Boy oh boy, I hoped Wally, and especially Alexander, wouldn’t see it—or that Alexander wouldn’t smell it. He’d make a dive for it, and it wouldn’t get away. Then we’d have the tail end of Wally’s visit ruined completely!
But it was already too late. Alexander had noticed it, and he stopped and sniffed and started a gruff growl in his throat. He wasn’t more than ten feet from me at the time, and our only hope to save us from a perfume shower bath would be to stop him quick, which I managed to do by saying, “Here, Alexander!”
I quickly picked up a stick and waved it, and he started toward me as he nearly always does until I’ve thrown the stick. Then he gallops after it.
Of course, I didn’t throw it. Instead, when he got to within a few feet of me, I dove for his collar, caught it, and hung onto him for dear life.
Just then Wally saw the kitty. Well, that was just as bad. He wanted it, too, and the next thing I knew, he had swooped down onto our wagon, grabbed the utility can, dumped out the apples into the wagon and all over the ground, and grabbed the can’s lid. Away he ran like a crazy boy, straight for that black and white woods kitty.
“Come back!” I yelled to him. “This is your last day! And your folks will be as mad as a hornet! You can’t take a skunk home with you in your car, and you can’t even go home yourself!”
My words on Wally’s mind were like pouring water on an umbrella. He kept on running straight for the old stump the polecat was digging around. The kitty saw him and heard him at the same time, and I knew—knew what would happen. It had to happen.
Wally wouldn’t know what to do when the kitty’s tail shot up like the plume on Little Jim’s mom’s hat. I was holding on for dear life to Alexander’s collar and also to his neck and trying to quiet him, and I knew he would have to break his collar to get away from me.
Then I got a surprise. Wally seemed to remember exactly how Circus had told him he had caught the skunk we had seen him catch quite a while ago. The very second the little woods cat saw Wally that close to him, he swished his tail straight up in the air and began dancing with his front feet, as much as to say, “I hate red-haired people! One move out of you and your name is mud.”
And Wally didn’t move a muscle. He just stood there with the utility can in one hand and both eyes glued to the skunk.
I crouched beside Alexander and cringed.
Alexander strained and growled, probably thinking, What on earth? Just give me one chance to do what I’ve been wanting to do all week, and I’ll go back to my city life a happy dog.
Then the kitty decided he had been quiet long enough and that maybe Wally wasn’t going to hurt him after all, so he lowered his flag and started off on a trot toward the rail pile, where I supposed his mother and the rest of her family had moved after they left Poetry’s dad’s toolshed.
Wally trotted beside that kitty—about eight feet from it—when all of a sudden, just as I had seen another kitty do when Circus had been trotting beside it, it stopped again and swished its flag straight up.
Wally went into action, except that he didn’t do as well as Circus. He started toward it like a shot, but one of his feet stumbled over the other, and he landed in a sprawl beside the skunk. Reaching out, he made a grab for its tail and missed, and I knew it was too late. Too absolutely late. The last day of his week was ruined.
But Wally was no dumbbell. He grabbed again while he was still on the ground, and there was some lightninglike action that I couldn’t see, and the kitty disappeared inside the utility can. The lid was clamped on, and Wally was up and sitting on the can and grinning and yelling, “Come on! I’ve got him. I’ve got a skunk!”
And he had!
It was good news, but it was bad news too, I thought. Alexander the Coppersmith and I left the wagon and started over to where Wally was.
“He doesn’t smell a bit!” Wally cried. “He didn’t even get a chance to shoot!”
Well, I knew better than that. That skunk had had time to shoot at least three times before his back feet were whisked off the ground, and he probably had used the rest of his six shots after he got into the utility can, which we were supposed to use to put apples back in and take them home.
But then I did get a surprise. There wasn’t any smell. There actually wasn’t. What on earth? I thought.
Just then I heard somebody coming toward us. Looking up, I saw Circus himself coming on an excited run as fast as he could, yelling, “Hey, you guys! You seen anything of a skunk around here? My pet skunk got away, and I can’t find it anywhere!”
And I remembered that Poetry had told me that the reason the mother skunk had moved her family was because Circus had caught another one of her kitties. And, of course, he had already had it “de-skunked” so it wouldn’t smell.
It had been a wonderful week—simply wonderful. Boy oh boy. Wally had caught a skunk as he had wanted to, even if Circus had caught it first. Then I found out Circus had planned to give it to Wally as a pet, anyway. Also, Alexander had had his fight with the bull as he wanted to. And something else even more important than all that had happened to Wally’s heart.
Later in the afternoon, when Uncle Amos and my red aunt and Wally drove away with Wally and Alexander the Coppersmith and his cedar-treated mattress in the back of the car and the black and white woods cat in the front in a dogproof cage, I watched the car going up the road.
And as the white dust moved out across Dad’s cornfield, a little whirlwind started up in our barnyard. It was such a lively and friendly one that I left “Theodore Collins” on the mailbox near where I had been standing and started on the run across the barnyard after it, to toss myself into it as I liked to do.
As I ran, feeling sad and wonderful at the same time, a flock of old hens that had been dusting themselves not far from the iron pitcher pump came to life and scattered in every direction. Mixy, who had been nosing around the grape arbor, must have thought my fast-flying feet were Alexander the Coppersmith’s, because she whirled around quick and started off like a black and white streak toward the barn.
I followed along in the spiraling little windstorm until it reached the edge of the cornfield and went whirling out into it, making the happy little noise I had read about once in a poem in Poetry’s book:
The husky, rusty rustle
Of the tassels of the corn …
Even though I had to stop at the edge of the cornfield, my thoughts went sailing round and round in a little whirlwind of their own, flying higher and higher into one of the prettiest skies I ever saw.
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
© 1957, 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: Sugar Creek Gang at Snow Goose Lodge
ISBN: 978-0-8024-7025-6
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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
Our six sets of Sugar Creek parents expected us to have a very safe and sane winter vacation at the Snow Goose Lodge.
They expected it because our camp director was to be Barry Boyland, Old Man Paddler’s nephew. Barry had taken us on two north woods summertime trips, and we’d not only come back alive but were, as they expressed it, “better boys than when we went.”
We had gone South once in the winter, all the way down to the Mexican border. We’d gone up North twice in the summer, but never before had we spent a week in the north woods in the winter. Our folks seemed to think it would be good for us to have the experience of ice fishing, skiing, playing boys’ games around an open fire in a fireplace, and learning a little more about woodcraft and other things it is worthwhile for a boy to know and do.
It’s a good thing our parents didn’t know in advance that a one-hundred-pound timber wolf would be hanging around the lodge most of the time we were there.
And my mother’s grayish-brown hair would have turned completely gray overnight if she had known that the weather in the Paul Bunyan Playground was going to be so unseasonably warm that it would wake up the hibernating bears—and that we would have an adventure with an honest-to-goodness live bear before our wonderful week was over.
Our folks certainly didn’t imagine that after nearly a week of unseasonably warm weather, while the bears were still out, not having found their new winter quarters, a wild blizzard would come sweeping in and we would be caught out in it a long way from the lodge, not able to tell directions or to find our way back.
It’s a very good thing our parents didn’t know.
Of course, none of the gang knew it either. All we knew was that somewhere in the wilds of the North, near a town called Squaw Lake, on the shore of a lake by the same name, there was a lodge called the Snow Goose, and we were going to have a one-week winter vacation there.
The Snow Goose Lodge, as you maybe already know, if you’ve read the story named The Green Tent Mystery, was owned by the Everards, people who spent part of one wonderful summer camping in a green tent in our own Sugar Creek territory.
What you don’t know, and maybe ought to before you get to the most exciting part of this story, is that our camp director, Barry Boyland, was studying in a Minneapolis college, and the vacation was for his education as well as ours.
“He’s writing an important paper on ‘Wildlife in the Frozen North,’” Mom said at the supper table one evening before we went.
“And you boys are to help him while you’re there,” Dad said across the table from me.
Mom’s kind of bright remark in answer was: “You are not to be the wildlife, understand, but only to help Barry learn all he can about it.”
I knew from what they had said, and the way they said it, that I was expected to behave myself even better than usual.
What else you don’t know—and maybe would like to—is that this year the Everards had gone to California for the winter. The Gang and Barry would be alone at Snow Goose, except for the time Ed Wimbish, an old trapper, would spend with us.
The day finally arrived for us to leave. After we’d said our last good-byes to our envious fathers and our half-worried mothers, we were on the big bus and gone. Barry would meet us at Minneapolis. Then we’d spend the night in a hotel to get acquainted with what it is like to stay in a big city hotel. We’d start early the next morning in Barry’s station wagon for the Snow Goose.
After we had traveled maybe twenty-five miles on the bus, Big Jim, who was sitting in the seat beside me, drew a letter from an inside pocket and said, “I got this just before we left. It’s from the Everards.”
I read the letter and felt my spine tingling with the kind of feeling I always get when I’m beginning to be scared. When I’d finished it, I passed it back, saying, “Better not let Little Jim and Dragonfly know about it. They’re too little. They’d be s-scared.”
There was no use keeping the secret from any of the other members of the gang, though. We’d all have to know sooner or later. So Big Jim let everybody read the letter, the scary part of which was:
You won’t need to be afraid of any of the wildlife you will see around the lodge. The bears are in hibernation, and the wolves are cowards and afraid of human beings. You’ll probably not see even one wolf, unless it is Old Timber, which Mr. Wimbish will tell you about. We’ve never seen him ourselves. Ed calls him the ghost wolf because he always fades from sight a second after you see him—or so Ed says. But Ed exaggerates, and you can take some of what he says with several grains of salt.
“Sounds fishy to me,” I said to Big Jim. I’d read stories about wolves, and in the stories they hadn’t been afraid of human beings at all.
Poetry, who had brought his camera along, said, “I’ve always wanted a picture of a human ghost but could never get one. I’m going to try a ghost wolf!”
His tone of voice was light, but I knew from the way he looked at me that he was only talking that way to help keep Little Jim and Dragonfly from worrying.
When we got to Minneapolis, Barry met us and took us to the Hastings Hotel, where we had two big double rooms with a bath between them and an extra cot in each room.
Dragonfly tried to make us laugh by trying a very old and very worn-out joke on us. He said, “How come we have to have a bathtub when we aren’t going to stay till Saturday night?”
“Quiet!” Big Jim ordered. “I’m phoning Sugar Creek to tell them we’re all here and all right.”
Dragonfly tried another joke, saying, “But some of us are not all there,” which wasn’t funny, either.
Soon Big Jim had his mother on the phone.
I was standing close by, looking out the window at a small snow-covered park with trees and shrubs scattered through it. My mind’s eye was imagining Old Timber standing tall and savage-looking with his long tongue out, panting a
nd looking up at us. Even though my thoughts were at Snow Goose Lodge, it was easy to hear what Big Jim was telling his mother and also to hear what her excited mother voice was saying to him. She could hardly believe we were there so soon.
Then all of a sudden there were what sounded like a dozen other mother voices on the party line, trying to give Big Jim special orders for their sons. Big Jim had a pencil in his hand and was grinning and writing. Then, all of a sudden he was holding out the phone to me, saying, “It’s your mother. She wants to talk to you.”
“Your compass, Bill,” Mom said. “You left it on the upstairs bureau. Be careful not to get lost in the woods. Better buy a new one if none of the other boys have any. You know you got lost up there once before—and also on Palm Tree Island.”
It was good advice, although it worried me to have her worry about me.
“Don’t worry,” I said into the phone and maybe into the ears of five other mothers. “The sun shines up here too—the very same sun that shines down there—and we can tell directions by it anytime.”
“Then be sure your watch is running and the time is right all the time,” she ordered me. And I knew she knew the secret of telling directions on a sunshiny day if you had a watch and knew how to use a certain Scout trick. Mom was right, though. The watch had to be set correctly.
I guess a boy ought to be glad he has a mother to give him good advice, even if sometimes he doesn’t need it because he already knows exactly what she is telling him.
While we were all getting our hair combed, our ties straight, our shoes touched up a little, and our coat collars brushed for dinner in the hotel, we tossed what we hoped were bright remarks at one another. Nobody got angry at anybody since it is a waste of good temper to lose it on a friend.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24 Page 20