“Put the board over the hole for a while,” Mom said, “so she can’t get
out. Let her stay until she feels at home, and then she’ll go back
every time we let her out for exercise and water and food.”
I put the rectangular shaped board over the door of Bentcomb’s house,
and propped it shut with a brick, so she couldn’t get out.
And so we “set” my favorite hen, Old Bentcomb. In just three weeks
there’d be a whole nestful of cheeping chicks and a very proud mamma
hen. I sat down for a minute on the roof of her house to rest. I was
almost overworked, I started to think, when Pop yelled, “Hey, Bill!
Come on out! We’ve got to get the rest of the chores done!” So I
started to the barn to help him do them, still thinking about the
camping trip we’d all been invited to take, and wondering if I could
get to go.
“Don’t you feel well?” Pop asked me when I was moving slowly around in
the barn doing different things.
“Kinda worn out,” I said, and the dust which I’d been stirring up with
a pitchfork over our corn elevator made me sneeze twice. “Maybe I’ve
got hayfever,” I said.
“That’s that straw dust you’re stirring up there,” Pop answered.
“_Stirring_ up?” I asked, and knew Pop was right. You just couldn’t
fool Pop, I thought.
He stopped what he had been doing which was something or other way up
at the other end of the barn, and called to me, “Next week, we’ll take
you to the doctor and have him give you a test to see what makes you
sneeze so much.”
“Some people sneeze a lot because of the rainy weather making so many
different kinds of flowers and weeds grow so much and making so much
pollen, maybe,” I yelled back in a tired voice.
Pop ignored my educational remark, and sent me up in the haymow to
throw down some alfalfa for our Brindle cow. While I was up there, I
stirred up the dust in the hay and sneezed three or four times real
loud.
Just then Pop called up to me and said, “What’s the matter, Bill? Are
you hurt?”--which made me feel foolish.
The sun was shining in through a crack in the barn and I peeped out
like I nearly always do when I’m up there and looked around at the
different things such as three rows of newly hoed potatoes in the
garden. I could hardly believe my eyes, when I noticed that there were
only _three_ rows I’d hoed. It had seemed like seven.
Then my heart almost jumped into my mouth when I heard voices
downstairs and one of them was Barry Boyland’s laughing voice. He
and Pop were talking, and saying they were glad to see each other. I
stopped in my tracks, and listened for all I was worth, and this is
what I heard, “Well, Barry, we _have_ to do something for him--he’s
getting the hayfever so badly. Maybe the North would be good for him.”
And then Barry laughed the queerest sounding laugh I’d heard in a long
time and said, “Sure, I understand. It’s the same story wherever I
go--the boys of the Sugar Creek Gang are all sneezing pretty bad, all
except Dragonfly, who is better this year than last--but his parents
said he could go, too.” Then Pop and Barry laughed long and loud at
each other like it was funny or something. But I didn’t care at all. I
was so tickled inside.
Right away a terrible scream of happiness jumped up into my throat, and
if I hadn’t stopped it, I’d have yelled even worse than I do when I’m
yelling for our baseball team.... Oh boy, oh boy--another trip up North
this summer, with all the gang going along!
4
As I’ve already told you, when we were going to get to go North, we
didn’t have any idea we’d run into such an exciting and dangerous
mystery, but when a gang of boys get together on a camping trip in the
wild North, something is pretty nearly always bound to happen, which it
did.
On the way we went through a city which advertised itself as the
Capital of the Paul Bunyan Playground--Paul Bunyan being what is called
a mythical lumberman of the North, and was supposed to have been
terribly big like a giant in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, which
is a fairy story every boy ought to know--only instead of Paul Bunyan
being a _bad_ giant, he was a good one, and was always doing kind
things for people.
We stopped to get some gas for Barry Boyland’s station wagon--which is
what we were all riding in--right across from a tourist camp called
“Green Gables,” and Little Jim gasped and said, “LOOK! Who and what
_is_ that?”
I looked out at what Little Jim was looking at, and saw what he saw,
and it was a great statue of a man with a beard and mustache, standing
with one hand upraised and the other on a back of a statue of a great
big extra big blue cow which had horns. Poetry spoke up and said,
“That’s Paul and Babe.”
“Paul and Babe _Who_?” Dragonfly wanted to know, and Poetry, who, as
I’ve told you before, had a lot of books in his library, all of a
sudden reached down into a briefcase he had with him and pulled out a
book and said, “That’s Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox, whose name is
Babe. It was the blue ox whose footprints were so large that when it
walked around they sank deep into the ground, and everywhere it went it
left big holes. Then when it rained, the rain water filled up the holes
and that made all the eleven thousand great big blue-watered lakes
which live in Minnesota.”
Little Jim, who likes fairy stories and legends, grinned and said,
“What made the water _blue_, then? How come?” You see, nearly all the
water in nearly all the great big hundreds of lakes we’d already seen
on our trip was as blue as the blue on the hair ribbon Circus’ sister
wore to school at Sugar Creek.
“What made the lakes blue?” asked Poetry with a question mark in his
voice. He puckered his fat forehead, and said, “Blue--oh _that!_” He
thumbed his way through the Paul Bunyan book quick, to see if there
was anything in the book to explain it, but there wasn’t. So he said,
“Old Babe, the ox, was blue, you know. One day when he was out swimming
in the headwaters of the Mississippi, the blue began to come off, and
pretty soon the Mississippi, which flows through a lot of lakes up
here, was all blue. The water flowed all around from lake to lake and
pretty soon the lakes’ waters were all blue, too!”
Well, it made as good an untrue story as any of the rest of the
exaggerated ones in the Paul Bunyan book so we added it to the list and
decided to tell it to our folks when we got back to Sugar Creek.
Pretty soon we drove on, right straight down through the pretty little
modern-looking city, where there were lots of people walking the
streets in vacation clothes.
Pretty soon we passed a Tourist Information place, on the right side
of the road where there was a very tall cement water tower, that was
shaped exactly like my pop’s big long six-battery flashlight back home,
being a lot larger at the top. Little Jim squinted his pretty blue eyes
up at it like he was thinking about something. Then we went on, and
Poetry read to us different crazy things the mythical Paul Bunyan was
supposed to have done, such as he had been such a big baby when he was
born that it took six large storks to carry him to his parents; and
Paul’s pet mosquitoes dug the wells up here where we were; his soup
bowl was so large it was like a lake and the cook had to use a boat to
get across it; also his pancake griddle was so large that they greased
it by tying greasy griddlecakes on the bottoms of some men’s shoes and
they skated around over its surface to grease it for Paul--things like
that.
Little Jim surprised us all of a sudden by saying, “Anybody want to
hear how all the people decided to move up into this country and stay
here?--How Paul Bunyan and I working together got them to come, when
nobody wanted to?”
“How?” Dragonfly wanted to know. “What do you mean YOU and Paul Bunyan
worked it? Paul used to live here long before you were born. You never
even saw him!”
“Oh I didn’t, didn’t I?” Little Jim asked and had a very mischievous
grin on his innocent face. “Want to hear the story?”
“Sure,” Poetry and I said, and Dragonfly said, “_No_.”
Little Jim said, “All right, I won’t--anyway, it’s too important a
story to tell to such a small unappreciative audience.” He sighed like
he was sleepy and curled up with his head on my lap and sighed again
and almost before I knew it he was actually asleep.
It felt good having Little Jim lying with his head in my lap, he being
my almost best friend except Poetry, and also being a really wonderful
little guy and was the best Christian in the whole Sugar Creek Gang.
He was always thinking and saying important things about the Bible and
heaven, and the One who had made the world, and also about His Son who
had come here to this pretty world once and died on a cross which was
made out of a tree, just to save anybody who would repent of his sins
and believe on Him.
I looked down at that pretty curly head, and thought of Sugar Creek
and my parents and little Charlotte Ann, and was lonesome for a
minute. Then pretty soon I was sleepy myself and the flying tires of
the station wagon sort of sang _me_ to sleep too. Once I half woke up
on account of Little Jim wiggled in my lap and I heard him mumbling
something. I was too sleepy to listen, but it sorta sounded like he
maybe thought he was at home getting ready to crawl into bed and go
to sleep. I kinda bent my ear down a little and listened close to his
perspiring face and say! I heard some of the prettiest words you ever
heard in your life and they were, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray
the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the
Lord my soul to take....” Little Jim was kinda mumbling the words. I’d
heard the poem before, in fact my folks had taught it to me, and when I
was littler I’d said it at night myself. But Little Jim said something
else I couldn’t quite make out, but it sounded like this: “Please
also--bless--Little Snow-in-the-face, and help him to get well...” Then
I felt Little Jim’s shoulder relax against my stomach and I knew he was
sound asleep. In another jiffy I was asleep myself.
When I woke up we were still flying along with Barry at the wheel, and
most of us sitting in lying-down positions, getting a swell afternoon
nap. It was wonderful to ride along that fast, and also wonderful to
see all the things we saw, as the road wound itself around and around
like the winding barefoot-boy paths through the Sugar Creek woods along
Sugar Creek itself. At the town of Pass Lake, most of us got out,
stretched ourselves and bought postcards at a drug store and sent them
to our folks. I sent a card that showed some men climbing a tree, and
some great big fish were at the bottom looking up like hungry bears
look up at boys.
I said to my folks, “Pretty soon we’ll be making camp,” which we did
about a quarter of a mile from the place we’d been the year before on
Santa’s lake front property--Santa, as you know, being the great big
laughing fat man who likes boys almost as much as Old Man Paddler does.
“Where’s _Mrs._ Santa?” Poetry asked that kind person, maybe
remembering the blackberry pie she’d given us, and maybe missing her
very friendly and extra special giggle, which we’d all liked to hear so
well. I had looked forward to seeing her laugh with her eyes as well
as hearing her laugh with her bird-like voice.
Santa, who was sitting in his big white boat which was beached near
where we were making camp, and was helping Tom Till get his fishing
pole and line ready for a fishing trip in the morning, said to Poetry,
“She’s gone to California, but will be back early next week, before you
boys have to go back to Sugar Creek.”
Well, it was almost time for the sun to go down, and we would have to
get busy pitching our tents. Barry called to us from the station wagon
which was parked close by, “Hey, Gang! Let’s get the tents up.... Hey,
you, BILL! POETRY! TOM!”
We all beat it and pretty soon were working like boy scouts, doing
what is called “making camp.” Barry’d picked a site not far from the
lake, and also not too far from a wood pile, so a gang of boys who were
lazy only when there was work to do, wouldn’t have to carry wood too
far. Also he picked a place where there wouldn’t be too much shade so
it wouldn’t be too damp, and yet there would be sunshine every day if
there was any.
“Why don’t we put the tents under this big tree right here?” Circus
asked, and Barry said, looking up at the tree, “See that great big half
dead limb there?”
Dragonfly looked up and saw it, and said, “Sure, what of it?” and
Little Jim spoke up and said, “The wind might blow some night,” and
then turned and ran to where Big Jim was, about fifty feet away and
who, with his jack-knife, was cutting green sticks of different sizes
to help us make what Barry called an outdoor kitchen, which he said
was going to be like the kind the Chippewa Indians used to use.
All of us were either giving or obeying orders, and in a few jiffies
our tents were up and the outdoor kitchen was nearly finished.
“O.K., you guys--you and Poetry,” Barry ordered Poetry and me, “roll up
a couple of those big round rocks over there, get a couple of forked
sticks, and push them right into the fire.” We already had a roaring
fire going in a place where it was safe to have one. No boy or anybody
ought to start a fire in any forest or woods any time unless it is in a
place where there is supposed to be one, and where it can’t spread, or
a whole forest might get burned up.
“What on earth?” I thought, as Poetry and I grunted a round rock apiece
up as close to the hot fire as we could, and then pushed them the rest
of the way with forked sticks so we wouldn’t get burned, ourselves.
“Wait and see,” Barry said, and we did, but kept wondering, “Why on
earth?” We got two other rocks also, while the rest of the gang helped
put up the tents and made things ready for our first night’s sleep. I
had a tingling feeling all inside of me, and just knew we were going to
have the most wonderful time of our lives.
It didn’t take us long to get supper over, which we cooked ourselves on
a little two-burner pressure gas stove which Barry had brought along,
he not wanting us to take time to cook in real Indian style, which we
would most of the time.
“Ouch!” different ones of us said to each other and all of a sudden
started slapping around at mosquitoes.
“Here--rub this on,” Barry said, “and be careful not to get any too
near your eyes and lips.” He handed us a couple of bottles of mosquito
lotion and we smeared our bare hands and ankles and necks and ears and
faces with the sickenishly-sweetish-smelling stuff, and right away it
was just like there wasn’t a mosquito in the world.
Santa came over and we all sat around the camp fire, with the pretty
sparks and flames playing above the beds of coal and the four large
roundish rocks in the middle of it.
After we’d all listened to Barry tell us an honest-to-goodness
Bible story about something that had happened on Galilee Lake once,
we all took turns telling made-up stories. It was Little Jim who
suggested we all make up Paul Bunyan stories and since it was a good
idea, we decided to try to see who could make up the best one, and
so we started. First, though, Barry told us the thrilling and very
interesting Bible story, which maybe I ought to tell you here myself,
’cause it was one of the best stories a real red-blooded gang of boys
ever heard.
All of us were in a sort of half circle around the camp fire, on
blankets and also on each other, some of us leaning up against each
other, like right that minute I was against Poetry.... “Get over,”
Poetry said to me. “Don’t crowd so close.”
“I’m trying to get warm,” I said. “It’s cold. I’m using you for a
windbreak.”
And Circus said to Poetry--“You’re a windbreak when it’s cold, and when
it’s hot we lie behind you in the shade,”--Poetry, as you know, being
fat as a small cow. Most of us giggled, except Poetry.
“It happened like this,” Barry began,--and I noticed Little Jim reach
into his vest pocket, and pull out his New Testament to look up the
place where Barry was getting the story from. I did the same, and so
did most of the gang, except Tom Till who had forgotten to bring his.
I looked at him and he swallowed like he was embarrassed, so I reached
out mine to him and he sort of looked on, although I knew he couldn’t
see very well, and wasn’t very good at reading the Bible anyway.
Besides it was more interesting to watch Barry’s brown face and his one
all-gold front tooth sparkling in the firelight when he talked.
It was one of my very favorite Bible stories and was about some
fishermen who lived near a great big blue-watered lake that was
thirteen miles long and seven miles wide and had thousands of fish in
it. Two brothers, named Peter and Andrew, were fishing, not with poles
but with nets, and two other brothers whose names were James and John,
whose Pop’s name was Zebedee and whose Mom’s name was Salome, were
using another boat. I was feeling sorry for the double brothers ’cause
they hadn’t caught any fish and I was wondering what their Moms would
say when they got home, when Barry started in to telling about a big
crowd of people coming along listening to Someone telling wonderful
stories and also telling them about the Father in Heaven and how to
live right and things like that; and the crowd got so close to the
Speaker that He might have been crowded into the water.
He turned and asked Peter to let Him borrow his boat, so He could get
into it and push out from shore a little, and then He could talk to the
crowd and not get trampled on and also the crowd’d be able to see Him.
It was a bright idea, I thought, and wished I had been there, ’cause if
it was wonderful to hear our minister at Sugar Creek tell about Him in
his very interesting sermons, it would have been even wonderfuller to
have been beside that pretty blue-watered lake that day and listened to
the Saviour right while He was talking....
Pretty soon, the Speaker’s sermon was over, Barry said, and then He,
just as if He wanted to pay Peter for being so courteous as to let Him
make a pulpit out of his boat, told Peter to shove the boat into the
deep water and let down the nets for some fish.... Say, Peter didn’t
want to do it, ’cause he had been fishing around there all night, and
hadn’t caught anything, and he might have wondered, “Why do it again
and make a fool of myself?”
“But,” said Barry,--and I could see his all-gold tooth shining as he
talked, and even though he was smiling, his face was very sober--“it
is better to obey the Lord, boys, even if it does seem foolish to the
world for you to do it, than it is to _disobey_ Him. Besides, He has a
right to give us orders, since He is the Son of God....”
He kept on talking, but for a minute, I looked at Circus, who I noticed
had his fists doubled up, and was lying on his stomach and his elbows,
looking up and across the fire at Barry. Also he had his chin resting
on his doubled-up fists and the muscles of his jaw were working and I
knew he was maybe imagining himself to be Peter and his thoughts were
right out in that pretty lake, and he was seeing the whole thing with
his mind’s eye like I was....
When my thoughts got back to Barry again, he was farther along in the
story to where the net was suddenly jammed full of great big bouncing,
swishing, lunging, splashing fish, and Peter and Andrew had to have
help to pull the net in. Also right that second, the big strong net
began to break in places and some of the fish were getting away, so
Peter let out a yell for James and John to make a dive for their
boat--in fact, to bring their boat with them which they did quick, and
both of the boats were so jammed full of fish that both of them started
to sink. That scared Peter, and also all of a sudden Peter realized
that the Man he’d been listening to was more than a man, but was also
the Lord. He all of another sudden realized what a terrible sinner he
was, and he forgot all about the bouncing, swishing, lunging, splashing
fish and dropped down on his knees and cried out to the Lord, “Go away,
Lord, leave me. I’m a sinful man!”--on account of he was so ashamed of
himself for being a sinful man, he didn’t think he was good enough to
be anywhere near the Lord....
But say, Jesus had done all this on purpose to get Peter to believe in
Him, and He told him not to be afraid any longer, but said, “Fear not;
henceforth thou shalt catch men...”
When Barry said that, Circus’ bright eyes lit up and he interrupted
the story to say, “What’d he mean by that?” Before Barry could answer,
Little Tim Till surprised us all by cutting in and saying across the
crackling fire to Circus, “He meant, ‘Don’t be scared; from now on
you’ll be what our Sugar Creek minister calls a _soul winner_.’”
Well, it was a wonderful true story, and for some reason I had the
happiest feeling all inside of me. I not only wished all of a quick
sudden that I had been there and had maybe been Peter or Andrew or
one of Mother Salome’s two boys, but I felt also that maybe the most
important thing in the world was to be a soul winner, or a fisher of
men...
Well, the story was done and the sky above the lake toward where the
sun had gone down, reminded me of the reddish, purplish and also
yellowish spread-out feathers of a terribly big fantail pigeon.
5
I was sitting there on a small log, looking at the extra beautiful
sky, looking at it over the top of our camp fire, thinking about how
the rays of the sun shooting up looked like a lady’s many colored
unfolded fan or the tail of a fantailed pigeon, when Barry said, “One
of the Sporting Clubs up here is offering a prize for the best original
Paul Bunyan story... Here’s a chance for you boys to stretch your
imaginations a little...”
Pretty soon we were all racking our brains to see if we could think of
something about Paul Bunyan that nobody had ever thought of before,
which Barry might decide was good enough to write about and send in
to the contest... Different ones of us made up different things,
such as: One time Paul Bunyan gave a wintertime party in a terribly
big recreational center in Bemidji, and so many people answered his
invitation and came that there wasn’t any place to hang their fur
coats and other heavy coats, so Paul went out and blew on his horn
and hundreds of great big huge antlered deer came running in from all
directions, and Paul stood them up all around the outer wall of the
building, each one of them facing the center, and the fancy ladies
hung their fur coats and other kinds of different colored coats on the
antlers, using them for what is called “costumers.” Those deer stood
there patiently, without moving, with their kind eyes watching the
skaters.
Everything was going fine, until somebody opened all the doors all
around to let in some fresh air, and then all of a sudden, Old Babe,
the blue ox came in and started lumbering around looking for Paul,
and stamped his hoofs and snorted like a mad bull, and the people got
scared and excited and the women started to screaming, and that scared
the hundreds of deer, and they bolted for the doors in a terribly mad
and wild scramble, and, there being doors all around that were open,
they took all the coats with them...
That was Big Jim’s story, and when he told it, I remembered that he
always got very good grades in English in the Sugar Creek School.
Dragonfly told his story, and it was that Paul Bunyan got hay fever so
bad and sneezed so hard and so many times in succession that it blew
a whole forest over; Poetry said Paul Bunyan ate so many blackberry
pies and got so fat that when he went in swimming in Leech Lake and
splashed around a lot, so much water splashed _out_ of the lake for
hundreds of miles around that it made a thousand _new_ lakes so that
the ten thousand lakes that Minnesota had at first were changed to
eleven thousand; Circus said the day Paul ate Poetry’s blackberry pies
he had to have toothpicks to pick the seeds out from between his teeth,
so he cut down some Norway pines with his jack-knife which was seven
feet long, and used them for toothpicks; Dragonfly looked at me and my
red hair, with a mischievous grin in his dragonfly-like eyes, and told
another story real quick which was: Paul’s long hair was so red that
when he was asleep one windy day, the Indians saw it blowing in the
wind and thought it was a forest fire. They threw water all over him,
and ever since then, all red-haired people have been all wet.
Well, that was supposed to be funny, and most everybody around the
camp fire thought it was and laughed hard, but it wasn’t funny, maybe.
For a minute I was almost mad, but decided it would be a waste of good
temper to spoil what the others thought funny; besides my pop says any
boy who wants to get along with people can’t afford to always be taking
offense. I couldn’t think of anything about Paul Bunyan that would help
me get even with Dragonfly, so I let Little Jim tell his story, and we
didn’t have time for mine, on account of it was time to go to bed.
I watched Little Jim’s small friendly face in the firelight and in the
light of the afterglow of the sun which had already gone to bed, and
he looked so innocent, that you couldn’t tell whether he was thinking
or not, but it was fun to listen to him, ’cause his mouse-like voice
squeaked out the strangest story, which really sounded good, and it
was: “Well, when Paul and I were up here in this pretty country of many
lakes, we got awful lonesome and wished there were some people living
here. We stayed down where Brainerd is now, and Paul would carry me
around in his vest pocket and tell me stories, and complain about how
lonesome he was...”
Well, it sounded like Little Jim was going to have a real good story,
so I listened and sure enough it was. That little innocent-faced guy
said that Paul Bunyan got so lonesome finally that he took his big
long brown flashlight and some different colored cellophane and stood
the flashlight, which was two hundred feet long, up on the ground,
and built a wooden platform around it right at the place where the
switch was, and every night Little Jim sat on that platform of the
two-hundred-foot-tall flashlight and turned that light on and off
and on and off; and Paul would stand beside the flashlight and slide
different colored pieces of cellophane paper across the top of the
flashlight, and the whole sky was all lit up in many different colors
every night, changing just like the beautiful northern lights do--(and
I thought that maybe the sky above the lake had made little Jim think
about the different colors)--and pretty soon in a week or so, people
from Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, and all the southern states, began to
come up North to see what they thought were beautiful northern lights,
and they liked the country so well they decided to stay and build their
homes, which they did, and so the town of Brainerd was founded, and
then Paul left his flashlight standing and the people took the big
batteries out and used it for a water tower, where it still stands in
downtown Brainerd.
Well, it was a cute idea, and I wished I could think of something good,
but couldn’t, so we broke up our campfire circle, with Santa standing
and yawning his fat self into a straightened up posture. He looked
straight at Tom Till and said, “How about a spin on the lake, with my
new outboard motor, Tom?”
I remembered that Santa and Mrs. Santa didn’t have any children of
their own, and that last year he had liked Tom so well, and had also
been the one who had showed Tom how to become a Christian. I knew that
Tom’s pop was an infidel, and was hardly ever kind to him, and Tom was
maybe hungry for some grown-up person to like him, so I felt happy
inside that Tom was going to get a fast boat ride, although I wanted to
go along worse than anything.
“You, too, Bill--and Poetry, if you like,” Santa said--“if you can
spare them awhile, Barry. I’ll take the rest of the gang tomorrow. This
new motor needs breaking in, you know.”
Well, it was all right with Barry, and it certainly was all right with
me, so away we four went toward the sandy shore to where Santa’s big
white boat was beached, each one of us taking our life preserver vests,
and putting them on before getting into the boat... Boy oh boy, that
lake looked wonderful, having as many colors as the sky itself, which
meant that a lake got its color from the sky, I thought, and said to
Poetry, “Looks like Old Babe, the Ox, must have changed his colors like
a chameleon and taken a swim out here, while we were telling stories.”
And Poetry surprised me by yelling, “SWELL, BILL, that’s wonderful!
Hey, you guys back there! Bill’s got a good story!”
Well, it made me feel half proud of myself to have Poetry yell that to
the gang like that, and I liked Poetry a lot for a minute, that being
one of the reasons why I liked him anyway--he was always making a
person feel like he was worth something.
It certainly felt fine to sit in the prow of Santa’s big boat, with
Tom Till and Poetry in the middle and Santa himself in the stern, and
go roaring out across the lake. Boy oh boy, in the afterglow of the
sunset, the lake was pretty, and without much wind was as smooth as
Mom’s mirror in our front room at home. I was wishing Pop and Mom were
there, to see things, but wouldn’t want them to stay on account of I
wanted to have some real exciting adventures to tell them about when we
got home...
Pretty soon, our boat cut a wide circle around the end of a neck of
land, and we went roaring down the other side about fifty or maybe a
hundred feet from shore. It was still a little light on the lake, but
the pine trees on the shore looked darkish and it was getting dark
fast. All the time I was wondering if we could run into any exciting
adventures up here in the North when Poetry said, “Look Bill! right
there’s where our boat upset last year and tossed us out, and right
there’s where I hooked that big Northern Pike.”
I remembered and yelled back to him and said so, and went on
thinking--wishing we’d have some kinda scary excitement as well as a
lot of fun camping.
I watched the widening waves that spread out behind us like a great V,
and felt fine and happy, and for some reason I liked everybody. Also
I was remembering the Bible story Barry had told, and how Peter was
afraid to have the Lord anywhere near him, because he was a sinner, and
I began to feel that God was real close to all of us and I wasn’t a bit
scared of Him ’cause I knew that He had washed all my sins away, which
our Sugar Creek minister and Little Jim say is what He does to a boy or
anybody who will really let Him--washing them away in His own blood.
Just then Poetry yelled to me, “Penny for your thoughts, Bill!” I
started, and looked at him and said, “Look at that reddish sky, will
you?” and Poetry looked and said, “Kinda pretty, isn’t it?”
6
We docked at Santa’s dock, and went into his log cabin with him. It was
cozy inside. First he lit two old-fashioned kerosene lamps, then ’cause
it might get cold pretty soon, we helped him start a fire in his small
wood stove in a corner; Tom pumped a pail of water from the pitcher
pump inside the cabin. Santa even had an icebox with ice in it, and in
another small room, twin beds; and back in a tiny room away back in the
back, there was a bathtub and beside it a very old-fashioned trunk that
for some reason made me think of Robinson Crusoe and buried treasure.
I wished harder than ever that we would run into a mystery up here in
the North.... I was all tingling inside, wanting one so bad. But, of
course, I wouldn’t want the kind that would half scare a boy half to
death, like the ones that sometimes happened to the Sugar Creek Gang,
but I wanted an ordinary mystery anyway.
Pretty soon it would be time to go back to camp and get to sleep. I was
wondering how we could keep warm in our cold wall tents--which was the
kind ours were--when there wouldn’t be any fires inside and we didn’t
have any heaters. Of course I knew I’d be pretty warm myself, after
I’d crawled into my sleeping bag, which is a waterproof bed made out
of khaki drill. It had a soft kapoc filled mattress, and I would just
crawl into it, zip up the zipper slide fastener on the side, and there
I’d be, but it’d be cold to get undressed and before getting into my
pajamas.
Santa showed us different things in his cottage, such as a large
mounted fish on the wall which Mrs. Santa had caught, and also a great
big bearskin rug which was on the floor and had a fierce bear’s head
with wide open red mouth on one end of it; also there was a snake skin
on the wall, which a missionary in Africa had sent him.
Well, it was soon time to go home. Poetry looked at Santa’s wood box
and said all of a sudden, “You need a load of wood--better let Bill
carry one in for you.”
“Fine,” I said, “I’ll hold the flashlight for you.” I took a flashlight
off the table, and started toward the door with Poetry right after me.
Outside, we looked back through the window at the pretty little cabin
and at Santa and Tom standing by the fire warming themselves, and all
of a sudden Poetry said, “I wish Tom had a pop like--I wish Santa was
Tom’s daddy.”
I thought of old hook-nosed John Till at Sugar Creek and knew that
maybe right that very minute he was probably standing at the bar in a
beer joint sousing his fat stomach with beer, and that Tom’s mother
was maybe not even going to have enough money to buy groceries for the
family the rest of that week.
At the long wood rick, Poetry and I stopped and he said, “Sh! Turn off
the light. I heard something.” I snapped off the flashlight, peered out
into the dark and listened. “It’s a crazy loon,” I said, when one of
those diving birds away out on the dark lake somewhere had let out a
long-tailed quavering cry, which came echoing across to where we were.
Also right that second another loon, closer to the shore, answered him.
And then my hair started to stand up on end, ’cause I heard another
sound almost like that of a loon, but it wasn’t coming from that
lake. It sounded like a little girl crying and came from over in the
direction of the boathouse where Santa kept his boat in the winter and
his tools and oars and things in the summer.
Then I heard the sound again, plain as day, a faint cry like a loon
that somebody was trying to smother, and maybe had his fingers on its
throat...
Poetry’s hand was tightening on my shoulder, and his face was close to
my neck, and I could hear and feel him breathing. “Over _there_,” he
whispered huskily, “close to the boathouse. _Down!_” he hissed, and
drew me down beside him, both of us hiding behind the wood rick.
Before I ducked, though, I’d looked in the direction of the boathouse
which was up against the edge of a steep hill, and I saw a tiny glow
like somebody had drawn on a cigarette or cigar and it had made it glow
in the dark.
I knew it couldn’t be any of our camping party ’cause not a one of us
smoked, not even Barry.
Then we heard the boathouse door creaking on its hinges and I knew I
was beginning to be scared.
“It’s a man smoking,” Poetry hissed in my ear, but I didn’t want to
believe it. “Maybe it was a lightning bug,” I said. There were several
of them flashing their spooky little lamps on and off out near Santa’s
boat.
“Lightning bugs’ lights are a yellowish green,” Poetry said, “and that
was a reddish glow.”
I knew he was right but wished in spite of wanting a mystery that
whatever it was, it wasn’t some criminal. Then I heard what sounded
like a stifled cry again and knew it _wasn’t_ any loon, but said to
Poetry, “It’s a loon’s echo, maybe.”
I had the flashlight in my hand and without thinking, but just doing
what I wanted to, shot its long white beam right straight toward the
boathouse, up against the hill. Before I could even think Poetry had
reached out a hand and grabbed my arm and smothered the light against
his fat side, but not before I saw what I saw, which was a dark shadow
of something dart behind the boathouse.
“Don’t scare whatever it is,” Poetry said. “Give me time to think what
to do,” Poetry, as you know, being the one of our gang which wanted to
be a detective and knew more about being one than any of the rest of us.
We were both ducked behind the wood rick again and our knees were on
a pile of sawdust, which maybe had been left there when somebody had
maybe cut the wood with a buzz-saw. Even with a scary mystery just
around the corner, Poetry quoted something he had memorized, which was.
“If a wood-saw would saw wood,
How much wood would the wood-saw saw
If the wood-saw would saw wood?”
“I thought you wanted to think,” I said to him.
“I am,” he said. “I think best when I have what books call a ‘poetic
muse.’ Did you notice what I noticed?” he asked me.
“What?” I said, and he said, “That the boathouse has had a new coat of
paint since we were here, last year.”
“I saw a shadow move,” I answered him. I was trembling inside and
listening toward the boathouse.
We kept on listening but didn’t hear a thing, so we decided to turn the
flashlight on the boathouse again, which we did, and sure enough it had
been painted, a nice pretty green color. It even looked like it had
_just_ been painted.
“Smell the paint?” Poetry said, and I did--for the first time.
That green boathouse had its door closed and looked as innocent as
Little Jim’s face looks when it is, and there wasn’t a sound of any
kind. A lonely loon let out a wavering wail from across the lake and
another one answered him from close to the shore, not far from the dock
where we had just left Santa’s boat, but there wasn’t another sound
anywhere.
“What about the door creaking on its hinges?” I said.
“Just remember it, when we start to questioning the suspect later
on,” Poetry said, and his voice was as calm as if he was actually a
detective. But his hand was on my arm, and I could feel it trembling
a little. We loaded up our arms with wood as quick as we could and
started toward the cottage.
We were both trembling when we got inside, but we’d made up our minds
to keep quiet so as not to scare Tom Till. Also if we were only
imagining things on account of wanting a mystery so bad, and if there
really wasn’t any, we didn’t want to seem silly to anybody except
ourselves, which wouldn’t be so bad.
We unloaded our two armloads of wood into the big wood box in the
corner beside the stove, and then looked around and saw on the table
in the corner a copy of a Minneapolis newspaper, and on the very front
page, a big headline which said, “FEAR OSTBERG KIDNAPPER HIDING IN
CHIPPEWA FOREST.”
I stared and stared at the heading and sidled quickly over to the
table, and in the light of the flashlight, on account of the kerosene
lamp not being bright enough, I read the whole story.
I was remembering the radio program I’d heard back in our house at
Sugar Creek, about a little girl being kidnapped at St. Paul... Poetry
sidled over to me and we read the newspaper together while Santa and
Tom Till were opening the icebox and getting out some bottles of pop.
Poetry’s hand was gripping my arm so tight that it hurt, but I didn’t
say a word. I was concentrating on the news story of the little girl
who had been taken from her home in St. Paul, and hadn’t been found
yet, and I was making up my mind that the kidnapper or whoever he was,
was maybe right that minute right out there in Santa’s boathouse, and
the Ostberg girl was there, too. The father of the little golden haired
girl had already paid the ransom money of $25,000 but the kidnapper
hadn’t left the girl where he’d promised to.
7
It was hard to keep still while we were drinking our pop from Santa’s
icebox; in fact, I couldn’t, so I said, “You been doing some painting
around here, Santa? I smell fresh paint outdoors.”
Santa set his bottle of orange pop down on the table and swallowed,
and said, “The boathouse? Yes, I gave it a new coat yesterday--I’ve
been doing a little work inside, too--doing it up in green and white.
I plan to use it for a den for my fishing tackle and guns, and a place
to write, and when I have company, it’ll do for a guest house--or a
sleeping room, anyway--”
Say, right that second, Santa got a queer look on his face,
straightened up and said, “What do you know? I just remembered I forgot
to lock the boathouse door.”
Tom Till spoke up and asked, “Do the Indians steal things up here when
you leave the doors unlocked?” and Santa answered and said something
everybody ought to know, which was: “There are _white_ people up here
who do. We have very little trouble with the Indians themselves. They
like to be trusted, and if they think you’ve locked the door especially
because of them, they resent it. Of course, there are Indians and
Indians, as there are white men and white men. A man isn’t a thief
because he’s an Indian or of any other race, but because he has a
sinful nature, which all men do have. You know a man decides for
himself whether he is going to steal or not. It doesn’t matter what the
color of his face is, if he has a black heart.”
Santa stretched himself and started toward the door.
I was wondering about Little Snow-in-the-face, and when we’d get to see
him, and said so, and Santa said, “He’s still in the hospital. He’ll be
thrilled to death to see you boys. He’s a great little boy.”
Santa opened his cabin door to go out and lock the boathouse door.
I looked at Poetry, and he looked at me, and we stared at each other.
“Let’s all go,” Santa said.
In a jiffy, we were all outside, following Santa, walking in and along
beside the white path his flashlight made.
“Well, what do you know!” Santa said all of a sudden, stopping and
holding the light on the door. “I must have locked it after all, and
forgotten I did it.”
At the door we stopped while he shone the light on the Yale padlock on
the door, and sure enough it was locked.
Santa laughed and said, “Must be getting forgetful in my old age.” He
turned, shot the flashlight all around, focusing it on stumps, out
between us and the dock, also on the cottage and the chimney, and on a
hole in a hollow tree just above the boathouse, and would you believe
it? There sitting in the hole was a rust-red blinking longish-eared
screech owl like an olderish woman sitting on the front porch of her
house.
Quick as a flash, the owl spread its wings and flew like a shadow out
into the night.
Poetry and I looked toward each other and sighed, and knew we’d been
fooled by our own imaginations, ’cause if there’s anything a girl
sounds like when she is half crying in a high-pitched voice around the
Sugar Creek school, it is a screech owl, which makes a sort of moaning,
wavering wail....
Well, that was that, and I felt very foolish, as all of us went back to
Santa’s dock, climbed into his boat, holding his flashlight and also a
bright electric lantern which you are supposed to do when you are out
on a lake in a boat, so you won’t run into some other boat and some
other boat won’t run into you.
In a little while we were roaring out across the darkish water, around
the neck of land and back toward camp.
Pretty soon, Poetry and Dragonfly and Circus and I were in our own
tent, with a small candle for a light on a folding table in one corner.
It was as warm as toast in the tent in spite of it being really chilly
outside, like it is most every night in the Paul Bunyan country.
“What on earth is that water pail doing in the center of the tent?” I
asked, ’cause it was right where I wanted to set my suitcase and open
it.
“That’s our stove,” Circus said.
“Stove?... That’s a water pail!” Poetry exclaimed.
“That’s where I want my suitcase,” I said, and started to move it, but
Circus yelled, “Don’t touch it. You’ll get burned. It’s a stove!”
In the flickering light his monkey face looked ridiculous, and I,
knowing how mischievous he was, said, “You’re crazy,” and started to
take hold of the handle of the pail, and did, and let go in a fierce
hurry. The handle was hot, and there was a lot of heat coming from the
outside of the pail and a whole lot coming from the inside. It was
pretty dark in the tent so I carried the candle from the corner, and
looked in, and--would you believe it?--Well, I wouldn’t have, if I
hadn’t seen it, but there it was--one of the big round rocks Poetry and
I had rolled into the fire a couple hours ago. It was still as hot as
anything, and would maybe stay hot nearly all night.
Pretty soon, I had crawled into my sleeping bag, and with Poetry in
his, right beside me, and Dragonfly and Circus on the other side of the
tent in theirs, we were ready to try to stop talking and go to sleep.
Circus snuffed out the candle, and we all were quiet as we could be
for awhile, which wasn’t quiet. We could also hear the rest of the
gang--which was Big Jim and Tom Till and Little Jim and also Barry
Boyland--still talking over in their tent maybe fifty feet away on the
other side of the camp fire.
In spite of having been scared by my own imagination, I was awful
sleepy and in a few jiffies was so sleepy I knew that in a minute I’d
be gone. I was so sleepy I knew I wouldn’t be able to say a very good
good-night prayer to the Heavenly Father. It was better for a boy to do
most of his praying when he is wider awake anyway, but I managed to say
a few words which I meant from the bottom of my heart, and they were
that the little girl’s parents wouldn’t go crazy on account of their
little girl being stolen. I also prayed for little Snow-in-the-face and
maybe a few other things.
Our gang hardly ever prayed together, on account of boys being bashful
about doing it, but each one of us nearly always prayed by himself.
Once in a while, though, we did when it was something extra important,
and we thought maybe God wanted us to ask Him about it.
It certainly was a wonderful feeling--lying there in my cozy sleeping
bag, warm as toast, listening to mosquitos buzzing around my face
but not getting bit even once on account of I had mosquito lotion on
my face and even on my ears, all of us being very careful, like the
directions on the bottle said, not to get any on our lips or too near
our eyes. Besides, there weren’t any mosquitos in the tent on account
of the window in our tent had mosquito netting built into it and it was
mosquito proof.
I certainly was glad I hadn’t told anybody I thought anybody had been
kidnapped and was maybe in Santa’s boathouse. I didn’t want to seem
ridiculous to anybody except to Poetry and myself; for some reason,
though, I wished I had been right, on account of, as my pop once said,
anybody doesn’t like to believe he is wrong, even when he is.
I drifted away into a half dream, and it seemed like I could hear the
washing of the lake wavelets on the shore, and they were mixed up with
Dragonfly’s snoring. Also it seemed like somebody was near me with a
saw and was sawing wood, and the pile of sawdust was getting higher
and higher, and Poetry and I were standing ankle deep in it. Then, I
took off my shoes to get the sawdust out of them, and they were filled
with green and white paint. Then somebody started pounding and making
a slapping noise beside me, and I woke up, and it was Dragonfly’s
twisting and turning in his sleep and slapping at his face and ears. So
I said to him, “’Smatter?” He answered back to me in a whining whisper
and said, “These crazy mosquitoes are driving me wild. They are the
biggest mosquitoes in the world!”
“Didn’t you put on any lotion?” I hissed back to him, and he said, “No,
I’m allergic to it. It makes me sneeze!” Right that second he sneezed
twice, so I said, “You’re probably allergic to mosquitoes, too.”
That woke Poetry up and he groaned a couple times and then really woke
up and said, “Talk about big mosquitoes. Did you ever hear the story
about the two big mosquitoes who had a noisy argument?”
“It sounds like we are on the midway of a mosquito circus right now,”
Dragonfly said.
“I mean it,” Poetry began, “--there was a real argument between two big
mosquitoes who lived up here in the Chippewa Forest. One night two of
them were flying around, looking for somebody to eat, and they found
Dragonfly lying asleep out on the beach. So one of them said, ‘Let’s
pick him up and fly him home and eat him _there_.’”
“‘Naw,’ the other one said, ‘let’s don’t. Let’s eat him right here,
’cause if we _do_ take him home, the big ones will just take him away
from us.’”
We made Dragonfly put on some lotion and pretty soon he was asleep
again, but I was wide awake, thinking about the kidnapper. Right that
second Poetry nudged me and said, “Bill--Sh!”