I GUESS I never did get tired thinking about all the interesting and exciting things which had happened to the Sugar Creek Gang when we’d gone camping far up in the North. One of the happiest memories was of the time when Poetry, who is the barrel-shaped member of our gang, and I were lost out in the forest, and while we were trying to get unlost we met a very cute little brown-faced Indian boy whose name was Snow-in-the-face, and his big Indian brother whose name was Eagle Eye.

Little Snow-in-the-face was really the cutest little Indian boy I had ever seen; in fact, he was the first one I’d ever really seen up real close. I kept thinking about him and wishing that the whole Sugar Creek Gang could go again up into that wonderful country which everybody calls the Paul Bunyan Playground and see how Little Snow-in-the-face was getting along, and how his big brother’s Indian Sunday school was growing, which, as you know, they were having every Sunday in an old railroad coach, which they’d taken out into the forest and fixed up into a church. Say, I never had any idea that we would get to go back so soon, in fact, the very next summer after we’d been there the summer before.

But here I go telling you about how we happened to get to go, and how quick we started, and all the exciting things that happened on the way and after we got there, and especially after we got there. Boy oh boy! it was real fun, and also very exciting—especially that night when we ran kersmack into a kidnapper mystery, and some of us who were mixed up in it were almost half scared half to death. Imagine a very dark night with only moonlight enough to make things look spooky, and queer screaming sounds echoing through the forest and over the lake, and then finding the kidnapped girl all wrapped in an Indian blanket with a handkerchief stuffed into her mouth and—but that’s getting ahead of the story, and I’d better not tell you how it happened until I get to it, ’cause it might spoil the story for you, and I hope you won’t start turning the pages of this book real fast and read the mystery first, ’cause that wouldn’t be fair.... Don’t you dare skip even one page. You just keep reading along until you get there.

Anyway, this is how we were going to get to go. Some of the Sugar Creek Gang of us were lying in the long mashed-down grass, in a level place at the top of the steep incline not very far from where the hill goes down real steep to the spring at the bottom where my pop is always sending me to get a pail of real cold fresh water for us to drink at our house. We were all of us lying in different directions, talking and laughing and yawning and pretending to be sleepy, also some of us were tumbling around a little and making a nuisance of ourselves to each other. Most of us had long stems of blue grass in our mouths and were chewing on the ends, and all of us were feeling swell. I had my binoculars in my hand and up to my eyes looking around at different things. First, I watched a red squirrel, high up in a big sugar tree, lying flat and lazy on the top of a gray branch like he was taking a two-o’clock-in-the-afternoon sun bath, which was what time of day it was that Saturday afternoon. I had been lying on my back, looking up at the squirrel, then I rolled over and got onto my knees and focused the binoculars on Sugar Creek. Sugar Creek’s face was very lazy, on account of that being a wide part of the creek, and the water moved very slowly, hardly moving, and was as quiet as Pass Lake had been up in Minnesota in the Paul Bunyan country, on a very quiet day. There were little whitish patches of different shaped specks of white foam floating along on the kinda brownish blue water. While I was looking at Sugar Creek with its big wide quiet face, and dreaming about a big blue-watered lake up North, I saw some V-shaped waves coming out across the creek from the opposite shore. The sharp-pointed end of the V was coming straight toward the spring and bringing the rest of the V along with it. I knew right away it was a muskrat and it was swimming right straight toward our side of the creek. Looking at the brownish muskrat with the binoculars made it seem like it was very close, and I could see its pretty chestnut brown fur. Its head was broad and kinda blunt, and I knew if I could have seen its tail it would have been about half as long as the muskrat, and deeper than it was wide, and that it would have scales on it, and only a few scattered hairs. I quick grabbed a big rock and quick threw that rock as straight as I could and as hard, right straight toward the acute angle of the long moving V which was still coming across the creek toward us.

And would you believe it? I’m not always such a good shot with a rock, but this time that rock went straight toward where the muskrat was headed for, and by the time the rock and the muskrat got to the same place at the same time, the rock went kerswishety-splash right on the broad blunt head of the musquash, which is another and kinda fancy name for a muskrat.

Circus, the acrobat in our gang, was the only one of the gang who saw me do what I had done. He yelled out to me in a voice that sounded like a circus-barker’s voice, “Atta boy, Bill! Boy oh boy, that was a swell shot! I couldn’t have done any better myself!”

“Better than what?” nearly all the rest of the gang woke up and asked him at the same time.

“Bill killed an Ondatra zibethica,” Circus said, which is the Latin name for a muskrat,—Circus’ pop being a trapper, and Circus having a good animal book in his library. “Socked it in the head with a rock.”

Everybody looked out toward Sugar Creek to the place where the rock had socked the Ondatra in the head, and where the two forks of the V were getting wider and wider, almost disappearing into nothing like waves do when they get old enough.

“Look at those waves!” Poetry said, meaning the new waves my big rock had started. There was a widening circle going out from where it had been struck.

“Reminds me of the waves of Pass Lake, where we spent our vacation last summer,” Poetry said. “Remember the ones we had the tilt-a-whirl ride on, when Eagle Eye’s boat upset, and we got separated from it, and if we hadn’t had our life vests on we’d have been drowned ’cause it was too far from the shore to swim!”

“Sure,” Dragonfly piped up and said, “and that’s the reason why every boy in the world who is in a boat or a canoe on a lake or a river ought to wear a life vest, or else there ought to be plenty of life preservers in the boat or the canoe, just in case.”

“Hey!” Little Jim piped up and squeaked in his mouse-like voice. “Your On-onda-something or other has come to life away down the creek!” And sure enough, it had, for away down the creek, maybe fifty feet further, there was another V moving along toward the Sugar Creek bridge, which meant I hadn’t killed the musquash at all, but only scared it, and maybe my rock hadn’t even hit it at all, and it had ducked and swum under water like Ondatra zibethicas do in Sugar Creek and like loons do in Pass Lake in northern Minnesota.

“I’m thirsty,” Circus said, and jumped up from where he had been lying on his back with his feet propped up on a big hollow stump. That hollow stump was the same one, I thought, where his pop had slipped down inside once and had gotten bit by a black widow spider which had had her web inside.

Right away we were all of us scurrying down the steep hill to the spring and getting a drink apiece of water, either stooping down and drinking like cows or else using the paper cups which we had in a little container on the leaning tree that leaned over the spring and which we’d put there, instead of the old tin cup which we’d battered into a flat piece of tin and thrown into Sugar Creek. All of a sudden, we heard a strange noise up at the top of the hill, and it sounded like somebody moving along through last year’s dead leaves and at the same time talking or mumbling to himself about something.

“Sh!” Dragonfly said, shushing us, he being the one who nearly always heard or saw something before any of the rest of us did.

We all hushed, and sure enough I heard it. It was a man’s voice, and he was talking to himself or something up there at the top of the hill.

“Sh!” I said to different ones of us, and we all stopped whatever we had been doing or saying, and didn’t move, all except Little Jim who lost his balance, and to keep from falling the wrong direction which was in a puddle of cold clean water on the other side of the spring, he had to step awkwardly in several places, jumping from one rock to another and using his pretty stick-candy-looking stick to help him.

We kept hushed for a jiffy and the sound up at the top of the hill kept right on—leaves rasping and rustling, and a man’s voice mumbling something like he was talking to himself.

All of us had our eyes on Big Jim, our leader. I was looking at his fuzzy mustache, which was like the down on a baby pigeon, and was wondering who was up at the top of the hill, and thinking about how I wished I could get a little fuzz on my upper lip, and wondering if I could make mine grow if I used some kind of cold cream on it, or something like girls do when they want to look more like older girls than they are.

Big Jim looked around at the irregular circle of us and nodded to me and motioned with his thumb for me to follow him up the hill. He stopped all the rest of the gang from following. In a jiffy, I was creeping quietly up that steep incline behind Big Jim, and also Little Jim came along, ’cause right at the last second Big Jim motioned to him that he could, on account of he had a hurt look in his eyes like maybe nobody thought he was important ’cause he was so little.

I had a trembling feeling all inside of me ’cause I just knew there was going to be a surprise at the top of that hill, and maybe a mystery. Also, I felt proud that Big Jim had picked me out to go up with him, on account of he nearly always picks Circus who is next biggest in the gang. I didn’t need to feel proud though, ’cause when I heard a little slithering noise behind me while I was on the way up, I knew why Circus didn’t get invited, and it was ’cause he was already half way up a small sapling which grew near the spring. He was already almost high enough to see what was going on at the top of the hill, Circus doing like he is always doing anyway, which is climbing trees most any time or all the time, he looking like a monkey even when he isn’t up a tree. The only thing that kept him from hanging by his tail like a monkey was that he didn’t have any tail, but he could hang by his legs anyway.

When we had almost reached the top, I felt Little Jim’s small hand take hold of my arm tight, like he was scared, ’cause we could still hear somebody walking around and talking to himself.

Big Jim stopped us, and we all very slowly half-crawled the rest of the way up. My heart was pounding like everything, ’cause I just knew there was going to be excitement at the top, and when you know there is going to be excitement, you can’t wait for it, but get excited right away.

“Listen!” Little Jim whispered to me beside me. “He’s pounding something.”

“Sh!” Big Jim said to us, frowning fiercely, and we kept still. What on earth was going on up there? I wondered, and wished I was a little farther up, but Big Jim had stopped us again, so we could listen.

One, two, three—pound, pound, pound... There were about nine or ten socks with something on something and then the pounding stopped and we heard footsteps going away.

I looked back down the hill at the rest of the gang. Dragonfly’s eyes were large and round, like they are when he is half scared or excited; Poetry had a scowl on his fat face, he being one who has a detective-like mind and was maybe disappointed that Big Jim had made him stay at the bottom of the hill; little red-haired Tom Till’s very freckled face looked very queer. He was stooped over trying to pry a root loose out of the ground, so he’d be ready to throw it at somebody or something, if he got a chance or if he had to, and his face looked like he was ready for some kind of fight, and like he half hoped there might be one. And if I had been down there at the bottom of the incline at the spring, and somebody else had been looking down at me, he would have seen another red-haired freckle-faced boy whose hair was trying to stand up on end under his old straw hat, and who wasn’t much to look at, but who had a fiery temper which had to be watched all the time or it would explode on somebody or something.

Maybe in case you’ve never read anything about the Sugar Creek Gang before, I’d better tell you that I am red-haired and freckle-faced and do have a fiery temper some of the time, and that my name is Bill Collins. I have a swell mom and pop and a baby sister whose name is Little Charlotte Ann, and I’m the only boy in the Collins family. Not having any older sisters, I have to wash or wipe the dishes two or three times a day and help with some of the other girls’ chores around our house, which maybe is good for me, Pop says, on account of when I wash dishes the hot sudsy water helps to keep my hands and fingernails clean.

I whirled around quick from looking down the hill at the rest of the gang and from seeing Circus who was up the elm sapling trying to see over the crest of the hill, but probably couldn’t. Big Jim had his finger up to his pursed lips for all of us to keep on keeping still, which we did.

The pounding had stopped and we could hear footsteps moving along in the woods, getting fainter and fainter, and just that second Big Jim said to us, “He can’t hear us now. His shoes are making so much noise in the leaves.”

We all got to the top in a jiffy, and looked, and Little Jim whispered “It’s somebody wearing old overalls,” which it was, and he was disappearing around the corner of the path that led from the spring down the creek going toward the old sycamore tree and the swamp.

A few jiffies later, Big Jim gave us the signal and all of us broke out of our very painful silence and were acting like ourselves again, but wondering who on earth had been there and what he had been doing, and why, when all of a sudden, Dragonfly who had been looking around with Poetry, looking for shoe tracks, let out a yell and said, “Hey, Gang, come here! Here’s a letter, nailed onto the old Black Widow Stump!” which is the name we’d given the stump after Circus’ Pop had been bitten there.

We all made a rush to where Dragonfly’s dragonfly-like eyes were studying something on the stump, and in a jiffy I was reading the envelope, and it said on it, in a very awkward old handwriting,

URGENT
To the Sugar Creek Gang
(Personal. Please open at once.)