“Green, yes,” Poetry said, “but it is also red. There’s lipstick on it!”
There wasn’t much red on it, but there was some. Quick as a flash, I thought to say, “That means whoever smoked it wore lipstick, and that means she was a—”
“Woman!” the rest of the gang interrupted me to say.
We had three clues now: the footprints Dragonfly had covered up were small—just the size of his feet; the thief, if that’s who had been here, smoked green-filter cigarettes and wore lipstick; and the lipstick made her a woman.
Poetry came up with another idea. “She was a mannish type of woman, on account of she would have to have powerful muscles to carry a gunnysack with a calf’s hide and head in it.”
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Little Jim’s innocent face wince as if Poetry’s words had jabbed him in his heart.
Now we were like six excited hounds on the trail of a coon, a trail as fresh as if the coon had crossed in front of our noses only a few minutes ago.
A powerful-muscled woman who wore boots, who smoked green-tipped cigarettes and wore lipstick—that was the kind of person we were on the trail of.
Carefully, Big Jim took the cigarette stub from Poetry, who had it at the time, and wrapped it in a clean handkerchief he borrowed from Little Jim. “First, we find out what kind of lipstick it is,” Big Jim announced. “Then we can start trying to find out where it was sold and who bought it. And also who in the territory—what woman, anyway—smokes green-tipped filter cigarettes.”
Well, a Sugar Creek storm hardly ever lasts very long, so after maybe seventeen minutes, it began to calm down like a boy’s temper when he is getting over being mad. The sun came out, and long shafts of light began to shine across the muddy path that led into the swamp. The wind stopped blowing, the leaves of the trees stopped their noisy rustling, and birds that were glad to be alive started singing. Robins especially, who are always happy after a rain, began whooping it up: “Go jump in the lake, go jump in the lake … cheerfully, cheerfully … go jump in the lake.”
I hadn’t planned to be the last one out of the cave, but for some reason I was. Maybe it was because Big Jim asked me to put the flashlight back in its secret hiding place behind the rocky ledge we all knew about. And maybe also that’s why I was so startled when I spotted on the sand floor of the cave a folded piece of white paper. I gasped out loud.
I stooped, picked it up, and shoved it into my shirt pocket before anybody could notice. A secret plan was taking shape in my mind. I would show it to Poetry just as soon as I had a chance and get his detective-like mind to working on whatever it was.
Right now we had four clues. The thief was a powerful-muscled woman who wore boots, who smoked green-tipped filter cigarettes and wore lipstick, and she had accidently dropped a folded piece of paper on the floor of the cave.
Those clues were enough to make any ordinary detective decide he was on a really hot trail. And Poetry was as good as a detective any day. He and I had worked alone on more mysteries than any of the rest of the gang. Of course, we had got ourselves into more scary situations because we worked alone, but as anybody knows, there isn’t a boy in the world that doesn’t enjoy being in the middle of a whirlwindlike adventure, if it isn’t too dangerous.
Say, did you ever see a small, funnel-shaped whirlwind moving through our south pasture, carrying a lot of last year’s leaves, straw, chicken feathers, dust, dead grass, and stuff? If you have, you will know that one of the happiest things a boy can do is to run pell-mell from the pitcher pump out across our barnyard, zip through the pasture bars, with flying feet race into the middle of that whirlwind, and go zigzagging along with it in whatever direction it goes. You feel the wind in your face and your shirt sleeves flapping, and also, part of the time, you’re fighting to keep the dust out of your eyes.
Anyway, the Sugar Creek Gang had been caught up in a whirlwind full of mystery and maybe even of danger.
If we tried to go back to the gunnysack now, we’d have to wade in almost ankle-deep mud in the little brown path. Also, because we couldn’t do what we wanted to do without a rope with a hook on it and also because it was time to get home to help our folks with the Saturday evening chores, we left the cave and the sycamore tree and the swamp behind. Not the mystery, though. It was still in our minds, and we had to take our minds along with us.
“What’ll we do about telling our folks what we know?” we said to each other when we came to the leaning linden tree, where we were going to part until our next meeting.
Big Jim suggested, “If we tell anybody, the news’ll spread like wildfire, and the sheriff or the marshal and maybe even the whole neighborhood will go down to the swamp. Our mystery will blow up in our faces, and we won’t have a chance to solve it ourselves. Come on, everybody! Let’s make a vow.”
So we did, making a sort of upside-down nest out of our twelve hands and promising each other not to tell anybody what we knew until we could agree on what to tell and when.
“Tomorrow,” our voices all repeated in chorus after Big Jim, “we will meet here and go down to the swamp and do what we planned.”
“Bill, you got a rope long enough at your house?” Big Jim asked.
“My mother’s got a new clothesline still not put up,” Dragonfly volunteered. “I’ll bring that.”
“My father’s got a short chain with an iron hook on it,” Circus offered.
Little Jim chimed in with a question then, asking, “Which one of us climbs up the tree and crawls out on the long, overhanging branch?”
For several seconds nobody said anything. The only sounds were the humming and buzzing of ten thousand honeybees that had come back to work again on the sweet-smelling creamy flowers of the linden tree, the robins ordering us to cheerily jump in the lake, and the noise of other birds having the time of their lives being glad the storm was over.
Big Jim’s answer to Little Jim’s question was a surprise, but it seemed the best answer. “We’ll wait till tomorrow,” he said. “Then we’ll draw straws, and whoever gets the shortest one gets to go.”
And that was that—a very worrisome that, at that.
All the way to our house, I was thinking about it. Also I had my mind on a folded piece of paper in my shirt pocket. I would show it to the gang tomorrow—after showing it to Poetry tonight when we all met again on Main Street in town.
I had better tell you, just in case you don’t already know it, that the Gang and their folks nearly always went to town on Saturday nights to buy groceries and to walk around and talk. That’s the way people do who live near a town the size of Sugar Creek—the mothers not being able to say to each other all they want on the telephone because ours was a party line. And any secrets on a party line are not secret very long, my grayish brown haired mother has said many a time.
At our front gate, Poetry swung onto his bike and was ready to start puffing his way down the road to their house, when I said to him, “Tonight at the fountain in town.”
“Tonight at the fountain,” he said, and with his tongue between his teeth he started pedaling himself down the road, while I closed the gate and went on toward the pitcher pump and the house, my folded piece of paper feeling like a lump of lead against my heart.
I knew that pretty soon I’d find out for sure what was written—or maybe printed—on it. There might even be a map of the territory. If there was a map, would it show Little Jim’s house and barn, the corral where Wandering Winnie was kept, and the lane leading to our own place, where Wandering Winnie came to lie down on her side with Lady MacBeth and chew her cud with her?
In only a little while, I was in the house and a little later was on my way to gather the eggs. There wasn’t a hen’s nest anywhere on the place I didn’t know about.
First, though, I had something important to do up in the haymow. As I set my right foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, I spotted old Mixy, our black-and-white cat, crouching under the north window. Her eyes were fixed on a corner
of Dad’s tool cupboard, and I knew she was doing what a good cat should—waiting to catch a mouse she had maybe heard under the cupboard. Then I went on up the ladder, my heart pounding a little because of what I expected to find on the piece of folded paper in my shirt pocket.
Straight to my secret corner I climbed, far up over the hay and down a little hay hill. I was going to keep a very special promise I had made to God once, which was that as long as I lived I would read something out of the Bible and pray every day.
I took my small leather New Testament out of its hiding place in a crack in one of the logs and, opening it, read a story about a boy who had gone fishing. Then the Savior and a lot of hungry people came along. Jesus borrowed the boy’s lunch and with His power used the lunch of only five small biscuits and two sardine-sized fish to feed all the people.
As I read the story I happened to think that, if the boy had kept his lunch for himself, it could never have been used to feed so many others—and that a boy my age ought to be unselfish enough to give his heart and anything else he had to God, so other people could be helped. And one way to do it would be to do as a certain gospel song said:
Look all around you, find someone in need.
Help somebody today.
I took a minute to kneel down and pray about different things I had on my mind. Then I was off my knees, and in the light that came through a crack in the weatherboards I unfolded the paper I’d found on the sandy floor of the cave.
What a disappointment! For what to my wondering eyes should appear, not what I had expected but a list of things written in Little Jim’s smooth, round, schoolboy-style handwriting. It was like a balloon being pricked with a pin.
I think I will write down the list for you, though, just the way Little Jim had written it himself, one word right under the other. Here, if you are interested in something that at the time certainly didn’t seem important, is what I read:
Up at 7:00—breakfast
Surprise Mother by making bed
Practice piano 30 min.
Secret
Garden work and feed chickens
Make new arrow
10:00—secret
11:00—piano again—30 min.
11:30—secret
10.12:00—lunch. Surprise Mother by helping with the dishes
11. 2:00—Black Widow Stump and the Gang
And that was all—just a list of things a boy had to do. Each item on the list had been checked with a pencil except the one that said “2:00—Black Widow Stump and the Gang,” which meant that the little guy had planned his day in advance and one by one had checked off the things already done.
I studied the list of things he had planned to do that day, noticed he had written the word “secret” three times, and wondered if it might have something to do with his now dead dumb dogie.
What’ll I do with the list? I asked myself and kept on wondering what “secret” meant.
I also said to myself, Bill Collins, if you hand the folded paper back to Little Jim, he’ll know you read it. How else could you know it was his?
“What’ll I do?” I asked my Very Special Friend, the One who made boys. And even though there wasn’t any voice answering, it seemed He wanted me to hand the list back to Little Jim and not show it to Poetry or to anybody else.
I left my little hay room and climbed down the ladder to the barn floor to hurry up and gather all the eggs. Then I would go into the house. I was going to sneak upstairs to see if Mom had made my bed yet. If she hadn’t, I might decide to surprise her.
I hadn’t any sooner reached the barn floor than my eyes caught a flash of black-and-white cat leaping from Dad’s tool cupboard toward something on the floor by the window. And almost as quick as greased lightning, old Mixy had a mouse in her mouth.
5
As soon as I had finished gathering the eggs, I took them to the house and, when Mom wasn’t looking, tiptoed upstairs. Instead of feeling disgusted with Little Jim for being such a good boy, I was proud of him for giving me a good idea.
Because I had the maybe the best mother in the whole world, I ought to try to prove to her that she had one of the best sons. I could hardly wait till Mom would find out what I was going to do and thank me for it.
About as quick as you can say, “Scat,” to a cat, I was through. I gave my pillow three or four fast final socks with my fist to smooth it out a little better and was just tucking in the spread at the foot of the bed when I heard Mom come into the house from outdoors somewhere. Straining my ears in the downstairs direction, I heard her moving toward the stairway. In another minute, she might be on her way up to start doing what I had already done.
That was one of Mom’s housekeeping rules—never to go anywhere away from home until the beds were made, the furniture dusted, and the dishes washed—not if she could help it.
“How come?” Dad had asked her many a time, especially when he was in a hurry to get started and she wasn’t ready yet.
And Mom always had the same answer: “You never know who might come home with us or stop in to see us, and I don’t want any woman to think I am a careless housekeeper.”
The bed finished and the spread straight enough for any woman to see it, I quick started toward the north upstairs room so that, when Mom would get to the top of the stairs, she wouldn’t see me. Instead, she would see the bed so well made that not a boy in the world would think I was a careless housekeeper.
I hadn’t thought about there being anything on the floor needing to be picked up, though. And when I stumbled over my baseball glove and went down in a noisy thumpety-bumpety-plop, Mom’s voice flew up the stairway, asking, “That you up there, Bill! What on earth!”
“Not what on earth,” I called down to her, “but what on the floor!” Trying to be funny and not being, I added in my raised voice, “Somebody’s son left his baseball glove right where I would stumble over it! What a dumb bunny!”
“While you’re up there,” Mom ordered me, “would you like to make up the bed? You never know who might drop in to see us, and I don’t want any woman thinking I’m a careless housekeeper.”
Now, I ask you, what can a boy do when he has just done something thoughtful for his mother and she, not knowing he has just done it, orders him to do it?
For some reason, I was angry inside and for the next half hour or more had a hard time being as good a boy as I thought I was.
As soon as supper was over and all the chores were finished, we were almost ready to go to town. That is, Dad was ready, and I was ready. So also was Charlotte Ann, in Dad’s arms in the car. Mom was still in the house doing last-minute woman’s stuff, so that if anybody came home with us—and you know the rest of what I was thinking right that minute.
“What you locking the door for?” Dad called when she at last came out but was stopping to lock the back door, which hardly anybody in Sugar Creek territory ever does.
“Cattle thieves!” Mom called. She tucked the key in her handbag and came on out to the car.
In a few minutes we were on our way to town.
It was, as you already know, Saturday night, when, as Mom often expressed it, “everybody and his dog would be there.” Everybody and his dog weren’t there, of course, but there certainly were a lot of people. Some of the mothers had come to get the Saturday night bargains in the grocery stores and to see what woman had a new hat or was going to buy one. The fathers had come to drive the family cars and see their friends. The young people were there because other young people would be there. And the Gang came because we liked each other and the Saturday night excitement.
We met as we had planned, in front of the Pop Shop, not far from the town’s drinking fountain. We were nearly always thirsty, not for the lukewarm water that spurted up out of the fountain on a hot night, but for ice-cold soda pop in bottles.
Inside the Pop Shop we could also get our shoes shined, buy candy bars, and just stand around and talk.
I got one of the most interesting surpris
es a boy ever got in his life, when, watching my chance, I took Little Jim around the corner of the Pop Shop and handed him the folded piece of paper I’d found on the floor of the cave.
He looked at me as if he had been shot at and missed, as he quickly took the paper and shoved it into his shirt pocket. It was the same pocket, I noticed, that had had the handkerchief he’d lent to Big Jim in the afternoon. That, I thought, explains how the note happened to get out of his pocket in the first place.
He stood for a minute, not saying anything, and as much as I wanted to know what the word “secret” meant, which he’d written three times on his list of things to do that day, I waited to see if he would tell me.
“Well,” he asked, “don’t you want to know what my secret is?”
“What secret?” I replied innocently.
“I put an ad in the paper,” he told me. “I offered a reward for anybody who found Wandering Winnie to bring her home and get a ten-dollar reward.”
With that, Little Jim took out his billfold and handed me a clipping from the daily paper that nearly all the Sugar Creek families take. And there it was—except that there it wasn’t.
I could hardly believe my eyes when I read:
LOST. A white-faced heifer. If found, return her to the James Foote farm for a $100.00 reward.
“That,” I told him, “is not ten dollars! That’s a hundred dollars! Look!”
He looked and was as surprised as I was. “What’ll I do if they do find her and bring her back? Where’ll I get a hundred dollars!”
“Yeah—where?” I said. Then I added, “But they won’t. You know and I know where Wandering Winnie is right this very minute. In a gunnysack in the Sugar Creek swamp.”
“Maybe she’s not,” he said hopefully. “Maybe that’s some other white-faced calf. I’ve been praying that—”
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36 Page 39