What was going to happen now? What would my folks say and how would they feel when they read in the papers that their only son had been kidnapped and shot by a wild man? And how would Charlotte Ann, my baby sister, manage to grow up without a big brother to look after her?
Where, also, would I be three minutes after the bullet from Charlie’s blue-barreled pistol went sizzling through my heart or head or somewhere—and how much would it hurt?
Even while I was still being pulled backward, what good sense I still had reminded me that the Savior had died for my sins and that I was a saved boy as far as my soul was concerned. If I did get killed, I would go straight to heaven.
It was my body that needed to be saved from whatever was about to happen to it, if anything was.
Still using me as a shield between him and the fifty-yards-away police, Charlie reached the log cabin, the pistol muzzle still pressed into my ribs. Right then the searchlight found us and pinned us to the cabin wall, and there came a strong, deep voice over a loudspeaker ordering, “All right, Charlie! You haven’t got a chance! Throw down your gun!”
Charlie’s voice shot back, “You’ll never take me alive!”
What he said was yelled past my right ear, and that’s when I smelled what at first was like a Sugar Creek polecat. Then I got another strong whiff, and it was a whiskey smell, which meant that Charlie Paxton, who was acting half scared to death anyway, wouldn’t have a clear mind. Now I knew I would have to do exactly what I was told.
The spotlight was still on us, and Charlie was still behind me with his whiskey breath, the pistol muzzle was still in my ribs, and I was still not brave.
The loudspeaker shot a different kind of message to Charlie then: “All we want is for you to tell us what you did with Connie Spruce. Let the boy go and tell the truth, and it’ll go a lot easier for you!”
That must have made something in Charlie’s mind snap. Though he’d been acting like a man scared half to death, now he let loose a wild scream, crying, “I killed her! I got her drunk, and she started the chairlift and got on! I turned it off and left her stranded up there somewhere, and she froze to death!”
There was something about what he said, and especially the way he said it, that made him truly seem a wild man. His powerful left arm around my waist was crushing me to his chest so tight I could hardly breathe. I didn’t dare try to fight my way free on account of the pistol muzzle still in my side.
The police didn’t dare risk a shot at him either. They might miss him and hit me.
“Come on, you!” Charlie snarled in my ear.
I didn’t know what he meant by “Come on,” but when I felt myself being forced toward the east end of the log wall, I knew he was going to try to get to the corner and behind the cabin. Once there, he could soon lose himself in the woods. He could cross the Roaring Fork and hide out in the mountains—maybe never be captured.
There wasn’t a thing I could do except nothing, and I was doing that the best I could and at the point of a gun. If only I could make a quick whirligig movement and sink a fist into the pit of his stomach, then maybe I could knock the wind out of him.
Charlie was mumbling to himself and sobbing now while he inched his way along with me toward the corner. In a few seconds we’d be there. It was what he kept on saying over and over that made me decide for sure he was losing his mind: “I killed her! I killed her with a bottle! I made her drunk, and she went up the chairlift in a blizzard. They’ll never get me alive. I’ll kill myself first!”
It was as if he didn’t realize I was even there, yet I was being almost crushed, his arm muscles were so powerful.
The word “bottle,” though, was like a doctor’s hypodermic needle with good sense in it being jabbed into me. Charlie Paxton hadn’t killed Connie Mae Spruce! Connie Mae was still alive somewhere! Her name was on the upside-down page of the upside-down guest book in Lazywild Tourist Camp back in the middle of the United States! If Charlie should commit suicide, it’d be for nothing. Whatever had happened the night of the terrible blizzard, Connie hadn’t died.
That thought was like a burning fuse in my mind. I had to save Charlie’s life. Had to. I tried to talk, but my voice was cut off by his powerful left wrist pressed against my throat. “She’s not dead! She’s alive!” I tried to say but couldn’t get out a single understandable word. I could only make squawking noises like a young rooster learning to crow.
Dad’s advice about good sense was still in my mind, but how could I have good sense when I didn’t have any good sense to have! One thing for sure, I had to stop a suicide. I was the only one that could do it!
I gave my body a fierce fast twist and felt Charlie’s arm muscles tighten, his wrist press against my throat, choking me. If only I could do what a Sugar Creek coon does when a hound has him at bay and he is fighting for his life …
That thought was the first sign of good sense I’d had for a while. Quick as a flash, I twisted my head sideways and sank my teeth into Charlie’s forearm, just above the last snap of his caballero cuff.
Charlie let out a yell and relaxed his grip—and that’s when I whirled and sank my right fist into the pit of his stomach, driving it with muscles that felt as strong in my mind as the village blacksmith’s.
That, I tell you, was one time in my life I was glad I’d had to do a lot of hard work on the farm and had developed my muscles till they were strong. Charlie not only let out a yell when I bit his forearm, but when my fist exploded in the pit of his stomach three times in rapid-fire succession, he grunted, grimaced, and sank to his knees.
That’s when I saw the gleaming barrel of his gun lying in the grass and his trembling hand fumbling for it. Like a streak I was after it. I swooped down upon it, grabbed it up, stumbled and fell, rolled over and onto my feet again, and was off like a freed coon for the campfire where the gang and the police were.
14
I certainly didn’t have any trouble seeing my way to the campfire, for I had the police car’s headlamps lighting the way. Also, almost the minute I had Charlie’s pistol in my hand and had started to run, another car came swinging into the area.
There was plenty of action now—the police racing for Charlie before he could get his breath after I’d knocked the wind out of him, Cranberry Jones hurrying over to the car that had just driven in, the gang talking excitedly about what had happened and was still happening.
By having good sense instead of being brave, I’d not only saved Charlie from killing himself but maybe had saved my own life as well. Who knows what he might have done to me? He was so mixed up in his mind with whiskey and fear and six months of worry about what he thought he was to blame for.
I won’t have room enough in this book to tell you some of the other exciting things that happened on our out-West vacation. But maybe you’d like to know that it was Lindy, Cranberry’s sister, who drove into our camping area while we were in the middle of all that danger and excitement.
Two women were in the car, Lindy and a golden-haired lady beside her. I happened to be near enough to hear what Cranberry Jones exclaimed when he got there.
“Connie Mae! Where did you come from? How did you get here?”
I didn’t get to find out why Connie Mae had come—and from where—until the next morning when we were all having breakfast at an outdoor table near the Hello Tree.
“It was the note some thoughtful person left in a whiskey bottle back at Lazywild Camp that made me decide to come.” She looked with the prettiest, kindest eyes I ever saw at Circus Brown, who had written the note, put it in the bottle, and fastened it there in the pile of drift. “I’d left my briefcase at the camp with valuable manuscripts in it. I went back to get it. And when I decided to go out to the pile of drift where I’d left a note in the bottle myself, I found your message.”
Again the blue eyes smiled at Circus, making me proud that he had thought of doing what he had done and had had the kind of heart that made him want to do it in the first place.
The morning breeze shaking the aspen leaves was making them sound like a hundred chattering voices, and the same breeze was making friendly little waves on the surface of the pool, sending one big wave of homesickness over me for the sound of red-winged blackbirds in the bayou.
But it was still interesting where we were, because I was hearing one of the most exciting true stories in the world, maybe.
“You boys had left a copy of the Aspen Avalanche too,” Connie went on, “and I saw the news item about the $500 reward for information leading to my capture—I mean, my whereabouts.” She smiled across the table at Cranberry Jones’s extrahappy face. “So I decided to come back and claim the reward myself! I remembered your letter last winter about plane service, Cran. To get here as soon as I could after arriving at Denver, I chartered a plane, got to Aspen late yesterday afternoon, and came over by taxi but arrived here just too late to help save poor Charlie from taking his own life. But you didn’t need me, I see.” Now the blue eyes were smiling at me, and all of a sudden I was maybe the most important hero in the world.
Lindy spoke then. “We still don’t understand how you survived in that terrible blizzard.”
“I still don’t know, either,” Connie Mae said. “But let’s say it was the hand of God. I was still in a half stupor when I began to realize where I was—on the chairlift, going up. The weather was so cold that if I hadn’t had on my ski outfit, I think I’d have frozen. But I did have: woolen socks, sweater, pants, mittens, and even my overmittens and boots—all that plus my coat. And of course, as you all now know, my handbag.
“How I got onto the chair or how the lift happened to be going, I don’t know, but I prayed desperately it would keep on going till I could get to Midway. Maybe I could find shelter there and stay till the storm ended, I thought.
“But all at once the cable stopped and of course my chair with it, and I was stranded, high above the mountainside. Even as warmly dressed as I was, the wind was driving through my outfit, and I was shaking with the cold and from being afraid.”
There wasn’t a one of us at the table that wanted to interrupt.
Connie stopped a few seconds, bit her lip, swallowed, and I saw tears in her eyes, as for a fleeting minute she seemed to be staring at something just above the top of the stockade that surrounded the pool. “You must have been praying, Lindy,” was what she said before going on. “I thought maybe it wasn’t far to the ground, and if I should jump out, I’d probably land in a drift—if I didn’t land in a treetop or on a pinnacle of rock.
“I thought of my flashlight in my handbag and fumbled for it. Because my fingers were all thumbs, I dropped the handbag. I lurched forward to try to stop it, lost my balance and fell, and did land in a drift.”
The rest of Connie Mae’s story was just as exciting. She knew that every sixty feet on the cable above her there was another hanging chair, and every now and then, all up and down the mountain, there was a tower. She shined her light up through the swirling snow and managed to see the shadow of the chair she’d just left. Maybe she could use the chairs for markers. She knew her direction would always be down, never up, but there would be places where the chairs would be too high for her to see even their outline.
“But I did make it,” she finished, “all the way down to the base station. The door was locked, but I found a window, opened it, crawled in, and the warmth made me so drowsy that I fell asleep on the couch. In the very early morning when I awoke, the storm was over, but I had a terrible hangover. A hangover conscience is very tormenting. What a fool I had made of myself the day and night before! Now that it was morning, what was I to do? I simply couldn’t face you, Lindy. I couldn’t!
“But thinking of you gave me an idea. So many times in the past, when I’d had a lost weekend, I’d go to the nearest stable, rent a saddle horse and ride. Ride and ride and ride. The wind in my face, the fresh air, and the feeling of flying would help clear my mind.
“So at dawn, I hurried from the base station, through the deserted streets to the Snow-slide stables, and saddled Ginger—you know, my favorite—and while the town still slept, I rode away, out past the meadow onto Highway 82, which had been plowed the day before but now was badly drifted.
“Such a beautiful world, I thought. The mountains roundabout, a million snow-laden Christmas trees. Everything was so white except my heart. I wasn’t worthy of my friends …”
Connie Mae Spruce stopped her story again. There were tears in her eyes. But when she began once more, her voice was calm, the way maybe the Sea of Galilee had been in the Bible after the Savior stood up in the boat and said, “Peace, be still!” to the storm and the white-capped waves.
“That,” Connie Mae said, “was before I knew what I know now—that with the power of God, any alcoholic who is sick of himself and the sin of drinking that helped to make him an alcoholic and really wants to be free, can be free …”
The rest of Connie’s exciting story, if I wrote it all for you, would make this book too long. I’ll have to wind up my part of it right now and then let you read what the Aspen Avalanche printed about her in their next week’s edition.
When we ourselves read it, the gang was home again, our vacation over, and all of us were down by the Snatzerpazooka tree near the swimming hole. We were going swimming for the first time since coming home.
Dragonfly’s important Stetson was hanging on the left shoulder of Snatzerpazooka, who was swaying lazily in the Sugar Creek breeze. From across the cornfield there came the musical “Oucher-la-re-e-e-e-eeee” of red-winged blackbirds in the bayou. Dragonfly, who had forgotten how to sneeze while we were in the mountains, had learned in a hurry as soon as we were halfway home—which meant he would have to go back to the mountains next summer and stay till the first fall frost, maybe. And the rest of the gang might get to go along.
And then Big Jim took from inside his shirt a copy of the Avalanche. “It came in the morning mail,” he said. “You guys want to read about the wedding?”
“What wedding?” different ones of us asked him, and he answered lazily, “Oh, Cranberry Jones and Connie Mae Spruce.”
It was a pretty wedding story. Cranberry and Connie were married on the backs of two beautiful palomino horses—Pal and Ginger—beside the chuck wagon at the Snow-slide Motel. Cranberry was going to quit the dangerous business of roping, riding, and wrestling and live a quiet life—stuff like that.
And then at the bottom of the story was an editor’s note that said:
Thus ends another “happy ever after” story, solving only in part, however, the mystery of how a woman can disappear in a midnight blizzard and never be heard from again until she wants to be. Mrs. Cranberry Jones’s own story of her harrowing escape from a midnight ride on the chairlift and her early morning horseback ride on the beautiful Ginger from the Cranberry Stables ended with another unsolved mystery. Three weeks of her life are missing. For she has no memory of anything that happened after she had ridden only a mile or so out on Highway 82 toward the airport—nothing until she came to herself three weeks later in Lincoln, Nebraska.
One guess is as good as another, but the editor would like to propose that she rode all the way to the airport, and that now, with all the publicity about the case, some plane or helicopter pilot will recall that on the morning of last New Year’s Day a woman in a ski outfit chartered a ride from there to Denver.
Old Joe Campbell’s heart attack that New Year’s morning sealed forever any story he could have told about why Ginger was standing outside the stables, saddled and whinnying to get in for her breakfast.
Lying on my side, listening to Poetry’s squawky voice read, I was thinking about another mystery, which was: What happened to Charlie Paxton, whose forearm I’d bitten and whose stomach I’d socked a fist into that exciting night? I was just ready to ask if anybody knew, when Poetry went on.
“And here’s another Rolling Stone from the Avalanche. ‘Charlie Paxton has undergone psychiatric examination at the State Hospita
l and seems to be completely normal. He’s had what the doctors call a catharsis, his fear of having caused Connie’s death is gone, and he is well.’”
I rolled over and sat up when Poetry read that, because I’m going to be a doctor someday, and any medical term I’d never heard of always makes me want to know more about it.
And that is the story of the mystery of Wild Horse Canyon. Maybe, as the Avalanche says, the rest of it will be solved someday. If it ever is, I’ll probably write about it for you in another story about the Sugar Creek Gang.
All of a sudden, from beside me, Dragonfly let out a long-tailed sneeze, saying at the end of it, “Come on, gang, let’s go in swimming! Last one in’s a cow’s tail!”
We all jumped up then, skinned ourselves out of our clothes, and started on a pell-mell dash for the creek.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24 Page 54