Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6

by Paul Hutchens

  It didn’t take long to clean them all and to put them on ice in the icebox. Then we had supper and another campfire meeting, and it was time to go to bed again.

  For tomorrow Barry had planned what is called a first-aid hike, which real Boy Scouts are always taking. We’d been up there for three days now, and nothing very exciting had happened, that is, no real adventure, except being almost scared to death in the railroad car.

  Before going to sleep that night, I thought cheerfully of what was going to happen the next day. We’d get a chance to see what the north was really like. We’d never had a first-aid hike, although I suppose Big Jim had, because he was a Boy Scout; and, of course, Barry had.

  Tomorrow! I was sleeping in Poetry’s tent, with Little Jim lying right beside me in his own sleeping bag. He was already breathing away noisily, the way a boy breathes when he’s asleep. Breathing like that even helps a person go to sleep when he’s got what is called insomnia—if he just pretends he’s asleep and starts to breathe kind of lazy-like and with a noise that sounds like my dad’s handsaw cutting through a board.

  For just one minute I stuck my head out the tent flap to look up at the stars and at the little grains of light I liked to imagine were sprinkling down. There was a big yellow moon just pushing its head up out of the lake away out there where the sky and the lake were fastened together.

  That moon was the same moon that was just coming up along Sugar Creek too, I thought, and I wondered how it could do it. I also thought that maybe that very minute down in Sugar Creek territory, my great big dad and my very kindhearted mom might be sitting out on our side porch, holding hands, each one in a chair close to the other one.

  And maybe Dad would call Mom one of his favorite names for her and say, “I wonder if our Billy-boy is lonesome for his parents.” And Mom would giggle a little and say, “Sure he is. There isn’t a boy in the world that likes his parents better than our Bill.” Then Mom and Dad would stand up and look at the same moon I was looking at, and then they’d go in the house and go to bed.

  Well, it had been an exciting day, and we were so tired that we slept like eight logs being sawed with noisy saws, which means we snored.

  8

  It was Poetry’s almost-and-yet-not-quite catching that big fish that got us into trouble near the last of the first week. He couldn’t get over the fact that he’d lost it, and he made up his mind that before the camping trip was over he was going back there and catch that fish, if it was the last thing he ever did. He told me about it, and he talked about it every day.

  But as I said, the very next day after Poetry had lost the fish, Barry had planned a first-aid hike. We’d be gone all morning and wouldn’t get back in time to make dinner, he said, so we’d put our fish dinner on to cook right away.

  We’d been cooking nearly all our meals on the gas stove in the trailer, but today’s dinner was to be cooked in the ground. I’d never heard of such a thing, but I was willing to do my part. Barry put us all to work—after breakfast and after we’d had a little talk from the Bible by Santa, who came over just in time.

  My job to help get the dinner ready was to dig a hole in the ground eighteen inches deep and the same distance in every other direction. I got a shovel from the resort and went to work.

  Poetry and Little Jim and Circus were sent to gather stones, a couple of bucketfuls, enough to completely line the hole. The idea looked silly, but Barry told us to do it, so do it we did.

  With a grunt, Poetry set his rocks down beside me and said, “Be sure you dig it far enough south.”

  Pretty soon the hole was finished and lined with rocks, each one pushed up close against the other. Big Jim put in kindling wood and dry twigs, making a pile about two feet high and stacking the sticks in a crisscross style. Then he started a fire, which we let burn for a whole hour, while we did different things around camp, waiting for all the wood to burn up. Barry sent us after basswood leaves and wild grape leaves and leaves from sassafras shrubs, and we even got some lettuce leaves, which we found in the icebox.

  “All right, Bill, bring your shovel,” Barry called, which I did. “Now scoop out all the ashes and live coals and pile them here. Circus, get a bucketful of sand, quick. Dragonfly, get those old burlap sacks there by the trailer door and soak them in the lake and bring them here as wet as you can.”

  It still looked very strange to us, but we obeyed anyway, and soon I had all the coals scooped out, leaving nothing in the hole but hot stones. Barry lined them with the green leaves, and then quicker than anything he put in about a dozen big fish steaks right in the center of the hole. All around the fish he put potatoes and corn on the cob and carrots. On top of that he spread more green leaves and more stones.

  Then he laid on the soaking-wet burlap sacks, just as Circus came puffing up with a pail of sand from the beach. Barry made me scoop some more sandy soil on top of that, making a little mound.

  Well, to me it didn’t make sense. It looked like the end of a funeral, with the fish being the corpse. All we needed now was a tombstone, and it would all be over.

  So I said to Poetry, calling him by his real name, which is Leslie Thompson, “Leslie,” I said solemnly, “go get your fishing pole, the one you caught the twenty-pound fish with, and set it up for a tombstone.”

  Which made him turn red in the face, and he said, “Just you wait and see. I’m going to learn how to fish. And before we go back to Sugar Creek, I’ll catch that big old northern if it’s the last thing I ever do,” not knowing that it would come mighty near to being the last thing he’d ever do. Why, if it hadn’t been for—but that’s too far ahead of the story. I’ll get to it pretty soon, though. First, let me tell you about our first-aid hike.

  With the “funeral” over, Barry handed me a white envelope, saying, “You’re the guinea pig today.”

  You see, a first-aid hike is one in which some boy of the gang or Scout patrol is given an envelope with instructions in it, telling him what kind of an accident he is to pretend he has had. He doesn’t know himself, until he opens the envelope, just what is supposed to have happened to him. He walks along ahead of the gang, starting five minutes before they do. Then after five minutes maybe, no matter where he is, he stops, opens the envelope, and reads the instructions. Whatever they say, he does.

  Sometimes he has to pretend he’s fallen out of a tree and broken his arm or leg; sometimes he has fainted, or fallen into the lake and drowned. The rest of the gang come along, find out what’s happened, and administer first aid. It’s good sport and good training.

  We were just ready to start when we had a case of real first aid to take care of. Poetry had reached up under his shirt to scratch his side and felt something funny there, so he jerked back his shirttail and looked. And there was a little wood tick sticking headfirst right into his side. In fact, that tick’s head was completely buried.

  Now, I’d read about wood ticks in a book, and they’re dangerous if the head gets left in when you pull them off. You might even get a fever and be sick.

  It didn’t take long to take care of the tick, though. Big Jim knew exactly what to do, and Barry let him do it. He sent Dragonfly after a match in the trailer. Then he lit the match and let it burn until there was a red-hot coal on the end. Then, quick as a flash, he touched the hot end of the match to the tail of that wood tick, being very careful not to touch Poetry himself.

  Wow! You should have seen that little flat rascal of a wood tick wiggle and squirm and come backing out of Poetry’s side the way our old horse Jim backs out of his stall at home, or else like my dad’s car does when he backs it out of the garage and is in a hurry to get to town—although Big Jim did have to use another match to make him back all the way out.

  And now for the hike. I took the white envelope and started off down the lakeshore, only to be stopped by Poetry, who yelled, “Hey, what direction are you going?”

  “Keep still!” I yelled back at him and went on, minding my own business, wondering all the time
what was written on the paper in the envelope.

  I was supposed to walk along the shore, Barry had told me, until I came to where the big point of land starts to go out into the lake. Then I was to keep on following the shoreline until I came to the boat belonging to Eagle Eye and his brother, Snow-in-the-Face. There I should stop and read my instructions.

  So I started out. It was a great morning, with the lake looking like a big silvery-blue mirror with live wrinkles on its face. Already I could see the point of land, jutting out maybe a half mile into the lake, something like a long neck without any head.

  That was where Poetry and I had been lost that other day before we knew very much about the territory up there. And that explains why we could hear a loon first on one side of us and then the other. There had been two loons, and they were hollering to each other across the neck of land, like two boys hollering to each other across a schoolyard.

  On the other side of the neck was a sandbar, and nearby were schools and schools of walleye that liked to chase after minnows. On the other side, too, was a long shoreline of bulrushes where, in different places, some big northern pike lay in hiding on the bottom of the lake, waiting for a live breakfast or a live dinner or supper to come swimming along. Then they would shoot like torpedoes under the water straight toward that dinner.

  If that live dinner happened to have a hook in it with a boy on the other end of the line, the northern pike himself would turn into dinner for a hungry boy.

  While walking along, I thought that I would like to be a fish, living down in the interesting underwater world, with the strange-looking other fish all around me. I’d go on an exploring trip, down, down, down to the very bottom of the lake. Maybe I’d organize a special gang of fish and have a lot of fun. There’d be a big northern pike and a little northern pike, a fat sunfish and an acrobatic bass, a very walleyed pike, and a red-finned, spotted muskellunge, which would be me with my red hair and freckles.

  Just then I heard a motorboat go put-putting by on the lake, and I knew it was mail time at camp. In my mind I could see the gang all running down the long deck toward the mailbox at the end to see if there were any letters from home.

  Pretty soon I came to the white boat that belonged to Eagle Eye and Snow-in-the-Face. There I stopped, tore open the envelope, and read the note inside, which was written on a typewriter. “Dear Guinea Pig,” it said,

  Find south by using your watch, then walk straight west until you come out on the other side of the point, where you will find a sandbar willow, growing right at the edge of the water. There you are supposed to drown yourself, only please don’t do it.

  Wait in the shade of the willow until you hear us coming, then slide off into the shallow water and call for help. Play dead until we get to you, and for five minutes after we get there, until we’ve restored your breathing by artificial respiration. We’ll let you know when you’re alive again.

  I finished reading the note, put it back into its envelope, shoved it into my pocket, took out my watch, and picked up a little stick about the size of a match. It was just half past nine, I noticed, not nearly as late as I’d thought it was.

  I laid the watch down on the palm of my hand, set up the stick on the outside of the rim, and turned the watch around until the shadow of the stick fell straight along the hour hand. South, I knew, would be just halfway between the point of the hour hand and the figure twelve on the dial.

  Anybody could find west if he knew which way south was, so I grinned and started west. I walked along, feeling happy, thinking of a lot of cheerful things, glad I was alive and remembering some of the important things Barry or Santa had been telling us in the campfire talks. I was beginning to get hungry too, thinking about the buried dinner under the old wet burlap sacks back at camp.

  Yes sir, I tell you it was great to be alive. A rabbit jumped up—a little reddish-brown one—and scooted across in front of me. A crazy loon let out a weird noise from the lake. Another rabbit jumped out just then and started to run, going straight west, the same direction I was going.

  Or was it north? All of a sudden I had a funny feeling, and every direction I looked was the same direction, and there were trees and trees and more trees. It was just as it had been that other time when Poetry and I had been lost.

  But I didn’t worry, because I knew how to find directions now myself. I took out my watch and—would you believe this?—it was still half past nine! My watch had stopped running and had maybe been stopped for a long time! Why, it ought to be almost eleven by now, I thought; and if I could have told the time with my stomach, it would have been way after twelve, I was so hungry.

  I stood still, thinking. We must have put the dinner in its grave about ten o’clock. Then Poetry had had to be operated on. Hm! Let me see, I thought. Yes, it ought to be about eleven by now.

  But that would change the directions all around! It meant that I hadn’t been going in the right direction at all. I might miss the willow tree when I got there.

  Anyway, I set my watch forward to eleven o’clock, wound it, and found south again. Then I started out in the direction I thought I was supposed to go, feeling funny and wondering, What if I get lost again!

  Barry had said in his talk last night, “See there, boys? That’s why we have to have the Bible, which is God’s Word, to show us the right direction to go. Nobody would know right from wrong, or how to live at all, or how to go to heaven, if we didn’t have this compass.”

  Then he had held up the Bible for us to see, and I had reached into my vest pocket, where I always kept my New Testament, and felt proud to think that my parents knew enough to buy me one and teach me to read it.

  I kept on walking, knowing I was going close to right and that sooner or later I’d get across the neck of the forest, which I did. In about three minutes more I heard the washing of waves against a shore, and there was the lake and the sandbar and the willow, near the water’s edge.

  I waded out through the soft white sand and lay down in the shade of the little tree, wondering why the shade should be on the south side of the tree at noon when it was supposed to be on the north.

  Oh, well, I thought, I never was very good at feeling directions. So I quit worrying about it. It didn’t matter how I felt. South was south, and nobody could change it, just like the Bible, which says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved,” and that settles it!

  We boys liked Barry Boyland, and we thought our parents were the wisest parents in the world to give us that kind of vacation.

  Pretty soon the gang would be coming to bring me back to life again, so I lay there thinking and imagining what if I was deadl I guess my mom and dad and little Charlotte Ann would be lonesome without me, and I’d be lonesome for them.

  First they’d take the red-haired, freckled-faced body that I used to live in out to the cemetery behind our church and bury it. And everybody would cry and cry and feel very sad, Mom and Dad most of all. And we wouldn’t be able to have any more of our three-cornered hugs—I think maybe I’d miss that most of all.

  Maybe someday up there, I’d walk down a quiet sort of lane, with a lot of birds singing in the trees on each side, and there upon a pretty little hill would be a kind of oldish-looking cabin, all fixed up for Old Man Paddler to live in when he came. Because I don’t think he’d want to live in a big fine house. He’d rather, if it cost anything to make it, have Jesus save the money to help the missionaries preach the gospel, or else help some poor boys get a good chance in life down on the earth.

  I might even walk up to the oldish-looking cabin some morning and look after the flowers for him, so that when he got there, everything’d be just like he’d like to have it. Then I’d get a drink at his spring if I was thirsty, although Sylvia’s dad says we won’t ever get thirsty in heaven. Maybe the Bible means, though, that a boy can always have all the water he wants.

  Anyway, maybe Jesus Himself would come walking along, with the scars still showing in His hands where He’d suffered
on the cross for everybody. He’d smile and lay one of His hands on my head and say, “Thank you, Bill. Whatever you do for others who love Me, you do for Me.” And maybe He’d give me the same kind of hug my dad does.

  Well, that’s as far as I got to think just then, because all of a sudden I felt something cold touch my nose. I opened my eyes quick. And there was a little blackish-green turtle with silly, blinking eyes looking right straight into mine, not more than a few inches away. In fact, I had to look cross-eyed to see him, he was so close. I knew right away that I wasn’t in heaven.

  I’d seen little turtles like this one before, down along Sugar Creek. They were always swimming and diving around in the water, and sometimes they’d crawl up on the land and travel to different places. Turtles even migrate, the way birds do, although they don’t move in such big companies as birds or grasshoppers.

  And that reminds me—when Old Man Paddler was a boy, grasshoppers used to be so thick sometimes that when they’d fly, or migrate, from one part of the country to another, they’d actually hide the sun like a big cloud, and it’d be almost dark on the earth.

  Well, sometimes when turtles shuffle around up on the shore, they try to cross the road, and they get run over, not having as much sense as a boy, who looks both ways before he starts and waits if he doesn’t have time enough to get across.

  This little guy was as surprised as I was, and he didn’t seem to like me any better than I did him. He turned around as quick as anything, scrambled away toward the willow tree, and started headfirst into a patch of grass, a little like a wood tick squirming headfirst into a boy’s side, carrying his bony house with him as turtles do. I’d hate to have to carry a house with me wherever I went, although I suppose if it was a part of me, I wouldn’t mind so much.

  Just that minute I heard the gang coming. I rolled over a couple of times and went kersplash into the water, screamed a wild scream for help, splashed around a little and sank to the bottom, the water being only about eight inches deep. I lay on my back with my face and nose sticking up like a turtle’s nose when it’s in the water and just looking around, only I kept my eyes shut.