Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24

by Paul Hutchens

  Then I saw Circus. He didn’t seem to realize what was going on or that we were anywhere around. He kept on calling Ichabod in a scolding voice. I noticed also that he had picked up a switch and was waiting for his hound to come to him so that he could give him a lesson in hunting—not to get off onto a rabbit trail when he was supposed to be on a red-hot other animal trail.

  Just as I thought, Circus gave his cute, very sad little hound a small switching and scolding, saying down to him—and apparently still not realizing that we were around—“Rabbits are trash! Do you understand? I started you off on a coon trail, and you were doing fine until that bunny jumped up right in front of your nose, and you let him interrupt you! If you’re going to be a trash trailer, you’ll be a terrible disappointment. You won’t be worth a hill of beans if you don’t learn to concentrate!”

  I broke in then, saying, “Rabbits aren’t trash!” I was thinking how very cute small bunnies are and also remembering one I had seen being eaten by a huge stub-tailed wildcat down by the mouth of the branch yesterday.

  “Part of the time they’re trash,” Circus answered like a teacher correcting a boy in class. “Any game the hunter isn’t after at the time is trash. That’s the name they give it. I’m trying to train Ichabod not to get sidetracked onto anything—not rabbit, possum, skunk, or anything—when I’ve started him on something else.”

  I looked down at Ichabod’s sad face and felt sorry for him. It seemed a shame he’d had to be punished. I guess maybe Circus felt even worse than I did about it, though, for a second later he was down on his knees hugging his cute little black-and-tan and crooning to him, “I’ve got a plan for your life. I can’t let you be a trash trailer. You’ll never be any good at trailing wildcats like your mother if you don’t learn now! Understand?”

  Dragonfly, who was washing his hands and face at the spring, heard what Circus said and called up the incline, “Old Stubtail’s come back, and he’s killed Molly’s new colt and—”

  Our spindle-legged little friend came storming up, his open knife in his now-clean right hand, his clothes still mud-spattered, his hair mussed up, and with a set face. “Let’s put Ichabod on his trail and chase him down and kill him!”

  In only a little while, Circus, Poetry, Dragonfly, Ichabod, and I were back at the swimming hole looking at the dead colt, studying its claw-raked sides. We looked at the place in front of the shoulders where powerful fangs had broken its neck and at the red hole behind the shoulders where the heart and liver had been dug out and eaten.

  Circus stood with narrowed eyes, looking down. There was excitement going on in his mind, I could tell. His fists were doubled up, and his jaw muscles were tensing and untensing.

  Something exciting was going on in Ichabod’s nose too. He hadn’t any sooner smelled the colt than he started running in a circle all around us and along the creek bank as though he was trying to find something he had lost or as if his nose was smelling something he’d never smelled before. Whatever it was, it was setting him crazy.

  Suddenly that little black-and-tan lifted his long-nosed head and let loose a wild, shrill call with a bell-like tremolo in it like a scared ghost calling for help. Then he took off in a long-legged gallop toward the bayou.

  “He’s found the trail!” Circus cried. The tone of his voice sent a hunter’s thrill chasing up and down my spine.

  And then we were all following as fast as we could run.

  Across the narrow strip of Dragonfly’s dad’s cornfield to the bayou and the neck of dry ground between the two long ponds, up the incline to the rail fence and the border of evergreens, the hound went, with the four of us close behind.

  At the rail fence the trail swung south along the hedgerow toward Bumblebee Hill and the cemetery at the top. It went through the cemetery and on and on and still on, following the thicket that skirted the rock wall, which, Circus said, was good “cat cover.”

  And now Ichabod was making a beeline for the Theodore Collins family house. At the elderberry bushes across the road from the walnut tree and our mailbox, the pup began to whimper and act worried as if he had lost the trail. But that was only for a few seconds. In a flash he was over the fence and across the gravel road to our front gate, where he ran from one side to the other to find a place to get over or through.

  That’s when we heard the sound of a car, and I saw a cloud of dust up the road. It was Dad coming back from Memory City.

  Boy oh boy, would we ever have something to tell him! Old Stubtail was back in our territory again and had killed one of our little pigs, had eaten a rabbit at the mouth of the branch, and had killed Molly’s new baby colt, and she hadn’t even had a chance to celebrate its birth!

  I was wondering what kind of a new cousin I had at Memory City, a boy or a girl, and how Wally and his dumb city dog were.

  I swung open the gate to let Dad in. Ichabod didn’t even bother trying to find out who was coming. Only one thing seemed important to him. He raced through the gate, his nose to the ground, let out another piercing bawl, and shot across the lawn, past the plum tree and the iron pitcher pump, straight for Addie’s pen.

  Dad swung the car in and stopped in a cloud of dust. The back door of the car was thrust open, and what to my wondering eyes should tumble out but a red-haired, freckled-faced boy my size and an excited copper-colored dog that you already know too much about if you’ve read the story The Bull Fighter.

  Dad had brought home with him from Memory City my set-minded, hard-to-get-along-with city cousin, Walford Sensenbrenner, and his uncontrollable dog, Alexander the Coppersmith.

  Why on earth had Dad done a thing like that to me and to the Sugar Creek Gang?

  What and why and how on earth would we ever manage to live for as long as Alexander the Coppersmith and his master stayed with us?

  They certainly had arrived at an exciting time and at a dangerous one too. Just how dangerous, none of us knew. Not even Ichabod, who was already out by Addie’s gate, running in a worried circle as if he had lost the trail again.

  8

  Alexander the Coppersmith had come again! In a flurry of fleeting flashes I remembered the wild 10,000 minutes we had had that other summer—especially one exciting, nerve-tingling adventure I’d never be able to forget as long as I lived.

  Honestly, that mongrel of a city-bred dog wasn’t afraid of the most dangerous danger there ever was! He had even tackled headfirst a snorting, blindly mad, shorthorn bull, actually sinking his sharp teeth into the bull’s nose and holding on for dear life. The worried, wild-eyed bull, trying to get Alexander the Coppersmith to let go, had swung around and with a mighty bellow and shake of his head had tossed that copper-colored dog toward the sky.

  But that’s another story. Right now I have to tell you about a pig-stealing, colt-killing wildcat, which right that very second Circus’s new black-and-tan pup was trailing out near Old Red Addie’s gate—one of whose piggies would never again lie in the straw with its mother.

  Ichabod seemed to have only one thing on his mind. He didn’t even notice Alexander the Coppersmith but was following his snuffling nose all around the gate, where I knew there was chocolate-colored pig’s blood and where last night I had seen two green eyes reflecting light from my flashlight and a gray-brown shadow slinking along the garden fence toward the twin pignut trees and the orchard below them.

  Right that second, Alexander was standing straight-nosed and stiff-legged, looking toward the gate where Ichabod was worrying his way through a tangle of scents, trying to decide which direction Old Stubtail had gone.

  To make things more interesting and noisy, Mixy, who had been lazing on our sloping outside cellar door, woke out of her middle-of-the-morning nap and came as far as the board walk to see what kind of animal had just come plopping out of the car with my city cousin, Wally.

  She was probably recalling that other time Alexander had come to our house: the Thanksgiving Day when he had chased her wildly across the barnyard with a turkey tumbling after. Or
Mixy might have been remembering fights she had had with different neighborhood dogs.

  Anyway, all of a sudden Alexander spied Mixy and started toward her, while she stood stiff-backed and bristling, eyeing him. In a second now, I thought, there would be action.

  And there was. A copper-colored city dog made a copper-colored dash at a country cat.

  Mixy crouched, flattened her ears, and stood her ground. The second Alexander got to where she was, she thrust out a fierce, fast right front paw with sharp talons on it and slashed and slashed and slashed again, letting loose a jumble of yowls and hisses and wild meows all mixed up with Alexander the Coppersmith’s gruff, excited, angry barks and yelps.

  The fight was so fierce and so fast that you couldn’t tell which animal belonged to the cat family and which to the dog.

  Dad, Dragonfly, Circus, Poetry, Wally, and I were in the fight, too—with our voices, that is. Wally was yelling, “Sic ’em!” The rest of us were rooting for Mixy, except for Dad. He was ordering them both to stop.

  I was proud of Mixy and the way she stayed right in the middle of that hissing, spitting, yowling, tooth-and-claw, cat and dog fight.

  All of a sudden, though, she must have decided she had had enough or had done enough to her enemy. As quick as scat, she turned herself into a streak of black and white lightning, shooting across the barnyard to the hole just below the window of the barn, where she would be safe—if she got there first.

  She did get there first and was safe, and I was again proud that she knew when to quit and run away. She’d live to fight another day.

  I expected Wally’s mongrel to stay at the small hole into which Mixy had disappeared and bark and bark and bark and pant and try to squeeze himself in after her. But he didn’t. Instead, he gave several gruff, disgusted, halfhearted barks in Mixy’s direction. Then he swung his copper-colored body around and came trotting back toward the iron pitcher pump where we all were, his tongue hanging out, his sides heaving a little with panting, and with a proud grin on his face that seemed to say, “There! I saved all your lives! I just licked the fur off a savage black and white cat that might have killed all of you! I drove her into a hole under the barn, and she’s scared to even stick her nose out!”

  The proud expression on his face was the same kind he got when he chased a car down the road.

  Just then, from near the pignut trees, Ichabod’s dog voice cried, “Come on, you, and help me! While you’ve been wasting your time on a worthless house cat, I’ve been untangling the trail of a pig-stealing, colt-killing wildcat! Woo-o-o-o! Woo-o-o-o!”

  Well, when Circus’s cute little hound let loose that long, high-pitched tremolo from the twin pignut trees, it brought all of us to life.

  “He’s found the trail again!” Circus cried, and away he galloped, past the toolshed and the chicken house on his way to catch up with his excited black-and-tan, which already was halfway to the orchard fence.

  Alexander the Coppersmith had come to life even more excited than the rest of us. The second he heard Ichabod’s baying, he took one quick stiff-legged, straight-nosed look toward the running hound with an expression on his face that seemed to say that up to now he hadn’t even noticed there was another dog around. He’d been busy saving our lives.

  Then, just as if Ichabod’s bawling was a stick somebody had thrown into a creek, expecting him to swim out and bring it back, he was off in a streak of speed to join in the fun or whatever it was that was going on.

  “Attaboy!” Wally cried to his mongrel. “Go get him!”

  At the orchard fence there was a patch of grass and weeds and wild raspberry bushes that made good cover for quail and that nearly always, in the winter especially, was a shelter for rabbits. There Ichabod ran into trail trouble again. I could tell by the way he was acting that he was trying to decide whether the wildcat had gone through the fence or had followed the fencerow to Poetry’s dad’s woods in the direction of the mouth of the branch where, yesterday, I’d seen his fierce face for the first time.

  Any second now, Alexander the Coppersmith would get to where Ichabod was circling and zigzagging around, trying to find what he had lost, and then what would happen?

  I let out a yell for him to stop, to come back, because I knew Alexander didn’t have the least idea what a wildcat smelled like or how to follow a cold scent forward or backward. Not knowing how serious things were—a stolen pig, three lambs killed on Harm Groenwald’s farm, a brand-new baby colt lying by the swimming hole with its heart and liver eaten out—he’d probably think Ichabod’s bawling and strange circlings and zigzaggings were some kind of game that country dogs play.

  And then he was there and all over everywhere, getting in Ichabod’s way, biting at him playfully and barking as if what few wits he had had turned into a Sugar Creek cyclone.

  He was like a car that didn’t have good brakes. In a fast charge at Ichabod, he whammed into his shoulder with his own shoulder and bowled him over. The two of them landed scratchety-sizzle in a tangled-up scramble in the raspberry bushes. And that’s when Ichabod’s voice changed into a series of short, sharp, more-than-ever-excited barks. For a second I thought he had lost his temper and that there was going to be a fierce dogfight there in the bushes.

  But I was wrong. Instead, a brown flash of bunny shot out into the open and raced hippety-hop down the fence row toward Poetry’s dad’s woods. Ichabod and Alexander both gave chase with a bedlam of dog voices, which was enough to scare the poor rabbit even worse than Peter Rabbit had been scared in the story where Mr. McGregor was after him with a garden rake.

  Seeing the rabbit flying in long leaps ahead of the also-flying, barking dogs, Circus let out a yell. “Hey, Ichabod! Stop! That’s a rabbit! Come back here!”

  To the rest of us he complained, “He’s going to be hard to teach! I’ll have to give him another switching!”

  With that he stooped, quickly picked up a branch Dad had pruned from the peach tree by the fence, and was off on a fast run toward the fence way down at the end of our pasture.

  By now both dogs were running excitedly back and forth, trying to find a place where they could get through the fence. The smart bunny had already squeezed through and was safe somewhere in Poetry’s dad’s woods.

  Finally, both dogs heard Circus’s angry voice, and both dogs started back toward where we were.

  I felt sorry for little Ichabod, because the history of my own life had some switchings mixed up in it. And if there is anything that hurts me worse than getting a switching myself, it’s to see somebody’s pet switched or even scolded—a hound especially, because he always acts so sad and crouches low and looks up at you with every wrinkle on his long face seeming to say, “Please, Mister. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was wrong to do it. Please.”

  The closer Ichabod got to Circus, the sadder he looked. By the time he was within ten feet, he was actually crawling. Then he stopped and looked up with sad brown eyes, every movement saying, “I’m sorry … please …”

  I took one look at Circus’s set face and knew he was thinking hard and wishing he didn’t have to do what I also knew he had to do. Nobody could train a hound not to chase rabbits or get sidetracked, unless the hound knew for sure his master wouldn’t stand for it.

  I hadn’t known that Little Jim, the littlest member of the gang, was anywhere around until all of a sudden from behind us I heard his tearful voice almost screaming, “Don’t! Don’t, Circus. Don’t! He doesn’t know any better. He—”

  “That’s why I’m punishing him,” Circus called back grimly, “so he will know.”

  Then Circus said something I didn’t understand at the time but which later I did. He looked around at all of us with kind of sad eyes himself. “I’m giving him a licking not to punish him for being bad but to make him a good trailer. I have a good plan for him, and I have to help him find out what it is.”

  The switching Circus gave his cute little black-and-tan hound pup was about the easiest switching a dog ever got. Wi
th one hand he held onto Ichabod’s collar, and with the other he swung the switch … one … two … three … four. Circus actually switched Ichabod harder with his voice, saying crossly, “Rabbits are out! Do you understand? Out! When you’re on a coon or a fox or a wildcat trail, you’re not to let yourself get sidetracked! Understand?”

  Then all of a sudden Circus flung his switch to the ground, dropped to his knees, pressed his cheek against his hound’s head, hugged him close, and begged, “I’m sorry, pal! Please don’t hate me for it! But I had to do it, even if it was bad company that got you started. Bad company, do you hear? Don’t ever let any other dog lead you astray!” Circus glared angrily at a fidgety Alexander the Coppersmith, not more than ten feet away.

  Wally overheard that and exclaimed, “Don’t you dare call my dog bad company! He’s a good dog!”

  You never saw a dog change his attitude so quickly. All in a second, Ichabod was happy again, nuzzling his face up to Circus’s and wagging his long tail. It seemed the dog was trying to say to Circus, “Don’t feel bad. I’ll forgive you …” And I noticed there were tears in Circus’s eyes as there had been in his voice when he had apologized to Ichabod.

  I couldn’t help thinking about Alexander, wondering if anybody had a good plan for his life and if his life would ever be worth anything. I’d tried so hard to teach him a few dog manners the other time Wally had come to spend 10,000 minutes at our house.

  There certainly was a difference in the way those two canines were getting trained and also in the way they came back from chasing the rabbit. Ichabod had returned to his master with a sad face, acting sorry for what he had done wrong, whatever it was. Wally’s mongrel had raced back proudly, his long tongue hanging out, a grin on his whiskered face as if to say, “There! I chased another wild animal away, clear down to the woods. I’ve saved all your lives again!”

  Wally, seeing what Circus had done, must have thought he ought to give Alex a little training, too. He picked up the switch Circus had tossed away and started after his dog, scolding and saying, “Come here, you rascal! Rabbits are out! Understand? Out!”