Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24

by Paul Hutchens

  Poetry’s note at the lodge would let Barry or Ed know where we were—that is, if they could get back without getting stuck in a drift somewhere. What if they were out in the storm themselves?

  Had anybody tried to phone us to see if we were all right? And when we hadn’t been there to answer the phone, were they worried half to death?

  Dragonfly expressed it for us when he whined, “What if when our folks back home listen to the news on the radio and hear about the storm up here and try to phone us, and nobody answers at the lodge?”

  But Little Jim knocked a hole in that worry. He just said, “If we have to stay all night, I get to sleep up there in the upper berth!”

  One thing was sure: it’d be crazy to go out into that howling blizzard and try to follow our “road” across to the Snow Goose. There was a stack of dry wood in the shanty and a larger rick outside. After we brushed the snow off, it would burn all right.

  “There’s enough wood to keep us warm all night and all day tomorrow, if we have to stay that long,” I said.

  “I’m hungry,” Dragonfly whined, and so were we all.

  “We can have fish for supper,” Big Jim answered him. “But we’ll have to catch them first.”

  Poetry was mischievous at the wrong time and in the wrong way when he said, “I’ve got a plastic bag of night crawlers in my coat pocket. We could fry them—”

  He didn’t even get to finish his nonsensical sentence, because right that second the wind whammed at the door, and something heavy struck it full force, shaking the house and scaring us plenty.

  What on earth—in a blizzard!

  We waited in almost deathly silence, wondering what kind of wild animal we’d get to see, maybe, and to tell Barry about for his special paper.

  When, after a few minutes, there wasn’t any further sound except that of snow and howling wind, Big Jim opened the door a crack to see what was what.

  He exclaimed a second later, “The wind’s left us a Christmas tree!”

  I’d seen it, too. Caught against the door latch was one of the trees Mr. Wimbish had set in the ice and snow to mark the evergreen road. “We couldn’t get back now if we wanted to,” I said. “Looks like the storm is blowing our road away.”

  We’d have to stay all night now, even if we’d been brave enough or foolhardy enough to try to follow the line of evergreens to the lodge.

  But you just couldn’t discourage Little Jim. He piped up with another cute idea—which was not really good—when he said cheerfully, “Don’t they make these fish shanties on sled runners? So they can move them from a worn-out fishing place to a new one?”

  I’d heard somewhere that they did, and said so. Then Little Jim finished the idea that had started in his mind: “The way the wind’s blowing out there, maybe we’ll wake up in the morning and find ourselves parked on the shore out in front of the Snow Goose!”

  It was a cute idea, but Dragonfly spoiled it for him by saying, “More’n likely the wind’d blow our house over!”

  Poetry joined in with Little Jim’s cheerful mood by tossing into the conversation his own bright remark, “Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in.”

  That was the wrong thing to say, because Dragonfly’s next sad words were, “What if Old Timber gets cold out in the storm and starts looking for a nice warm place to spend the night?”

  And that was the wrong thing to say. It started a whirlwind-sized worry spiraling in my own mind, which in only a few seconds was like a small tornado. I wasn’t worried about Old Timber. Wolves didn’t hibernate. But bears did!

  Right that very minute, maybe, old Father Bear was outside somewhere, sleepy and grumpy and maybe even hungry, trying to find a warm shelter so he could go back to sleep until spring. What nicer, cozier place in the whole north woods than a fishing shanty like the one we ourselves were in!

  “Wolves don’t hibernate!” I said to Dragonfly, and he quick came out with the very worry that was bothering me, saying, “But bears do!”

  Big Jim broke into the conversation then, his words hardly audible over the noise his poker was making as he stirred up the fire in the stove. His face looked a little worried in the yellow light of the flames. “Our bear’s probably gone back to the last place he left—or maybe all the way back to where he spent the first half of his winter. The last tracks I saw were headed back.”

  “It’s the baby bear I’m worried about,” Little Jim piped up. “He hasn’t any fur coat like his father and mother have.”

  Circus yawned as though he was sleepy and grunted. “The way the wind’s blowing, Mother Bear’s fur coat’ll probably be blown off and we’ll find it somewhere out in the woods when we get back tomorrow.”

  “If there is any tomorrow.” That was Dragonfly’s sad answer.

  I was surprised to hear Big Jim’s half-angry order right then, as he demanded of all of us, “Let’s can the discouraging talk! We’re safe and warm, and we ought to show a little trust.”

  I knew what he meant when he said “trust.” Big Jim was one of the finest Christian boys I’d ever met. He had been even better since Sylvia had moved to Sugar Creek. When he said “trust,” I knew he meant faith in God. We ought to show a little faith that the heavenly Father was looking after us. Hadn’t He led us through a blinding blizzard all the way to the shanty? Hadn’t He helped us find the row of evergreens before the wind started blowing them away?

  Pretty soon we had our trapdoors open and were catching fish. When we’d caught enough, we quick cleaned them and after tossing the heads and entrails outside, we started up the camp stove. Using the salt and pepper and lard that were there, we had a fish supper.

  A little later we wrapped ourselves in the blankets from the high shelf and went to bed as best we could. The small house was not made for that many boys to sleep in, but we used the benches and the upper berth and also the tabletop.

  Big Jim decided we’d better save kerosene by blowing out the lantern. With a huff and a puff he did it, and the only light left was that of the flames showing through the cracks in the stove.

  How long I’d slept, I didn’t know. I’d had quite a time keeping warm, in spite of the fire, the blanket I had over me, and all my clothes. It seemed I’d almost waked up quite a few times because of being cold. But I’d had gone back to sleep in spite of the wind that shook our house and made me think of Little Jim’s idea that we might wake up in the morning on the shore near the lodge.

  And then all of a sudden I was wide awake, sitting up on my bench bunk, my heart pounding, my worried eyes looking about at the strange shadows of things—the other boys asleep all around me, the stack of wood not far from the stove, the sturdy picnic table with Circus and Big Jim sleeping on it.

  The flickering light from the stove made everything look ghostlike, especially to a scared-half-to-death boy, which it seemed right that second I was. I didn’t know why. Something had jerked me to a sitting position with all the sleep knocked out of me.

  The face of Poetry, who’d been sleeping nearest me, was like that of a frightened, mussed-up-haired ghost. His husky whisper came across the few feet of space between us: “Did you hear that?”

  Had I heard it! I most certainly had. Just one second before he asked his question, there’d been what sounded like a scream outside, not far from the shanty door.

  Before I could answer Poetry, there was another high-pitched cry that sent a shower of shivers all over me. I knew the door Ed had built was strong, but any large wild animal that wanted to could break it down.

  The weird, wailing sound that had shattered my sleep all to smithereens was enough to give even the most experienced woodsman the heebie-jeebies.

  The rest of the gang’s sleep was shattered, too. “M-maybe it’s the b-b-bear!” Dragonfly stammered.

  “Bears don’t scream,” Big Jim’s husky voice corrected him. Then he added in a tone that didn’t agree with his words, “It might just be the house cat looking for us and smelling our fish.�
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  But I knew his mind’s eye wasn’t seeing the big beautiful tomcat that had been hanging around the lodge ever since we’d been there.

  I wished that was all it was, but I knew whatever I’d heard wasn’t any tame animal.

  “Listen,” Big Jim’s half-calm voice exclaimed.

  There was something different about the sound this time. It wasn’t a trembling caterwaul as it had seemed before. It was like a human being’s voice, a frightened, exhausted cry for help.

  Woman! I thought. That was what the smothered cry coming to us from somewhere out in that howling blizzard sounded like—a woman’s high-pitched, trembling scream, calling, “He-e-e-elp! He-e-e-elp!”

  “What’ll we do?” Dragonfly’s worried voice broke into my thoughts.

  “Go back to sleep,” Poetry suggested and yawned as if he was indifferent, the very opposite of what I knew he was. “It’s probably just a wildcat. They often scream like that when they’re hunting.”

  Before Dragonfly or anybody could disagree with him, Poetry hurried on to explain, “When a wildcat’s hunting and screams like that, if there happens to be a live lunch hiding anywhere near, the scream’ll scare the living daylights out of the lunch. The lunch’ll jump or make some kind of animal noise. The wild-cat’ll hear it, and if the live lunch is the kind of animal wildcats like, in only a few minutes the wildcat won’t be hungry anymore.”

  “That doesn’t make sense!” Dragonfly showed good sense by saying. “No wildcat could hear anything jump in a blizzard. I tell you that’s s-s-something else! It s-s-sounds like a w-woman!”

  “He’s right!” Big Jim exclaimed from where he was, near the stove, getting ready to open the firebox door and put in another chunk of fuel. He quick changed his mind about putting in more wood, and he lit the lantern instead.

  I was off my bunk in a flash. If Big Jim thought there was a woman out there, then maybe there was.

  When the lantern was lit and in place, Big Jim unbolted the door and yanked it open. The wind whipped in a flurry of snow and icy wind, almost blowing out the light.

  Then, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a medium-tall, extrapretty, rosy-cheeked girl in a snow-covered dark green coat with wide fur sleeves and fur collar. She was wearing brown ski pants. On her feet, instead of boots, was a pair of snowshoes.

  The second I saw her, I knew who she was.

  So also did Poetry, who whispered to me, “Barry’s twenty-year-old mother!” It was certainly not the right time to be thinking a mischievous thought.

  She didn’t breeze in happily, the way I’d seen her do back in the hotel lobby when Poetry and I had been under the potted palm. She fell in, instead, stumbling over the high sill and landing on the board floor of the shanty, striking her head against the table.

  Before we could get her far enough in to close the door, I saw, not more than fifteen feet from the shanty, a pair of fiery eyes. But it was only for a fleeting flash. Then a blur of grayish snow-covered fur faded away like a ghost into the swirling snow.

  “The ghost wolf!” Poetry cried. “I saw him out there!”

  Two things had to be done quickly—help the girl all the way inside and get the door shut to keep out the fierce winter weather that was driving and blowing and howling like a wild animal as big as the whole north woods wilderness.

  I’d never seen a young lady so exhausted. She gasped to us, “Thank God, I made it! I was afraid I wouldn’t. Aunt Martha! I think she’s having a heart attack!”

  Big Jim unfastened the heel straps of the girl’s snowshoes and slipped her feet out of them. In the light of the lantern on the shelf, her eyes looked terrified. She struggled to a sitting position, leaning against the table leg, and still breathing hard.

  “Barry?” she cried out all of a sudden. “I thought—”

  “Barry,” Big Jim answered politely and in as calm a voice as he could, “went with Ed Wimbish on his trapline this morning. They haven’t come back yet.”

  Things were pretty mixed up in my mind, and it seemed also in the mind of the girl. But as we all talked and listened, and while the wind howled outside and drove the snow against our windows, while six scared boys and one even more-worried girl tried to explain to each other why we were there at such an unearthly time, things began to untangle themselves.

  This is the story as best I can give it to you:

  She had driven all the way from Minneapolis to bring the station wagon here, so that we could have it to drive home in. She would spend the weekend with her Aunt Martha and Uncle Ed, but she got to the Wimbish Grocery after the storm had struck. The store was closed, so she drove down to the Wimbish lakeshore cottage. Martha was trying to put in a telephone call to the lodge to see if we were all right, when suddenly all the lights went out in the cottage and the phone went dead.

  Martha was terribly worried because the phone had been ringing and ringing and no one had answered at the Snow Goose. She just knew something terrible had happened to us. The only thing to do was to try to make it out to the lodge in the station wagon.

  They’d tried. They’d gotten all the way to the lane that leads in and had gotten stuck there. In desperation they’d started out on foot to the lodge. The storm seemed wilder than any they’d ever been in before.

  Martha’s heart seemed to be acting up when they reached there, and then she had fainted.

  “I found your note on the table, but I thought Barry had left it for me, just in case I came early. I couldn’t revive Martha, and the phone wasn’t working, so I couldn’t call anyone. It—it seemed there was only one thing to do—follow the evergreen road I knew ran out here to the shanty …”

  She stopped explaining and raised her hand to her forehead, her eyes closed as if she was in pain.

  Then I saw it for the first time—a line of red on her temple, running up into the hairline.

  She slumped against the corner of the bench and went over in a crumpled heap onto the floor.

  “She’s f-fainted!” Little Jim cried.

  And she had.

  8

  What do you do when you are in a fishing shanty more than a mile from camp, shut in by a blinding blizzard that seems to be getting worse every minute, and the road markers back to the lodge have maybe been blown away?

  And what do you do when your camp director’s very special friend, whom he is going to marry next June, is lying in a faint on the floor of the shanty with a trickle of blood coming from under her pretty brown hair down onto her forehead?

  We not only had to give her first aid, but we had to do something about Martha Wimbish, who was back at the lodge, maybe having a heart attack—that being the reason that Barry’s fiancée had fought her way through the storm to the shanty in the first place. She’d thought Barry was there, which you know he wasn’t.

  “My note!” Poetry whispered to me in the middle of the excitement. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have written what I did.”

  My mind took a run and a jump and landed in the main room of the Snow Goose, taking me along with it. It was afternoon, and I was standing behind Poetry while he typed the note to be left for Barry. It had been fun at the time, playing a joke on Barry like that. In fact, we’d set two joke traps for him that afternoon. The note had said, just as if Jeanne herself had typed it, “I’ve gone out with the boys to the shanty. If we’re not back when you get here, you’ll know we are having fun and catching lots offish.”

  But it was the ending of the note that was the trigger of the joke trap that was to catch Barry. It was, “Looking forward to next June.” Poetry hadn’t signed any name.

  “But we caught her instead of him,” Poetry said under his breath into my ear. “She read it and thought it was from him!”

  And she’d fought her way out here through a dangerous storm to get help for Martha.

  The other joke trap, which you already know about, we’d made by dressing a snow statue with a bear rug and leaving it to make Barry think he had seen an actual li
ve bear, which he could write about for his important paper.

  I felt more than worry in my mind for the girl lying in a faint on the floor of our shanty. I felt admiration for her. I was proud of anybody who was brave enough to fight her way through a blizzard out to where she thought Barry was to get help for her aunt. That took courage. It also took a lot of what Dad would call “stamina,” which means “strength to endure.”

  Maybe Barry hadn’t picked out such a helpless, citified girl after all.

  I was thankful that Big Jim had had Scout training and knew what to do to help bring anyone out of a faint. Jeanne’s being already on the floor meant that her head was low, as the head is supposed to be when you are trying to revive anyone. He quick folded one of the blankets, and we helped him put it under her hips, then elevated her feet by putting a large chunk of firewood under them. He also, in a fleeting flash of flying fingers, loosened all the tight clothing from her neck. Lifting one of the trapdoors, he dipped his handkerchief in the cold lake water and began to sponge her face with it.

  Circus took orders to open one of the windows a crack to let in fresh air. It was the coldest and windiest fresh air you ever felt or breathed in your life. It took only a split second for the room to get full of it.

  And a second later, Big Jim’s patient revived.

  He quickly put a bandage from the shanty’s first-aid kit on the small open wound on the girl’s head. The blood stopped flowing, and the first step in what was going to happen next was over.

  “Listen!” Dragonfly cried. “The storm’s getting worse! That’s thunder!”

  We didn’t even have to listen to hear it. There was a roaring sound, louder than any swarm of bees could have made. It was like a prop airplane out there somewhere, with a half-dozen propellers going terribly fast.

  “That’s lightning!” Little Jim cried.

  There wasn’t any question about there being a bright light outside.

  Was the world getting ready to come to an end? Had the terrible blizzard upset nature someway and—