WELL, when you have a mysterious sealed envelope in your hand, which you’ve just found under some pine needles at the base of a tree out in the middle of a forest, and when you’re playing a game about finding buried treasure, all of a sudden you sort of wake up and realize that your game has come to life and that you’re in for an honest-to-goodness mystery that will be a thousand times more interesting and exciting than the imaginary game you’ve been playing.

We decided to keep our new names, though, which we did, although we had an argument about it first. I was still Robinson Crusoe, and Dragonfly was my Man Friday. Circus and Poetry wanted us to call them the cannibals, but Dragonfly wouldn’t. “I don’t want to have to worry about being eaten up every minute. You’ve got to turn into goats right away. Besides, one cannibal’s already been shot and is supposed to be dead.”

“You’d make a good goat yourself,” Circus said to me,—“a Billy goat, ’cause your name’s Bill.”

But it wasn’t any time to argue, when there was a mysterious envelope right in the middle of our huddle where we were on the ground at the base of the tree where Circus had found it, so Poetry said, “All right, I’ll be the goat, if you let me open the envelope.”

“And I’ll be the other goat,” Circus said, “if you’ll let me read it.”

“Let me read it,” Dragonfly said to me. “Goats can’t read anyway.”

“You can’t either,” I said. “You’re a black man that doesn’t know anything about civilization and you don’t know how to read.”

So it was I who got to open the soiled brownish envelope, which I did with excited fingers, and then we all let out four disappointed groans, for would you believe it? there wasn’t a single thing written on the folded white paper on the inside—not one single thing. It was only a piece of typewriter paper.

Well that was that. We all sank down on the ground in different directions and felt like the bottom had dropped out of our new mystery world. I looked at Friday and he at me, and the fat goat started chewing his cud, while our acrobatic goat rolled over on his back, pulled his knees up to his chin, and groaned, then he rolled over on his side and, my Man Friday lying right there right then, got his side rolled onto, which started a scuffle, making my Man Friday angry. All of a sudden he remembered something about the story of Robinson Crusoe. He grunted and said, while he twisted and tried to get out from under the goat, “Listen, you—when Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday got hungry, they killed and ate one of the goats, and if you don’t behave yourself like a good goat, we’ll—”

But Circus was as mischievous as anything and said, while he rolled himself back toward Dragonfly again and laid his head on his side, “Isn’t your name Friday?”

Dragonfly grunted and said, “Sure,” and Circus answered, “All right. I’m sleepy, and there’s nothing better than taking a nap on Friday,” which he pretended to do, shutting his eyes and started in snoring as loud as he could, which sounded like a goat with the asthma.

That reminded Poetry of something funny he’d read somewhere, and it was about two fleas who were supposed to have lived on the island with Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday. Both of these fleas had been chewing away on Crusoe and were getting tired of him and wanted a change, so pretty soon one of them called to the other and said, “So long, kid, I’ll be seeing you on Friday.”

I just barely giggled at Poetry’s story ’cause my mind was working hard on the new mystery, thinking about the blank piece of paper and why it was blank, and why was the envelope sealed, and who had dropped it here, and when, and why? So I stood up and walked like Robinson Crusoe might have walked, in a little circle around the tree, looking up at the limb where Circus had been perched, and then at the ground, and at Poetry, my fat goat, who right then unscrambled himself from the rest of the inhabitants of our imaginary island, and followed me around, sniffling at my hand, like a hungry goat that wanted to eat the letter I had.

Abruptly Poetry stopped and said to me, “Sh!” which means to keep still, which I did, and he said, “Look, here’s a sign of some kind.”

I looked, but didn’t see anything except a small twig about four or five feet tall that was broken off, and had been left with the top hanging.

My Man Friday and the acrobatic goat were still scuffling under the tree, and didn’t seem interested in what we were doing. “What kind of a sign?” I asked Poetry, knowing that he was one of our gang who was more interested in woodcraft than most of the gang and was always looking for signs and trails and things.

“See here,” he said to me, “this is a little birch twig, and somebody’s broken it part way off and left it hanging.”

“What of it?” I said, remembering that back home at Sugar Creek I’d done that myself to a chokecherry twig or a willow, and it hadn’t meant a thing.

“But look which way the top points!” Poetry said mysteriously. “That means it’s a signal on a trail. It means for us to go in the direction the top of the broken twig points, and after awhile we’ll find another broken twig, and whichever way it points we’re to go that way.”

Say, did my disappointed mind ever come to quick life! Although I still doubted it might mean anything. Right away, we called the other goat and my Man Friday and let them in on our secret, and we all swished along, pretending to be scouts, going straight in the direction the broken twig pointed, all of us looking for another twig farther on.

We walked about twenty yards through the dense growth before we found another broken twig hanging, but sure enough we did find one, and this time it was a broken oak twig, and was bent in the opposite direction we’d come from, which meant the trail went straight on. Then we did get excited, ’cause we knew we were on somebody’s trail.

My Man Friday was awful dumb for one who was supposed to be used to outdoor life, though, ’cause he wanted to finish breaking off the top of the oak twig and also cut off the bottom and make a stick out of it to carry, and to take home with us back to Sugar Creek when we finished our vacation. “For a souvenir,” he whined complainingly, when we wouldn’t let him and made him fold up his pocket knife and put it back into his pocket again.

“That’s the sign post on our trail,” Poetry explained. “We have to leave it there so we can follow the trail back to where we started from, or might get lost,” which I thought was good sense and said so.

We scurried along, getting more and more interested and excited as we found one broken twig after another. Sometimes they were pointing straight ahead, and sometimes at an angle. Once we found a twig broken clear off and lying flat on the ground, at a right angle from the direction we’d been traveling, so we turned in the direction it pointed, and hurried along.

Once when Poetry was studying very carefully the direction a new broken twig was pointing, he gasped and said, “Hey, Gang! Look!”

We scrambled to him like a flock of little fluffy chickens making a dive toward a mother hen when she clucks for them to hurry to her and eat a bug or a fat worm or something.

“See here,” Poetry said, “—here’s where our trail branches off in two directions—one to the right and the other to the left.” And sure enough, he was right, for only a few feet apart were two broken twigs, one an oak, and the other a chokecherry, the chokecherry pointing to the right and the oak to the left.

“Which way do we go for the buried treasure?” Poetry asked me, and I didn’t know what to answer.

Then Poetry let out a gasp and said, “Hey, this one pointing to the right looks like it’s fresher than the other. We certainly are getting the breaks.”

We all studied the two broken twigs, and I knew that Poetry was right. The one pointing to the right looked a lot fresher break than the one pointing to the left. Why, it might even have been made today! I thought. And for some reason, not being able to tell for sure just how long it had been since somebody had been right here making the trail, I got a very peculiar and half-scared feeling all up and down my spine.

“I wish Big Jim was here,” my Man Friday said. I wished the same thing, but instead of saying it, I said bravely, “Who wants Big J—” and stopped like I had been shot at and hit, as I heard a sound from somewhere that was like a high-pitched trembling woman’s voice calling for help. It also sounded a little bit like a screech owl’s voice that wails along Sugar Creek at night back home.

“’Tsa loon,” Circus said, and was crazy enough to let out a long, loud wail that trembled and sounded more like a loon than a loon’s wail does.

I looked at my Man Friday and at my fat goat to see what they thought it was. Right away before I could read their thoughts, there was another trembling high-pitched voice which answered Circus. The second I heard it, I thought it didn’t sound like a loon but like an actual person calling and crying and terribly scared.

You can’t hear a thing like that out in the middle of the Chippewa Forest where there are Indians and different kinds of wild animals and not feel like I felt, which was almost half scared to death for a minute, although I knew there weren’t any bears or lions, but maybe only deer and polecats and coons and possums and maybe mink.

“It’s NOT a loon,” I whispered huskily, and felt my knees get weak and I wanted to plop down on the ground and rest. I also wanted to run.

Then the call came again not more than a hundred feet ahead of us, and as quick as I had been scared, I wasn’t again, for this time it did sound exactly like a loon.

In a jiffy we all felt better and said so to each other. The newest broken twig right beside us was pointing in the direction the sound came from, so we decided there was probably a lake right close by which is where loons nearly always are—out on some lake somewhere swimming along like ducks, and diving and also screaming bloody murder to their mates.

We all swished along, being very careful to look at the broken twigs so we’d remember what they looked like when we got ready to come back, which we planned we’d do after awhile.

My fat goat and I were walking together ahead of my Man Friday and my acrobatic goat. We dodged out way around fallen tree trunks and old stumps and around wild rose bushes and also wild raspberry patches and chokecherries, and still there wasn’t any lake anywhere.

It certainly was a queer feeling we had though, as we dodged along, talking about our mystery and wondering where we were going, and how soon we would get there.

“’Tsfunny how come Circus found that envelope back there with only a blank piece of white paper in it,” I said. “Do you s’pose the kidnapper dropped it when he left the little Ostberg girl there?”

“I suppose—why sure, he did,” Poetry said.

“How come the police didn’t find it there then, when they searched the place last week for clues. If it’d been there then, wouldn’t they have found it?” I asked those two questions as fast as I could ’cause that envelope in my pocket seemed like it was hot and would burn a hole in my shirt any minute.

Poetry’s fat forehead frowned. He was as struck as I was, over the mystery.

All our minds were as blank as the blank letter and not a one of us could think of anything that would make it make sense, so we went on, following our trail of broken twigs. It was fun what we were doing, and we didn’t feel very scared ’cause we knew the kidnapper was in jail. In fact, we were all thrilled with the most interesting excitement we’d had in a long time, ’cause for some reason we were sure we might find something terribly interesting at the end of the trail—if we ever came to it—not knowing that we’d not only find something very interesting but would bump into an experience even more exciting and thrilling than the ones we’d already had on our camping trip—and one that was just as dangerous.

Right that second we came to a hill. I looked ahead and spied a wide expanse of pretty blue water down below us. Between us and the lake, on the hillside, was a log cabin with a chimney running up and down the side next to us, and a big log door. We all had seen it at once I guess, ’cause we all stopped and dropped down behind some underbrush or something and most of us said, “Sh!” at the same time.

We lay there for what seemed like a terribly long time before any of us did anything except listen to ourselves breathe. I was also listening to my heart beat. But not a one of us was as scared as we would have been if we hadn’t known that the kidnapper was all nicely locked up in jail and nobody needed to be afraid of him at all. I guess I never had such a wonderful feeling in my life for a long time as I did right that minute, ’cause I realized we’d followed the trail like real scouts and we’d actually run onto the kidnapper’s hideout, and we might find the ransom money. Boy oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

Why all we’d have to do would be to go up to that crazy old-fashioned looking old house, push open a door or climb in through a window and look around until we found it, I thought. It was certainly the craziest looking weathered old house, and it looked like nobody had lived in it for years and years. The windows had old green blinds hanging at crooked angles, some of the stones had fallen off the top of the chimney, and the doorstep was broken down and looked rotten. I could tell from where I was that there hadn’t been anybody going into that door for a long time on account of there was a spider web spun from the doorpost next to the old white knob, to one of the up-and-down logs in the middle of the door.

“Let’s go in and investigate.”

“Let’s n-n-n-n-not,” my Man Friday said, and I scowled at him and said fiercely, “Slave, we’re going in!”