Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24

by Paul Hutchens

  Then I seemed to be reading a very pretty handwriting that said, “Alcohol is ruining my life. Someday it will kill me. It will do the same for you if you take it into your life.”

  Also tumbling about in my groggy mind were the last few words of Little Jim’s father’s prayer, which he had made in the light of the campfire: “Bless all the boys of the world. May those who are happy-go-lucky today not be hardened tomorrow.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what the prayer meant, but it seemed he was asking the One who had made all the boys there are in the world to keep them from getting hard hearts when they grew up to be men.

  But it was morning before you could say Jack Robinson, it seemed, and right away we were all up and having a noisy time, breaking camp.

  Pretty soon breakfast was over, we were packed, and all of us were in the station wagon except Circus, who was still back in the cabin near the river.

  “He’s looking to see if we left anything,” Little Jim’s mother said from where she sat in the front seat beside her husband. “Isn’t it a musical day?” she asked nobody in particular and sighed. “Everything is singing—the birds, the water in the riffles, the sunrise. Listen!”

  I looked toward the northeast where the red round sun was just nosing its way up over the rim of the horizon. I listened to see if I could hear what she was hearing, but I couldn’t. I noticed, though, that the prairie all around our wooded camping place was lazy with the smell of sweet clover—and I did hear the singing of tires on the many cars that were already on the highway, racing like mad to get from somewhere to somewhere else.

  When Circus kept on not coming, I volunteered to go after him, and before anybody could say no, I was out the car door and on the run toward the cabin.

  When I reached the cabin’s back door, which faced the river, I stopped stock-still. What on earth, I thought. Instead of Circus being busy looking around in the different rooms, checking to see what, if anything, anybody had left, he was sitting at the kitchen table with an empty whiskey bottle in front of him, writing something on a sheet of paper.

  He jumped when he saw me standing just outside the screen door.

  “We’re ready to go” was all I could think of to say, still wondering what on earth he was doing and why. One reason I didn’t say anything else right then was because there were tears in his eyes.

  I just stood, staring, asking questions with my own eyes, noticing his jaw muscles tensing and relaxing, tensing and relaxing, the way they nearly always do when he is thinking hard about something.

  “I wasn’t going to tell anybody,” he said, “but I don’t care if you know. Here, read it.” He pushed open the screen door and handed me the sheet of paper he’d been writing on.

  And this is what I read:

  If whoever finds this bottle would like to know how to become a real Christian, just write to me and I’ll write right back and tell you. My father used to be an alcoholic, and my mother cried most of the time because we didn’t have enough to eat, and we couldn’t go to church because we didn’t have good clothes. Then one day my father got sick of sin and let the Savior have his heart. We have a happy family now.

  That’s when I got tears in my own eyes—and it seemed there were some in my voice too when I gulped and said, “You’ve got a wonderful mother too. I heard my mother say so.”

  Circus signed his name to the note, put our Aspen, Colorado, address on it, folded the paper, pushed it into the quart whiskey bottle, stuffed the cork in good and tight, and said, “All right, let’s go.”

  He was out of his chair and pushing open the screen door and off on a fast lope toward the river. A way from the water’s edge he stopped, and I expected him to swing back his strong, long right arm and throw the bottle with the sermon in it out into the musical stream. Instead he hurried over to the pile of drift where he’d found the bottle yesterday, tucked it in the very same place it had been, and tied the neck with a piece of string to an overhanging willow.

  On our way back to the car where the gang was yelling for us to hurry up, he panted, “I’ve wasted too many empty bottles. From now on, every one I find or throw away or leave anywhere is going to have a sermon in it.”

  Then that sober-faced, brown-haired acrobat astonished me and made me proud of him by saying, “I might be a gospel minister someday.”

  I didn’t realize I still had tears in my eyes until I almost ran head-on into a rosebush on the motel lawn. There was a sad feeling in my heart but also a glad one. It seemed our acrobatic, cartwheel-turning, hand-springing, flip-flopping expert was maybe one of the best boys in the whole world.

  Pretty soon we were in the station wagon driving out onto the highway.

  All of a sudden Dragonfly, who had just sneezed, looked at me and said, “You got hay fever?”

  “No, why?” I asked him.

  He sneezed twice before answering, saying, “You’re sniffling a little, and your eyes are red.”

  I didn’t bother to answer him, but as our car went singing down the highway, all of us having our usual boys’ fun, chatter, and friendly fights, with my mind’s eye I was seeing a whiskey bottle lying in a pile of drift, its neck tied by a string to an overhanging willow, and in the bottle a note by one of the neatest curly-headed boys there ever would be. Would anybody ever find the note, I wondered, and write to Circus?

  I stayed in my mind’s world until Poetry jarred me out of it with a secret punch in the ribs with his elbow. “Look!” he whispered.

  I looked and saw in his hand a magazine I knew not a one of us had brought with us. “Where’d you get a ski magazine?” I whispered to him.

  His answer switched my mind back onto our mystery. “Mr. Alberson gave it to me. Connie Mae Spruce left it in the wastebasket along with several other sports magazines. Because we were going to Aspen, where there is a lot of winter skiing, he thought we might like it.”

  “Know what?” I asked.

  And he answered, “No, what?”

  “I’ll bet when we get to Aspen, we’ll find out she really is the disappeared woman.”

  Our secret was getting almost too big for two boys to carry, but Poetry insisted we still keep it to ourselves for awhile, anyway. There’d be time enough when we found out that the handwriting and the name on the register at the Snow-slide were the same as on the upside-down loose leaf in the Lazywild register.

  The farther we went, the faster I felt myself being whirled along into the heart of a strange experience. I just knew that when we got to the place we were going to spend our vacation, we’d-we’d-well, you just wait and see, as I had to.

  The morning passed, and the afternoon, and we were still headed west. It wasn’t until we were driving through the gateway of another camping place to spend another night, that I noticed a corner of the ski magazine had been torn off. Maybe it had been off all the time, but I just hadn’t noticed it. I made gestures to Poetry, pointing to the torn place.

  He stopped me with a scowl and whispered in my left ear, “It had a man’s name and address on it. I’ve got it in my wallet with the note from the bottle. See?”

  He showed me the corner torn from the magazine. The name was Charlie Paxton, and the address was Aspen, Colorado!

  Now I was like a hound on a trail that was getting hotter and hotter. We certainly had a lot of information bottled up in our minds.

  The second the station wagon door was open, Dragonfly swung out, looked all around, straightened his Stetson, and with both hands near his hips where his toy six-shooters were—his high-heeled boots shining in the western sun—he set his face in the direction of a red, statuelike rock and began walking slowly toward it, glaring at it as if it was a cattle rustler or gun-slinger.

  All of us must have been thinking the same thing, because we humored Dragonfly by keeping still.

  Then, all of a sudden, he growled a surly command to the red statue, saying, “Draw, you horse thief! Draw!”

  But the long red rock stood silent. Dragonfly’s mind
’s eye must have seen some imaginary movement of the man-sized rock, because, like lightning, his six-shooters were out, and he was yelling, “Bang! Bang! Bang!”

  The sentinel rock stood still unmoving and also unshot.

  The rest of us piled out and started making camp, as soon as the camp manager told us where we could pitch our tent. Dragonfly wasn’t too much help. He was strutting around in his Western outfit as though he was the king of the cowboys, giving commands, using Western language, barking orders in all the cowboy words he knew. His big, broad Stetson certainly looked large on his small head, I thought, and his boots with their high heels weren’t any good for running or hiking but would be all right for riding and for showoff. Also, as anybody knows, or ought to know, they could protect him from cactus and snakes.

  I didn’t have any idea, as we pitched our tent and did a lot of other things Little Jim’s dad ordered us to do, that Dragonfly’s fancy Stetson was going to play an important part in helping us solve the mystery of the lost woman—or that it would get us into a very dangerous situation.

  If I had known it, I’d have had a lot more respect for the hat and wouldn’t have been so envious of that spindle-legged, allergic-nosed little guy because his folks had let him have a high-priced cowboy outfit and mine hadn’t let me.

  Anyway, there I went, zip zip zip, into the most exciting part of our Western vacation. Tomorrow we’d be in the Rockies, and in only another half day we’d have our tent pitched somewhere along Roaring Fork River or else a little farther from the town along the shore of Maroon Creek.

  Little Jim’s mother and Little Jim and the rest of us would attend the Music Festival in the huge tent in the meadow. Then we’d get to see an honest-to-goodness rodeo with Cranberry Jones, my favorite cowboy hero, roping calves, wrestling steers, riding bucking Brahman bulls and—well, it was going to be a wonderful vacation.

  Also, Poetry and I were going to spend part of the time doing detective work. We already had some very important clues. Very important.

  5

  If you’ve never seen and heard a real, live out-West rodeo, you’ve missed half the life of a lot of cowboys and of other people who like what is called one of the most exciting spectacles in the world—steer wrestling, trick riding exhibitions, calf roping, and dangerous rides on wild broncs and bucking Brahman bulls!

  One reason we were so excited about going to the rodeo was because the advertising placards all over town and the full-page ads in the Avalanche almost screamed at us that Cranberry Jones was going to perform!

  There was a parade in the morning, right through downtown, with beautiful horses and trained dogs and—but I’d better get going right now on what happened that afternoon when I was wearing Dragonfly’s hat at the rodeo.

  “Just be careful not to let the wind blow it off,” he ordered me. “This’ll pay you back for letting me wear your jeans and shirt that time mine got all wet in Sugar Creek.” And that reminded me of the time you maybe already know about if you’ve read Locked in the Attic.

  Little Jim’s folks had what are called “box seats,” and the rest of us sat on the arena fence, which was a board-and-rail fence with a flat board at the top for people to sit on.

  Dragonfly was sitting on my left and Circus on my right. Big Jim and Little Jim were on the other side of Circus, and Poetry was to the left on the end of our line.

  It was a wonderful feeling, sitting on an arena fence waiting for the rodeo to start, waiting also for what would be the biggest thrill of all, Cranberry Jones, the cowboy hero who, nearly every time I rode my imaginary palomino back at Sugar Creek, I imagined I was—except when I was the Lone Ranger, who rode a big white stallion and wore a mask.

  And I guess I had never breathed such clean, fresh air as the kind that swept down from the roundabout mountains.

  First on the program was the bareback riding. Two or three different cowboys came out of the chutes one at a time on bucking broncs, stayed on a few seconds, and got tossed off. It was exciting to watch, but I kept waiting and waiting for Cranberry Jones.

  All of a sudden, the announcer’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker: “Ladies and gentlemen! Cranberry Jones is coming out on brain-bashing, bone-breaking Sudden Death! Sudden Death has been ridden only three times and has unloaded the best cowboys in the nation—killing one and sending the other two to the hospital!”

  I sat tense and waiting, chills running up and down my spine.

  In a flurry of excited noise up at the farther end of the arena, all of a sudden Cranberry Jones on Sudden Death’s bare back came shooting out of one of the chutes. The horse was charging and bucking as if he was insane.

  Cranberry Jones wore spurs on his high-heeled boots. I noticed he was digging them into Sudden Death’s shoulder, which was one of the rules for bareback, bronc-busting rides.

  That horse should have been named Sudden Death or Sooner! He jumped and twisted and reared and circled and bucked. He exploded all over the place. His four feet flew so fast it looked as if he had ten times as many legs as he did have. He thundered around in every direction there is, including up.

  I was so excited with what was happening, hardly able to follow the cyclonelike actions of Sudden Death that I forgot whose beautiful, tan Stetson I had on—off, rather, for it was in my hand now, and I was waving it and yelling with everybody else and screaming to Cranberry Jones to hang on.

  All the time, Dragonfly beside me was yelling, “Be careful! Be careful! That’s my hat!”

  But I wasn’t careful, not realizing till afterward that he was yelling at me. Also, right that second, I was about to lose my balance and was fighting to keep myself from falling off the fence and landing inside the arena in the path of the thundering feet of that mad-as-a-hornet horse.

  Right then is when the canyon wind, which had been having a lot of fun of its own all afternoon, came to life with a fierce gust. It swept across the arena, whipping dust into my face and eyes, and I couldn’t see a thing. That, also, is when I really did lose my balance.

  To save myself from falling, I let go of the hat. The wind took it and sailed it like a flying saucer out across the arena, where it made a half-dozen topsy-turvy, roundabout, up-and-down movements and landed in the dust in the path of Sudden Death’s flying feet!

  Just then two furious riders on terribly fast other horses, riders who in rodeos are called “pickups,” came charging in behind Sudden Death. Sooner than you could have said Jack Robinson’s first name, one of them swept Cranberry Jones off his plunging horse and let him down safely to the ground on his own cowboy-booted feet and—would you believe it?—also on Dragonfly’s once beautiful, now-smashed, dusty hat!

  Poor Dragonfly’s poor hat! Its crown was crumpled. Its swept brim was twisted. It was covered with ground-in dust and dirt!

  And then I got one of the most thrilling surprises of my life. Cranberry Jones, instead of hurrying back toward the announcer’s stand, turned, picked up Dragonfly’s hat, dusted it off, straightened it with a few quick movements, limped over to where we were, looked up at the gang sitting like six chickens on a farm fence, and handed the hat to me—to me because I had reached out for it.

  “Things like this happen,” Cranberry Jones said “I’ll pay for getting it cleaned and blocked. Drop around to the Snow-slide Motel after the rodeo and bring the hat with you.” He turned to leave, then looked back and winked at somebody in the direction of the box seats.

  “Give it to me!” Dragonfly exclaimed and had the hat out of my hands in a flash. But there weren’t any tears in his eyes, and he wasn’t angry. Instead, his eyes were shining as if he was very proud to have let his fancy Stetson be trampled by a famous cowboy and by Sudden Death’s feet.

  Next on the program was the steer wrestling. A half-dozen cowboys I’d never heard of came charging out of the chutes one at a time, riding wildly around the arena in pursuit of a wild-eyed, long-horned steer, swinging off their horses onto the steer’s back and wrestling with it, holding it b
y the horns, trying to pin the steer to the ground, which some of the riders did.

  Then the announcer called out over the loud speaker, “Cranberry Jones again, ladies and gentlemen!”

  Out came a savage-looking steer with long, pointed, swept-back horns like the handlebars of my bicycle back home. At almost the same time, a beautiful palomino came out, a horse that in the West is sometimes called “the golden one.” It was gold-colored and proud-looking with a white mane and tail. On the horse was Cranberry Jones, wearing a coal black hat and a purple shirt with perpendicular gold stripes, and his beautiful high-heeled boots. Behind him on a sorrel horse came another rider.

  “The guy on the other horse is a hazer,” Poetry explained. “He’s a cowboy helper”—which I didn’t want to hear on account of I already knew it and was just getting ready to tell him. Fast and furious, both men chased the long-horned steer! Gallopety-lickety-swishety-jumpety! In a few seconds, Cranberry Jones was beside the racing steer and leaning over. In a flash he was half off the palomino and half onto the steer, grasping him by his long horns.

  That was one fierce, fast wrestling match between a thousand pounds of hairy, powerful-muscled beef and a hundred-fifty-pound cowboy whose own muscles must have been as strong as the ones on the brawny arms of the village blacksmith, which smithy used to stand under the spreading chestnut tree in our fourth reader in Sugar Creek School.

  I took a fleeting few seconds to look toward the announcer’s stand, where I knew several men with stopwatches were timing Cranberry to see how long it would take him to throw the steer.

  Strain and grunt and twist and snort, flying dust and yelling people—and then, all in a dusty flash, the steer was down! Somebody waved a flag, the crowd broke into wild yells, as did we all. Cranberry Jones had wrestled and thrown his steer in three seconds, less time than he had ever done it before.