Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
_THE SUGAR CREEK GANG DIGS FOR TREASURE_
by
PAUL HUTCHENS
[Illustration]
_Van Kampen Press_
WHEATON, ILLINOIS
_The Sugar Creek Gang Digs for Treasure_
Copyright, 1948, by
Paul Hutchens
All rights in this book are reserved. No part may be reproduced in
any manner without the permission in writing from the author, except
brief quotations used in connection with a review in a magazine or
newspaper.
Printed in the United States of America
1
I was sitting right that minute in a big white rowboat that was docked
at the end of the pier which ran far out into the water of the lake.
From where I was sitting, in the stern of the boat, I could see the
two brown tents where the rest of the Sugar Creek Gang was supposed to
be taking a short afternoon nap--which was one of the rules about camp
life none of us liked very well, but which was good for us on account
of we always had more pep for the rest of the day and didn’t get too
tired before night.
I’d already had my afternoon nap, and had sneaked out of the tent and
come to the dock where I was right that minute, to just sit there and
imagine things such as whether there would be anything very exciting
to see if some of the gang could explore that great big tree-covered
island away out across the water, about a mile away.
Whew! it certainly was hot out here close to the water with the
sunlight pouring itself on me from above and also shining up at me from
below, on account of the lake was like a great big blue mirror that
caught sunlight and reflected it right up under my straw hat, making
my hot freckled face even hotter than it was. Because it was the style
for the people to get tanned almost all over, I didn’t mind the heat as
much as I might have.
It seemed to be getting hotter every minute though--the kind of
day we sometimes had back home at Sugar Creek just before some big
thunderheads came sneaking up and surprised us with a fierce storm. It
was also a perfect day for a sunbath. What on earth made people want
to get brown all over for anyway? I thought. Then I looked down at
my freckled brownish arm, and was disgusted at myself, on account of
instead of getting a nice tan like Circus, the acrobatic member of our
gang, I always got sunburned and freckled and my upper arm looked like
a piece of raw steak instead of a nice piece of brown fried chicken....
Thinking that, reminded me that I was hungry and I wished it was
suppertime.
It certainly was a quiet camp, I thought, as I looked at the two tents,
where the rest of the gang was supposed to be sleeping. I just couldn’t
imagine anybody sleeping that long--anyway, not any boy--unless he was
at home and it was morning and time to get up and do the chores.
Just that second I heard a sound of footsteps from up the shore, and
looking up I saw a smallish boy with brownish curly hair coming toward
me along the path that runs all along the shore line. I knew right away
it was Little Jim, my almost best friend, and the grandest little guy
that ever lived. I knew it was Little Jim not only ’cause he carried
his ash stick with him, which was about as long as a man’s cane, but
because of the shuffling way he walked. I noticed he was stopping every
now and then to stoop over and look at some kind of wild flower, then
he’d write something down in a book he was carrying which I knew was a
wild flower Guide Book.
He certainly was an interesting little guy, I thought. I guess he
hadn’t seen me, ’cause I could hear him talking to himself which is
what he had a habit of doing when he was alone and there was something
kinda nice about it that made me like him even better than ever. I
think that little guy does more honest-to-goodness thinking than any
of the rest of the gang, certainly more than Dragonfly, the pop-eyed
member of our gang, who is spindle-legged and slim and whose nose turns
south at the end; or Poetry, the barrel-shaped member who reads all the
books he can get his hands on and who knows one hundred poems by heart
and is always quoting poems; and also more than Big Jim, the leader of
our gang who is the oldest and who has maybe seventeen smallish strands
of fuzz on his upper lip which one day will be a mustache.
I ducked my head down below the dock so Little Jim couldn’t see me, and
listened, still wondering “What on earth!”
Little Jim stopped right beside the path that leads from the dock to
the Indian kitchen which was close by the two brown tents, stooped down
and said, “Hm! Wild Strawberry....” He leafed through the book he was
carrying and with his eversharp pencil wrote something down. Then he
looked around him and, seeing a Balm of Gilead tree right close to the
dock with a five-leafed ivy on it, went straight to the tree and with
his magnifying glass, began to study the ivy.
I didn’t know I was going to call out to him and interrupt his
thoughts, which my mother had taught me not to do, when a person is
thinking hard, on account of anybody doesn’t like to have somebody
interrupt his thoughts.
“Hi, Little Jim!” I said from the stern of the boat where I was.
Say, that little guy acted as cool as a cucumber. He just looked slowly
around in different directions, including up and down, then his bluish
eyes looked absent-mindedly into mine, and for some reason I had the
kindest, warmest feeling toward him. His face wasn’t tanned like the
rest of the gang’s either, but was what people called “fair”; his
smallish nose was straight, his little chin was pear-shaped, and his
darkish eyebrows were straight across, his smallish ears were like they
sometimes were--lopped over a little on account of that is the way he
nearly always wears his straw hat.
When he saw me sitting there in the boat, he grinned and said, “I’ll
bet I’ll get a hundred in nature study in school next fall. I’ve found
forty-one different kinds of wild flowers.”
I wasn’t interested in the study of plants at all, right that minute,
but in some kind of an adventure instead, so I said to Little Jim, “I
wonder if there are any different kinds of flowers over there on that
island, where Robinson Crusoe had his adventures.”
Little Jim looked at me without seeing me, I thought, then he grinned
and said, “Robinson Crusoe never saw _that_ island.”
“Oh yes, he did! He’s looking at it right this very minute and wishing
he could explore it and find a treasure or something,” meaning I was
wishing I was Robinson Crusoe myself.
Just that second a strange voice piped up from behind some sumac on
the other side of the Balm of Gilead tree and said, “You can’t be
a Robinson Crusoe and land on a tropical island without having a
shipwreck first, and who wants to have a wreck?”
I knew right away it was Poetry, even before I saw his barrel-shaped
body shuffle out from behind the sumac and I saw his fat face, and his
pompadour hair and his heavy eye brows that grew straight across the
top of his nose, like he had just one big longish eyebrow instead of
two like most people have.
“You _are_ a wreck,” I called to him, and didn’t mean it, but we always
liked to have word fights, which we didn’t mean and always liked each
other better all the time.
“I’ll leave you guys to fight it out,” Little Jim said to us. “I’ve got
to find nine more kinds of wild flowers,” and with that, that little
chipmunk of a guy shuffled on up the shore swinging his stick around
and stooping over to study some new kind of flower he spied every now
and then.
And that’s how Poetry and I got our heads together to plan a game of
Robinson Crusoe, not knowing we were going to run into one of the
strangest adventures we’d had in our whole lives.
“See here,” Poetry said, grunting himself down and sliding down off the
side of the dock and into the boat where I was, “if we play Robinson
Crusoe, we’ll have to have one other person to go along with us.”
“But there were only _two_ of them,” I said, “--Robinson Crusoe himself
and his man Friday, the colored boy who became his slave, and whom
Crusoe saved from being eaten by the cannibals, and who, after he was
saved, did nearly all Crusoe’s work for him.”
“All right,” Poetry said, “I’ll be Crusoe, and _you_ be his Man Friday.”
“I _will_ not,” I said. “I’m already Crusoe. I thought of it first, and
I’m already _him_.”
Poetry and I frowned at each other, almost half mad for a minute until
his fat face brightened up and he said, “All right, you be Crusoe, and
I’ll be one of the cannibals getting ready to eat your man Friday, and
you come along and rescue him.”
“But if you’re going to be a cannibal, I’ll have to _shoot_ you, and
then you’ll be _dead_,” I said.
That spoiled that plan for a jiffy, until Poetry’s bright mind thought
of something else, which was, “didn’t Robinson Crusoe have a pet goat
on the island with him?”
“Sure,” I said, and Poetry said, “All right, after you shoot me, I’ll
be the goat.”
Well that settled that, but which one of the gang should be the colored
slave, whom Robinson Crusoe saved on a Friday and whom he named his Man
Friday, we couldn’t decide right that minute.
It was Poetry who thought of a way to help us decide which other one of
the gang to take along with us.
“Big Jim is _out_,” I said, “’cause he’s too big and would want to be
the leader himself, and Robinson Crusoe has to be _that_.”
“And _Circus_ is out, too,” Poetry said, on account of he’s almost as
big as Big Jim.
“Then there’s only Little Jim, Dragonfly and Little Tom Till left,” I
said, and Poetry said, “Maybe not a one of them’ll be willing to be
your Man Friday.”
We didn’t have time to talk about it any further, ’cause right
that second Dragonfly came moseying out toward us from his tent,
his spindling legs swinging awkwardly and his crooked nose and
dragonfly-like eyes making him look just like a ridiculous Friday
afternoon, I thought.
“He’s the man I want,” I said. “We three have had lots of exciting
adventures together, and he’ll be perfect.”
“But he can’t keep quiet when there’s a mystery. He always sneezes just
when we don’t want him to.”
Right that second, Dragonfly reached the pier and let the bottoms of
his bare feet go ker-plop, ker-plop, ker-plop on the smooth boards,
getting closer with every “ker-plop.”
When he spied Poetry and me in the boat at the end, he stopped like
he had been shot at, and looked down at us and said with an accusing
voice, “You guys going on a boat ride? I’m going along!”
I started to say, “Sure, we want you,” thinking how when we got over to
the island, we could make a slave out of him as easy as pie.
But Poetry beat me to it by saying, “There’s only one more of the gang
going with us, and it might not be you.”
Dragonfly plopped himself down on the edge of the dock, swung one foot
out to the gunwale of the boat, caught it with his toes, pulled it
toward him, swished himself in and sat down in the seat behind Poetry.
“If anybody goes, I go, or I’ll scream and tell the rest of the gang,
and nobody’ll get to go.”
I looked at Poetry and he looked at me and our eyes said to each other,
“Now what?”
“Are you willing to be eaten by a cannibal?” I asked, and he got a
puzzled look in his eyes. “There’re cannibals over there on that
island--one, anyway--a great big fat barrel-shaped one that--”
Poetry’s fist shot forward and socked me in my ribs, which didn’t
have any fat on them, and I grunted and stopped talking at the same
time. “We’re going to play Robinson Crusoe,” Poetry said, “and whoever
goes’ll have to be willing to do everything I say--I mean everything
_Bill_ says.”
“_Please_,” Dragonfly said. “I’ll do _anything_.”
Well that was a promise, but Poetry wasn’t satisfied. He pretended
he wanted Tom Till to go along, on account of he liked Tom a lot and
thought he’d make a better Man Friday than Dragonfly.
“We’ll try you out,” Poetry said, and caught hold of the dock with his
hands and climbed out of the boat, all of us following him.
“We’ll have to initiate you,” Poetry explained, as we all swished
along together. “We can’t take anybody on a treasure hunt who can’t
keep quiet when he’s told to, and who can’t take orders without saying
‘WHY?’”
“Why?” Dragonfly wanted to know, and grinned, but Poetry said with a
very serious face, “It isn’t funny,” and we went on.
“What’re you going to do?” Dragonfly wanted to know, as we started to
march him along with us up the shore to the place where we were going
to initiate him. I didn’t know myself where we were going to do it,
but Poetry seemed to know exactly what to do and where to go and why,
so I acted like I knew too, Poetry making me stop to pick up a great
big empty gallon can that had had prunes in it, the gang having to eat
prunes for breakfast nearly every morning on our camping trip.
“What’s _that_ for?” Dragonfly wanted to know, and Poetry said, “That’s
to cook our dinner in.”
“You mean--you mean--_me_!”
“You!” Poetry said, “Or you can’t be Bill’s Man Friday.”
“But I get saved, don’t I?” Dragonfly said with a worried voice.
“Sure, just as soon as I get shot,” Poetry explained.
“And then you turn into a goat,” I said to Poetry, as he panted along
beside us, “and right away you eat the prune can!”
With that, Poetry smacked his lips like he had just finished eating a
delicious tin can. Then he leaned over and groaned like it had given
him a stomach-ache.
Right that second, I decided to try Dragonfly’s obedience, so I said,
“All right, Friday, take the can you’re going to be cooked in and fill
it half full of lake water!”
There was a quick scowl on Dragonfly’s face, which said, “I don’t want
to do it.” He shrugged his scrawny shoulders lifted his eyebrows and
the palms of his hands at the same time, and said, “I’m a poor heathen;
I can’t even understand English; I don’t want to fill any old prune can
with water.”
With that, I scowled, and said to Poetry in a fierce voice, “That
settles _that_! He can’t take orders. Let’s send him home!”
Boy, did Dragonfly ever come to life in a hurry. “All right, all
right,” he whined, “give me the can!” He grabbed it out of my hand,
made a dive toward the lake which was still close by us, dipped the can
in and came back with it filled clear to the top with nice clean water.
“Here, Crusoe,” he puffed. “Your Man Friday is your humble slave.” He
extended the can toward me.
“Carry it yourself!” I said.
And then, all of a sudden, Dragonfly set it down on the ground where
some of it splashed over the top onto Poetry’s shoes, and Dragonfly got
a stubborn look on his face and said, “I think the cannibal ought to
carry it. I’m not even _Friday_ yet--not till the cannibal gets killed.”
Well, he was right, so Poetry looked at me, and I at him, and he picked
up the can, and we went on till we came to the boathouse, which if
you’ve read “The Sugar Creek Gang Goes North,” you already know about.
It was going to be fun initiating Dragonfly--just how much fun I didn’t
know--and I certainly didn’t know what a mystery we were going to run
into in less than fifteen minutes of the next half hour.
In only a little while we came to Santa’s boathouse, Santa as you
maybe know being the barrel-shaped owner of the property where we had
pitched our tents. He also owned a lot of other lakeshore property up
here in this part of the Paul Bunyan country. Everybody called him
Santa ’cause he was round like all the different Santa Clauses we’d
seen and was always laughing.
Santa himself with his big laughing voice called to us when he saw us
coming and said, “Well, well, if it isn’t Bill Collins, Dragonfly and
Poetry,” Santa being a smart man, knowing that if there’s anything a
boy likes to hear better than anything else, it’s somebody calling him
by his name.
“Hi,” we all answered him, Poetry setting the prune can of water down
with a savage sigh like it was too heavy to stand and hold.
Santa was standing beside his boathouse door, with a hammer in one hand
and a handsaw in the other.
“Where to, with that can of water?” he asked us, and Dragonfly said,
“We’re going to pour the water in a big hole up there on the hill and
make a new lake.”
Santa grinned at all of us with a mischievous twinkle in his bluish
eyes, knowing Dragonfly hadn’t told any lie but was only doing what
most boys do most all the time anyway--playing “Make-believe.”
“May we look inside your boathouse a minute?” Poetry asked, and Santa
said, “Certainly, go right in,” which we did, and looked around a
little.
Poetry acted very mysterious, like he was thinking about something
very important, while he frowned with his fat forehead, and looked
at different things such as the cot in the farther end, the shavings
and sawdust on the floor, and the carpenter’s tools above the work
bench--which were chisels, screwdrivers, saws, planes and also hammers
and nails; also Poetry examined the different kinds of boards made out
of beautifully grained wood.
“You boys like to hold this saw and hammer a minute?” Santa asked us,
and handed a hammer to me and a saw handle to Dragonfly, which we took,
not knowing why.
“That’s the hammer and that’s the saw the kidnapper used the night he
was building the gravehouse in the Indian cemetery,” Santa said, and I
looked and felt puzzled, till he explained, saying, “The police found
them the night you boys caught him.”
“But--how did they _get_ there?” I asked, but Poetry answered me by
saying, “Don’t you remember, Bill Collins, that we found this boathouse
door wide open that night, with the latch hanging? The kidnapper stole
’em.”
I looked at the hammer in my hand, and remembered, and tried to realize
that the hammer handle I had in my hand right that minute was the same
one that, one night last week, had been in the wicked hand of a very
fierce man who had used it in an Indian cemetery to help him build a
gravehouse. Also, the saw in Poetry’s hand was the one the man had used
to saw pieces of lumber into the right lengths.
“And _here_,” Santa said, lifting a piece of canvas from something in
the corner, “is the little, nearly-finished gravehouse. The lumber was
stolen from here also. The police brought it out this morning. They’ve
taken fingerprints from the saw and hammer.”
“Why on earth did he want to build an Indian gravehouse?” I asked,
looking at the pretty little house that looked like a longish chicken
coop, like we have at home at Sugar Creek, only twice as long, almost.
Dragonfly spoke up then and said, “He maybe was going to bury the
little Ostberg girl there.”
But Poetry shook his head, “_I_ think he was going to bury the ransom
money there, where nobody in the world would guess to look.”
Well, we had to get going with our game of Robinson Crusoe, which we
did, all of us feeling fine to think that last week we had had a chance
to catch the kidnapper, even though the ransom money was still missing.
2
But say, it was a queer feeling I had in my mind as we left the
boathouse and went up the narrow, hardly-ever-used road to the top of
the hill and followed that road through a forest of jack pine and along
the edge of the little clearing. I was remembering what exciting things
happened here the very first night we’d come up North on our camping
trip. Poetry was remembering it too, ’cause he said in a ghost-like
voice so as to try to make the atmosphere of Dragonfly’s initiation
seem even more mysterious to him, “Right here, at this sandy place in
the road, is where the car was stuck in the sand, and right over here
behind these bushes is where Bill and I were crouching half scared to
death, watching him.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and he had the little Ostberg girl he’d kidnapped
right in the back seat of the car all the time and we didn’t know it
for sure.”
“How’d he get his car _un_stuck?” Dragonfly wanted to know, even though
the whole Sugar Creek Gang had probably been told it a dozen times,
every time Poetry and I had told it to them. So I said to Dragonfly,
“Well, his wheels were spinning and spinning in the sand and he
couldn’t make his car go forward, but it would rock forth and back, so
he got out and let the air out of his back tires till they were almost
half flat. That made them wider and increased traction, and then when
he climbed back into his car and stepped on the gas, why he pulled out
of the sand and went lickety-sizzle right on up this road.”
“You going to initiate me _here_?” Dragonfly wanted to know, and I
started to say, “Yes,” but Poetry said, “No, a little farther up, where
we found the little girl herself.”
We walked along, in the terribly sultry afternoon weather. Pretty soon
we turned off to the side of the road and came out into a little
clearing that was surrounded by tall pine trees. I was remembering
how right here Poetry and I had heard the little girl gasping out
half-smothered cries and with our flashlights shining right on her,
we’d found her lying wrapped up in an Indian blanket.
“She was lying right here,” Poetry said, “--right here where we’re
going to initiate you.” Poetry’s ordinarily duck-like voice changed
to a sound like a growling bear’s voice as he talked and sounded very
fierce. There really wasn’t anything to worry about, though, ’cause we
knew the police had caught the kidnapper and he was in jail somewhere,
and the pretty little golden-haired Ostberg girl was safe and sound
with her parents again back in St. Paul.
“But they never did find the ransom money,” Poetry said, which was
the truth, “and nobody knows where it is. But whoever finds it gets a
thousand dollar reward--a whole thousand dollars!”
“You think maybe it’s buried somewhere?” Dragonfly asked with a serious
face.
“Sure,” Poetry said. “We’re going to play Robinson Crusoe and Treasure
Island both at once. First we save our Man Friday from the cannibals,
and then we quit playing Robinson Crusoe and change to Treasure Island.”
Well, it was good imagination and lots of fun, and I was already
imagining myself to be Robinson Crusoe on an island, living all by
myself. In fact, I sometimes have more fun when I imagine myself to
be somebody else than when I am just plain red-haired fiery-tempered,
freckled-faced Bill Collins, living back at Sugar Creek.
It was fun the way Poetry and I initiated Dragonfly into our secret
gang--anyway, fun for Poetry and me. This is the way we did it....
I hid myself out of sight behind some low fir trees with a stick in my
hand for a gun, and Poetry stood Dragonfly up against a tree and tied
him with a piece of string he carried in his pocket.
“Now, don’t you _dare_ break that string!” Poetry told him. “You’re
going to be cooked and eaten in a few minutes! You can pretend to _try_
to get loose, but don’t you dare do it!”
I stood there hiding behind my fir trees getting ready to shoot with
my imaginary gun, just in time to save Dragonfly from being cooked.
Dragonfly looked half crazy standing there tied to the tree and with a
grin on his face, watching Poetry stack a little stack of sticks in one
place for our imaginary fire. We wouldn’t start a real fire on account
of it would have been absolutely crazy to start one, nobody with any
sense starting a fire in a forest on account of there might be a
terrible forest fire and thousands of beautiful trees would be burned,
and lots of wild animals, and maybe homes and cottages of people, and
even people themselves.
A jiffy after the stack of sticks was ready, Poetry set the big prune
can on top, then he turned to Dragonfly and started to untie him.
“Groan!” Poetry said to him. “Act like you’re scared to death! Yell!
_Do_ omething!”
Dragonfly didn’t make a very scared black man. “There’s nothing to be
afraid of,” he said; and there wasn’t, I thought--but all of a sudden
there was, ’cause the very second Poetry had Dragonfly cut loose
and was dragging him toward the imaginary fire, Dragonfly making it
hard for him by struggling and hanging back and making his body limp
so Poetry had to almost carry him, and just as I peered through the
branches of my hideout and pointed my stick at Poetry and was getting
ready to yell, “BANG! BANG!” a couple of times, and then rush in and
rescue Dragonfly, there was a crashing noise in the underbrush behind
me, and footsteps running and then a terribly loud explosion that
sounded like the shot of a revolver or some kind of a gun which almost
scared the living daylights out of me, and also out of the poor black
boy and the cannibal that was getting ready to eat him.
Say, when I heard that shot behind me, I jumped almost out of my skin,
I was so startled and frightened. Poetry and poor little pop-eyed
Dragonfly acted like they were scared even worse than I was.
When you’re all of a sudden scared like that, you don’t know what to
say or think. Things sort of swim in your head and your heart beats
fiercely for a minute. Maybe we wouldn’t have been quite so frightened
if we hadn’t had so many important things happen to us already on our
camping trip, such as finding a little kidnapped girl in this very
spot the very first night we’d been up here, and then the next night
catching the kidnapper himself in a spooky Indian cemetery.
I was prepared to expect almost anything when I heard that explosion
and the crashing in the underbrush; and then I could hardly believe
my astonished eyes when I saw right behind and beside Dragonfly and
Poetry a little puff of bluish gray smoke and about seventeen pieces of
shredded paper, and knew that some body had thrown a firecracker right
into the middle of our excitement.
“It’s a firecracker!” Dragonfly yelled at us, and then I had an
entirely new kind of scare when I saw a little yellow flame of fire
where the explosion had been, and saw some of the dry pine needles leap
into flames and the flames start to spread fast.
I knew it must have been one of the gang who’d maybe had some
firecrackers left over from the fourth of July at Sugar Creek. Quicker
even than I can write it for you, I dashed into the center of things,
grabbed up our prune can and in less than a jiffy had the fire out, and
then a jiffy later, I heard a scuffling behind me and a grunting and
puffing; and looking around quick, the empty prune can in my hands, I
was just in time to see Circus, our acrobat, scramble out of Poetry’s
fat hands, and in less than another jiffy, go shinning up a tree,
where he perched himself on a limb and looked down at us, grinning like
a monkey.
I was mad at him for breaking up our game of make-believe, and for
shooting off a firecracker in the forest where it might start a
terrible fire. So I yelled up at him and said, “You crazy goof! Don’t
you know it’s terribly dry around here and you might burn up the whole
Chippewa forest!”
“I was trying to help you kill a fat cannibal,” Circus said. He had
a hurt expression in his voice and on his face, as he added, “Please
don’t tell Barry I was such a dumb-bell,”--Barry being our camp
director.
I forgave Circus right away when I saw he was really trying to join in
with our fun and just hadn’t used his head, not thinking of the danger
of forest fires at all.
“You shouldn’t even be _carrying_ matches, to light a firecracker
with,” Poetry said up at him.
“Every camper ought to have a waterproof matchbook with matches in it,”
Circus said. “I read it in a book, telling what to take along on a
camping trip. Besides,” Circus said down to us, “we can’t play Robinson
Crusoe without having to eat food, and how are we going to eat without
a fire?” I knew then that he’d guessed what game we were playing and
had decided to go along.
“We don’t need you,” I said. “We need only my Man Friday, and a
cannibal that gets killed--”
“And turns into a goat,” Poetry cut in and said.
“Only _one_ goat would be terribly lonesome,” Circus said. “I think I
ought to go along. I’d be willing to be another goat.”
Well, we had to get Dragonfly’s initiation finished, so I took charge
of things and said, “All right, Poetry, you’re dead! Lie down over
there by that tree. And you, Dragonfly, get down on your knees in front
of me and put your head clear down to the ground.”
“Why?” Dragonfly wanted to know, and I said, “Keep still. My Man Friday
doesn’t ask ‘Why?’”
Dragonfly looked worried a little, but did as I said, and bowed his
head low in front of me, with his face almost touching the ground.
“Now,” I said, “Take hold of my right foot and set it on the top of
your neck--NO” I yelled down at him, “Don’t ask ‘_why_!’ JUST DO IT!”
which Dragonfly did.
“And now, my left foot,” I ordered.
“That’s what the blackboy did in Robinson Crusoe, so Crusoe would
know he thanked him for saving his life from the terrible cannibals,
and that he would be willing to be his slave forever,” I said to
Dragonfly. “Do you solemnly promise to do everything I say, from now on
and forevermore?” I asked, and when Dragonfly started to say, “I do,”
but got only as far as “I--” when he started to make a funny little
sniffling noise. His right hand let loose of my foot, and he grabbed
his nose and went into a tailspin kind of a sneeze, as he ducked his
neck out of the way of my foot and rolled over and said, “I’m allergic
to your foot,” which the dead cannibal on the ground thought was funny
and snickered, but I saw a little bluish flower down there with pretty
yellowish stamens in its center, and I knew why Dragonfly had sneezed.
My Man Friday, in rolling over, tumbled ker-smack into the cannibal
and the two of them forgot they were in a game and started a friendly
scuffle, just as Circus slid down the tree, joined in with them, and
all of a sudden Dragonfly’s initiation was over. He was my Man Friday,
and from now on he had to do everything I said.
Up to now, it was only a game we’d been playing, but a jiffy later
Circus rolled over and over, clear out of reach of the rest of us, and
scrambled up into a sitting position and said to us excitedly, “Hey
Gang! Look! I’ve found something--here at the foot of the tree. _It’s a
letter of some kind!_”
I stared at an old envelope in Circus’s hands, and remembered that
right here where we were was exactly where we’d found the kidnapped
girl and that the police hadn’t been able to find the ransom money, and
that the captured kidnapper hadn’t told them where it was. In fact, he
had absolutely refused to tell them. We’d read it in the newspapers.
Boy oh boy, when I saw that envelope in Circus’s hands, I imagined all
kinds of things, such as it being a ransom note or maybe it had a map
in it and would tell us where we could find the money and everything!
Boy oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!...
3
Well, when you have a mysterious sealed envelope in your hand, which
you’ve just found under some pine needles at the base of a tree out in
the middle of a forest, and when you’re playing a game about finding
buried treasure, all of a sudden you sort of wake up and realize that
your game has come to life and that you’re in for an honest-to-goodness
mystery that will be a thousand times more interesting and exciting
than the imaginary game you’ve been playing.
We decided to keep our new names, though, which we did, although we had
an argument about it first. I was still Robinson Crusoe, and Dragonfly
was my Man Friday. Circus and Poetry wanted us to call them the
cannibals, but Dragonfly wouldn’t. “I don’t want to have to worry about
being eaten up every minute. You’ve got to turn into goats right away.
Besides, one cannibal’s already been shot and is supposed to be dead.”
“You’d make a good goat yourself,” Circus said to me,--“a _Billy_ goat,
’cause your name’s Bill.”
But it wasn’t any time to argue, when there was a mysterious envelope
right in the middle of our huddle where we were on the ground at the
base of the tree where Circus had found it, so Poetry said, “All right,
I’ll be the goat, if you let me open the envelope.”
“And I’ll be the other goat,” Circus said, “if you’ll let me read it.”
“Let _me_ read it,” Dragonfly said to me. “Goats can’t read anyway.”
“You can’t either,” I said. “You’re a black man that doesn’t know
anything about civilization and you don’t know how to read.”
So it was I who got to open the soiled brownish envelope, which I
did with excited fingers, and then we all let out four disappointed
groans, for would you believe it? there wasn’t a single thing written
on the folded white paper on the inside--not one single thing. It was
only a piece of typewriter paper.
Well that was that. We all sank down on the ground in different
directions and felt like the bottom had dropped out of our new mystery
world. I looked at Friday and he at me, and the fat goat started
chewing his cud, while our acrobatic goat rolled over on his back,
pulled his knees up to his chin, and groaned, then he rolled over on
his side and, my Man Friday lying right there right then, got _his_
side rolled onto, which started a scuffle, making my Man Friday angry.
All of a sudden he remembered something about the story of Robinson
Crusoe. He grunted and said, while he twisted and tried to get out from
under the goat, “Listen, you--when Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday
got hungry, they killed and ate one of the goats, and if you don’t
behave yourself like a good goat, we’ll--”
But Circus was as mischievous as anything and said, while he rolled
himself back toward Dragonfly again and laid his head on his side,
“Isn’t your name Friday?”
Dragonfly grunted and said, “Sure,” and Circus answered, “All right.
I’m sleepy, and there’s nothing better than taking a nap on Friday,”
which he pretended to do, shutting his eyes and started in snoring as
loud as he could, which sounded like a goat with the asthma.
That reminded Poetry of something funny he’d read somewhere, and it
was about two fleas who were supposed to have lived on the island
with Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday. Both of these fleas had been
chewing away on Crusoe and were getting tired of him and wanted a
change, so pretty soon one of them called to the other and said, “So
long, kid, I’ll be seeing you on Friday.”
I just barely giggled at Poetry’s story ’cause my mind was working hard
on the new mystery, thinking about the blank piece of paper and why
it was blank, and why was the envelope sealed, and who had dropped it
here, and when, and why?
So I stood up and walked like Robinson Crusoe might have walked, in a
little circle around the tree, looking up at the limb where Circus had
been perched, and then at the ground, and at Poetry, my fat goat, who
right then unscrambled himself from the rest of the inhabitants of our
imaginary island, and followed me around, sniffling at my hand, like a
hungry goat that wanted to eat the letter I had.
Abruptly Poetry stopped and said to me, “Sh!” which means to keep
still, which I did, and he said, “Look, here’s a sign of some kind.”
I looked, but didn’t see anything except a small twig about four or
five feet tall that was broken off, and had been left with the top
hanging.
My Man Friday and the acrobatic goat were still scuffling under the
tree, and didn’t seem interested in what we were doing. “What kind of a
sign?” I asked Poetry, knowing that he was one of our gang who was more
interested in woodcraft than most of the gang and was always looking
for signs and trails and things.
“See here,” he said to me, “this is a little birch twig, and somebody’s
broken it part way off and left it hanging.”
“What of it?” I said, remembering that back home at Sugar Creek I’d
done that myself to a chokecherry twig or a willow, and it hadn’t meant
a thing.
“But look which way the top points!” Poetry said mysteriously. “That
means it’s a signal on a trail. It means for us to go in the direction
the top of the broken twig points, and after awhile we’ll find another
broken twig, and whichever way it points we’re to go that way.”
Say, did my disappointed mind ever come to quick life! Although I still
doubted it might mean anything. Right away, we called the other goat
and my Man Friday and let them in on our secret, and we all swished
along, pretending to be scouts, going straight in the direction the
broken twig pointed, all of us looking for another twig farther on.
We walked about twenty yards through the dense growth before we found
another broken twig hanging, but sure enough we did find one, and this
time it was a broken oak twig, and was bent in the opposite direction
we’d come from, which meant the trail went straight on. Then we did get
excited, ’cause we _knew_ we were on somebody’s trail.
My Man Friday was awful dumb for one who was supposed to be used to
outdoor life, though, ’cause he wanted to finish breaking off the top
of the oak twig and also cut off the bottom and make a stick out of it
to carry, and to take home with us back to Sugar Creek when we finished
our vacation. “For a souvenir,” he whined complainingly, when we
wouldn’t let him and made him fold up his pocket knife and put it back
into his pocket again.
“That’s the sign post on our trail,” Poetry explained. “We have to
leave it there so we can follow the trail back to where we started
from, or might get lost,” which I thought was good sense and said so.
We scurried along, getting more and more interested and excited as
we found one broken twig after another. Sometimes they were pointing
straight ahead, and sometimes at an angle. Once we found a twig
broken clear off and lying flat on the ground, at a right angle from
the direction we’d been traveling, so we turned in the direction it
pointed, and hurried along.
Once when Poetry was studying very carefully the direction a new broken
twig was pointing, he gasped and said, “Hey, Gang! Look!”
We scrambled to him like a flock of little fluffy chickens making a
dive toward a mother hen when she clucks for them to hurry to her and
eat a bug or a fat worm or something.
“See here,” Poetry said, “--here’s where our trail branches off in two
directions--one to the right and the other to the left.” And sure
enough, he was right, for only a few feet apart were two broken twigs,
one an oak, and the other a chokecherry, the chokecherry pointing to
the right and the oak to the left.
“Which way do we go for the buried treasure?” Poetry asked me, and I
didn’t know what to answer.
Then Poetry let out a gasp and said, “Hey, this one pointing to the
right looks like it’s fresher than the other. We certainly are getting
the breaks.”
We all studied the two broken twigs, and I knew that Poetry was right.
The one pointing to the right looked a lot fresher break than the
one pointing to the left. Why, it might even have been made today! I
thought. And for some reason, not being able to tell for sure just how
long it had been since somebody had been right here making the trail, I
got a very peculiar and half-scared feeling all up and down my spine.
“I wish Big Jim was here,” my Man Friday said. I wished the same
thing, but instead of saying it, I said bravely, “Who wants Big J--”
and stopped like I had been shot at and hit, as I heard a sound from
somewhere that was like a high-pitched trembling woman’s voice calling
for help. It also sounded a little bit like a screech owl’s voice that
wails along Sugar Creek at night back home.
“’Tsa loon,” Circus said, and was crazy enough to let out a long, loud
wail that trembled and sounded more like a loon than a loon’s wail does.
I looked at my Man Friday and at my fat goat to see what they thought
it was. Right away before I could read their thoughts, there was
another trembling high-pitched voice which answered Circus. The second
I heard it, I thought it _didn’t_ sound like a loon but like an actual
person calling and crying and terribly scared.
You can’t hear a thing like that out in the middle of the Chippewa
Forest where there are Indians and different kinds of wild animals
and not feel like I felt, which was almost half scared to death for a
minute, although I knew there weren’t any bears or lions, but maybe
only deer and polecats and coons and possums and maybe mink.
“It’s NOT a loon,” I whispered huskily, and felt my knees get weak and
I wanted to plop down on the ground and rest. I also wanted to run.
Then the call came again not more than a hundred feet ahead of us, and
as quick as I had been scared, I wasn’t again, for this time it did
sound exactly like a loon.
In a jiffy we all felt better and said so to each other. The newest
broken twig right beside us was pointing in the direction the sound
came from, so we decided there was probably a lake right close by which
is where loons nearly always are--out on some lake somewhere swimming
along like ducks, and diving and also screaming bloody murder to their
mates.
We all swished along, being very careful to look at the broken twigs
so we’d remember what they looked like when we got ready to come back,
which we planned we’d do after awhile.
My fat goat and I were walking together ahead of my Man Friday and my
acrobatic goat. We dodged out way around fallen tree trunks and old
stumps and around wild rose bushes and also wild raspberry patches and
chokecherries, and still there wasn’t any lake anywhere.
It certainly was a queer feeling we had though, as we dodged along,
talking about our mystery and wondering where we were going, and how
soon we would get there.
“’Tsfunny how come Circus found that envelope back there with only a
blank piece of white paper in it,” I said. “Do you s’pose the kidnapper
dropped it when he left the little Ostberg girl there?”
“I suppose--why sure, he did,” Poetry said.
“How come the police didn’t find it there then, when they searched the
place last week for clues. If it’d been there then, wouldn’t they have
found it?” I asked those two questions as fast as I could ’cause that
envelope in my pocket seemed like it was hot and would burn a hole in
my shirt any minute.
Poetry’s fat forehead frowned. He was as struck as I was, over the
mystery.
All our minds were as blank as the blank letter and not a one of us
could think of anything that would make it make sense, so we went on,
following our trail of broken twigs. It was fun what we were doing, and
we didn’t feel very scared ’cause we knew the kidnapper was in jail. In
fact, we were all thrilled with the most interesting excitement we’d
had in a long time, ’cause for some reason we were sure we might find
something terribly interesting at the end of the trail--if we ever came
to it--not knowing that we’d not only find something very interesting
but would bump into an experience even more exciting and thrilling than
the ones we’d already had on our camping trip--and one that was just as
dangerous.
Right that second we came to a hill. I looked ahead and spied a wide
expanse of pretty blue water down below us. Between us and the lake,
on the hillside, was a log cabin with a chimney running up and down
the side next to us, and a big log door. We all had seen it at once I
guess, ’cause we all stopped and dropped down behind some underbrush or
something and most of us said, “Sh!” at the same time.
We lay there for what seemed like a terribly long time before any of us
did anything except listen to ourselves breathe. I was also listening
to my heart beat. But not a one of us was as scared as we would have
been if we hadn’t known that the kidnapper was all nicely locked up in
jail and nobody needed to be afraid of him at all. I guess I never had
such a wonderful feeling in my life for a long time as I did right that
minute, ’cause I realized we’d followed the trail like real scouts and
we’d actually run onto the kidnapper’s hideout, and we might find the
ransom money. Boy oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!
Why all we’d have to do would be to go up to that crazy old-fashioned
looking old house, push open a door or climb in through a window and
look around until we found it, I thought. It was certainly the craziest
looking weathered old house, and it looked like nobody had lived in
it for years and years. The windows had old green blinds hanging at
crooked angles, some of the stones had fallen off the top of the
chimney, and the doorstep was broken down and looked rotten. I could
tell from where I was that there hadn’t been anybody going into that
door for a long time on account of there was a spider web spun from the
doorpost next to the old white knob, to one of the up-and-down logs in
the middle of the door.
“Let’s go in and investigate.”
“Let’s n-n-n-n-not,” my Man Friday said, and I scowled at him and said
fiercely, “Slave, we’re going in!”
4
Even though there was a spider web across the door, which meant that
nobody had gone in or out of the door for a long time, still that
didn’t mean there might not be anybody inside, ’cause there might be
another door on the side next to the lake.
Poetry and I made my Man Friday and the acrobatic goat stay where they
were while we circled the cabin, looking for any other door and any
signs of anybody living there. The only door we found was one that
led from the cabin out onto a screened front porch, but the porch was
closed-in with no doors going outside, on account of there was a big
ravine just below the front of the house and between it and the lake.
So we knew that if anybody wanted to go in and out of the house he
would have to use the one and only door or else go through a window.
We circled back to Dragonfly and Circus, where we all lay down on some
tall grass behind a row of shrubbery, which somebody years ago had
set out there, when maybe a family of people had lived there. It had
probably been someone’s summer cabin, I thought--somebody who lived in
St. Paul or Minneapolis, or somewhere, and had built the cabin up here.
I noticed that there was a cement pavement running all around the back
side of the cabin, which was set up against the almost cliff-like hill.
Also there was a very long stone stairway beginning about twenty feet
from the old spider-web-covered door and running around the edge of the
ravine, making a sort of semi-circle down to the lake to where there
was a very old dock, which the waves of the lake in stormy weather, or
else the ice in the winter, had broken down, and nobody had fixed it.
We waited in our hiding place for maybe about ten minutes, listening
and watching before we decided nobody was inside, and before we decided
to look in the windows and later go inside, ourselves. We didn’t think
about it being trespassing, on account of there was an old abandoned
house back at Sugar Creek which our gang always went into anytime we
wanted to, and nobody thought anything about it, because that old cabin
back home belonged to a very old long-whiskered old man whom everybody
knows as Old Man Paddler, and anything that belonged to him seemed to
belong to us, too, he being a very special friend of anybody who was
lucky enough to be a boy.
Anyway, we, all of us, were pretty soon peeking in through the windows,
trying to see what we could see, but it was pretty dark inside, so we
knew if we wanted to see more we had to find some way to get in.
Right that second I decided to see if my Man Friday was my Man Friday
or not, so I said, “O.K., Friday, go up and knock at that door.”
Say, Dragonfly got the scaredest look on his face. As you maybe know,
if you’ve read some of the other Sugar Creek Gang stories, Dragonfly’s
mother believed in ghosts, and good luck happening to you if you find
a four-leaf clover or a horseshoe, so Dragonfly believed it too, most
boys believing and doing what their parents believe and do.
Dragonfly not only had a scared look on his face but also a stubborn
one, when he said, “I _won’t_!”
He refused to budge an inch, and so in a very fierce voice I commanded
Poetry and Circus, “O.K., cannibals, eat him up!”
“They’re NOT cannibals!” Dragonfly whined. “They’re goats, and goats
only eat tin cans and shirts and ivies and things like that!”
“What’s the difference?” the fat goat said, and started head-first for
Dragonfly.
But we couldn’t afford to waste any time that way, so Poetry, being
maybe the bravest one of us, went up to the door, while we held our
breath, I knowing that there wasn’t anybody inside but wondering if
there was, and if there was, who was it, and was he dangerous, and
what would happen if there was a fierce man in there or something.
First Poetry brushed away the spider web, then he knocked on the door.
Nobody answered the knock so he knocked again and called, “Hello!
Anybody home?”
He waited and so did we, but there wasn’t any answer, so he turned
the knob, twisting it this way and that, and the door didn’t open. He
turned around to us and said, “It’s locked.”
Well, I had it in the back of my mind that the ransom money might be
in that cabin and that we ought to go in and look, as I told you,
not thinking that it was trespassing on somebody’s property to go in
without permission.
We found a window on one side of the cabin right next to the hill,
which on that side of the house was kinda like a cliff, and that
window, when we tried it, was unlocked.
“You go in through the window and unlock the door from the inside and
let us in,” I said to my acrobatic goat, and he said, “It’s private
property.”