Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24

by Paul Hutchens

  I yelled to Mr. Everhard, “Come on! They’re safe! Hurrah!” I started on a fast, wet run toward the sycamore tree, swerved around it, and went on toward the mouth of the cave itself.

  Just as I got there, I noticed that the door, which had been locked for a few weeks, was open. And then, what to my wondering eyes should appear but Mrs. Everhard, wearing the swallowtail butterfly dress I had liked so well that other afternoon when she had borrowed Charlotte Ann. Charlotte Ann herself was standing in front of Mrs. Everhard with one of her chubby hands clasped in hers.

  “Come on in out of the rain! Come on in!” Mrs. Everhard said cheerfully. “Mr. Paddler has invited us to come up through the cave to his cabin for a cup of sassafras tea.”

  13

  I tell you, a wonderful feeling started to gallop up and down my spine and all through me as we two drowned rats hurried to the cave and went inside, where it was so quiet we could hardly hear the storm.

  “We got here just before the storm broke,” Mrs. Everhard said to her husband—and probably also to me.

  I noticed that the rock-walled room was all lit up with five or six candles, and then I noticed that over in a corner, sitting at the desk, was Old Man Paddler himself! His long white whiskers reached almost down to his belt, and his hair was white as a summer afternoon cloud in the southwest sky.

  I noticed also that there were several new, comfortable chairs in the cave, the kind that people have in their houses. Over on the east wall, hanging from a wooden peg that was driven into a crack, was a beautiful wall motto, “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God.”

  So this is why he has had the cave closed up for the past few weeks, I thought. He had closed it for repairs, the way they do a store in town when they are redecorating it. It was really pretty neat.

  “How do you like our reception room?” Mrs. Everhard asked her husband.

  He stared at her.

  Knowing he didn’t understand what she meant, she said, “Today was my consultation day, you know. Mr. Paddler has been giving me lessons in faith, teaching me how to trust everything to God and …”

  While she was talking, I noticed that Charlotte Ann was hiding herself behind Mrs. Everhard’s skirts the way she does behind Mom’s sometimes when she feels bashful.

  Then Mr. Everhard asked a question. “You mean you have been coming here for consultations?”

  “Every other day for over a week. I had a hard time sneaking away sometimes, but I managed it—while you thought I was at the Collinses and once when you thought I was taking a nap. But I won’t have to come anymore.”

  Her voice suddenly broke, and I could tell that some tears had gotten into it. Then, maybe not realizing that her husband’s clothes were as wet as a soaked sponge and that she had on her pretty swallowtail butterfly dress, she made a dive for him, sobbing and saying, “Oh, John, darling! I see it now! I see it! God is good! God does love me, and I know we will see our dear little Elsa again in heaven! I have learned to trust! There is rest in heaven, as it says on Sarah Paddler’s tombstone!”

  It was a sight I maybe wasn’t supposed to see. I noticed that Old Man Paddler himself got out a snow-white handkerchief and brushed away a couple of tears. Then he adjusted his thick-lensed glasses and looked down at the Bible on the desk in front of him.

  “Just this afternoon,” Mrs. Everhard said with her face buried against her husband’s neck, “when I saw the clouds rolling and twisting and I knew there was going to be a bad storm, I was so afraid for little Charlotte Ann. I prayed and prayed as I ran, knowing if I could get here, we would be safe. When lightning struck that old tree out there, and it came crashing down in the very place where we had been just a moment before, I realized that God Himself was looking after us. So I began to thank Him. And without knowing I was going to do it, I was also thanking Jesus for dying upon the cross for me that my sins might be forgiven and—and all of a sudden I began to be very happy inside. Oh, John!”

  Mrs. Everhard stopped talking and just clung to her husband. They stood with their arms around each other, and little Charlotte Ann stood below them, not knowing what was going on at all.

  Then Charlotte Ann looked up at them and, as she does sometimes when Mom and Dad are standing like that, she beat her little hands on Mrs. Everhard’s knees and said to them in her cute little baby voice, “I want to be up where the heads are.”

  Well, that is the beginning of the end of this story about one of the most wonderful things that ever happened around Sugar Creek.

  After the storm was over and the clouds had cleared away and the friendly sun was shining again on a terribly wet world that had just had a good rainwater bath, we said good-bye to Old Man Paddler, not accepting his kind invitation to go through the cave to his cabin for a cup of sassafras tea. I knew I had better get back home with Charlotte Ann before my parents got there, so that when they did get there I would just be finishing my job of two hours of baby-sitting.

  I maybe ought to close the windows, too. And if there was any rainwater on the floor anywhere, I had better get it mopped up quick before Dad or Mom or both of them at the same time saw it and started mopping up on me.

  We were all the way to the Sugar Creek bridge when Mr. Everhard stopped to say, “Where’s the shovel you took with you when you left the tent?”

  Mrs. Everhard laughed a very musical laugh and answered, “I gave it to Mr. Paddler. He needs a new one for his flower garden up in the hills. Besides, I don’t think I’ll ever need it again. Will I, darling?” she said to Charlotte Ann, whom she was carrying.

  But Charlotte Ann didn’t seem to understand what it was all about. “I’m hungry,” she said.

  Just that second there was a rippling bird voice from somewhere in the woods, and it sounded like “O Lottle-lee. Lottle-lee.” It was an honest-to-goodness wood thrush this time, which probably felt extrahappy about something now that the storm was over.

  When we got to the green tent, Mrs. Ever-hard just stood looking at all the damage the storm had done. In fact, none of us said anything for a minute, not even Charlotte Ann. I was sort of expecting her to make some kind of a woman’s exclamation and feel terribly bad. But instead she said quietly, “Well, that’s that. It was God’s storm, so we’ll have to accept what it did to our property.” And I thought what a wonderful teacher Old Man Paddler had been.

  Then she seemed to forget that Charlotte Ann and I were there, because she said, “It’s been a wonderful vacation, John, wonderful! I’ll never be able to thank God enough for such a thoughtful husband and for that dear old man in the cave.”

  Well, I can’t take time now to tell you any more about what happened that day, except that I did get home with Charlotte Ann at just about the time my folks drove up to our mailbox. Mom was so thankful we were all right that she didn’t say much about the rainwater on the kitchen floor and my wet clothes.

  Besides, the Everhards were there, and it seems Mom thinks I am a better boy when we have company than when we don’t. Also, Mr. Everhard was all wet, too, and it might not seem right for a boy to get a scolding for something it was all right for a grown-up to do.

  The Everhards couldn’t stay in their tent that night, so Little Jim’s mom kept them at their house, for they have one of the best spare rooms in all the Sugar Creek territory. Tomorrow the bobwhite and his wood thrush wife could move back into the tent, after it had been dried out and pitched in a new and better location.

  Big Jim himself picked out the best campsite in the woods for the Everhards, and with some of our dads helping a little, we moved the tent and all their equipment about fifty feet from the linden tree.

  Then we called a special gang meeting to talk over all the exciting things that had happened, especially to Charlotte Ann and the turtledove—who had turned into a wood thrush—and her bobwhite husband.

  We spent maybe an hour walking around through the woods to see how many trees had been blown down or uprooted. Some of our favorite tre
es had, which made us feel kind of sad. But it was good to be together even though we couldn’t go in swimming.

  Sugar Creek’s ordinarily nice, clear, friendly water was an angry-looking brown and was running almost as fast along its course as it does all the time just in the riffles. Both ends of the bayou were so full they came together in the middle to make one big, long pond, and I thought about how sad the cute little barred pickerel must feel to have their playground spoiled for them. It certainly wouldn’t be much fun for them to have to look at everything through muddy water. Besides, who wants to have muddy water in his eyes all the time?

  There wasn’t very much we could do that was exciting enough for a gang of boys, and we couldn’t even lie down and roll in the grass. It was still wet.

  “We can all go home and help our folks—maybe offer to hoe potatoes or something,” Poetry said with a heavy sigh.

  Circus answered, “It’s too wet to work the ground today. Don’t you know that?”

  “Sure I know that,” Poetry answered with a grin. “That’s why I said it.”

  “What can we do?” Dragonfly asked in a discouraged, whining voice.

  It was Little Tom Till who thought of something that sounded interesting. “Let’s all go down to the cave and see the way Old Man Paddler has fixed it up.”

  “Yeah,” Little Jim chimed in, “and let’s go through it up to his cabin and see if maybe he will offer to make us some sassafras tea.”

  From the old linden tree, where we were at the time, we rambled toward the bridge, following the shore of the creek, which certainly didn’t look friendly today, even with the cheerful afternoon sun shining down on it. I wished everything would hurry up and get back to normal. If there is anything in the world that gives a person a sad feeling, it is to have his favorite swimming hole spoiled by a heavy rain.

  “Ho-hum,” I sighed as I was climbing over the rail fence at the north road.

  “Ho-hum, yourself,” Poetry sighed back at me.

  Only Little Jim seemed happy. He was standing on the top rail of the fence. “What you guys so sad for?”

  “Sad?” I answered. “Who’s sad?”

  “Yeah, who is?” Big Jim said sadly.

  “What are you grinning like a possum for?” Dragonfly asked Little Jim.

  The little fellow scooted down the other side of the fence then, saying over his shoulder as he ran across the gravel road, “Because next winter I get to go to the Everhards’ new resort at Squaw Lake and go ice fishing. And I can take two of the gang along with me, whichever two of you want to go. They just bought a resort up there last week and are going to move there this fall.”

  Little Jim had found out all that while the Everhards had been at his house. He was halfway over the fence on the other side of the road when he finished telling us about it.

  Well, this has got to be the last part of this story, because I have to get started as quick as I can on the next one—a long and happy and exciting story about how all the gang got to go to the Everhards’ resort in the wilds of the North for a few days’ ice fishing, up where there were a lot of wild animals living all around in the forest. Talk about a different kind of fun and also a different kind of adventure! Boy oh boy!

  I’ll finish this by telling you something that happened that afternoon when we got to the cave.

  “Hurry up,” Little Jim called to us.

  And for some reason, his cheerful voice made me begin to feel wonderful as we all swished across the road, up the embankment on the other side, and started on a helter-skelter gallop toward the cave—where we found an envelope tacked to the door.

  The Sugar Creek Gang Series:

  1 The Swamp Robber

  2 The Killer Bear

  3 The Winter Rescue

  4 The Lost Campers

  5 The Chicago Adventure

  6 The Secret Hideout

  7 The Mystery Cave

  8 Palm Tree Manhunt

  9 One Stormy Day

  10 The Mystery Thief

  11 Teacher Trouble

  12 Screams in the Night

  13 The Indian Cemetery

  14 The Treasure Hunt

  15 Thousand Dollar Fish

  16 The Haunted House

  17 Lost in the Blizzard

  18 On the Mexican Border

  19 The Green Tent Mystery

  20 The Bull Fighter

  21 The Timber Wolf

  22 Western Adventure

  23 The Killer Cat

  24 The Colorado Kidnapping

  25 The Ghost Dog

  26 The White Boat Rescue

  27 The Brown Box Mystery

  28 The Watermelon Mystery

  29 The Trapline Thief

  30 The Blue Cow

  31 Treehouse Mystery

  32 The Cemetery Vandals

  33 The Battle of the Bees

  34 Locked in the Attic

  35 Runaway Rescue

  36 The Case of Missing Calf

  Paul Hutchens

  MOODY PUBLISHERS

  CHICAGO

  © 1952, 1998 by

  PAULINE HUTCHENS WILSON

  Revised Edition, 1998

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, and 1994 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif. Used by permission.

  Original Title: 10,000 Minutes at Sugar Creek

  ISBN: 978-0-8024-7024-9

  We hope you enjoy this book from Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought-provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more information on other books and products written and produced from a biblical perspective, go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:

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  PREFACE

  Hi—from a member of the Sugar Creek Gang!

  It’s just that I don’t know which one I am. When I was good, I was Little Jim. When I did bad things—well, sometimes I was Bill Collins or even mischievous Poetry.

  You see, I am the daughter of Paul Hutchens, and I spent many an hour listening to him read his manuscript as far as he had written it that particular day. I went along to the north woods of Minnesota, to Colorado, and to the various other places he would go to find something different for the Gang to do.

  Now the years have passed—more than fifty, actually. My father is in heaven, but the Gang goes on. All thirty-six books are still in print and now are being updated for today’s readers with input from my five children, who also span the decades from the ’50s to the ’70s.

  The real Sugar Creek is in Indiana, and my father and his six brothers were the original Gang. But the idea of the books and their ministry were and are the Lord’s. It is He who keeps the Gang going.

  PAULINE HUTCHENS WILSON

  1

  The very thought of my city cousin coming to visit us for a whole week while his parents went on a vacation was enough to start a whirlwind in my mind.

  A whirlwind, you know, is a baby-sized rotating windstorm. On most any ordinary summer day around our farm, you can expect to see one of these friendly fun makers spiraling out across the fields or through the woods like a little funnel of wind. It laughs along, carrying with it a lot of different things such as dry leaves and grass and feathers from our chicken yard or dust from the path that goes from the iron pitcher pump across the barnyard to the barn, or anything else that’s loose and light.

  Away the little whirlwind goes, whirlety-sizzle, like an excited boy running in circles. Is it ever fun to toss yourself into one of them and go racing along with it and in it. Nearly every time
I get into the middle of one, though, it acts as if it can’t stand having a red-haired boy getting mixed up in it, and all of a sudden it isn’t a whirlwind anymore. All the leaves and grass and dust and stuff stop whirling and just sail around in the sky awhile before they come floating down all over the place.

  So Wally, my whirlwind city cousin, was coming to visit us. He not only had a lot of mischievous ideas in his mind, but he didn’t like to be told anything, such as how to do a thing and especially not to do a thing.

  The worst thing was, he was going to bring with him his copper-colored dog, which he had named Alexander the Coppersmith and which didn’t have any good country manners. Certainly there would be plenty of excitement around the place, and some of it would be dangerous. Just how dangerous, I couldn’t tell until Wally and his dog got there.

  There isn’t any boy who likes excitement more than I do, and I even like it a little bit dangerous, as well as mysterious, but I didn’t want Wally to come, and I didn’t want Alexander the Coppersmith either.

  Honest to goodness, I never heard or saw or smelled such a frisky, uncontrollable, uneducated, ill-mannered dog without any good country breeding, from his mischievous muzzle all the way back to his “feather.”

  Maybe you didn’t know that dogs have feathers, but they do. “Feather” is the name of the tip end of a dog’s tail. It’s the featherlike hair that grows on the very, very end. I didn’t know that myself until I read it in a book about dogs, which Dad gave me for my birthday.

  When I had first seen Wally’s dog, I thought it was an Airedale. Wally was extraproud of his copper-colored quadruped because he could do several things, such as sit up and bark when he wanted food.

  I never will forget what happened the year Wally brought him the first time. It was on a Thanksgiving Day. Wally had been so sure that if we tied our turkey’s neck to a rope and tied the other end of the rope to Alexander that he would lead the turkey all around the pen like a boy leading a pony. We tried it, and for a while it was a lot of fun watching the dog do his stuff. The turkey followed along behind like a baby chicken following its mother, until all of a sudden our old black and white cat, Mixy, came arching her back and rubbing her sides against things the way cats do. A second later, Alexander was making a wild dog dash toward Mixy. At that very second also, Mixy made a wild cat dash out across our barnyard toward the barn.