We all came to with a start.
When I looked behind me, I saw that the little guy had taken the flashlight we always kept in a secret place in the cave and was shining it on something.
“Whoever the cattle thief was, he smoked cigarettes,” Dragonfly said.
In a few seconds, we were all in a noisy circle, looking at what Dragonfly had found.
Big Jim held it between the forefinger and thumb of his left hand. I could tell from the way his eyes were squinting and his jaw muscles were working that he already had something serious stirring in his mind. A second later he said grimly, “Let’s all think a minute and see what we come up with.”
That was the way we nearly always did when we were studying a mystery and wanted to wring out of it all the best ideas there were—the way somebody wrings a dishcloth to get out of it all the sudsy water there is.
For maybe sixteen seconds we stood in a silent circle, while the storm roared on outside and while we all focused our eyes on that half-smoked cigarette.
Little Jim’s idea was: “It’s got a green filter,” which it did have, and that made it different from every other kind.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36 Page 38