IF anybody had seen Poetry and me swishing along down that narrow winding road, following along in the bobbing path of our flashlights, our breath coming in quick short pants, they might have thought we were crazy. It was one of the crookedest roads I’d ever seen in my life, and would you believe it, Poetry couldn’t resist puffing a part of a poem as we raced along toward the firewarden’s cabin. The poem started out like this:

Only we didn’t find any six-pence, but we did find something else, and in a fast jiffy I’ll tell you what it was. In a half minute more we knew we would be ready to turn the last bend in the road just before we got to the firewarden’s house. All of a sudden Poetry stopped and flashed his light about fifty yards down the road ahead of us, and as plain as day I saw a great big beautiful reddish-brown deer standing right in the center of the road. Its head was up and his big antlers looked very pretty. His ears were large and were spread out like our old Brindle cow back home spreads hers out when she is interested in something, or scared. Say, that deer was really scared. It turned and like a reddish-brown flash it was gone, leaping away and disappearing into the trees and bushes at the side of the road. It’s a good thing we saw the deer, though, ’cause if we hadn’t maybe we wouldn’t have stopped and wouldn’t have heard what we heard right that second. We both heard it at the same time, and it sounded exactly like what we’d heard before when we were standing out by the wood rick.

“It’s another screech owl,” Poetry said, and started on, but I stopped him, and said, “Maybe it’s a loon.”

“It’s coming from out there in the trees,” he said. “Loons don’t stay up here in the woods. They’re out on the lake or else right close to it all the time.”

We both listened, my heart thumping like Pop’s hammer driving a terribly big nail into a log in our barn at Sugar Creek. It was a worse scare than I’d had in a long time. It certainly sounded exactly like what we’d heard at the boathouse. I remembered the simpish looking owl we’d seen standing in the hole of the hollow tree behind the boathouse and how it had flown away, but this time I just knew it wasn’t any owl or any loon.

“Let’s go see,” Poetry said, and I said, “What if it is the girl? What’ll we do? What’ll—”

“Let’s decide later,” Poetry interrupted me by saying. We flashed our lights out toward the trees and couldn’t see a thing, but we heard that eery cry that was like a loon being choked, and then we started toward it, our lights shoving the dark back as we went along, and we walked in their yellowish bobbing paths.

We crept up slowly. I had a big stick in my hands, ready to use it as a club if I had to. For some reason we didn’t stop to think that maybe we ought to get to the firewarden’s house first, and tell him, but instead we just kept right on going, the pine needles on the ground making a spooky noise under our shoes and, then, all of a sudden, Poetry stopped, and I, who had been following him, bumped into him. “Look! There’s an Indian blanket with somebody wrapped up in it,” meaning a blanket of many colors like most all families in Sugar Creek have in their homes.

Then I heard it again, a low half-muffled half cry, and we knew we’d found the kidnapped Ostberg girl.

Say, when I looked down at that blanket with the little five-year-old girl wrapped in it, and saw the great big handkerchief the kidnapper had stuffed into her mouth as a gag to keep her from talking or screaming, and as we unwrapped her and saw that her hands were tied together and also her feet so she couldn’t walk, and when I saw the pretty yellowish all-tangled-up hair around her face and shoulders, I forgot all about having been half scared to death a while ago, and got a terribly angry feeling inside that made me want to find the kidnapper and for just about three minutes turn loose both of my fiery-tempered fists on his chin and nose and stomach and literally knock the living daylights out of him.

My pop had told me true stories about how there are wicked men in the world who don’t have any respect for God or girls or women, and how every one of them ought to be locked up somewhere until a doctor can get them cured, or else they should stay in jail for life or be executed for their awful crimes, which means they ought to be put to death in the electric chair or hung, Pop says. Anyway, there ought not to be even one of them allowed to run free in this world, and if they are allowed to, it’s the law’s or the people’s fault.

Well, we couldn’t stand there just staring and wasting good temper on something we couldn’t help, but ought to get the firewarden quick and he would know what to do.

Poetry certainly had presence of mind. “Take my flashlight,” he ordered me, and almost before I could get it into my hand, he was stooped over and taking the gag out of the girl’s mouth, and with his pocket-knife was cutting the cords that were around her wrists and hands.

It was pitiful the way that pretty little girl, who was about three or four years younger than Little Jim, sobbed and cried when we got the gag out of her mouth. She had a terribly scared look in her face. “H-E-L-P!” she half cried, but in a very muffled hoarse voice, like she had been crying for a terribly long time and had worn her vocal cords out.

“Mama! Mama!” she cried. “I want my M-M-Mama!” Then she would just go into a kinda hysterical sobbing and we couldn’t hear a word she was saying.

“We’re your friends,” we tried to tell her, “we’ve come to rescue you. We’ll help you get to the firewarden’s house, and——”

But the poor little thing was so scared that she couldn’t say a word we could understand, except she wanted her mama. She was also so weak she couldn’t stand up and wouldn’t be able to walk the rest of the way to the firewarden’s house, and we didn’t think we ought to try to carry her.

We had to do something quick, though ’cause she probably needed a doctor, too, so Poetry made me go on the run for the firewarden, while he stayed with the helpless girl. He would yell to us when we came back and flash his light so we could know where he and the girl were.

I tell you I ran, but I was trembling so much that it was hard for me to keep going.

In a few jiffies I came in sight of some white birch saplings which criss-crossed each other, making a homemade gate. I could see the house just beyond and an old unpainted barn. Also, there was a light in the window of what looked like an ordinary bungalow which meant that maybe the firewarden was still up, not having gone to bed yet.

I lay down and squished myself under that gate, and in a hurried jiffy was knocking at the door of the bungalow.

“Quick!” I panted as soon as the door opened. “We’ve found the kidnapped Ostberg girl! She’s out there in the trees wrapped up in an Indian blanket and——” and for some reason, right that second, I remembered about the automobile and its license number. I half yelled the things I wanted to say. The firewarden looked ridiculous in his green-striped pajamas as he stood in the doorway of his kitchen, with a flashlight in his hand.

“What is it?” a woman’s voice called from somewhere back in the house. It was the voice of a sleepy woman who had just woke up and wanted to know what was going on.

“Quick!” I said. “The auto license number is Minnesota 324–179, and he’s got two half-flat tires and will have to stop somewhere at an oil station and get some air.”

I guess maybe the firewarden must have known all about the Ostberg girl having been kidnapped ’cause it only took me a little while to explain enough to him so he was ready for action. He was a kind of an oldish man but he was very spry and could think fast. While his wife was dressing somewhere in the house, he made two quick phone calls, and almost right away he got his powerful electric lantern and the three of us were on our way to his home-made gate. There we stopped while he flashed his flashlight around a little and said, “Well, what do you know—he must have thought our driveway was another bend in the road. He started to turn in, then swung out again. See?”

I used my own flashlight on the tire tracks, and, as plain as day, I saw that some car had made a sharp turn there, and as sure as the nose on Dragonfly’s face, which, as you maybe know, turns south at the end, I noticed that the back tires had wider patterns than the front.

We zipped up to where Poetry was waiting for us with the kidnapped girl. That pretty little girl was still so scared that she couldn’t talk without great sobs getting mixed up with her words, and you couldn’t understand her very well. Say, the firewarden’s wife just knelt down on the ground beside that tangled-up-golden-haired little pretty-faced girl and gathered her into her arms and crooned to her like she was her very own little girl, then stood up with her, and, being a very strong woman, wouldn’t let her husband carry her but carried her herself, and crooned to her all the way back to their cabin.

When we had first got to where Poetry was, though, I noticed he was standing beside the crying little girl, with a little book in one hand and was shining his flashlight on its pages and was reading something. “What on earth?” I thought, and waited for a chance to ask him what he was doing and why.

On the way to the cabin, while I was wishing the rest of the gang was there, and thinking that we’d have some wonderful stories to tell that would be even better than Paul Bunyan stories, and also could tell our folks the same ones, I said to Poetry, “What were you doing back there—reading stories to her to keep her quiet?”

“It’s a secret,” he said. “I’ll tell you tomorrow,—or anyway later...”

Well, I’ve got to step on the gas with this story. Almost right away, we came to the birch-sapling gate. There we stood while I showed Poetry where the kidnapper had started to turn in and then made a sharp turn and gone on. Poetry flashed his flashlight down real close to the ground and studied the patterns of the tracks and said, “He must have slowed down a lot right here, or the tire patterns wouldn’t be so plain.”

Right that second there were the headlight and also a spotlight of a car swinging down the road coming toward us real fast. “It’s the police already,” the firewarden said, and sure enough it was.

Say, there was certainly some excitement around there and also on the inside of me for awhile.

First, they made sure the girl was all right. In fact, Mrs. Firewarden was in the back seat of their car with the girl in her arms and the girl was asleep. In another few minutes an ambulance was coming to take her to a hospital.

“How’d you get here so quick?” Poetry asked one of the big blue-suited policemen, and he answered in a pleasant voice, like he thought a boy’s questions were as important as a grown-up’s, and this is what he said, “We have a radio in our car. We were only a few miles up the highway when the order came through, and so, here we are!”

Even before he had finished saying what he was saying, I was thinking how absolutely silly it is for anybody to think he can commit a crime and not get caught and punished, even though they hadn’t maybe caught the kidnapper yet.

In the next seventeen minutes I saw one of the most interesting things I’d ever seen in my life, and it made me even more sure than I was that anybody—man or boy or even a woman or girl—was just plumb crazy to try to be smarter than the law is and get by with any kind of a crime or sin.

I whispered it to Poetry when I saw what the policemen were doing right that minute, saying, “Anybody can’t get by with any kind of crime,” and Poetry, who is almost as good a Christian as Little Jim is, and who not only has a lot of poems on the tip of his tongue ready to be quoted any second, but also knows many Bible verses, quoted one of them to me right that minute instead of a poem, and it was, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever man soweth, that shall he also reap,” and he added to it another which was, “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.”

One of the cops heard him and looked up from what he was doing and said, “That’s right, son; that’s what my mother used to say.” Then we quit talking, almost, and in the light of his spotlight from his car, watched what was going on. “What in the world?” I thought when I saw the policeman take what looked like a fishing-tackle box out of his car, carry it to the gate and set it down. Then he went back to the car and brought out something else. “What’s that?” Poetry wanted to know, and the friendly cop said, “A flash-bulb camera with a reversible tripod. We’re going to snap a picture of these tire tracks.”

“Why?” I thought, but didn’t want to seem dumb enough to say so, ’cause I supposed Poetry knew.

First, the cop laid a black cardboard down alongside of the tire track, the edge of the cardboard looking like a ruler with little white inch marks on it. Then he set up his camera with its lens focused right straight down on the track. As quick as a wink, there was a blinding flash of light which showed me that it was a flashlight picture they were taking.

Right away, he opened the fishing-tackle-box-looking kit and took out what looked like a Flit can, like the kind Mom uses on flies and also on bugs and stuff in our garden, and began to spray something very carefully all over the track for about two feet of it, holding the spray gun about three feet high.

“It’s shellac,” the policeman said, and I said, “Why?” and he said, “Wait and see,” which I had to do.

Pretty soon, he stopped spraying, screwed off the container at the bottom of the spraying device and screwed on another can of something else and started in doing the same thing, pumping away very carefully, not letting the spray strike very hard on the sandy tracks, so as not to make any of the sand move. I looked at the other things in the kit which was spread wide open in front of us, and saw what looked like a large salt shaker like the one Mom uses when she is cooking raw fried potatoes, also there was a cup made out of rubber, two other containers, a spoon and what is called a spatula, which looked like a long flat stick our doctor uses when he looks into my throat and makes me say “Ah,” and also looks at my tongue and the place where my tonsils used to be.

“The dry shellac makes the tire impression firm enough to stand the weight of the plaster of Paris without crumbling it,” the policeman said, and even though I didn’t understand what it was all about or why, it was very interesting to watch. Right away he started getting the plaster of Paris ready.

It was certainly an interesting sight. They mixed some of the plaster of Paris in the rubber cup, doing it almost exactly like I had seen our Sugar Creek dentist do it, and also like we do it in school when we make an art plaque or something. The only difference was, they sprinkled in a little salt to make it harden quicker. The plaster of Paris was poured on the top of the water, and allowed to sink to the bottom of the rubber cup until the water couldn’t take any more, then it was stirred with a spoon, and very carefully dipped out with the spoon into the tire impressions. First, though, they made a little cardboard wall along the side of the track so the plaster of Paris wouldn’t run over the edges.

“What’s he doing now?” I said to Poetry, when some sticks and twigs and little pieces of string were laid on top of the first layer of plaster of Paris. “I don’t know,” Poetry said, “reinforcing it, maybe,” which, it turned out, he was. Right away another thicker layer of plaster of Paris was put on, and then it was ready to let harden.

After awhile, when they were sure it was solid, they would just lift it up and there would be a perfect plaster cast, a foot and a half long, of the tire marks, which, whenever they found the kidnapper’s car, would help them prove that he was really guilty.

We couldn’t stay there all night, though, ’cause tomorrow the gang had a lot of things to do and see, and besides when a boy wants to be in good health, he has to have plenty of sleep at night, so the firewarden decided to drive us back to camp, while the police looked all around the place where we’d found the little girl, and also in Santa’s boathouse for other clues. We gave them the yellow scarf with the paint on it, and went with the firewarden back to our camp to try to get some excited sleep.

Boy oh boy, it had been a great experience! About an hour later, after waking up all the gang and telling them the news, we were in our tents again ready to sleep. The big hot round rock in the pail in the center of the tent certainly had helped keep the tent warm, and when I was in my sleeping bag again, as warm as toast, I felt that I had really done something important in life... Before I went to sleep again, I got to thinking about that little kidnapped girl, knowing how glad her parents would feel when they got the news which they maybe already had, and were maybe already on their way up here to see her. Of course, if she was really sick, and had been mistreated terribly by the kidnapper, she would maybe have to be in the hospital quite a while.

For a few minutes just before I dropped off to sleep, I was listening to the waves lapping against our sandy shore, and was thinking and thinking and thinking. I knew that if I had been up and was standing by the shore looking out on the moonlit water, the rolling waves would maybe look just like our oats field does down along Sugar Creek when the wind is blowing ... waving and waving and rolling and rolling and rolling and looking very wonderful; and for a minute I could see my pop sitting up on our big binder, driving along, and maybe singing a song which nearly always, when Pop sang or whistled, was a hymn we used in our church.... It might be the one that goes:

Then I remembered Poetry’s Bible verse and it was, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”.... It was absolutely silly, I thought again, for anybody to sow a lot of sin in his life and not expect to reap a harvest of the same kind, and the verse also said God couldn’t be mocked, which maybe meant that every man would be punished for living a sinful life. Then I imagined different things, such as Pop saying to Mom, “I wonder how Bill is getting along up North,” and Mom would say, “Oh fine—I hope. I wonder if he is warm enough. It gets so cold up there at night, and you know how he is—he kicks the covers off in his sleep, and lies there and half freezes without even waking up.” And Pop would remember that I had my sleeping bag, and Mom would sigh and they’d go to sleep. They really were wonderful parents, I thought ... and the waves of the blue water lake rolled and rolled and tossed around some, and then a great big pair of horns stuck themselves up out of the lake, and then a cow’s face, and then a whole cow splashed and splashed, and the water turned all blue all around the big blue cow and Mom tried to stop him from swishing around so much on account of he was splashing around in her washing machine and getting too much bluing on her clothes...

And then I guess I must have dropped off to sleep, ’cause the next thing I knew it was morning and the gang was making a lot of boys’ noise and we had another wonderful day in which to live and have new adventures.

Ho hum, here I am, with all the pages filled up and not even room to tell you about how the kidnapper got away from the police and how the Sugar Creek Gang ran kersmack onto his trail all by themselves the very next day, and what a fierce fight we had and everything. But just as quick as I can, I’ll get going on that exciting story, which was maybe the most exciting experience that ever happened to us. Maybe I’ll get started writing tomorrow.

The End

With the passing of summer many of the Sugar Creek creatures disappear. Gone are the birds, the snakes and the toads—like Bill’s old friend, Warty. But a new member of the gang arrives and before winter is past some very interesting and exciting things happen to him, as well as to other members of the Gang.

Be sure to read all the books in the SCRIPTURE PRESS series:

THE SUGAR CREEK GANG GOES NORTH

ADVENTURE IN AN INDIAN CEMETERY

THE SUGAR CREEK GANG DIGS FOR TREASURE

NORTH WOODS MANHUNT

THE HAUNTED HOUSE AT SUGAR CREEK

LOST IN A SUGAR CREEK BLIZZARD

THE SUGAR CREEK GANG ON THE MEXICAN BORDER

THE GREEN TENT MYSTERY AT SUGAR CREEK

10,000 MINUTES AT SUGAR CREEK

THE TRAP LINE THIEF AT SUGAR CREEK

BLUE COW AT SUGAR CREEK

WATERMELON MYSTERY AT SUGAR CREEK

Other thrilling stories about the Sugar Creek Gang may be ordered from your Christian bookstore

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