Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6

by Paul Hutchens

  I knew he must have lost it a half mile down the hill when he had fallen in the snowdrift—where he and Dragonfly had their wrestling match.

  12

  No matches! No magnifying glass!

  That meant there’d be no fire. And it was getting colder all the time.

  Just that minute Old Man Paddler coughed as though his cold was already going down into his chest.

  We ought to get a doctor, I thought, and I knew it’d take us an hour and a half in the snow to get to a telephone and that whoever came would have to come on snowshoes, and that would take another hour and a half. It’d be dark before then. And with the wind beginning to blow, the snow would move like white dust on a dirt road when a car whizzes past. Even with a light, the doctor couldn’t see the way.

  Big Jim opened the door and looked out at the thermometer hanging there. Then he shut the door quick and said, “It’s below zero already.”

  That was a lot colder than it had been at home.

  For a minute, which seemed like an hour, we stood looking at each other, none of us saying anything.

  I glanced over at Little Jim, feeling especially sorry for him because he was so little. Also maybe I looked at him because he was such a good Christian and I thought that pretty soon maybe he’d say something about God that’d make us feel better.

  When a boy is in trouble and doesn’t have his parents with him, he isn’t quite as brave as he is most of the time, and he wishes he was a better Christian—if he is one. And if he isn’t, he wishes he was, because as Sylvia’s father had said just last Sunday, it’s silly not to be a Christian. If you aren’t, you won’t know how to pray, and, if you should happen to die, then you’d be lost forever.

  Do you know that Little Jim’s face wasn’t scared at all? It was as still and quiet as the face of the lamb Jesus carried in His arms in that picture in my Bible storybook.

  It was Dragonfly who surprised us by saying, “Why don’t we get down on our knees and pray?”

  Well, why don’t we? I thought. Of course, when a boy is in danger it is not always good to stop and pray. If there was a mad bull chasing a boy, it’d be silly to stop and pray. But he could pray on the run—and I’ll bet he would too.

  Now that I think of it, I guess I’d been praying in my mind ever since I knew Old Man Paddler was down in the cellar needing our help.

  We knew God wouldn’t send any matches right down out of heaven, but He might help us find a match if there was one. In a jiffy there we all were, down on our knees beside Old Man Paddler’s bed.

  Dragonfly’s prayer was awful short because he was just learning how to pray out loud. I knew just what he was thinking about when he said in a tearful voice, “And if I don’t see my p-parents again, I hope they’ll get saved before they die.”

  I looked up for a second when he said that and saw the sun shining through the frost-covered window on the top of his cap. It was so cold none of us had thought to take his cap off, as you are supposed to do when you pray. But I think God knew how cold it was, and He always looks on the heart anyway, Mom says.

  That prayer meeting wasn’t more than three minutes long, and yet it must have been long in another way, because it was long enough for our prayers to reach all the way to heaven and back again. Suddenly there was what looked like an answer, right in front of our eyes!

  As we got up from our knees, Old Man Paddler whispered for me to bring his Bible and his glasses, while the other boys kept looking for that extra box of matches that was supposed to be there and wasn’t.

  Well, I got the Bible, which was as worn on the inside as it was on the outside. It was while I was helping him put his glasses on that an idea came to me. It just swooped down on me like a chicken hawk swoops down on a little chicken in our barnyard in the summertime! There was our answer to prayer as plain as day!

  I could hardly believe it at first, for fear it wasn’t so—and maybe the idea wouldn’t work-but the lenses in the old man’s glasses were as thick as a magnifying glass! In fact, that is what they were. They made everything look bigger so he could see to read.

  I was so excited I didn’t even wait to hear the Bible verse the old man was going to read. “Look, Big Jim!” I almost screamed. “Look! Here’s a magnifying glass! I’ll bet you can start a fire with it!”

  Poetry looked at me as if he thought I was crazy, but I knew I was right—I hoped. I’d sat close to Old Man Paddler at our Thanksgiving dinner, and I had noticed how thick the lenses were. And because I’m going to be a doctor someday—maybe an eye doctor—I’d noticed them especially. I’d even borrowed them after dinner that day and read a little, just to see how things looked with them on.

  Well, it was our last chance. If we didn’t hurry, the sun would go down over the hill or else go behind clouds and stay there. We knew there wouldn’t be any use to go back to look for Poetry’s matchbox, because it’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

  In a little while Big Jim was busy trying to start a fire using the glasses. He held one lens over his hand first to see if it would burn. He knew just how to get the sunlight focused. Pretty soon there was a little round spot of light on his hand about the size of a pearl, just like a magnifying glass makes, and Big Jim said, “Ouch!” and jerked his hand away. It had actually been so hot it had burned him!

  He whittled some thin shavings from a very dry piece of wood. Then he added some tissue paper, which had been wrapped around a present Little Jim’s mom had sent along with us on the toboggan.

  We all stood around shivering and standing close to each other to keep warm.

  Big Jim laid his pile of shavings and the tissue paper on the lid of an old box, and then we held the door open a crack so he could get the direct sunlight. “As soon as I get a blaze,” he said, “I’ll carry it to the fireplace, and pretty soon we’ll all be warm.”

  It was easy to say, but it was harder to do.

  In a few minutes, I saw a little curl of smoke rise from the piece of tissue paper. Dragonfly gasped and crowded in closer. I looked around quick at Old Man Paddler. His eyes were shut, and his lips were moving, which meant maybe he was praying. I knew he was, in fact. I thought, What if Bill Collins was Old Man Paddler lying there like that, and some boys were trying to save my life? I’d do what he was doing too.

  When I looked back again at Big Jim, a hole was burned through the paper, but there wasn’t any blaze. And all the shavings did was smoke a little and go out.

  Poetry, who had a good mind, said, “I’ll bet if we had some kerosene, it’d burn.”

  We looked around and found an old-fashioned kerosene lamp on the mantel above the fireplace.

  And now Old Man Paddler lay there breathing kind of hard and with his eyes shut, as if he was very sick or else had gone to sleep.

  It didn’t take Big Jim long to get the glass lamp chimney off and the lamp open. He twisted a piece of paper into a little roll, pushed it down into the kerosene, and a minute later he had one of the lenses focusing the sunlight on the tip end of the kerosene-soaked paper.

  I kept on shivering and hoping and thinking about my parents. We could all see our breath coming out of our noses and mouths like gray smoke coming out of a house with six chimneys.

  “It won’t work,” Big Jim said, shaking his head and laying the glasses down on the table. Then he put on his mittens and flapped his arms around his sides and slapped his hands against his legs to make the blood circulate better so he could get warm. The kerosene-soaked paper was even worse than plain paper. All it did was smoke.

  Big Jim stopped flapping his arms, took a deep breath, and sighed as he let it out. His breath almost hid his face for a minute, like tobacco smoke does a man who smokes.

  There was a sudden sound from behind us. Old Man Paddler made a noise as if he was waking up and wanted to say something.

  “If you had some dry, decayed wood,” he whispered, his husky voice mixed up with his whisper, “you could start a fire.” Then he shut his eyes
and shivered and seemed to go to sleep again, which I think he did.

  “He’s right,” Big Jim said, “but there isn’t any in the cabin.”

  “I saw some once in a hollow tree right by the old swimming hole,” Dragonfly said.

  “There ought to be a hollow tree around here somewhere,” Circus said. “I’ll go look for one.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, but Big Jim said no, he’d go himself.

  Little Jim wanted to go, but he wouldn’t let him either.

  So Big Jim took Old Man Paddler’s hatchet, and he and Circus went out into the snow, where it was even colder than it was inside, to look for a hollow tree that might have in it some very dry, decayed wood, which is called “punk.”

  The snow had already begun to drift because of the wind, and that meant that pretty soon, even if the sun was still shining, the blowing snow would be almost as bad as clouds, and we had to have sunlight or we couldn’t start a fire!

  I got to thinking about Mom and Dad and Charlotte Ann and wishing I’d been a better boy. I wished that right that very minute my great big dad would come walking through the door with a box of matches and his strong voice would say, “Hello, everybody! We’ll have a roaring fire in just about a minute!”

  There wasn’t any use to wish that, I knew, but I kept on wishing anyhow.

  I kept looking out the little hole where I’d wiped the frost off the window. I had to keep doing it, or it would frost over again. It was so cold and getting colder all the time. I couldn’t see very much except the trees—and the snow, which looked like the baby powder Mom uses on Charlotte Ann. It kept blowing like white dust, with the wind picking it up and whirling it from one snowdrift to another, the way a little whirlwind does in the summertime when it picks up dust from the road and carries it out across the cornfield. The sun was still shining though, and I knew that if they’d find some punk pretty soon it still wouldn’t be too late. If only they could find some!

  It seemed Circus and Big Jim never would come back. After they’d been gone for maybe ten minutes, which felt like an hour, I made Dragonfly and Little Jim lie down on a blanket I found in a corner. Then I wrapped it around them and went to look out the window of the other room.

  I couldn’t see anything of Circus or Big Jim back there, but I thought I did see a big hollow tree. It might have some punk in it! I decided to go out and look. First, I told Dragonfly and Little Jim to lie still, which they promised to do.

  I tell you it was cold, and it was very hard walking with those clumsy snowshoes on. I struggled as hard as I could, afraid any minute I might forget to lift my foot and I’d go down in a big drift and not be able to get out. And that is exactly what happened.

  The first thing I knew I was down in a huge drift that was as deep as I was tall. I couldn’t get out without kicking my snowshoes off, and I couldn’t seem to get them off. Big Jim and Circus weren’t anywhere in sight, and they couldn’t have heard me holler for help anyway on account of the wind. I thought maybe I might not ever get out.

  While I was wallowing in that snowdrift like a black bear wallowing in the mud in a swamp, I made a promise to God. “If You’ll let me live, and Old Man Paddler, and all the Sugar Creek Gang, I’ll try to be the best soldier in the gospel army any boy can be. I’ll always be kind to my mother, even when she tells me to do something I don’t want to do, and …”

  Then I called for help as loud as I could, but nobody heard me. The wind on my face felt like a lot of little arrows were shooting me with icicles as sharp as needles.

  After what seemed like a terribly long time, I began to get sleepy and didn’t even want to get up, which is how you feel when you’re about to freeze to death. If you do lie down and go to sleep and nobody finds you, maybe you will freeze. So be sure never to give up when you’re out in a snowstorm and begin to feel sleepy. Keep on working or walking, because that’ll help get you warm.

  But I didn’t know that then, so I just let myself give up, and I lay there as if I was going to bed in a great big feather bed. Pretty soon I’d wake up in heaven maybe.

  The next thing I knew, Big Jim and Circus were making me stand up and walk, which I did without wanting to, being even disgusted with them for making me.

  “Come on!” Big Jim gasped, pulling me by one arm and Circus pulling me by the other. “We’ve found some punk, and we’ll have a fire in no time!”

  13

  Pretty soon we were back in the cabin, where there wasn’t any wind I saw that Old Man Paddler still had his eyes shut and seemed tobe asleep.

  As soon as Big Jim could, he focused the sunlight on that little reddish-brown piece of decayed wood they’d found. The punk was as light as a piece of paper and could be crushed in your hand almost as easily as a cracker could.

  Almost the second that round spot of concentrated sunlight touched that punk, it began to smoke. Big Jim’s hands trembled a little because he was so cold. He had to brace his hand against the door to keep it steady.

  Right away there was more and more smoke. Then I saw a red glow of fire about the size of a pinhead, which grew bigger as Big Jim blew on it. He kept on holding the spot of light on the same place, moving it around a little so the fire would spread. His face was very serious.

  “Get me a piece of tissue paper!” he ordered through his teeth. Then he held the roll of tissue against the red coal and blew on it, and kept on blowing, making the red coal bigger and making more smoke.

  I tell you I felt like shouting, for right there before our eyes a yellow tongue of flame shot up, and there was our fire!

  It didn’t take Big Jim long to carry that tiny paper torch over to the little wigwam of sticks in the fireplace. From then on we were just like a bunch of noisy blackbirds, all of us feeding the baby fire a small stick whenever Big Jim would let us. Soon there was a roaring blaze that made us feel mighty good.

  We started another fire in the cookstove, boiled some water, made sassafras tea, heated beef and vegetable soup for Old Man Paddler, and put hot wet towels on his swollen ankle.

  You should have seen that old man brighten up! As soon as it was warm in the cabin, he let us prop him up in bed. And when the soup was ready, Poetry, who had seasoned it because he was the best cook of any us, carried a great big steaming bowlful to him.

  Before he ate, his hoarse voice whispered, “I think we ought to be thankful, boys,” and in a second he closed his eyes for prayer. He couldn’t bow his head very well because he was leaning back against the pillow we had put there for him. But he nearly always prayed with his face looking up anyway.

  It was awful quiet while we waited for him to begin. I could hear the wind outside, whirring around the cabin, the fire roaring in the cookstove, and the blaze crackling and sizzling in the fireplace.

  I tell you that was a grand prayer. First he thanked God for answering our prayers. Then he thanked Him for the Sugar Creek Gang, calling us all by our nicknames as he always did. He finished by saying, “And bless Little Tom Till and Bob Till and all the boys in the world who don’t have Christian parents to take them to Sunday school and church and teach them to love Jesus and live right. Help all the Christian pastors and schoolteachers and senators and congressmen and all the leaders of our country to do something about saving our boys. And help the leaders in other countries not to forget the millions of boys that are living all around them. Help the parents especially …”

  For some reason, while the old man was praying, I began to like my mom and dad better than ever and to be very proud of them. I wished that right that minute I could go running lickety-sizzle from the kitchen of our house into the living room and make a dive for my mom and dad and give them a great big hug. I do that sometimes when I happen to see them standing together somewhere, hugging each other the way parents do. Then I wished I could scoop little Charlotte Ann up in my arms and hold her curly head with its soft cheeks and pug nose up against my freckled face and give her a hug too.

  It was while Old Man Pa
ddler was eating his soup that Little Jim remembered the mail, which was one of the reasons we had come up there in the first place.

  Old Man Paddler took the letters one at a time in his wrinkled hands, holding them up close to his eyes and looking at them through his thick glasses. I didn’t like it very well that he had to wear glasses, because I liked to see his kind old eyes twinkle, and I couldn’t because of the glasses. And he had so many whiskers that you couldn’t tell whether he was smiling unless you saw his eyes.

  With the cabin nice and warm and with Old Man Paddler feeling better and maybe not going to be very sick at all—except that he couldn’t walk on his sprained ankle and would have to stay in bed for a while till it got well and until his cold was better—and with all of us drinking sassafras tea, we forgot about how cold it was outside.

  We boys were sitting around the fireplace, just thinking and talking and feeling cheerful, when the old man surprised us by saying, “I suppose you boys remember my nephew, Barry Boyland, who was shot last summer?”

  We’d nearly forgotten about him. In fact, I hadn’t thought about him more than once, and that was when my city cousin, Walford, had asked about him the day we accidentally killed our old Thanksgiving turkey. (That crazy, ignorant Airedale dog! He should have had more sense than to try to chase a cat while he was tied to a turkey’s neck! But dogs are like that-even stranger than girls who think boys are afraid of spiders, which I’m not.)

  Then the old man said something that made us feel sad again. He said, “I’ve been thinking about the will I made in which I put something for each member of the Sugar Creek Gang.”

  He stopped talking and turned the letter from his nephew over in his hands. We just sat looking at him and listening to the wind and the fire and waiting for him to talk on.

  Pretty soon he did. “It’s the Till boys I’m thinking about,” he said, “Tom and Bob. I am very glad that Little Tom is going to Sunday school regularly, and I think it is fine the way you boys have been treating Bob, even though he is your enemy. I think I ought to tell you that I’d like to have them in my will too, and they can be if—” Then the old man stopped talking.