In a jiffy the ladder was set up, with Little Jim and me holding it,
and Mr. Black on his way up. Poetry who knew how to take pictures
better than any of the rest of us was standing away out away from the
schoolhouse, and snapped the picture, himself.
While Mr. Black was still up on the roof, he called down to all of us
in a cheerful voice and said, "That was a very clever poem you boys
composed--you know, the one you had on the snow man yesterday, and on
the blackboard this afternoon. I think I got a very good picture of
both of them for next Wednesday night--the people of Sugar Creek will
think it very clever. When I first got the idea of illustrating the
book review for Mrs. Mansfield, I didn't know how much cooperation you
boys were going to give me."
Things still didn't make sense--I couldn't understand it.
On the way home, though, with Poetry and me carrying Pop's new light
ladder and with Little Jim carrying our swing board, all of a sudden
Dragonfly let out a yell and made a dive for something shining in the
road, swooped down on it and picked it up, and exclaimed, "_Good
luck!_ No wonder we had good luck! here's a brand new horseshoe! No
wonder we didn't get a lickin' from Mr. Black."
And it was! I knew it must have come off Prince when he was running
down this very same road about an hour ago with half a gate swinging
on his bridle rein.
Dragonfly hung the new horseshoe on his arm and said excitedly, "Will
my mother ever be tickled! She'll hang it above our kitchen door.
We've got three there now I found _last_ year, and this is my first
one _this year_. Boy oh boy, it's going to be a lucky year for the
Sugar Creek Gang!"
Little Jim who had been shuffling along, ahead of the rest of us, with
the swing board under one arm and with his stick in his other hand,
stopped all of a sudden and looked back over our heads toward where
the sun had just gone behind a cloud in the southwest, and he had a
far-away expression in his eyes. He didn't pay any attention to what
Dragonfly had said, but dropped back beside me and said, "That
certainly was a swell sermon yesterday. I knew maybe Sylvia's pop was
going to preach about that, and sure enough he did."
"About _what_?" I asked him, Little Jim being the only one of the gang
that it was easy to talk about sermons with, except maybe Poetry.
Little Jim socked at a brown mullein stalk with his stick, and
scattered brown seeds in different directions, then he answered me
with his back still turned, "Oh, about when you get Jesus in your
heart, you don't get mad so easy, and when you do, you behave yourself
anyway--just like a fire in a house melts the snow off the roof, or
like when spring comes, the new leaves will push all of the old dead
leaves off that've hung on all winter."
Just that second Poetry who had the other end of the ladder, yelled
back to me and said, "Quit walking so jerkily, Bill Collins!"
Then I remembered that our teacher had been in church that morning,
and of course he had heard the part of the sermon I hadn't heard, on
account of I had been thinking about Poetry's pet lamb and Snow-white,
our white pigeon.
Then Little Jim said, "When I put that question in 'The Minister's
Question Box,' just inside the church door this morning, I hoped
Sylvia's pop would answer it in his very first sermon, and he did."
So that was it! It was as plain as day to me now. Dragonfly spoke up
then and said, "Was that what you were thinking about yesterday
afternoon, when you were looking up in the beech tree at the bottom of
Bumblebee hill, and when you kept talking about snow on people's
houses?" and that was the first time I even guessed that that little
spindle-legged guy knew what we were talking about.
"Sure," Little Jim said.
Dragonfly tossed his new horseshoe up in the air and caught it when it
came down, and said, "It's a pretty horseshoe, anyway--besides, I bet
the gang _does_ have a lucky year, don't you?"
Little Jim whispered to me something that was a real secret, and it
made me like him awful well, to know he wasn't afraid to talk to me
about it, and it was, "Do you suppose Mr. Black _really_ became a
Christian this morning while Sylvia's pop was preaching--or maybe he
is just _going_ to let Jesus into his heart, real soon?"
"I don't know," I said.
Poetry who didn't know what we were all talking about, on account of
he was up at the other end of the kinda longish ladder, said back to
us, "We shouldn't have carried this ladder home. We should have made
Shorty Long and Bob Till do it. They took it there, in the first
place!"
And Little Jim piped up and said, "Are you _sure_? Maybe Mr. Black did
it, so he could get a picture of it for next Wednesday night."
Dragonfly heard that and said, "But who piled the chairs up on his
desk and knocked the Christmas tree over and everything?"
"Yeah, that's right," Little Jim said, "I guess maybe they did do it,
but I'm not very mad at 'em."
"I'm not either," I said, "not _very_ much, anyway," and I
wasn't,--only I knew that as long as they lived in the neighborhood we
could expect most anything to happen.
Then Little Jim said to all of us. "As soon as the new cold wave is
over, I'll bet it'll start to get warm, and pretty soon spring'll be
here, and all the beech switches all along Sugar Creek will have new
green leaves on 'em."
Then Little Jim whisked on ahead of us, every now and then stopping to
make rabbit tracks in the snow with his pretty striped ash stick.
Boy oh boy, I wished it was already spring, 'cause when spring came we
could all go barefoot again and as soon as Sugar Creek's face was
thawed out, we'd go swimming in the old swimming hole and maybe have
some very exciting brand new adventures, like we always do every
spring and summer. The first thing I wanted to do when spring came,
was to go fishing.
I was thinking what fun it'd be when spring came, when all of a sudden,
I heard a roaring sound coming from the direction of Dragonfly's pop's
woods, like a terrible wind was beginning to blow through the bare
trees. I looked up quick, and noticed that the sky in that direction
was darkish looking and kinda brownish, like there was a lot of dust
blowing in from some far-away prairie. Then I felt a gust of cold wind
hit me hard in the face.
In almost a half a jiffy all of us were in a whirling snowstorm, and I
knew the new cold wave had already come, and that before spring got to
Sugar Creek we'd have a lot more winter--in fact there might even be a
blizzard.
"Hurry up!" all of us yelled to all of us. "We've got to get home
quick."
But that's the beginning of another Sugar Creek Gang story, which I
hope I'll get a chance to write for you real soon.