Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12

by Paul Hutchens

  Somehow I had a very light feeling inside, as if the Bible verses Poetry and I had read that morning had made me feel all white where it had been kind of black before. And I knew that maybe I was going to like our new teacher a whole lot.

  10

  Well, it was kind of a long day, but we didn’t have any more trouble, not even with Shorty Long. At four o’clock we were all out, and the gang was hurrying as fast as we could go toward Poetry’s house. Most of our parents had said we could meet there first before going up to Old Man Paddler’s cabin with all the good things to eat that had been left over from the party.

  At Poetry’s house, his mom told me I could go too because she had called up my dad, who was home again, and told him about what the parents had decided the night before. And Dad had said, “All right,” but I was to get home as quick after supper as I could. It would get dark early, and none of our parents wanted us to be out after dark.

  “It’s bound to get dark before we can get home, though,” Big Jim said, so we took Poetry’s lantern with us. I also took Dad’s flashlight, which I had left at Poetry’s house. Besides, we would need lights to go through the cave.

  Pretty soon all of us—except Tom Till, whose dad had told him to come home right after school—were on our way down through the woods from Poetry’s, going toward the sycamore tree and the cave.

  We had plenty of time, so we went past the Sugar Creek bridge and stopped awhile to look around. But all our tracks of the night before were covered up.

  We looked in the woodchuck den where the skunk had been caught and killed, and Circus said to Poetry, “I stopped and got it on the way home from your house last night.”

  Poetry said, “I thought you smelled like a skunk all day today.” But it wasn’t very funny.

  We walked along the crest of the hill for a while till we came to the place where the boot tracks had gone out toward Bumblebee Hill. But all of them, including ours, were covered with snow.

  “I think I know who wrote those crazy letters,” Poetry said. He was the one of the gang who planned to be a real detective someday and was already smarter than any of us when it came to having ideas about who had done what and why.

  “Who did?” some of us asked him.

  He said, “Just wait and see. I’ll bet we find out tonight.”

  “Whyn’t you tell us now?” Dragonfly wanted to know.

  Poetry said, “Wait’ll we get to Old Man Paddler’s cabin, and I will.”

  At the old sycamore tree with the long opening in its side, we stopped and looked around. It was big enough for two of us boys to crawl into one at a time and stand in side by side. Little Jim had his stick, which smelled nice and clean because he had washed it with soap at his house, and he was swishing it around at everything. Circus looked at the different trees as if he wanted to climb one of them but also didn’t want to because of its not being any fun to climb a cold tree with snow on its trunk. Big Jim had a grim look on his face as though he was a bit worried. He looked around at the place where we had all had our wrestling match with old John Till, but there weren’t any tracks left there either because it had snowed so much after the fight.

  Dragonfly was grinning, but he also seemed to be trembling a little. I thought maybe he was cold and wished we’d hurry up and go through the dark cave and get to Old Man Paddler’s nice warm cabin. Although it wasn’t that cold, especially when a boy has been walking or running and has on warm clothes, which Dragonfly did.

  Poetry borrowed Little Jim’s stick and began to swish it around in the snow where we’d had our fight with John Till.

  I said, “What are you doing that for?”

  He said, “Looking for another clue-maybe another crazy letter. Maybe John Till dropped another one here in the fight.”

  “But John Till didn’t write them,” I said. “I wish you would stop thinking he did. I wish—”

  Poetry interrupted me. “I wish you would stop wishing that I would stop thinking.” Then he started a poem, which was the first one he had quoted to us all day, which meant he was feeling very fine and mischievous again. He said:

  “There was a young turkey

  Who was feeling quite perky

  Because he was getting so fat,

  But when he found out

  Thanksgiving was near,

  He wished he was thin as a rat.”

  Poetry didn’t find anything, so we went on up to the big canvas curtain that hangs in front of the entrance to the cave. I had a weird feeling in my mind and around my heart that we were going to run into another exciting adventure almost right away, and maybe we would meet it in that dark cave on the way through to Old Man Paddler’s cabin.

  Big Jim must have felt the same way, for he stopped us by lifting his finger to his pursed lips and saying, “Sh! Quiet, everybody.”

  Everybody was quiet.

  Then he said, “Whoever has been writing notes and putting them around the neighborhood to stir up trouble for us is bound to be somebody who knows us and doesn’t like us. Whoever he is, he knows this neighborhood pretty well, for he knew how to get to the cave in the dark and put Bill’s suitcase there.”

  Big Jim and Circus led the way, using Poetry’s lantern and my dad’s big long flashlight. The rest of us followed along behind, one at a time in Indian fashion. The passage was too narrow in some places for two of us to walk side by side without bumping into each other too much. Sand and gravel covered the solid rock floor, and the cave had a rock roof.

  Our parents had inspected the cave a long time ago and decided it was safe for us to go through. They didn’t want us ever to go into or play in a cave that had only a dirt roof, because it might cave in on us and kill us or smother us as that kind of cave sometimes does, which you read about in newspapers. But ours had a rock roof, and so it was safe.

  I was disappointed that we didn’t run into any new mystery on the way through the cave, but we didn’t. And in just a few minutes we came to the big wooden door at the other end. We knocked, and in a moment a quavering old voice called, “Who’s there?”

  When we said, “The Sugar Creek Gang,” right away we heard another door opening and knew it was Old Man Paddler lifting up the trapdoor to his cellar. Then we heard him come down his wooden steps to the big door where we were and heard a key turning in the big lock. Right away we were in the cellar and up the stairs and in his cabin, putting down the trapdoor.

  Boy, oh, boy, it felt good to be in that kind old man’s cabin again with the nice warm fire crackling in the fireplace and the teakettle sitting on the stove. Everything looked just as neat and clean as if he had a wife to keep it clean but no boys to make it dirty.

  “Well, well, well, boys,” he said, when we first came in. “What do you have there in that basket?”

  “Surprise,” some of us said at the same time.

  He sat in a homemade chair at his table by the window, and the sun, which was getting ready to set behind a hill, was shining in on his very white hair and long white beard.

  “Oh,” he said, “a picnic supper! That’s fine! Well, just make yourselves at home. You may put the water on for sassafras tea. I think I’ll finish this letter I’m writing first.”

  Little Jim nudged me, and I knew he felt good, because he liked sassafras tea better than anything else to drink when we were at Old Man Paddler’s cabin.

  “There isn’t any water,” Circus said, looking into an empty pail on a washstand over by the back door, which was also the front door.

  The old man lifted his fine head, scratched it just behind the right ear with a long yellow pencil, and said, “So there isn’t. I’ve been using snow water—haven’t had a chance to scoop a path down to the spring yet.”

  That was what my dad would have called an “indirect method” of saying to a gang of boys, “Some of you scoop a path from the door to the spring, some of you carry a pail or two of water, and anybody who wants to can do anything else he wants to, if it needs to be done!”

&
nbsp; In fact Dad had been using that method on me at our house for a while. Instead of saying, “Bill, you’re acting awfully lazy today. Get out and gather the eggs,” he might say, “By the way, Bill, I noticed that old Bent Comb was on the nest under the barn again today. Doesn’t she know that’s the coldest place on earth to leave an egg and that it’ll freeze and crack and be no good for selling to help buy a boy’s new sled? You’d think old Bent Comb would know her egg would freeze if it happened to stay in the nest too long!”

  And I’d say to Dad, “I’ll go gather the eggs,” which I would nearly always do right away.

  Anyway, when Old Man Paddler said what he said, Poetry and I made a dive for a snow shovel in the corner by the door. Then we went to get the big scoop shovel that we knew he kept in a small woodshed not far from the cabin. And in a jiffy we were scooping away.

  Circus didn’t wait for us to get a path shoveled but went leaping and galloping out through the drifts to the spring, which was at the foot of a small hill and at the end of a path we knew was there in the summertime—and which we were trying to follow while we were shoveling right that minute.

  Different ones of the rest of the gang did different things, such as stir up the fire in the fireplace and in the cookstove, carry in more wood and stack it in a little rack against the wall beside the fireplace, and make and throw snowballs at different things around the old man’s place.

  Poetry and I were grunting along, shoveling as fast as we could and feeling fine because it’s the best feeling in the world to get warm inside your warm clothes when you are working on a cold day. You don’t feel cold because you’re working, and you feel especially fine when you can see the path getting longer and longer while you work.

  Pretty soon, though, I said to Poetry, “’S’-matter? What’s the worry on your face for?”

  And he said, “Did you see what I saw?”

  “No—what?” I said.

  “Did you notice what kind of stationery he was writing his letter on? That—that old-fashioned writing tablet?”

  l guess I hadn’t noticed, although it’s a wonder I hadn’t. Because if there was anything in the world I was interested in, it would be anything anybody would write using the same kind of stationery somebody had written on and shoved into our mailbox—and also the same kind of stationery somebody had written on and tucked under the pommel coat-strap of Mr. Black’s saddle.

  “But,” I said to Poetry, “certainly Old Man Paddler wouldn’t write such crazy letters. Besides, he wouldn’t knock me down. Also, he can’t run, and he doesn’t wear that kind of shoes.”

  “Of course not,” Poetry said. “I didn’t say he did, did I? But I know who did.”

  Well, he wouldn’t tell me what he knew, so pretty soon we had our path scooped to the spring and were back in the nice warm cabin with the fire crackling in the fireplace and the teakettle singing on the stove. The sun was already down. As I looked out toward the west where it had been, there were about seven very pretty rows of reddish clouds hanging nearly all the way across the sky. They looked like seven very long rails in the fence that is just across the road from our house.

  The old man had lit a lamp while we were outside, and it was on the table beside him now. He was just about to finish his letter. On the stove was a little granite pan nearly filled with steaming reddish water and red chips of sassafras roots.

  “I’ll just sign my name,” he said, “and then it’ll be ready for mailing. Bob will be here any minute now to mail it for me. He’s going to town tonight, and this letter has to get off on the midnight train. He’s taking the same train back to his job at Boulderville.”

  And right that second it was just like somebody had turned on a big electric light in my mind. Why, of course, that was who had written those letters—Big Bob Till! He must have come home for a day or two to see his dad, who had just got out of jail, and was still mad at the Sugar Creek Gang, as he had always been. He probably had tried to get us all into trouble by writing to Mr. Black, trying to make him hate the Sugar Creek Gang, and by writing that crazy note to my dad, which would make it look like Shorty Long’s dad had written it, just to get Shorty and me mad at each other. Why, it was as plain as the crooked nose on Dragonfly’s pop-eyed face that Big Bob Till had done it.

  “Bob Till?” different ones asked the old man at the same time.

  Poetry looked at me and grinned, and the grin said, I told you so.

  And Old Man Paddler said, “Yes, Bob has been home for several days while his father is out on parole. Bob’s been staying here part of the time. There’s a boy who needs a friend, boys—somebody to be a real father to him. If we don’t be kind to him, he’ll turn out to be a very, very bad boy and a menace to society.

  “Now, while we’re waiting for the tea to get done, do you want to hear my letter to my brother—my twin brother down in Palm Tree Island, you know?”

  Well, we did, and we didn’t. Most of us wanted to talk to each other first, especially Poetry, who whispered to me, “I’ll bet Bob’s dad was waiting at the bridge for him in their old car last night. When Bob got there, old John Till, who had boots on, must have climbed out and started running the trapline. Bob probably had on a shoe with a hole in its sole, and he got in and drove the car home. Then this morning Little Tom borrowed his brother Bob’s shoes and wore them to school—I figured it out myself.”

  I was sure Poetry was right. But because it was the only polite thing to do, we listened to Old Man Paddler’s letter to his twin brother:

  Dear Brother Kenneth,

  I am so pleased that you are planning to come home. I can hardly wait until I see you again. I think, though, because you have been ill and because the weather is very cold here and you are accustomed to a warm climate, you had better wait till spring before you come …

  Boy, oh, boy, I was excited, with the mystery of the crazy letters solved, and at the same time remembering how exactly alike Old Man Paddler and his twin brother looked, and thinking what fun it was going to be when those two nice old gentlemen got to see each other for the first time in a lot of years. Imagine those two long-whiskered men living in this little old weather-beaten cabin and both of them friends of the Sugar Creek Gang!

  The letter was rambling on when I heard somebody knock downstairs on the big wooden door, and I knew it was Bob Till. I looked at Big Jim’s face and noticed that he had his lips pressed close together. I also noticed that his fists were doubled up. He looked right straight into my eyes and said, “No fighting, Bill. Let me handle him.”

  Then Big Jim jumped up and lifted the trapdoor to the cellar and dashed down to open the other door to let in Bob Till, his worst enemy.

  I don’t know what I expected to happen when Big Jim and Big Bob met in Old Man Paddler’s cellar. They’d been enemies for a long time and had had two fierce fights. One was on Bumblebee Hill, and the other was at the top of the iron stairway in an elevated station in Chicago, where Bob had fallen down and cut a gash in his head. It was Big Jim who had saved his life when they had to take Bob to a hospital for a blood transfusion. Big Jim’s and Bob’s blood were the same type.

  But even though Big Jim had given his blood for him, still Bob didn’t like him and was always doing everything he could to cause Big Jim and the whole Sugar Creek Gang trouble.

  My heart was pounding, and I noticed my own fists were doubled up as I listened hard to learn what would happen. Big Jim could easily knock the living daylights out of Bob if he got to hit him first, but Bob was a fierce fighter too, so …

  Then I heard that great oak door down there open and Big Jim’s voice say politely, “Come in, Bob. Supper’s ready upstairs. The whole gang is here, and we’re having a surprise supper on Old Man Paddler.”

  And then I heard a lot of different kinds of noise down there. I heard sounds like somebody’s hand grabbing a doorknob and then feet scuffling on the hard dirt floor of the cellar. And then Bob’s voice said, “Oh, no, you don’t, Big Jim! You yellow-livere
d coward. Take that and that and that! You will tell on my dad, will you, and get him sent back to jail?”

  And then there was more noise and a sound like twenty feet on the floor at the same time, then a terrible bang as the cellar door slammed shut. And then I heard somebody’s feet go crunch, crunch, crunchety-crunch-crunch-crunch on the gravel of the floor of the cave, and I guessed it was Bob Till running away.

  I certainly was on my feet in a hurry, and so was the rest of the gang. We almost stumbled over each other on our way down that stairway to where we found Big Jim lying facedown on the dirt floor right close to the heavy oak door.

  “We’ll get him—the coward!” Circus said. He had my dad’s flashlight in his hand, and I knew he was the fastest runner of the gang. He knew every inch of the way through the cave and could probably catch Bob before he got through to the cave entrance or at least in a little while after they came out at the other end.

  Big Jim groaned, rolled over, and sat up right in the place where the door would have to open if Circus opened it, and he said, “No! Let him go. I don’t want to hurt him …” Big Jim’s voice kind of faded away as if he was feeling very weak. Then all of a sudden he toppled over, the way a tree does when you’ve chopped it off at the roots, and he fell on his face again.

  I simply have to wind up this story right here, without taking time to tell you how we revived Big Jim and how we had our party after he felt better, and how we ourselves mailed Old Man Paddler’s letter to his brother on Palm Tree Island.

  But when we were on the way home and Poetry and Little Jim and I were together, Little Jim piped up with something that was just like the things he is always saying and thinking: “Big Jim gave his blood for Bob in Chicago once, and now he is trying to be kind to him. But Bob is still mean. It’s just like what happened in the Bible, I’ll bet. Somebody gave His blood on the cross for John Till and Bob, and they’re running away from Him too.”