Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24

by Paul Hutchens

  It was a pretty wonderful prayer, and I made up my mind that someday I would learn to pray just as good a one myself, if I could.

  As hungry as I was for the cookies and as thirsty as I was for a cup of melted lollipops, I could have listened to Old Man Paddler pray a little longer without getting tired. Also, for some reason, I was thinking of my cousin Wally and was glad he was hearing what Old Man Paddler was saying. It seemed the Lord was another Person right in the room with us; we just couldn’t see Him. I knew He liked all the boys and girls in the world and wanted them to enjoy all the wonderful things in nature that He had made just for them. Something the old man said in his prayer must have reminded him of something else, because a little later, while we were having our tea and cookies, he excused himself, stood up, and went over to a corner of the room. There he lifted a white cloth from a basketful of apples, saying, “You boys help yourselves to these before you go.”

  I had seen apples exactly like them in one of his orchards about a quarter of a mile from his cabin, where we had helped ourselves any time we wanted to—he having given us permission.

  Well, when the old man said for us to help ourselves to the apples in the basket, Dragonfly spoke up and said, “We can get all we want on our way home.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Old Man Paddler answered. “I think maybe you boys won’t want to climb over into the orchard today. It’s not safe.”

  What could he mean? I wondered.

  Then he told us. Just yesterday he had rented one of his pastures to a cattleman named Harm Groenwald, who had moved into the Sugar Creek neighborhood. The pasture was right next to that apple orchard. There was a big red bull running with Mr. Groenwald’s other cattle, the old man said, and that very morning while he was in his orchard getting apples, the bull had spotted him. Seeing the old man and being mad about something anyway, as bulls quite often are, he had let loose a mad bellow and started crashing down the gate.

  “I’m too old to hurry very fast,” Old Man Paddler said. “I don’t do so well since I fell down the cellar stairs. So I almost didn’t make it. I did get to the other side of the orchard and over the wire fence just in time, though. If it hadn’t been for the Lord helping me, I wouldn’t be here this afternoon.”

  When he said that, it was easier to understand why he had prayed the way he had—about his going up to heaven to see his wife and boys and about us being protected from danger.

  “Until we get a new bullproof gate, we’ll all have to stay out of the orchard,” he cautioned us. Then his old eyes spotted Poetry’s red shirt. “Your shirt wouldn’t help his temper any, either,” he said. “A bull always sees red when he sees red.”

  Also he looked at Wally’s and my red hair. “And there are two other reasons why you should stay on this side of the fence.”

  First Big Jim and then all of us thanked the old man for warning us. We knew enough about farm life to know how dangerous bulls are when they really are dangerous.

  But Wally’s city experience had been a lot different from ours. The very first thing he said after we left the cabin was “I want to see the bull. I never saw an honest to goodness bad-tempered one in my life.”

  8

  Honestly, I never saw a boy and his dog get into more interesting and exciting situations and into more trouble they had to have help to get out of!

  On the way to the orchard, Wally let Alexander run free, and did that mongrel enjoy his liberty! He made life miserable for every rabbit and squirrel and chipmunk he saw, making a fierce fast dash after them the minute he spied them. Once a covey of quail exploded into the air in front of his curious nose, and, as quail do, they fanned up and out in every direction. Poor Alexander was dumbfounded. He couldn’t decide which direction to run. He made an excited leap into the air. Before he came down, he had turned a complete circle.

  I was remembering how smart quail were. When a family of them was on the ground, they arranged themselves in a little cluster with their tails together and their heads pointing outward like the spokes of a wheel. Then when any danger came along, they could burst into the air, and their wings wouldn’t get in each other’s way. They’d each start off in a different direction, which would make it safer for them in case anybody shot at them.

  But nothing seemed to bother Alexander the Coppersmith very long. He was just as happy that he had chased nine or ten quail out of his sight as if they had been that many wild animals. The proud expression on his face never left for more than a few seconds at a time. When he did stop running for some reason and walk ahead of us or beside Wally for even a few seconds, he would lift his sharp-toenailed feet as proudly as if he were a fancy show horse at a county fair.

  Well, pretty soon we came to the edge of the pasture Old Man Paddler had rented to Mr. Groenwald. I noticed that the cattle were up at the other end, standing in the shade of some trees near the orchard, probably in the shade of the very apple tree that had on it the apples I liked best. Also I remembered that the gate leading into the orchard was there. At that distance, my eyes couldn’t separate the bull from the rest of the cattle, but I supposed he was there with them, anyway.

  In the same pasture not far from where we were, there was a flock of maybe sixty sheep, quite a few of which were cute little woolly lambs. Some of them had tails and some of them not. While I was wondering if Mr. Groenwald had used an elastrator on his lambs, as most of the Sugar Creek farmers had done that year, Alexander came galloping back from having chased a rabbit out of his sight. Then he spied the flock of sheep.

  One lamb was closer to the fence than the rest, and Alexander ran excitedly up and down the fence till he found an opening big enough for a dog to get through. Then away he went, head and nose and teeth first, toward that lamb, which, looking up from nibbling grass and seeing and hearing and maybe smelling Alexander coming, started to run like Little Bo Peep’s sheep, carrying its tail behind it.

  The lamb was bleating as it ran, and I realized it was a one-sided race in which the lamb was sure to lose.

  Suddenly a covey of seven boys’ voices exploded into the air and shot like bullets in the direction of that dog, each of us saying the same thing in different words: “Stop, you dumb dog!” “Stop, you crazy, nonsensical mongrel!” “Stop! Don’t you know anything?” “Leave that lamb alone!”

  And all the time Wally was yelling, “Alexander, stop! Alexander the Coppersmith, come back here!”

  But that uncontrollable dog was like a boy in a footrace with a crowd of people yelling and rooting for him to run faster. He didn’t stop.

  I was both mad and scared. I could imagine that insane dog’s sharp teeth tearing the lamb’s shoulder or flank or even his throat, making a big ugly wound. Then, if we couldn’t stop the bleeding or get a veterinarian to come soon enough, the lamb might bleed to death.

  I also knew that sometimes in our territory sheep had actually been killed by dogs, especially at night. Some farmers had lost a lot of sheep that way. Once a dog had been proved guilty, and he had been shot.

  But Alexander couldn’t be stopped. He kept on running toward that innocent little lamb, which, for some reason, stumbled over itself, and down it went. A second later, Wally’s dog crashed into him headfirst. Because Alexander had been running so fast, he lost his own balance and went into a double flip-flop, rolling over a couple of times before finally landing on his feet all ready for more action.

  I don’t know what happened in that dog’s mind—if he had a mind—while he was turning that flip-flop and rolling over. Maybe he was so surprised that he forgot what he was doing, or maybe all of our screams upset his plans, or maybe he didn’t know what he was doing in the first place. The next thing I knew, he had left the lamb and was galloping back toward us.

  I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw what I saw. That little lamb, which, when it had started to run, had had a cute little dangling tail, didn’t have it now, and Alexander the Coppersmith did. Alexander was galloping toward us with the lamb’s t
ail in his mouth—a happy expression on his face, as if he had just had the best time of his life, had done something wonderful, and wanted us to think so, too.

  That expression! Honestly! it seemed to say. See what I did for you? I’m a wonderful dog!

  He had gone out into that pasture with only one tail and had come back with two-one on each end of him. One was fastened to him and was his own, and the other belonged to the lamb.

  Well, all the gang knew what had happened. Alexander had caught hold of the lamb’s tail, which, four weeks ago, had had an elastrator used on it. It had been about ready to fall off anyway. The minute he had gotten it between his teeth and given it a tug, it had come off in his mouth.

  With all of us yelling at him to come back, and he probably thinking we were cheering for him, he got mixed up in his mind. The tail in his mouth was about the size of the stick he was used to carrying back to Wally, and he forgot the lamb and came back to where we were.

  But Wally didn’t know about a farmer using an elastrator to dock his lambs. When he saw that lamb’s tail in Alexander’s mouth, he got a scared expression on his face.

  All the gang must have thought of the same thing at the same time, because right away we started telling him about sheep-killing dogs and how the owner of that kind of dog had to pay for any killed or badly hurt sheep.

  “Sometimes the dog that is guilty has to be killed,” Dragonfly said to Wally.

  Well, Wally got his dog back on the leash, and we all walked along the fencerow toward the other end of the pasture where the orchard was. The gang had fun making Wally think he might be in some real trouble. He thought he might have to pay all of his one hundred dollars because of his dog’s biting off the lamb’s tail. A little later, though, when he began to be really worried, we stopped teasing him and told him the truth.

  Not long after that, we reached the orchard—on our own side of the fence, of course-being especially careful to keep Alexander the Coppersmith on his leash. At any minute he might take a notion to jump the fence and try his success on one of the cows to see if he could come galloping back with a cow’s tail in his mouth.

  We couldn’t let him risk it. That fierce old bull, which I was looking at right that minute, would probably make a furious headfirst rush straight for the dog and toss him back over the fence with a horn hole clear through him.

  We didn’t stay there very long, because we could see that Old Man Paddler was right. That was the fiercest-looking bull I had ever seen. The very minute he spied Poetry’s red shirt, he turned his head toward us and stared and stared and glared and began edging toward the fence where we were, as though he would be tickled to death to show us how he could protect every one of the fifteen or more milk cows that were with him.

  The cattle were all standing by the gate. It had been repaired, but I could see that if the bull wanted to, he could have torn it down in a minute—as easy as Charlotte Ann could knock down a house of blocks—and come on through it into the orchard.

  We watched the cows swishing their tails and lifting their feet nervously to keep the flies away, and then we went on, eating the apples we had in our pockets.

  Alexander was the only one who didn’t seem satisfied. He kept whining and straining on the end of his leash in the direction of the bull, as if he would like to show us what he could really do if he had a chance. I didn’t know then that he would really get a chance before Wally’s week was over.

  Well, we decided it was time to go on toward home, because in an hour or so it would be time to help our folks with the chores. But Wally had never seen the Sugar Creek swamp, and we thought there would be time enough to go a little out of the way and take him through it. And that’s where Alexander had another adventure.

  The swamp is always a very interesting place in the summer. About halfway through it there is a big pond made by the water of Sugar Creek backing into it the way it also does about a mile farther up the creek in what we call the bayou.

  We’d had many very exciting experiences in that old swamp. On the way we told Wally about different adventures we’d had there, such as the time we saw a man’s head lying out in the middle of the swamp, and of the time Dragonfly saw a big black bear wallowing in the mud like a hog in a muddy barnyard, and a lot of other things that a city boy hardly ever has happen to him.

  There was one place on the shore of the pond where there was a little grassy hillock, and we used to stop there and rest and watch the different things that lived in the swamp, such as dragonflies sailing around like tiny airplanes that could stop anywhere they wanted to, land on anything they wanted to, and take off again without ever having a smashup. Nearly always, a big water moccasin would be hanging from the limb of the willow that extended out over the water. And usually there would be a wild duck or two or a mud hen, swimming along, making long V-shaped water trails as they swam across from one side or one end of the pond to the other. Or a muskrat would be doing the same thing, his roundish brown head looking so friendly and his two hind feet dangling along behind him as he swam.

  We kept Alexander on his leash while we went through, so that he wouldn’t get off the path and wade out into the quagmire and sink in and never come back up, the way old John Till almost did once and would have if we hadn’t rescued him.

  We stopped right where that had happened and told Wally the whole story while Alexander whimpered and strained at his leash and tried to get away and get at everything he saw moving on the ground, swimming in the water, or climbing or flying in the trees.

  “Look!” Circus exclaimed. “There’s a big snapping turtle!”

  I looked where Circus’s forefinger and Alexander’s nose were pointing. Right out in the lazy swamp water, about twenty yards from shore, I saw a shadow moving under the surface. Then the water parted, and the snapper himself came up for air, first his nose, a pair of heavy eyelids, and reddish eyes that looked like two drops of transparent blood. Then up came his wrinkled face and ugly thick neck. I got just a glimpse of the rest of him under the water and gasped. It was the biggest snapping turtle I had ever seen.

  “And look!” Little Jim said beside me. “There’s a mud hen.”

  A mud hen is the same as a marsh hen. People also call it a coot. It is a stupid bird that can’t fly very fast, and hunters don’t call it a game bird as they do actual ducks—mud hens are only ducklike. But they are always fun to watch. You could never tell, when they ducked themselves under, where they would come up next.

  The mud hen was swimming lazily along, ducking her head under every few seconds. Then she must have seen something down in the water that she wanted. Quick as a splash, she upended herself, and down she went headfirst and tail last, going completely under, leaving only a little excited circle of water where she had been, with its waves widening out and out in every direction.

  “I wish I was a mud hen,” Little Jim said. But a few seconds later, he wouldn’t have wanted to be.

  “Sh!” Big Jim ordered. “Let’s keep still.”

  And we did. Even Alexander the Coppersmith didn’t move but only trembled with excitement, whimpering to get into some action of any kind, just so he wouldn’t have to be still.

  Then, unexpectedly, things did start to happen, and Alexander the Coppersmith got into the middle of a brand-new kind of excitement. I saw it all with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears and felt it with every nerve in my body and every cold chill that ran up and down my spine and every hair on my head that tried to stand up under my straw hat.

  That mud hen, not knowing we were hiding there behind a swamp rosebush, had surfaced close to where a minute ago I had seen the big, vicious-looking, hungry-looking, bloody-eyed mud turtle. I saw her at the same time I saw the turtle’s nose.

  The turtle went down like a submarine, and I knew what was going to happen! That wrinkle-necked, powerful-jawed animal was going to sneak up under the mud hen, grab her by her pretty little webbed feet with his keen-edged cutting mandibles, and drag her down to
the muddy bottom, and that would be the end of her!

  I felt myself wanting to scream bloody murder and do something to save the hen. Yet I knew I couldn’t.

  Then, without knowing what I was going to do until I had done it, I quick stooped down, picked up a short stout stick, and threw it straight at the mud hen, yelling at the same time, “Quick! Scram! Fly! Get out of the way, or you’ll be killed!” That ugly armor-plated beast wasn’t going to have that cute little innocent coot for his afternoon lunch if I could help it.

  Quick as a flash, my stick was on the way out across the shallow water of the pond, straight for the mud hen. It struck the water with a splash six inches from her, and down she went ker-splash, leaving only my stick floating in the nervous water where she had been.

  Then things really began to happen on the shore.

  My stout stick was Alexander the Coppersmith’s invitation to do something himself. Like a flash he was gone, straight as a copper bullet down the bank toward the edge of the pond. He got to the end of his leash so fast that it took Wally by surprise and jerked him off his feet and into the water.

  But Alexander didn’t know or care what happened to Wally. He was after the stick I had thrown. It took him only seconds to swim out to get it, get it in his happy mouth, and start swimming back toward us, right past the place where I had last seen the turtle.

  Well, snapping turtles are carnivorous. They eat flesh and nothing but flesh, and they don’t care what kind—chicken, fish, muskrat, marsh hen, or dog. And they always eat their food underwater, not being able to swallow anything unless they have it beneath the water.

  A second later, there was a terrific splashing out where Alexander was and what sounded like a hundred wild yelps of terror. Alexander dropped his stick and started thrashing around like a huge fish on a boy’s line trying to get away. Then he went under, and there was only a fierce boiling of the water where he had been.

  Well, there we were, six country boys on the shore of the pond in the middle of the swamp and one city boy in the shallow water near the shore. And far out in the pond, an excited city dog was under the water somewhere, battling for his life against a fierce underwater monster that was hungry for dog meat.