All the time while Poetry and I were running through the snowy woods, squishety-sizzle, zip-zip-zip, crunch, crunch, crunch, I could see in my mind's eye our new teacher's big beautiful brown saddle horse, prancing along in the snow toward Bumblebee hill, carrying his heavy load just as easy as if it wasn't anything. Right that very minute, maybe, the horse would be standing and pawing the ground and in a hurry to get started somewhere, while maybe its rider was standing with The Hoosier Schoolmaster in his hand, looking at the picture of the schoolhouse, and then maybe looking at the ridiculous-looking snow man we'd made of him....

In a few minutes Poetry and I were so out of wind that we had to stop and walk awhile, especially because I had a pain in my right side which I sometimes got when I ran too fast too long. "My side hurts," I said to Poetry, and he said, "Better stop and stoop down and unbuckle your boot, and buckle it again, and it'll quit hurting."

"It'll WHAT?" I said, thinking his idea was crazy.

"It'll quit hurting, if you stop and stoop down and unbuckle your boot and then buckle it again."

Well, I couldn't run anymore with the sharp pain in my side, so even though I thought Poetry's idea was crazy, I stopped and stooped over, biting off my mittens with my teeth, and laying them down on the snow for a jiffy and unbuckling one of my boots and buckling it again while I was still stooped over; then I straightened up, and would you believe it? That crazy ache in my side was actually gone! There wasn't even a sign of it.

I panted a minute longer to get my wind, then we started on the run again. "It's crazy," I said, "but it worked. How come?"

"Poetry Thompson's father told me," he said, puffing along ahead of me, "only it won't work in the summer-time. In the summer-time you have to stop running, and stop and stoop down and pick up a rock, and spit on it and turn it over and lay it down again very carefully upside down, and your side will quit hurting."

Right then, I stumbled over a log and fell down on my face, and scrambled to my feet and we hurried on, and I said to Poetry, "What do you do when you get a sore toe from stumping it on a log—stoop over and scrape the snow off the log and kiss it, and turn it over, and then—?"

It wasn't any time to be funny, only worried, but Poetry explained to me that it was the stooping that was what did it. "It's getting your body bent double, that does it.—Hey! Look! There he is now!"

I looked in the direction of our house, since we were getting pretty close to Bumblebee hill, and sure enough, there was our teacher sitting on his great big beautiful brown horse which was standing and prancing right beside the old iron pitcher pump not more than twenty feet from our back door. Mom was standing there with her sweater on and a scarf on her head talking to him or maybe listening to him, then I saw Mr. Black tip his hat like an honest-to-goodness gentleman, and bow, and his pretty horse whirled about and went in a horse hurry to our front gate which was open, and being held open by my pop, and he went on, galloping up the road, his horse galloping in the shadow which they made on the snowy road ahead of them.

Well, that was that, I thought, and Poetry and I who were at the top of Bumblebee hill hurried down to where he and I had left our sleds, the rest of the gang having taken theirs with them when we'd gone to the cave. At the bottom of the hill, we saw the great big tall snow man. The sun was still shining right straight on it, but wouldn't be, pretty soon, but would go down. So Poetry and I stopped close to it, and he got his camera ready.

"You get The Hoosier Schoolmaster, Bill, and turn it around and stand it up against the Hoosier schoolmaster's stomach." Poetry ordered, "so I can get a good picture of it," which I started to do, and then gasped.... There wasn't any Hoosier Schoolmaster! The book was gone. "It's gone!" I said to Poetry, and it was, and there was a page of yellow writing paper, instead.

"Hey!" I said, "There's something printed on it!" Sure enough, there was. The piece of yellow writing tablet was standing up on the two sticks, leaning against the snow man's stomach, and was fastened so the wind wouldn't blow it away, by another stick stuck through the paper and into the snow man's stomach.

"It's your poem, Poetry," I said, remembering the poem which Poetry had written about our teacher. "How'd it get here?" Right away I was reading the poem again, which was almost funny, only I didn't feel like laughing on account of wondering who had stolen the book and had put the poem here in its place. The poem was written exactly right:

It had been funny the first time I had read it, which was not more than a week ago, but for some reason right that minute it was anything in the world else. I was gritting my teeth and wondering who had done it, and who had stolen The Hoosier Schoolmaster. There wasn't a one of the gang that could have done it, 'cause we had all been together all afternoon; and at the cave all the rest of the gang had gone to their different homes.

"Who in the world wrote it and put it there?" I said, noticing that the printing was very large and had been put on with black crayola, the kind we used in school.

"There's only one other person in the world who knows I wrote that poem," Poetry said, "and that's Shorty Long."

"Shorty Long!" I said, remembering the newest boy who had moved into our neighborhood and was almost as fat as Poetry and who had been the cause of most of our trouble with our new teacher and had had two or three fights with me and had licked the stuffins out of me once, and I had licked the stuffins out of him once also, even worse than he had me, almost.

"How'd he find it out?" I said.

"Dragonfly told him," and also I remembered right that minute that Dragonfly and Shorty Long had been kinda chummy last week and we had all worried for fear there was maybe going to be trouble in our own gang which there'd never been before, and all on account of the new fat guy who had moved into our neighborhood and had started coming to our school.

"Are you going to take a picture of it?" I said to Poetry, and he said, "I certainly am; I'm going to have the evidence and then I can prove to anybody that doesn't believe it, that somebody actually put it here."

"Yeah," I said, "but everybody knows you wrote the poem."

Poetry lowered his camera, and just that minute I saw something else that made me stare and in fact startled me so that for a jiffy I was almost as much excited as I had been when the fierce old mad old mother bear had been trying to kill Little Jim right at that very place where we were about a year and a half ago.

"Hey! Look!" I said, "Mr. Black's been here himself!"

"Mr. Black!" Poetry said in almost a half scream.... And right away both of us were looking down in the snow around the beech tree, and around the snow man, and sure enough there were horse's tracks, the kind of tracks that showed that the horse had shoes on. And even while I was scared and wondering "What on earth!" there popped into my red head the crazy superstition that if you found a horseshoe and put it up over the door of your house or one of the rooms of your house, you would have good luck....

"I'll bet Mr. Black took the book, and wrote the poem and put it here."

"He wouldn't," I said, but was afraid he might have.

"I'm going to take a picture anyway," Poetry said, and stepped back and took one, and then real quick, took another, and then he took the yellow sheet of paper with the poem on it and folded it up and put it in his coat pocket, and with our faces and minds worried we started in fiercely knocking the living daylights out of that snow man. The first thing we did was to pull off the red nose, and pull out the corn-cob pipe, and knock the round head off and watch it go ker-swish onto the ground and break in pieces, then we pulled the sticks out of his stomach, kicked him in the same place, and in a jiffy had him looking like nothing.

We felt pretty mixed up in our minds, I can tell you.

"Do you suppose Mr. Black did that?" I said.

"He wouldn't," Poetry said, "but if he rode his horse down here and saw it, he'll certainly think we're a bunch of heathen."

"We aren't, though—are we?" I said to Poetry, and for some reason I was remembering that Little Jim had acted like maybe we ought not make fun of our teacher just 'cause he had hair only all around his head and not on top, and couldn't help it. For some reason, it didn't seem very funny, right that minute, and it seemed like Little Jim was right.

"What about The Hoosier Schoolmaster?" Poetry said to me, as we dragged our discouraged sleds up Bumblebee hill. "What'll we tell your mother? And what'll she tell Mrs. Mansfield?"

"I don't know," Poetry said, and his voice sounded more worried than I'd heard it in a long time.

The first thing Mom said to us when we got to our house was, "Mr. Black was here twice this afternoon."

"Twice?" I said. "What for? What did he want?"

"Oh he was just visiting around, getting acquainted with the parents of the boys. Such a beautiful brown saddle horse," Mom said. "And he was so polite."

"The horse?" Poetry said, and maybe shouldn't have, but Mom ignored his remark and said, "He took a picture of our house and barn and tried to get one of Mixy cat, but Mixy was scared of the horse, I guess, and ran like a frightened rabbit."

"Was he actually taking pictures?" Poetry asked with a worried voice.

"Yes, and he wanted to get one of you boys playing on Bumblebee hill.... But you were all gone, he said, but he found the book you left there, so he brought it back—you know, the one Mrs. Mansfield wanted."

"What book?" I said, pretending to be surprised. "Did Mrs. Mansfield want a book?"

And Mom who was standing at our back door bareheaded, and shouldn't have been, on account of she might catch cold, said, "Yes, she phoned here for The Hoosier Schoolmaster, while Mr. Black was here, but I knew your mother had one, Poetry, so I told her to call there."

Poetry and I were looking at each other, wondering "What on earth?" Then Mom said, "Mr. Black thought maybe you boys had been reading it or something and had forgotten it when you left."

"D-d-d-did he—did he—?" Poetry began, but stuttered so much he had to stop and start again, and said, "Did he say where he found it? I mean was it—that is, where did he find it?"

"He didn't say," Mom said, "but he said since he was going on over to Mrs. Mansfield's anyway, he'd take it over for me, so you won't have to take it over, Bill," Mom finished.

Well, that was that.... Poetry and I sighed to each other, and he said, "Did you tell my mother?"

"I've just called her," Mom said, "and you're to come on home right away to get the chores done early.... It's early to bed for all of us on Saturday night, you know."

Poetry must have felt pretty bad, just like I did, but he managed to say to Mom politely, "Thank you, Mrs. Collins. I'll hurry right on home."

I walked out to the gate with him, and for a jiffy we just stood and looked at each other, both of us with worried looks on our faces.

"Do you suppose he really took a picture of himself with that poem on his stomach?" Poetry asked. "And if he did, who on earth put it there?"

"I don't know," I said, "but what would he want with pictures of all of us and our parents?"

"I'm sure I don't know—" Poetry said, with a worried voice.

Just that minute Pop called from the barn and said, "BILL, HURRY UP AND GATHER THE EGGS! IT'LL BE TOO DARK TO SEE IN THE BARN AS SOON AS THE SUN GOES DOWN! POETRY, BE SURE TO COME AGAIN SOME TIME," which was Pop's way of telling Poetry to step on the gas and get going home right now, which Poetry did, and I went back to the house and got the egg basket to start to gather the eggs, wondering what would happen next.

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