Just that second, Dragonfly shoved his hands against my knees behind me. Both my knees buckled, and I swung around a little. When I tried to look again toward Circus’s house, the binoculars were focused not on his house but on our redbrick schoolhouse farther across the field.
All of a sudden I let out a gasp and a yell and felt a weird feeling inside of me. For right there on the north side of the schoolhouse was a ladder, leaning up against the eaves, and—yes, I could see it as plain as day—something that looked like a board was lying right across the top of the schoolhouse chimney.
It was even plainer than day what had happened: Shorty Long and Bob Till had been to our house and barn while we were in church and had stolen Snow-White and some other pigeons. Then, seeing how nice and light and easy it was to carry Dad’s new ladder, and remembering the story of The Hoosier Schoolmaster, and both of the boys not liking the Sugar Creek Gang, and Shorty Long especially not liking me terribly much, they had borrowed the ladder and had used it to put the board on the chimney, so our teacher would be smoked out when he started the fire. And I, Bill Collins, and maybe all the Sugar Creek Gang, would get into even more trouble with Mr. Black.
I was thinking all those worried thoughts while I was looking through the binoculars and was still standing on the roof of Poetry’s dad’s chicken house, with Poetry and Little Jim beside me.
I must have let out a very excited gasp, because Poetry said, “’S’matter, Bill?”
Little Jim said in his mouselike voice, which was also excited for a change, “See anything important?”
Dragonfly was on the ground in front of me. He yelled up and said, “What’s the matter?” Then he sneezed, which is what people sometimes do when all of a sudden they look up and the sun gets into their eyes, which it did in Dragonfly’s eyes right that second.
“Quick!” I yelled. “Come on, we’ve got to get to the schoolhouse before Mr. Black does, or the schoolhouse will catch on fire maybe!” The ladder was on the side of the schoolhouse where I knew Mr. Black wouldn’t see it when he got there.
I whirled around, made a leap for the ground, landed in a snowdrift, got out of it in a hurry, and raced as fast as I could down Poetry’s lane toward the highway.
Poetry and Dragonfly and Little Jim came whizzing along behind me, yelling what was the matter and why was I in such a hurry, and how on earth could the schoolhouse catch on fire, and why did we have to get there before Mr. Black did?
I still had Poetry’s binoculars in my hand and was running, panting, and dodging drifts, and all the time I could see in my mind Dad’s new ladder leaning up against the school-house. I knew that if Mr. Black ever saw it and found out whose it was, I’d have a hard time explaining to him that I hadn’t done it.
In between pants, I managed to get it into the heads of the rest of the gang what I’d seen and why I was in a hurry. “We’ve got to get there first and get that board off the chimney or the room will be filled with smoke and maybe there will be an explosion.” I remembered that in The Hoosier Schoolmaster there had really been a lot of smoke.
Poetry, who was my best friend, was almost as mad as I was, and he said behind me between his short breaths, “Those dirty bums! They’re the cause of all our trouble with our new teacher!”
And Little Jim, who heard him say that, yelled to us, “Are you sure?” Imagine his not being sure.
We took a shortcut we knew about. Once when we were on the top of a little hill in Dragonfly’s woods, we stopped, and Poetry and I took a couple of quick looks through the binoculars toward Circus’s house to see if Mr. Black was still there. His horse was, so we guessed he was too.
Then I saw him out in their backyard, and a whole flock of girls was lined up against the woodshed, and he was taking their picture. I didn’t see Circus anywhere, and I wished he was with us because he could run faster than any of us and also climb better.
“Come on!” I yelled to the rest of the guys with me. “We can make it, I think.”
Away we went.
“Wait!” Dragonfly yelled from pretty far back. “I’m out of breath. I … can’t … can’t run … so … fast!”
All of a sudden Poetry stopped. “We’re crazy, Bill. We can’t make it. See! There he goes now, right straight toward the schoolhouse. Quick! Drop down! He’s looking this way.”
He ducked behind a rail fence, which was where we were at the time, and I dropped down beside him. Dragonfly was still coming along not more than fifty feet behind us, and Little Jim was staying back with him.
I hated to stop, and I hated to have to realize what was happening. But it was true that Mr. Black was going to get to the schoolhouse first, and he’d start the fire in the schoolhouse stove because he wouldn’t see the ladder, since it was on the opposite side of the school from the woodshed where he kept his kindling wood.
I’d seen Mr. Black start fires in the Poetry-shaped iron stove before. He always went straight to the corner under the long shelf where we all kept our lunch boxes. He’d pick up a tin can of kerosene, which he kept in the corner and in which he kept some neat little sticks. Those little sticks would be all soaked with kerosene from having been there all night or longer. He’d take them to the stove and lay them in carefully, along with other small pieces of wood and a few larger pieces, and then he would very carefully light a match and touch the flame to the kerosene-soaked sticks, and right away there would be a nice fire.
I knew it would take him only a little while, and in a few minutes the fire in the stove would be roaring away. But with that board on the chimney, the smoke couldn’t get out. It’d have to come out of the stove somewhere, and the schoolhouse would fill with smoke. Also I remembered that the school Christmas tree, which we’d left up since Christmas, wasn’t more than fifteen feet from the stove, and its needles were dry enough to burn.
Something had to be done in a hurry, and yet there was Mr. Black getting closer and closer to the schoolhouse. In fact, it was already too late to get there without being seen before he went inside. I knew that if I got there in time to hurry up that ladder and take off the board, I’d have to do it after Mr. Black got inside and before he could get the fire laid and started.
The rail fence behind which we were hiding right that minute was on the same side of the school the ladder was on and about as far from the school as our barn is from our house.
All of us were squatted down behind the fence now, and I took charge. I said, “You guys stay here. The very minute he gets in, I’ll dive out of here and make a beeline for the school-house and zip up the ladder and take the board off. Then I’ll climb back down, drag the ladder around behind the schoolhouse quick, and come back here. Then tonight or sometime after Mr. Black goes home, some of us’ll sneak over and bring the ladder home, and everything’ll be all right.”
It was a good idea if only it would work—which it had to, or I just knew that the gentleman I’d made up my mind I was going to try to be would get a terrible switching, which any gentleman shouldn’t have to have, or else he isn’t one, which I wasn’t yet.
“Let me do it,” Poetry said, puffing hard from the fast run we’d just had.
Dragonfly said, “The ladder’d break with you on it,” trying to be funny and not being.
Little Jim piped up. “All the snow’s off the roof right next to the chimney.” I looked at him real quick, and he had a faraway look in his eyes, as if he was not only looking at the dry roof around the schoolhouse chimney but was thinking something very important that he’d heard in church that morning, but which I hadn’t.
“Here goes,” I said, my heart beating wildly. “You guys stay here and watch.”
Little Jim said, “We will. We’ll watch and … and …”
I knew what he was going to say even before he said it, and for some reason it seemed right for him to say it, and it didn’t sound sissified for him to, either. While I was climbing over that rail fence and making a dive for the school-house and the ladder, Little Jim�
�s whole sentence was tumbling around in my mind, and it was, “We will. We’ll watch and … and pray.”
Little Jim was almost as good a friend of mine as Poetry was, I thought.
A jiffy later I reached my dad’s new ladder and had just started up, when I heard somebody running behind me and saying in a husky whisper, “Hey, Bill! Stop. Wait! Let me hold the ladder.”
I looked around quick, and it was Poetry, and I knew he was right. My dad had taught me never to go up a ladder until I was sure the bottom of it was safely set so it wouldn’t slip—or unless somebody stayed at the bottom to hold it so it couldn’t.
Then I was on my way up, and then I was at the eaves. Being a very good climber, I scrambled up the little roof ladder, which was made out of nailed-on boards, to the redbrick chimney. I had to be as quiet as I could, though, not wanting Mr. Black to hear me on the roof. I also was going to have to be careful when I took the board away so that the sound of it sliding off wouldn’t go down the chimney and through the stove.
In a minute, I thought, I’d have that board off and would toss it far out where it wouldn’t hit Poetry, and then I’d be on my way down again. But when I took hold of the wide, flat board, I couldn’t any more get it off than anything.
I gasped out loud when I saw why I couldn’t move it. There was a nail driven into each end, and a piece of stovepipe wire was wrapped around the head of each nail. Then the wire was twisted around and around the brick chimney, down where it was smaller. That old board wouldn’t budge—an almost new board, rather, and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the board out of the swing that we have in the walnut tree at my house. Why, the dirty crooks! I thought. They wanted it to be sure it would look as if Bill Collins put it up here.
I was holding onto the chimney—sort of sitting behind it, so I wouldn’t slide down. Below in the schoolhouse, I could hear sounds of somebody doing something to the stove. It must have been Mr. Black finishing laying the fire, because then I heard a sound like an iron door closing on the big, round, Poetry-shaped stove.
Only a second later, a puff of bluish smoke came bursting out through a crack where the board didn’t quite cover the chimney on one side, and I knew that the fire was started. I knew, too, that in minutes that one-room school would be filling with smoke, and a mad teacher would come storming out to see what on earth was the matter with the chimney, and I’d be in for it.
“Hey!” I whispered down to Poetry, shielding my voice with my hand so the sound would go toward him instead of down the chimney.
Poetry heard me and dived out far enough from the schoolhouse to see me.
I whispered, “It’s too late. The fire’s already started. What’ll I do? I can’t get it off. They’ve wired it on. If I had a pair of pliers, I could cut the wire.”
And Poetry said back to me, “There’s a pair in the schoolhouse.” Which was not helpful.
Awful sounds came up the chimney from down inside the schoolhouse, and I could just imagine what Mr. Black was thinking and maybe was saying too. Smoke was pouring out of the chimney beside my face, but I knew the crack was too small for all the smoke to get out, and the room down there would be filling up.
What on earth can we do? was screaming at me in my mind.
Then Poetry had an idea. “Come on down quick, and let’s run. Let’s leave the ladder and everything!”
“But it’s my dad’s ladder, and it’s our swing board out of our walnut tree swing.”
“I say, let’s run!” Poetry half yelled and, for some reason, knowing I couldn’t get the board off the chimney, and guessing what might happen if I got caught, it seemed Poetry’s idea was as good as any So. I turned and started to scoot my way down the board ladder on the roof to the ladder Poetry would be holding for me.
And then—well, I don’t know how it happened, but my boot slipped before I could get my feet on Dad’s ladder. I felt all of me slipping toward the edge of the roof—slipping, slipping, slipping, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I’d be going slippety-sizzle over the edge of the eaves and landing with a wham at Poetry’s feet. I might even land on him and hurt him.
Even while I was sliding, I heard a sickening sound in the schoolhouse somewhere, like maybe a stove falling down or a chair falling over or something. Then my feet were over the edge, and I was grasping and grasping with my bare hands at the slippery roof, and they couldn’t find anything to hold onto. Then I heard another sound that was even more sickening than the one I’d heard from the schoolhouse, and it was a ripping and tearing sound. I felt a long sharp pain on me somewhere, and I knew my trousers had caught on a nail.
R-r-r-ip! R-r-r-ip! Tear-r-r! And I also knew that when I hit the ground in a second or two, there would be a big hole in my trousers that I’d have to explain to Mom when I got home, as well as a lot of other things to both Mom and Dad.
The next thing I knew I was off the edge and falling, and the very next thing I learned awfully quick was that I had landed ker-wham-thud in a snowdrift at the foot of the ladder.
10
Even while I was falling and scared and feeling that long sharp pain running up and down my hip where I’d probably been scratched by a nail, I was wondering what would happen next, what Mr. Black would do, and what would happen when I got home. And also I was wondering how bad I would be hurt when I fell. And then I landed ker-fluffety-sizzle in that big snowdrift.
And there I was, Bill Collins, the one member of the Sugar Creek Gang who had made up his mind he wasn’t going to have anything to do with smoking a teacher out of his school-house. The one who was going to be what is called a gentleman was now lying upside down in a scrambled-up heap, all covered with snow, with one of his trouser legs ripped maybe halfway down, and with his mind all tangled up and everything.
The fall didn’t hurt much because the snowdrift was pretty deep, but we had to do something and do it quick.
I heard the schoolhouse door open around in the front of the school. While I was trying to scramble to my feet, I looked, and there came Mr. Black, hurrying around to our side of the schoolhouse with a big pail in his hand. He swooped down with it onto a snowdrift, scooped up a pailful of snow, and, without even looking in our direction, dived back around the corner of the schoolhouse as if he was half scared to death.
Poetry yelled to Dragonfly and Little Jim, who were still hiding behind the rail fence, “Hurry up! I think the schoolhouse is on fire inside! Let’s go help Mr. Black put it out.”
And so I, Bill Collins, an imaginary gentleman but not looking like even half a one, staggered out of my snowdrift. The four of us ran to the front of the schoolhouse and around to the open door, which had smoke pouring out of it, to see if we could help Mr. Black put out the fire.
“I can’t go in,” Dragonfly said. “I’m allergic to smoke. It’ll make me sneeze.”
And then I heard Mr. Black’s horse, which was tied at the front gate, snort and make crazy horse noises. Even before I could imagine what was going to happen, it had happened. There was a noise like a leather strap straining and then a cracking and splintering sound. I looked just in time to see the little wooden gate to which the horse had been tied break in two or maybe three pieces and part of it go galloping down the road, dragged by a wild-eyed saddle horse.
At the same time I saw a half-wild-looking man run out of the smoking schoolhouse and make a dash through the place where the gate had been and go racing after the horse, not even seeing us. Or if he saw us, he didn’t pay any attention to us but yelled to Prince in a commanding voice, “Whoa! Whoa!”
It certainly was an exciting minute. In spite of the way I knew I must have looked myself, with snow all over me and with a ripped trouser leg and everything, Mr. Black looked even worse as he raced down the road after his horse, yelling for him to stop. When he ran past us, I noticed that his hands were black with soot, as was his face, and he really looked like a wild man. For some reason, even while everything else was all topsy-turvy in my mind, I couldn’
t help but remember Poetry’s poetry:
The Sugar Creek Gang had the worst of
teachers,
And “Black” his name was called.
His round red face had the homeliest
of features;
He was fat and forty and bald.
Today his face was black as well as his name, and I knew that, if he hadn’t been bald, his hair would certainly have been mussed up as mine is most of the time when my hat is off. Only, Mr. Black’s fur hat was still on.
But Prince certainly wasn’t in any horse mood to stop, being scared, I suppose, because of smoke pouring out of the schoolhouse, and all the noise that the stove had made, and the gang making a noise and running excitedly. That horse with a gate tied to its bridle rein probably was as scared as a dog or cat is when a boy who ought to know better ties a can to its tail and it gets scared and runs and keeps on running.
Prince kept on running, and the piece of gate kept swinging in different directions. Every time the horse turned his head this way or that, the gate would swing around and sock him in the side and scare him maybe even worse. I thought how terrible it would be if Prince would get his feet tangled up in part of the gate and fall and maybe break one of his legs and have to be killed. That is what nearly always has to be done to a horse when it breaks a leg, because you can’t get a horse to be quiet long enough for its leg to heal. I certainly wouldn’t want such a pretty horse to have to be killed.
Well, there we were—the four of us, innocent-faced Little Jim, dragonfly-eyed Dragonfly, barrel-shaped Poetry, and me, red-haired, freckled-faced Bill Collins. And there were Mr. Black and his horse, getting farther and farther up the road that leads past Circus’s and Big Jim’s houses, which are on the other side of the road from each other.
But we couldn’t stand there and just watch a runaway horse with a man chasing it when a schoolhouse was on fire. I’d been so excited about the runaway horse that I’d almost forgotten the schoolhouse.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12 Page 39