“You aren’t!” Dragonfly piped up. “Poetry is.” He shouldn’t have said that, because it wasn’t any time to be funny. But Dragonfly didn’t always know when it was or wasn’t time to be funny, since he couldn’t help being funny nearly all the time anyway.
I ignored his remark, as did most of the others, and went on with my exciting story, waving my turned-on flashlight around in a circle and saying, “Anyway it sounded like he thought my dad’s name was William instead of Theodore, which it is, but the letter said we had to treat his son decently and not beat up on him and—”
“It was Shorty Long’s dad who wrote the letter then,” Little Jim said.
That sounded right, because the gang, and especially Bill Collins, had had a fight with him that very day, and I’d had one with him about two weeks before, not long after Shorty Long’s family had moved into our neighborhood.
I told the rest of what had happened as fast as I could, with different ones of the gang interrupting me every other minute to ask questions. But pretty soon I had the whole thing told—how I’d talked to Poetry on the phone and that somebody had been listening in when I told him about the crazy misspelled letter.
“I heard two telephones go up and down,” Poetry said, “not just one. There must have been two neighbors listening.”
“I heard three,” Circus said as he stopped catching snowflakes.
“What!” I said. “Were you listening too?”
“Sure, I wanted to call you up and tell you something important, and so I lifted the receiver to see if the line was busy. You and Poetry were already talking. So while you were talking and I was listening, I heard three different telephone receivers go up. And whoever the people were, they were listening to you.”
“Maybe one of them was mine,” Dragonfly said. “I was going to call you up about something important and—”
“Quiet!” Big Jim ordered. “Let’s have the whole story. Go ahead, Bill.”
I went ahead and said, “Then when I’d said good-bye to my folks right there by the gate and they had started on down the road on the way to Wally’s house, a screech owl let out a terrible wail and scared me half to death. And then, while I was getting over being scared, somebody shot out from behind that fir tree and grabbed the letter out of my hand and shoved me into the ditch. He said, “You little redheaded runt! Let that be a lesson to you to be careful about what you tell people over the telephone!”
“Then it was Shorty Long’s dad who was listening in and who wanted the letter back again!” Circus said.
Little Jim said, “I don’t think the Longs have any phone, because Mom tried to call there last Saturday to ask Mrs. Long to go to church with us. The telephone was discon— discon—”
“Disconnected,” Dragonfly said, and Little Jim said, “Yeah, disconnected.”
“Maybe they had it connected again,” Circus said, pretending to eat all the snowflakes he had caught. “Maybe they paid their bill.”
Circus probably was the only one of the Sugar Creek Gang to know what that might mean, because his dad used to get drunk before he became a Christian. Then they sometimes couldn’t pay their telephone bill for a long time and had to have their phone disconnected.
Big Jim spoke then, and in the light of Poetry’s lantern, which was smoking a little, I could see that he was thinking about something very seriously. He said, “It couldn’t have been Mr. Long listening in on your line. He’s not on your line. He’s on ours.”
Well, that was that.
Anyway, I was rattling on again, telling them that, whoever it was, he had heard the gang coming and had made a dash for the fir tree, and that I’d heard him running through the woods only a few minutes ago. Telling the gang that and still being mad and also very brave (because the gang was with me), I began to feel my blood getting hot, and I said, “Let’s follow his tracks and see where he went. Let’s find out who it is!”
And Poetry, who is interested in being a detective someday and is always talking about clues and things, said, “If we had the letter, it would be a good clue.”
“We’ll have to hurry,” Big Jim said, “or this snow will cover up all his tracks,” which it would in even just a little while.
“Let’s run up to the house and tell my folks we’re going to take a walk,” Poetry said. “We can leave Bill’s suitcase there and—”
Suitcase! I’d forgotten all about it. Something in my mind started whirling. Where is my suitcase? Why—why—
“Hey!’” I yelled. “Where is my suitcase? Hey! Why, it’s gone. It’s—that guy must have taken it with him. And it’s got my brand-new pair of pajamas in it!”
3
When I shone my dad’s flashlight in every direction and couldn’t see my little brown suitcase anywhere, I got terribly scared. It not only had my pajamas in it, but all of a sudden I remembered what I’d half heard my mom say on the phone to Poetry’s mom. She had pinned Poetry’s mom’s brooch to my new pajamas. Also I remembered that just as I had stepped out of our car a little while ago, Mom had reminded me that there was something for Mrs. Thompson inside the suitcase.
Boy, oh, boy, I felt even more tangled up in my mind now than I had been, for I realized that the roughneck who had stolen the letter and had knocked the living daylights out of me and had shoved me into the snowdrift had also stolen the suitcase and everything that was in it.
“Come on, gang!” I cried. “Let’s trail him in the snow! Let’s find out where he went and who he is. And let’s lick the living daylights out of him.” Then I told the gang what was in the suitcase besides my new pajamas.
Poetry spoke up excitedly. “What? My mom’s pretty new brooch was in it? Why—why—why— I bought that for Mom for Christmas! Why—”
Our excitement caught fire like a straw stack out in a field, and we were all ready to make a quick dash straight for the evergreen tree and get started on the guy’s trail.
But Big Jim stopped us, pulled back his sleeve, looked at his watch in the light of Poetry’s lantern, and said, “We’re scheduled to be at Old Man Paddler’s cabin at seven o’clock. He’s expecting us. Otherwise he can’t come tonight!”
Can’t come where? Where’s he going? I thought and then asked it out loud. I found, by tying together what different ones of the gang said in broken pieces of sentences, that all the Sugar Creek Gang’s parents and some other neighbors, as well as Old Man Paddler, were supposed to meet at Poetry’s house that night to help celebrate the new furnace and recreation room that Poetry’s parents had in their basement. My parents hadn’t told me about it, I guess, because I had had some trouble with Dad in the woodshed right after school. Either they had forgotten it later or else maybe Mom and Dad had wanted me to be surprised.
Anyway, a lot of people were coming to Poetry’s house after a while, and the gang got to come early so that we would have fun for a while without the parents being present, which boys nearly always like to do.
Besides, some girls might come with the different parents, and that would spoil the party for the whole Sugar Creek Gang—except maybe for Big Jim, who wouldn’t care if our minister’s daughter, Sylvia, came. And maybe even I wouldn’t get mad if one of Circus’s ordinary-looking sisters named Lucille came along. She was one of the main reasons I had given Shorty Long a licking that very morning on the way to school, which you already know about if you’ve read One Stormy Day.
According to Big Jim’s watch, it wasn’t much after six o’clock, and we would have plenty of time to go to the cave near the sycamore tree and follow it far back into the hills to where it came out in the basement of Old Man Paddler’s cabin.
“We’ve got to get Bill’s suitcase back and my mom’s new brooch!” Poetry said, as excited as I was, and I could see on his face that he also was angry at whoever had stolen the letter and the suitcase and the brooch.
“Here we go, then!” Big Jim said. “Here, Circus. You take Poetry’s lantern. And Bill, let me have your flashlight. Circus and I’ll
lead the way. Come on! We’ll have to get going fast before the snow covers up his tracks.”
Behind the evergreen tree we all stopped a minute and gathered in a huddle to study the tracks and see if they were from anybody’s shoes or boots that we might know.
“See!” Circus said. “His shoes—one of his shoes has a hole in its sole.” And sure enough, it had.
“Why didn’t he wear boots?” Little Jim wanted to know. Wearing boots was one of the most important things a boy could do in the wintertime.
“Maybe his parents were poor,” Poetry squawked.
“His feet are too big for him to have any parents,” Dragonfly said.
And they certainly were big, as though maybe the person was a very big man, which he probably was or he wouldn’t have been big enough to have knocked the living daylights out of me.
Right away, with Big Jim and Circus leading, we were on the way. Poetry and Dragonfly were next, with Little Jim and I following along behind. Little Tom Till was the only member of the gang who wasn’t with us, because his parents hardly ever let him come. It was Little Tom Till’s big brother, Bob, who was Big Jim’s worst enemy.
We followed those shoe tracks fast and were panting and running and stopping to study them to find out which way they were going. Already they were partly covered with the fast-falling snow, so we had to hurry.
Suddenly Big Jim stopped and yelled to all of us, “Looks like he’s going right straight for the Sugar Creek bridge.”
It looked as if Big Jim was right, which he nearly always is, because that was the direction the tracks were going, which meant maybe that they were made by somebody who lived on the other side of the creek.
Soon we reached the bridge ourselves, and right there the tracks stopped.
“They’ve stopped,” Big Jim said, holding my dad’s flashlight close down to the ground and turning it here and there, over the bridge, along the road, into both ditches, and all around.
We all made a dive toward where Big Jim stood looking at the very last tracks, but he ordered us back. “Get back! You’ll cover up any tracks if there are any!”
“But there’s been a car along the road here,” Poetry squawked.
Dragonfly piped up then. “I heard a car go rattling across the bridge a little while ago.”
We stared at each other for a while. We knew that—with the shoe tracks disappearing and the car tracks being there—the guy had probably jumped into a car and was far away by that time with the letter and the suitcase.
Big Jim made us stand still and keep quiet for a few minutes, while he and Circus took my dad’s big flashlight and walked around all over the road and along the ditches looking for tracks. Round and round they went, while the snow was falling on them and on us and quickly covering up any tracks if any had been made, and it looked as if there weren’t.
All the time Big Jim and Circus were looking, I stood still, which was the hardest thing I’d had to do for a long time. I kept thinking about the pretty little brown suitcase, which my parents had bought for me, and that it was very expensive luggage. Also I kept thinking about the new pajamas and Poetry’s mom’s brooch and worrying, What if we don’t ever find it again?
Then Little Jim sidled up to me. I knew he must have been thinking for quite a while—he was the only one of the Sugar Creek Gang who thought important things all by himself— because he whispered, “I’ll bet it’ll be easier to get him to be a Christian now than it was.”
“Get who to become a Christian?” I asked.
“The thief,” he said. “Now that he’s stolen and done something kind of big to be sorry for, maybe it won’t take God so long to show him he is a sinner and needs to be saved.”
Little Jim probably didn’t even know he was saying something very important, which any minister might be proud to even think of. Imagine a little guy like Little Jim being able to think of a thing like that! I knew he’d probably heard his mom or his dad say something like that at home, because it sounded like things I’d heard his pretty mom say before. His mom was a great Christian as well as being the pianist in our church and a music teacher.
After what seemed a terribly long time to have to keep still, Big Jim straightened up from looking for tracks. He sort of shrugged his shoulders and swung the flashlight around toward the sky and said, “I give up. We’ve lost him. He’s probably a lot of miles from here in that car by now.”
We all just stared at each other with serious faces, and for a minute not a one of us said a thing to anyone else. Then Dragonfly, instead of talking, got a funny look on his face all of a sudden and started to blink his eyes and to open his mouth. He is always doing that because of his being what is called allergic to nearly everything. He sneezes at almost everything he’s never smelled before and also at nearly everything else. Then he let out a half-smothered sneeze.
“You’ve got a cold,” Little Jim said to him.
“It’s not a cold!” Dragonfly pulled a big red handkerchief out of his coat pocket, which looked as if it had maybe another bandanna or two stuffed in it for emergency in case Dragonfly might need more than one. “It’s Bill’s crazy new pajamas. I smell ’em. I never could stand the smell of moth balls.”
“They’ve been washed,” I said. “Besides, they aren’t here.”
Dragonfly said, “I thought you said they’re new.”
Well, they were new, but my mom always washed new pajamas at our house before she’d let Dad or me wear them. She wanted to be sure they were sanitary after maybe being handled by so many people in the factory and the store.
I didn’t want to be bothered with an argument, so I said half-disgustedly to Dragonfly, “You wouldn’t understand,” which he wouldn’t because his mom doesn’t worry about germs the way my mom does.
Then Dragonfly sneezed again. “It’s a horse. I smell a horse.”
I was just getting ready to tell him, “What of it?” when behind us somewhere we heard a strange rumbling like the noise horses make when they sneeze, and I knew Dragonfly was right.
And Poetry, who is mischievous even at the most serious times, exclaimed, “Sure it’s a horse. Hear him sneeze! He’s allergic to Dragonfly!”
Big Jim whirled the flashlight in the direction of the horse’s sneeze.
Then suddenly we were hit full in the face with a powerful light from somebody else’s flashlight, and a man’s big voice called, “Hello!” And the voice sounded like somebody’s voice I’d heard before.
Whoever he was, he turned the flashlight off.
Then Big Jim shot a long beam from Dad’s flashlight in the direction of the voice, and we all saw it at once. There was a big beautiful saddle horse with a man on it, and the rider was wearing a brown leather jacket and boots and looked like riders do who ride in parades on the Fourth of July.
“Did you boys want to see me?” the big gruff voice said.
Right away I got a weird feeling in my throat and in my mind, because I knew whose voice it was. It was the voice of our new man teacher at the Sugar Creek School, whom we boys had caused so much trouble for that day, and we shouldn’t have.
All of a sudden I was remembering all the things that we’d done and shouldn’t have. Also I remembered something I had done that I hadn’t done on purpose. I was throwing a snowball at Shorty Long and accidentally hit Mr. Black on the top of his head while he was stooped over adjusting the doormat.
Of course, he hadn’t been a perfect teacher, either. He had made a mistake that day when he punished me instead of Shorty Long, but that was because of his getting our names mixed up. But I knew he thought we were all a pretty bad gang of boys, which we weren’t most of the time.
Then his horse started acting especially frisky, as though he wanted to get started in some direction or other. He was prancing and turning this way and that, as if it didn’t make any difference which direction he went just so he could get started. And then he did get started, and it was right toward us. I could hear the horse’s feet comin
g, and so could the rest of the gang.
I tell you, when it is dark like that and you hear a big horse coming in your direction very fast—and also hear a man’s voice saying excitedly, “Whoa!” two or three times as though his horse is about to run away—you really want to get out of the way. We all scrambled into the ditch at the end of the bridge. We were ready to dive under it where we knew no horse could come.
We didn’t get out of the way any quicker than we should have, either. We might have been trampled, because Mr. Black was having a hard time controlling his horse and was yelling excitedly, “Whoa! Steady, Prince! Whoa!”
But it wasn’t doing any good. It sounded the way it does when a man’s horse is being disobedient and is also scared and trying to run away. And sure enough, that was what was happening. We heard more excited whoas and more and fiercer stamping of the horse’s feet. And then the horse was on the bridge, and I heard Mr. Black say, “All right then, you scared fool! Run, if you want to!”
And did that horse run! His four feet on that wooden bridge above us sounded like maybe a thousand horses’ feet. He went galloping across at what my dad would have called breakneck speed, which is terribly fast. Then the horse was across the bridge, and we heard his hoofs on the road on the other side, running gallopety-sizzle-gallop-gallop-gallop up that road, getting farther and farther away every second.
4
Well, that was that. We’d probably made our teacher as mad as a hornet, because we had likely scared his horse. He would have it in for us tomorrow, and there would be more trouble than ever.
We’d had many a gang meeting on an old log under that end of the bridge, so we decided to stoop down and go under and have a quick meeting right then, though we wouldn’t have time to sit down very long. But we’d lost the trail of whoever it was who had stolen my suitcase and the letter and Poetry’s mom’s brooch, and we had to decide what to do next.
So in a flash there we were, out of the falling snow and under the bridge, all of us sitting on two logs facing each other. One of the logs was a big square one, which had been left there by the men who had made the bridge. The log had too many knots in its wood to be safe to use in a bridge.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12 Page 26