Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24

by Paul Hutchens

  I was too drowsy to care whether I got a bite, and I hoped my barrel-shaped best friend would stay away until I’d had a nice little snooze.

  My nodding head woke me up just enough to remind me I’d better set my pole good and tight in case I actually did go to sleep. If some lazy fish down there in the water somewhere should wake up and yawn, swallow the juicy wriggling cluster of angleworms with my sharp-barbed hook in them, feel the barb, and suddenly start running wildly in every direction out into deeper water—if that should happen while I was sleeping, the big savage fish might pull my pole in after it.

  I was on my back now, my head resting on a stone pillow, which I had made more comfortable by covering it with my jacket. I pulled my straw hat over my eyes to shade them from the sun and its light, yawned several noisy yawns, sighed several sighs, and let my lazy thoughts drift away into nothing.

  It seemed I was seeing Wynken, Blynken, and Nod sailing about the sky in a wooden shoe in the poem every boy knows, which was written by Eugene Field and is in one of the books in our school library. Then I was in the wooden shoe with Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, sailing higher and higher, past the moon and stars. I was fishing in a sea of dew.

  Was I actually asleep? I wondered.

  Just then I became aware of the stone pillow under my head. And one of the Bible stories I’d heard Dad read—and which you already know about—started roaming about in my mind. If I was dreaming, I thought, then I certainly wasn’t red-haired Bill Collins, who didn’t have any brother to fight with but had only a red-haired city cousin who had a city-bred, ill-mannered mongrel of a dog that wasn’t afraid of anything but would rush in where an ordinary dog would be scared to even bark.

  In my dream, if it was a dream, now it seemed I was Jacob, who had had a quarrel with his brother, Esau, and had run away to keep from getting killed. It seemed to be night, and I was in a very rocky place where there were wildcats hiding in caves and going up and down a gold stairway like a department store escalator.

  Then in my dream I heard a voice from the top of the ladder calling down to me, saying, “The land on which you lie, I will give it to you …”

  It was a very strong, very kind, very deep-echoing voice, different from any I had ever heard. It seemed it was the voice of God, who had made all the wonderful things in nature—the creek and the birds, the rocks and rills, the woods and templed hills, all the boys there are in the world—and even the girls.

  I had felt the voice many a time in my heart but had never before heard it. It sounded like organ music in the Sugar Creek church and like water in the riffles and like the friendly thunder after a storm. It made me think of a hand slowly stroking the soft fur of a kitten …

  And then is when I woke up.

  I had heard a strange sound close by, I thought, a sound that scared me all to smithereens.

  A fast wind was ruffling the surface of the creek. My brown bottle-cork bobber was zigzagging around as if I was getting a whopper of a bite, and in the direction of the swamp there was the excited rumble of actual thunder. The sun was smothered under a cover of worried, dark brown clouds, and there was the smell of rain in the air. I must have slept quite a while, I thought.

  That was when I heard another sound and saw what had made it. Sitting on the trunk of the big elm overhanging the water was a great furry animal. It looked like a giant-sized tiger cat, ten times as big as Mixy, the Collins family’s house cat. But this cat didn’t have any nice, long, bushy tail. It had a stub about eight inches long.

  I guess I’d never come so wide awake so fast in my life. The fierce-looking animal was crouching in my direction, snarling now. He held one wide front foot on the bloody carcass of what was left of a half-eaten rabbit.

  I saw the angry gray-green eyes glaring at me as if I had interrupted his dinner. I heard him spit and hiss the way Mixy spits and hisses when she’s angry or has been interrupted in her eating.

  In that fleeting flash of a few seconds, I saw the brown stripes on his forehead, the long gray-white whiskers, the whitish chin and throat. The huge claw-filled paw holding down the remains of the bunny looked as though it was powerful enough to rip a dog’s ears to shreds with one fierce, fast thrust.

  I was sitting up, which means I must have awakened with such a start that I was halfway up before realizing it—as a boy sometimes does even when he is home and safe in a nice warm bed.

  Now, I managed to think, would be a good time to see how fast I could run toward Theodore Collins’s house and a good time to try out a .22 Savage on a savage wild animal. It certainly wouldn’t be disobeying Dad to kill Old Stub-tail, because that wouldn’t be target practice at all.

  I was on my feet in a flash, ready to start a speedy sprint toward the branch bridge and across it on the way to get Betty Lizzie.

  Then’s when I caught a glimpse of my fishing line cutting a wide circle in the water. The cane pole was bouncing as though I had a fish as big as a wildcat on it.

  I dove for the pole, grabbed it, felt the wild-running fish on the other end of the line, forgot about being scared of the wildcat, and in a few fast, not-very-skillful movements had landed a whopper of a largemouth bass. I remembered while I was doing it that fish bite better when it’s raining or going to rain.

  And right then I heard another roll of thunder—not in the distance but a lot closer. I hurried to get the bass off the hook and onto the stringer I’d brought. I wasn’t able to feel proud of myself for catching him on account of the wildcat’s being not more than twenty-five feet from me on the overhanging elm trunk. Anybody knows a boy can’t feel proud and scared half to death at the same time.

  I knew, of course, that wildcats eat mice and rabbits and small birds but wouldn’t attack a human being unless they were cornered or thought they were. I certainly wasn’t going to get close enough to the base of the overhanging tree to make Old Stubtail think I was after him—that he was cornered—and to run the risk of having him spring at me.

  But why let him scare me out of what few wits I had? I didn’t have to let him keep me from catching another big fish or setting my pole again. I quick baited the hook with a half dozen of the biggest, juiciest, liveliest worms in the target practice can.

  Then, I tied the free end of my stringer onto a willow by the shore and eased the whopper of a bass I’d already caught into the water at the edge, so he’d stay alive. In a jiffy now, my pole would be set, and I’d be flying home for Betty Lizzie. I might even get the savage-looking wildcat killed before Poetry came.

  And that’s when I heard a boy’s squawky, ducklike voice calling from the direction of the branch bridge. Seconds later, the boy behind the voice broke through the bushes. It was Poetry, running like a barrel with legs on it, carrying a large, rectangular brown envelope.

  That, also, is when the wind blew hard and it began to rain.

  “Come on!” he yelled to me. “Let’s get to the cave, or we’ll be drowned! There’s a terrible storm coming up!” He shoved the brown envelope inside his shirt to keep it from getting wet.

  “Look!” I cried to him and pointed toward the overhanging tree. “There’s a wildcat up there! Old Stubtail’s back again! He’s up there eating a rabbit!”

  “Where?” He looked toward where I was pointing.

  “Right up there … right … right …”

  But there wasn’t any wildcat with fierce face and savage claws glaring down at us. And there wasn’t any half-eaten bloody carcass of a rabbit.

  What on earth, I thought.

  Poetry irked me into getting almost fighting mad at him when he said sarcastically, “Oh yeah! A wildcat or a wild idea?”

  Then it did begin to rain. There was a roaring in the trees overhead and all around. A blinding lightning flash and an explosion of thunder ten times louder than a rifle shot came at the same time. My mind screamed for me to get out of there in a hurry—away from any tall trees, which are dangerous to be under when there’s an electrical storm.

  Grittin
g my teeth at being made fun of by my best friend and having my word doubted, I cried to him, “There was a wildcat up there eating a rabbit! He was spitting and hissing, and his right front paw had curving claws that could scratch a dog’s eyes out and tear his ear to shreds in one fierce, fast stroke!”

  But where was the furry animal that had been there only a few exciting minutes ago? I knew I’d seen him. Knew it!

  There wasn’t time now to argue, and arguing wouldn’t do any good anyway. We had to get to the cave quick or get as wet as if we’d fallen in the creek.

  Our four bare feet flew over the path we’d run on a thousand times in our lives—in fact, almost a thousand times that very summer, toward the sycamore tree and the cave.

  The wildcat would get wet, too, I thought. And in my mind’s eye I saw our old black and white cat at home. Whenever she was outdoors and it started to rain, she would come to cat life fast and run like a scared rabbit to the house or toolshed or would streak like a four-legged arrow across the barnyard to the hole under the barn.

  “Maybe wildcats are like pussycats,” I thought out loud. “Maybe Old Stubtail hurried down the tree to get in out of the rain.”

  “Yeah.” Poetry puffed his reply as he lumbered along behind me. “Maybe he’s outrun us and is already in the cave!”

  “Cave!” my mind and my voice screamed at the same time.

  It was an exciting idea—and a scary one. Maybe Old Stubtail had gone to the cave to get in out of the rain. Maybe he had made it his home already and had his den there. Maybe after he lost the dogs up in the hills, he’d circle back through the swamp and hide in his secret place in our cave!

  It took two fast-running boys only a half-dozen wet minutes to get to the sycamore tree with its white and purple and gray bark—which I didn’t even bother to notice—and inside the black, open mouth of the cave. There we stopped, panting for breath, and looked back out at the rain that was coming down in sheets. We heard the roaring wind and saw the trees whipping hard.

  There were a lot of things on my mind right then: the strange and very wonderful dream of the golden escalator leading up to the skies; the voice I’d heard in the dream; the whopper of a bass I’d caught and which, right that minute, was on the end of the stringer in the creek; the angry eyes of the wildcat; Poetry’s doubting my words, calling them a wild idea; the storm that had driven us here; and especially, the wildcat’s being gone when I’d pointed out to Poetry where he’d been.

  It certainly was storming hard. There was wind, jagged lightning, deafening thunder, and blinding sheets of rain.

  I tried telling Poetry over again about what I’d seen, but he still didn’t believe me. “Old Stubtail’s down in Parke County. Don’t you remember? Circus’s father and old Jay and Bawler left yesterday to go down and catch him!”

  “But I saw him when I woke up!” I protested. I told Poetry about going to sleep and all of a sudden waking up with the wind blowing and low clouds scudding across the sky. I told him about the whopper of a bass I’d caught—and the wildcat eating the rabbit.

  But his mind was like an up umbrella in the rain. My words fell on him and rolled off.

  “All right,” I said, “call me a liar.”

  “You’re not a liar,” he defended me. “You just have an elastic imagination. You thought you saw it. You just said yourself you’d been asleep and the wind woke you up!”

  I had just said that to him, but I certainly didn’t expect him to take my words, make a whip out of them, and give me a switching.

  There wasn’t much of anything we could do in the cave while we waited for the storm to stop, and it was pretty dark in there because there wasn’t any sunshine outside. The wind kept whipping the trees outside the cave, and the thunder and lightning were acting as though they were mad at each other and at the whole world.

  I was still thinking about Old Stubtail. I knew I’d seen and heard him. I wondered what had become of him. In my mind now was an idea that had come to me a little while before. Old Stubtail might really have run to the cave to get in out of the rain! He might be here right now, not more than a few feet from us!

  All of a sudden I heard something behind me that started my hair to crawling on the back of my neck.

  “Hear that!” I whispered huskily. “That’s him! That’s Old Stubtail! He’s back in the cave somewhere behind us.”

  4

  I was more scared now than I had been back at the base of the leaning elm on whose trunk I’d seen the wildcat.

  It’s not nearly as frightening to see a dangerous wild animal when you’re quite a distance from it as it is to be in a dark cave and hear one behind you somewhere—and you can’t see it.

  The roar of the storm didn’t make it any easier for us to hear what we were trying to hear.

  Scratch … scratch … I’d heard.

  We knew that the other end of the cave came out away up in the hills in the basement of Old Man Paddler’s cabin, but what we were hearing was close by. Very close. Not more than six feet from us, it seemed.

  I’d never seen Poetry so calm at a time like that. “We’ll find out in one minute if there’s anything back in there anywhere,” he said.

  And then I saw that he had out his waterproof matchbox, the one he nearly always carried with him. He struck a match and lit one of the candles we kept on a shelf in a holder. We’d lit candles there many a time when we’d had gang meetings.

  “Now,” he said, “we’ll—”

  Then we did hear something for sure.

  “It’s behind the wall here somewhere,” I said. “It’s the wildcat, I tell you! He’s got his den here in the cavel That’s why he wasn’t on the tree when I tried to show you he was! He knew the storm was coming and made a bee-line for here!”

  Just saying it made it seem actually the truth, and I was cringing aplenty.

  Poetry’s face in the light of the candle showed that he was a little afraid himself, but he wasn’t the kind of boy to admit it. “Let’s have a look,” he said, and he held the candle close to the wall where we’d heard the sound. Then he let out a heavy, disgruntled sigh and said, “Well, that’s that. There’s a leak in the cave roof. That’s all. See the water dripping?”

  I’d already seen, and my ears were already hearing. Drip … drip … drip instead of scratch … scratch … scratch …

  While we were still waiting for the storm to subside, we used the light of the candle to help us see to put together Poetry’s space patrol periscope, which was his mystery and what was in the brown envelope.

  First, we took it out, cleaned the two mirrors, one at either end, as the directions for assembling it said, and step by step we put it together. It’d be fun to use, making us able to see around corners without being seen, look over the tops of people’s heads to watch a parade, or over the stone fence at the cemetery while we ourselves would be on the other side. There’d be a lot of uses for it.

  I was still irked at my best friend, though, for not believing me about the whopper of a cat I’d seen. Of course, I’d seen him! I hadn’t been just dreaming, I was sure. I’d also caught a whopper of a bass, and I knew I wasn’t dreaming when I’d done that. I had proof of it on the stringer tied to the willow down by the mouth of the branch.

  I began to feel a little better toward Poetry, though, as we worked together on the periscope. After all, he’s my best friend, I thought. We’d had more fun and trouble together than any two of the rest of the gang.

  “As soon as this storm is over,” he announced, “we’ll go back to where you saw your little kitty and look for clues. If we find blood on the tree trunk where he was chewing on the rabbit, we’ll know you weren’t asleep.”

  And then I was mad again. I gritted my teeth and said, “OK, chum, have it your way. We’ll find the blood. It’ll be there, all right.”

  As soon as we were sure the storm was over, we went out in the rainwashed air and splashed our way down the muddy path to the mouth of the branch where I’d see
n the “kitty” and where my whopper of a bass was on the stringer, tied to the willow not far from the base of the leaning elm.

  Poetry worked his way carefully along the slanting trunk of the tree so as not to fall off the slippery wet bark, and I stood grinning, expecting him any minute to find a little blood or some bits of rabbit fur to prove I was right.

  “Nothing here,” he called back. “Not even a scratch on the bark. Not a single claw mark.”

  I called up to him, “Then the rain washed the blood off, and if there was any rabbit fur, it washed off into the creek and floated downstream!”

  At least he’d have to believe me about the whopper of a bass I’d caught. I’d been bragging about that to him, too.

  “OK,” I said. “Come on down, and I’ll let you carry my bass home.”

  I caught hold of the end of the stringer, not untying it first because I wanted to hold up the whopper for Poetry to see without running the risk of its getting away.

  Then I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. There wasn’t any big largemouth bass on the end of the stringer! There wasn’t anything. The stringer was empty.

  “What on earth!” I exclaimed

  “I will be in a minute!” Poetry called down from the place on the tree trunk where the wildcat had been and now wasn’t.

  We stood for a few seconds looking at my empty stringer.

  I could feel what Poetry was thinking before he let out a grunt and said, “The wildcat that wasn’t there ate a whopper of a bass that wasn’t there that had been caught by a red-haired, freckled-faced boy that wasn’t all there!”—meaning he thought I wasn’t quite bright.

  Before I could even start to prove to him that I was, he grunted again, caught the stringer by its empty end, studied it a minute, and said in his ducklike voice, “Or maybe the bunny that hadn’t been there ate the fish that wasn’t there that was caught by the boy that wasn’t—”

  That was as far as he got. I chopped his sentence in two by exploding at him. “If the barrel-shaped boy had been there, there wouldn’t have been room enough for anything else!”