Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6

by Paul Hutchens

  So we slept in the cabin, and I don’t need to tell you about that.

  But this much you ought to know: The next Monday morning, when the seventeen pupils of the Sugar Creek School, No. 9, were all sitting in their seats studying, or supposed to be studying, all of a sudden Big Jim raised his hand.

  Miss Lilly looked at him and nodded, and he motioned for her to come to his desk, which she did.

  I had been trying to find out what that same Mr. Brown, who had had trouble with his wool and his sheep and his bank account and his lumber bill, was going to do about his coal bill, so it was easy for me to look up and watch and listen to see what was going on in Big Jim’s mind.

  And do you know what? He said to Miss Lilly—and his voice was very clear and like a man’s—“The Sugar Creek Gang is ready now to sign that paper, if we may, please.”

  And so was all the rest of the school.

  I really don’t know whether anything as important could happen to the Sugar Creek Gang as what I’ve just written to you about, but if anything does happen, I’ll take plenty of time to tell you about it.

  In fact, I can almost feel that something is going to happen. That very afternoon, after school was out and I was on my way home, I had to go past Circus’s house for something, and his dad’s big hunting dogs, with their long noses and their long voices, had something up a tree and were making plenty of dog noise.

  “Hello there, Bill Collins,” Circus’s dad’s husky voice called to me. “Fall is almost here, and I’ve planned a hunting trip some dark, drizzling night, and I’d like all the Sugar Creek Gang to go along. I saw coon tracks along the mouth of the branch this morning.”

  I went on home, thinking about that hunting trip and hoping my parents would let me go. It would be fun to go hunting along with the gang, walking in the flickering of a lantern through the dark woods and along Sugar Creek, hearing the long-tongued bawling of the hounds.

  And we might even catch—well, ’most anything.

  The Sugar Creek Gang Series:

  1 The Swamp Robber

  2 The Killer Bear

  3 The Winter Rescue

  4 The Lost Campers

  5 The Chicago Adventure

  6 The Secret Hideout

  7 The Mystery Cave

  8 Palm Tree Manhunt

  9 One Stormy Day

  10 The Mystery Thief

  11 Teacher Trouble

  12 Screams in the Night

  13 The Indian Cemetery

  14 The Treasure Hunt

  15 Thousand Dollar Fish

  16 The Haunted House

  17 Lost in the Blizzard

  18 On the Mexican Border

  19 The Green Tent Mystery

  20 The Bull Fighter

  21 The Timber Wolf

  22 Western Adventure

  23 The Killer Cat

  24 The Colorado Kidnapping

  25 The Ghost Dog

  26 The White Boat Rescue

  27 The Brown Box Mystery

  28 The Watermelon Mystery

  29 The Trapline Thief

  30 The Blue Cow

  31 Treehouse Mystery

  32 The Cemetery Vandals

  33 The Battle of the Bees

  34 Locked in the Attic

  35 Runaway Rescue

  36 The Case of Missing Calf