One thing I had always liked to do was to go out into the woods along Sugar Creek—or somewhere where men were cutting wood—and climb up on the fallen trunk of a big tree and walk on it all the way from the base to the very top. Then, when I couldn’t walk any farther because there wasn’t any more trunk, I’d climb one of the upright branches at the top end, perch myself in a crotch of a limb, and sway back and forth and up and down, imagining myself to be riding on a cloud or in an airplane or maybe in a boat on an ocean or a lake.
So when Little Jim and I saw that maybe everybody was going to have to wait awhile till the hounds had solved their problem, we took Big Jim’s flashlight and climbed up onto the maple tree trunk. Balancing ourselves, we started carefully to walk toward the top, maybe a hundred feet away, which pointed away from the little stream.
“’S’matter?” Little Jim asked me when we were by ourselves and holding onto each other and to an upright limb to keep from falling off the tree trunk.
“Nothing,” I said. “Come on, let’s go all the way.”
“I mean,” Little Jim said, holding onto me with both hands now and almost falling off at the same time, “I mean, why can’t the dogs find the coon?”
“They’ve lost the trail,” I said. “Old Mr. Raccoon knows we’re after him, and he doesn’t want to be a collar for any woman’s coat, so he has maybe jumped out into the water and waded along awhile, and his smell has already been carried away in the current. Maybe he’s a hundred yards down the branch and will climb out on the other side, or else he’ll stay in the water till he gets clear to Sugar Creek, and then he’ll find a safe place in a hollow tree and won’t get caught.”
By the time I’d finished explaining all that to Little Jim, we were all the way to the end. We perched on a branch, swinging back and forth and feeling fine, as good as if we’d just gotten our report cards in school and all our grades were As and Bs instead of what some of them sometimes are and shouldn’t be.
“Do you know what I wish?” Little Jim asked me, and his voice was wistful, the way his mouselike voice is sometimes.
I expected him to say something very important, because Little Jim is the only one of the Sugar Creek Gang who has important ideas all by himself without somebody else thinking of them first.
Anyway, this is what he said: “I hope—” he stopped and gave his body a big lurch, and the tree limb we were on swayed back and forth, back and forth “—I hope we don’t catch up with the coon. I hope it gets away!”
“What!” I said. “Why, Circus’s dad could get maybe nine dollars for it, and that would buy flour and meat and fruit and—”
“Yeah,” Little Jim said in a sort of trembly voice. “But just the same, I hope the coon gets away, and I hope Circus’s family has flour and meat and fruit, too.”
We rocked a while, back and forth, back and forth, up and down, and I was thinking that if Poetry were with us—and the branch was strong enough to hold him too—he’d probably begin to say in his half-boy, half-man voice,
“Rock-a-bye, baby, in the treetop,
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks—”
That was as far as I got to think just then because Little Jim, whose father, as you maybe know, is the township trustee and knows all the important things that go on in the county, said to me, “John Till is running away from the police, and they are on his trail just like Old Bawler and Old Sol are on the coon’s trail, and my dad says we’d better—”
Well, I knew that now I was going to hear what he had to say, and I had already guessed it would be something different from what most any other boy would say, because of Little Jim’s being, as I told you, maybe the best Christian in the whole gang. So I wasn’t surprised when he said, finally finishing the sentence he’d started an hour or two before, “We’d better pray [think of it—pray!] that the Lord won’t let him get shot because he’s not saved, and if he died he’d be lost forever!”
Right after Little Jim said that, everything was quiet for a while, neither one of us saying anything. I looked away a minute and thought of red-haired Tom Till, who had started to go to Sunday school right after I’d licked him in a fight and Little Jim had saved his life by shooting the fierce old mother bear that was about to eat him up. And I thought of Bob Till, who had had trouble with the police himself and was on parole now to Little Jim’s dad. And I thought of their sad-faced mother, who had to sew and bake and wash for the family without enough money to buy things, all on account of hook-nosed John Till’s spending nearly everything he made for beer and stronger drink.
I felt sad, and I thought a prayer to God that went something like this: Please do something in the Till family that will help Little Tom’s sad mom to be happy.
Then I looked down the tree trunk through the branches, which still had some of their leaves on them, to where the men and the rest of the gang were sitting in the light of their lanterns. I could hear the splashing of the dogs in the stream, in and out, and I could hear them whimpering and their noses sniffling anxiously. I could hear a very quiet wind sighing in the trees above us, and I still felt sad inside. But at the same time I felt kind of—white—as if a little warm light were shining there, because maybe it does a boy good to pray for somebody besides himself.
Just that minute I heard a high, long-voiced bawl far up the branch. It was Old Bawler, who had found the trail again and was running in another direction. Then Old Sol’s voice rolled out in a deep mournful sound, and the chase was on again. It wasn’t until after Little Jim and I had unscrambled ourselves from where we were, all tangled up in the tree crotch and each other, and were following along with the rest of the hunters and Jeep, the picayune, that I realized that Little Jim had said something else and what it was.
“Do you know what I just prayed?” he’d said. “I prayed that if John Till had to get shot first, before he would repent of his sins, that God would let the police shoot him but not kill him.”
Imagine that little guy praying a prayer like that!
While we were splashing along again on the chase, following the dogs, swinging our lanterns and flashlights, and I was wishing the time wasn’t going so fast toward eleven o’clock and wishing I didn’t have to go to the dentist tomorrow morning—while we were doing that, I began to feel weird in my heart, as if maybe Little Jim had prayed something very important. Maybe he was right. Maybe if John Till had a lot of trouble and maybe if he got scared terribly, he’d think about things and about how mean he was to his wife and boys and how selfish he was in spending all the money on himself. And maybe he’d—well, as Little Jim said, maybe he would repent, which means to be sorry enough for sin to actually confess it to God and be forgiven and saved.
Then I got to wishing that if something bad had to happen to John Till before he’d wake up—if he didn’t have sense enough to repent without being made to—that whatever was going to happen to him would happen mighty quick for the sake of his sad-faced wife and his boys, who needed the right kind of dad as well as the right kind of mom.
I even wished that something would happen that very night while he was running away from the police who were on his trail like hounds on an animal’s trail. John Till was so mean that he was almost worse than an animal—certainly worse than a possum or a coon, which doesn’t know any better. Old hook-nosed John Till did know better, I thought.
Just that second I heard a shot from somewhere, and I knew it wasn’t from any of us.
Dragonfly, who was in front of me, stopped dead still in his tracks, and I bumped squarely into him and into his dog, which was there also. “What was that?” Dragonfly asked.
Poetry, who had been puffing along behind me, bumped into me and said, “That? That was probably a car backfiring. That’s a road over there. Somebody’s car probably had to slow down for Sugar Creek bridge, and then when it started again, it backfired.”
4
We didn’t get to think any longer
about hook-nosed John Till getting shot. Just that minute the dogs, including the little Airedale, started making more noise than ever, as if the trail was getting what is called “hot.” That meant the dogs were getting closer and closer to the coon and might catch up with it any minute.
In fact that was what I heard Circus, just ahead of me, say. “Listen to that, would you? Hear Old Bawler bawl? The trail is getting hot!”
And so were all of us from running so fast, and even faster, down along the little stream toward its mouth, which is where it emptied itself into Sugar Creek and where Dragonfly and I once caught a very large black bass.
We were hurrying, hurrying, splashety-sizzlety, around logs and over logs and all around the little stream that we called the “branch,” meaning it was a tributary stream, which any boy who studies geography knows about.
As I told you, I was trying to learn a lot of new words and how to use them by using them. I said over my shoulder to Poetry—who on nearly every chase had a hard time to keep up with the rest of us and was puffing along behind me—“I hope the coon doesn’t dive into the tributary again and lose his scent.”
And Poetry, trying to be funny and not being, puffed into my ear, “Raccoons don’t have any sense when dogs are after them.”
Dragonfly, whose spindly legs were working terribly fast along on the other side of me, also tried to be funny and wasn’t. He yelled, “They may not have many dollars and cents, but they can sense danger when they know dogs are after them”—which goes to show that even though we were excited, we were having fun.
Old Sol with his deep voice, which sounded as if it was coming through a long hollow log in a cave, was going “WHOOO … WHOOO …”
And Old Bawler, whose voice was high-pitched like a loon’s or like a woman’s screaming voice in a haunted house, was going “Whooo … whooo …”
“Hey!” somebody behind us called. “Wait for me!”
It was Little Jim, whose short legs couldn’t work fast enough for him to keep up with us. All of us stopped except Big Jim and the men and waited till Little Jim whizzed up to us.
Poetry asked him, “Say, Little Jim, you know all about music. What key are those hounds barking in?” He held up his lantern so I could see Little Jim’s half-happy and half-sad face and also see his cap that was still on backwards with its bill turned up.
Little Jim panted a minute and listened before answering, then he said, “They’re both in the same key, I think.”
He really was a good musician, you know—his mom was the very best in Sugar Creek Township and played the piano in our church. Little Jim practiced hard every day, which is the way to learn anything anyway.
We all kept still while Little Jim acted as if he was thinking, which he was, and listening. Then he used his own voice and struck the pitch Old Sol’s voice had been striking and was striking right that minute far down the branch. Then his voice jumped away up high to another pitch, like a bird springing up to a higher rung on a ladder, and he struck the same pitch as Old Bawler was striking every few seconds.
“WHOOO …” That was like Old Sol. “Whooo …” And that was like Old Bawler.
Then that short-legged little guy grinned and said, “Old Sol is on re in the key of F, and Old Bawler is on la in the same key!”
After that, I could see that Little Jim was more interested in the chase because he could think about the music in the dogs’ voices. And if there was anything he liked better than anything else, it was music—unless maybe it was some of the sassafras tea that Old Man Paddler used to make for us when we went up to his cabin to see him.
We had started to go on when Dragonfly piped up from near us somewhere and asked, “What pitch is Jeep on?”
Well, Jeep was barking the way he always had barked, every now and then, short and nervous.
Little Jim made us all keep quiet a minute, and then he said, after barking a little himself, imitating the picayune, “He’s—he’s off key!” There was a mischievous grin on his small face. “He’s almost hitting fa, but he’s sharp.”
“See there!” Dragonfly exclaimed. “What did I tell you? I knew he was smart. Little Jim says he is.” Dragonfly had never been very good in his music classes, not knowing that sharp doesn’t always mean smart.
“I know what key your picayune is barking in,” Poetry’s squawky voice said in a very low key, and he winked at me.
“You do not!” Dragonfly said, angry at Poetry for calling his dog a picayune.
“I certainly do,” Poetry said saucily.
“All right, Smarty, what key is he barking in?”
Poetry winked at me again and started to run toward where the dogs were all making more noise than ever. He tossed his supposed-to-be-funny sentence over his shoulder at Dragonfly: “Your Airedale is barking in the don-key!”
After that, the rest of us had a hard time keeping up with Dragonfly and Poetry. But Dragonfly was a pretty good sport, and even though he was mad, he could see that it was funny. So when he finally caught up with Poetry, instead of socking him he only said, knowing a little about music though not enough to get good grades in school, “Anyway, you’re a shaped note and a round note at the same time.”
And if you know anything about music yourself, you’ll know that Dragonfly was a very smart little spindle-legged guy to think up a joke like that.
Things must have been happening up ahead of us where the dogs were and where the chase was hot and getting hotter, because all of a sudden, while my thoughts were all tangled up with music and notes and Little Jim and his mom and different music keys, the dogs’ voices all at once sounded like a pipe organ in a church with a kitten walking back and forth, back and forth, across the black-and-white keys, the way our old Mixy, in fact, did across the keys of the organ in our own front room at home.
It was a very interesting half-dream I’d been having while being very wide awake, when things suddenly changed. That is, the dogs changed their tunes and their keys. All three of them were now barking like Picayune Jeep himself, all of them in short, sharp, nervous, and excited, very much excited, voices. Jeep sounded as if he was not only excited but as though he had done something wonderful and wanted us all to hurry up and come and see. In fact, they all sounded like that.
“Treed!” Circus cried beside me.
“Treed!” I heard Circus’s dad yell up ahead of us.
“Treed!” we all called at almost the same time.
“What’s treed mean?” Dragonfly wanted to know, but nobody answered him.
“What’s treed mean?” he asked again, and Little Jim piped up across from him and said, “It means the coon has run up a tree to keep from getting caught on the ground, just like a possum does.”
And that was right. Coons do that, just as Mixy does sometimes when a dog is after her. She goes like a bullet up a telephone pole or tree or our grape-arbor pole to get away.
We ran as fast as we could, every one of us, getting in and out of each other’s way, until pretty soon I could see what we were all seeing at the same time. There was a round, tall maple tree, and around its base were the dogs, barking—not bawling, but barking in excited, staccato barks. I knew that staccato was the right musical word for it because just that minute Little Jim said, “Hear them! They’re barking staccato now!”
And they were. Old Sol’s deep, gruff voice sounded as if he had crawled all the way through his hollow log and was very happy about it. Old Bawler’s high-pitched, quavering voice sounded as if she wasn’t scared anymore. And Jeep sounded as if he knew he had been right all the time and had just found it out for sure and was bragging about it.
I tell you there was some excitement going on around there for a minute or two. The three dogs were jumping up and down, up and down, up and down, like hot popcorn in a hot skillet. Then they would stop barking for a little and just sit, tongues hanging out and panting, looking at us to see what we were going to do about things. Then when one of them would bark, another would, and also the o
ther, and then all of them.
It looked as if there was certainly something up that tree all right.
Big Jim’s dad’s hired man snapped on his long flashlight and shot a beam of light up into the tree. He moved the bright, white round spot it made all around through the leafless branches, back and forth and around and around, making me think of a boy in our schoolhouse with an eraser, moving it across the blackboard to erase the chalk marks. Except that the light of the flashlight was erasing the dark off the blackboard of the sky. We could see every gray branch and twig of that tall old maple.
Suddenly I realized that beside me Circus’s dad had his rifle ready, and I knew that in the next minute or two something was going to happen. I could feel it. The flashlight stopped moving and was shining on something dark. I knew it wasn’t any squirrel’s nest of dry leaves either. I knew that for sure when I saw it with my own eyes. Then Circus saw it, then Dragonfly saw it, being a little late for a change. Then all of the rest of us saw it just as plain as day-two little greenish-white-and-yellowish balls of fire away up in the top of the tree, and I knew we’d treed a coon.
We certainly had found a coon.
The very minute Circus’s dad raised his long-barreled rifle toward the sky and pointed it directly toward those two marble-sized balls of fire—the coon’s eyes—all three dogs stopped barking, stopped yelping, stopped even whimpering, and were tense, waiting for the sudden explosion that would mean the shell had been fired.
Well, I guess the dogs weren’t any more excited than the Sugar Creek Gang was. We were waiting for the shot to be fired too. And all the time I was thinking about the coon, wondering what the coon was thinking about. Was it wondering how it would feel to be shot? I remembered what I’d said to Little Jim not very far back along the trail, which was that the coon probably didn’t want to be a collar for any woman’s coat.
Then there was the sound of Circus’s dad cocking his rifle, followed by a few seconds of tense, careful aiming right toward the two green eyes. And then there was a loud explosion, which wasn’t maybe so loud but seemed like it because everything else was so quiet. It was like a firecracker that a boy sets off on the Fourth of July.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12 Page 3