Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 13-18 Read online

  And then Poetry gasped and said, “There isn’t anybody in that boat. It’s empty!”

  Just then the boat came into the middle of a big wide silver path, which lakes have on moonlit nights when you look out across them in the direction of the moon. And I saw that Poetry was right.

  I could hardly believe my surprised eyes, but in that silver path was a motorboat about the size of the one Bob Till had gone away in, cutting big, terribly fast wide circles, going round and round and round. The motor sounded exactly like the big black-shrouded one I knew how to run so well and which Bob had taken from Santa’s dock.

  It didn’t make sense—a boat out there without anybody in it.

  “It’s getting closer! The wind is blowing it toward the shore. It gets closer every time it makes a circle!”

  What to do or whether to do anything was the question. Poetry and I stood there on the dock in our pajamas, not slapping at the mosquitoes, because when the wind blows, as it was right then, mosquitoes’ small wings can’t control their flight, and they stop looking for boys to bite.

  Whirr! Roar! Whizz! And also Plop! Plop! Plop! The motor was doing the whirring and the whizzing, and the bottom of the boat was doing the plopping on the waves.

  “It’s empty!” we said to each other.

  “Maybe whoever was in it fell out. Maybe it was John Till, and he was drunk and fell out, and the boat just keeps on running,” I said.

  I knew a motorboat could do that. If the steering handle was set, it would maybe stay set, and the motor would keep on going until it ran out of gas or rammed into the shore somewhere.

  Then the boat straightened out a little, as though the steering handle had swung around, which they do sometimes when nobody holds onto them. Now it came roaring straight toward our dock at a terrific rate of speed! In another half minute it would crash into the end of the dock where we were, right there by the flagpole. It was coming as straight as a torpedo and almost as fast, I thought, as though this was a war and somebody had fired a torpedo right toward where we were.

  And then a second later, while my mind was whirling, not believing it could or would happen, the sharp prow of that big white boat with the fierce racing motor on the other end of it struck with a crash that jarred the dock, glanced sideways, swerved up along its edge, and ran into the sandy shore. At the same time, the propeller, down in the water, struck the shallow sandy bottom, which made the motor tilt forward.

  The motor made a couple of discouraged-sounding sneezes and coughs and stopped.

  Almost before the sound of the crash had stopped splitting my eardrums, I was over by the boat, looking down and shining my flashlight into it. There lying in the bottom was a quart-sized whiskey bottle, and my imagination told me that maybe John Till had been in the boat and that he had gotten drunk and had fallen out and was out there in the lake somewhere, already drowned. My heart sank as I thought of what a hurt heart Little Tom Till would have when he found out.

  The waves of the lake were splashing against the dock posts and lapping at the shore and the boat, and it was a terribly tense minute.

  And then Poetry, who was beside me, grabbed my arm as if he had just heard something terribly important and said, “Listen … sh … listen!”

  I listened but didn’t hear anything at first. Then all of a sudden I did, and it was a scared voice calling from somewhere, crying, “Help! Help!”

  10

  I certainly didn’t dream that things were going to turn out the way they did when that boat whammed itself into our dock and up onto the shore, turning partway over on its side, and we heard a voice calling from somewhere, “Help! Help! Help!”

  The first thing I thought of was that somebody—I didn’t know who—was out there drowning and had to have help right away.

  Santa’s house was several hundred yards up the shore, and any yelling any of us could have done for Big Jim and Circus to come and help us couldn’t have been heard by them. And by the time any of us could have run up there and wakened them, it would have been too late to save whoever’s life needed to be saved.

  Quick as anything, I said to Poetry, “We’ve got to do something, or maybe somebody will drown out there!”

  But I didn’t have to tell Poetry to get going. He was the fastest-acting barrel-shaped boy you ever saw. In less time than it takes me to write it for you, Poetry had picked up two oars that were lying there and tossed them into the row-boat that was on the opposite side of the dock and in an instant was unwinding the anchor rope from around the dock post.

  Then he yelled to me, “Hurry up and get in and get the oars into the oarlocks, and let’s row out quick and save him!”

  Even while we were making a lot of noise, I could still hear that voice out there calling, “Help! Help! H–e–l–p!”

  We got the boat’s prow headed into the waves, which is what you have to do when you row on a lake, or you’ll maybe get your boat filled with water.

  Then I heard another yell coming from the direction of the tents, and it was Dragonfly racing toward us in flapping pajamas, wanting to know what was going on and why.

  I yelled back to him from the boat I was already in and said, “Hey, you—Dragonfly! Beat it down to Santa’s cabin and tell Big Jim and Circus to get Santa’s motorboat and come out to help us! There’s somebody drowning out there in the moonlight!”

  As quick as anything, Poetry and I were on our way. Our boat had three life-preserver cushions in it—enough for Poetry and me and whoever was out there, which of course had to be John Till, I thought, on account of the whiskey bottle in the bottom of the boat that had just roared its way up onto our shore.

  If our own boat should be upset and we were tossed out into the water, we could swim to our cushions and by keeping our bodies down under the water and holding onto the cushions for dear life, we could manage to keep our faces above water, and the cushions would hold us up.

  Poetry and I sat in the middle seat, side by side, with Poetry sitting nearer the center than I, so that the boat would be well balanced, on account of he was a whole lot heavier than I was. Each one of us used an oar, and we rowed as fast as we could in the direction the call for help had come from.

  Our oars made squeaking noises in the locks, the blades made a little splashing sound in the water, and the waves plopping against the prow made it hard for us to hear the calls for help and also hard to tell just which direction to go. But we kept on rowing hard, and I could see the shore getting farther and farther away.

  I was glad that my parents had taught me how to work on the farm and that I had muscles that sometimes felt as strong as the muscles of the man in a poem Poetry is always quoting, “The Village Blacksmith,” which goes:

  Under the spreading chestnut tree

  The village smithy stands.

  The smith—a mighty man is he,

  With large and sinewy hands,

  And the muscles of his brawny arms

  Are strong as iron bands.

  But even though my arm muscles felt that strong, my knees felt sort of weak as I realized that a man’s life was depending on us. We kept on rowing as hard and as fast as we could, grunting and sweating and hoping and also doing what any boy with good sense, or even without it, would do at a time like that—praying as hard as anything.

  Anyway I was, and I was asking God to please help us get there quick. When a boy is in the middle of such dangerous excitement as I was in, he will ask God to help him, even though he hasn’t been a very good boy and isn’t sure God will have anything to do with him. All of a sudden I was thinking of Little Tom and his nice mother, and it just seemed it would be terrible for them to lose their dad, even if he was maybe the meanest man that ever lived at Sugar Creek.

  Another reason I was praying with every grunt was that I knew John Till wasn’t a Christian. And if he didn’t become one before he died, he’d never get to go to heaven, because my parents had told me the Bible says, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingd
om of God.” Anybody who knows what Dad calls the “ABC’s of the gospel” knows that you can be born again just by letting the Savior into your heart. But John Till had never done that.

  I guess maybe I didn’t use any words with my prayer, though, but only some worried thoughts, which I sort of shot up to heaven as quick as I could, the way I shoot arrows with my bow when I’m back home. In fact, for a while it seemed I was shooting prayer-arrows up to God and that on the end of each one, instead of a little feather, there was a note on a strip of paper. And on each note I’d written, “Please, heavenly Father, old John Till’s soul is lost, and if he drowns without being saved, it’ll be terrible. Help us get to him quick.”

  Then Poetry interrupted my thoughts saying, “Stop rowing a minute and listen!”

  I let my oar rest for a moment, and right away the waves made our boat swerve a little, as though it would swing around if we didn’t keep on rowing.

  But I heard a voice not more than fifty feet farther on. Looking quick, I saw something dark in the water, struggling. And the voice with a desperate gasp cried, “Hurry—I—help!” Then it stopped.

  I tell you we hurried then. I kept on sending up prayer-arrows, grunting and pulling and wishing. Then without knowing I was going to say it, I said, “Oh, please don’t let him drown. Because Poetry and I have got a secret about one of Your Bible verses that says if two of us agree on something we ask for, You will answer us.”

  It just seemed that John Till had to be saved, on account of it seemed that promise in the Bible was especially about him. Then, again without knowing I was going to say it aloud, I said, “And here comes another arrow with the same thing written on it.”

  And Poetry said, “What arrow? What are you talking about?”

  I explained it to him while we rowed harder.

  And even though he didn’t say much, I knew he was doing the same thing I was. My parents had taught me to pray when I was little, and I still liked to, even though my folks sometimes might wonder if I ever did or not, because I was sometimes too mischievous. Also sometimes I wasn’t always what they called a “good boy,” which is an expression they use when they mean I ought to behave myself.

  Soon we were close to John Till, and I saw it was really him, and he didn’t have any life preserver. He had probably been drunk and had just tumbled out of his boat while it was racing terribly fast, and he had been swimming ever since.

  I quick grabbed up the cushion in front of my feet and with a wide sweep of my arm tossed it out toward him. My aim was as good as David’s had been when he had used his slingshot on the giant that time in the Bible.

  The pillow landed ker-plop right in front of old John, and I saw him make a desperate lunge toward it and grab hold with both arms. Then I heard him yell in a sputtering voice something I never dreamed I’d hear from old John Till that night. It was “Thank God, I’m saved!”

  Then he quit trying to swim and just lay back and held onto the cushion and let himself float, with only his face above water and the cushion in front of his chin. That is the way to float, if you ever have to hold onto a life-preserver cushion.

  In a moment we had our boat there, and old John was crying and gasping and saying, “Thank God—oh, thank you, boys, thank you!”

  How to get him into the boat was the question, though, for the minute he would try to get in, his heavy weight might tip us over. But in spite of being exhausted and gasping for breath, John Till still had good sense. He didn’t try to climb in right away but got his breath first.

  Besides, in a minute Circus and Big Jim, with Dragonfly holding a flashlight to help them see us, came motoring out. In a little while we had John in the boat, and we were all on our way to shore, with John so tired out he just laid down his terribly wet self and sort of shook and sniffled and half cried while we moved along.

  I tell you, it’s a wonderful feeling when you’ve done something like that. You’re glad not only because you helped do it, but, if you believe what Poetry and I believed, you feel as though you and the heavenly Father are very good friends—which is maybe the best feeling a boy ever has.

  As we rowed along toward shore, John Till just lay in the bottom of the boat like a terribly big fish that had just been caught and was so tired out he couldn’t move.

  Pretty soon, Poetry whispered, “Do you think he’s pretending to be good, and that he just said those religious words back there to fool us and is maybe playing possum? Do you think when we get to shore he’ll quick make a dive for the bushes and run away?”

  I’d seen possums act like that. They were lively until they were caught; then they would do what is called “play possum”—just roll over on their sides and curl up into a half circle and shut their eyes and act dead until we or the dogs went away a few yards. Then they would come to life quick, scramble to their ridiculous feet, which look like hands, and run to a tree and climb up it or to a hole in the ground and dive into it.

  “I don’t know,” I said to Poetry, “but he sounded like he meant what he said when he said those words back there.” I wanted to believe it, because I wanted Tom Till to have a brand-new dad like Circus had gotten when his pop had been saved a couple of years before.

  Well, it turned out that I was right. That whiskey bottle we’d seen in the bottom of his boat hadn’t had whiskey in it at all but was one Little Jim had put a gospel tract in! Old John had found it and read it, and the Lord Himself had used it to do what our Sugar Creek minister calls “convict him of his sins.” On top of that, he had stopped to read the message in the other whiskey bottle, the one that had been used as a marker for a good crappie-fishing place out in front of the Indian cemetery. Also he had been listening on his little radio to the program of The Church of the Cross.

  So, after he had accidentally tumbled out of the boat tonight, he’d gotten half scared to death, and all the verses of the Bible and the sermons he had heard came splashing into his mind. And without stopping to think that he didn’t believe in God, he had prayed to Him to not only save his body from drowning but to save his soul from being lost.

  When we rescued him, he had the other $5,000 of the ransom money in his trousers pocket. It was pretty wet but was as good as gold. And do you know what? He told us he hadn’t been helping the real kidnapper at all but had only wanted to get the $1,000 reward for finding the missing money.

  “And now, boys,” John’s gruff, trembling voice said, as we listened to him explain things, “you’ll have to start praying for Bob. We had a quarrel tonight, and he’s gone away somewhere.”

  “Where?” Tom asked.

  All of us were sitting around a campfire, which we’d started quick to get John warmed up after we’d got some of Barry’s dry clothes on him and a blanket wrapped around him. Most of the rest of us were wrapped in blankets, too.

  John looked down at his red-haired, freckle-faced, trembling-voiced boy and said, “I don’t know. I—he thought we ought to keep the $5,000 instead of turning it in. I—I’m afraid I was too hard on him, maybe. But when we couldn’t agree about this $5,000, I took the boat and left him there at the Indian cemetery.”

  We asked old John different questions, one of them being, “How’d you know where the ransom money was?”

  And he said, “I studied the newspapers and the pictures, and I found the kidnapper’s map in the grave house of an old Indian chief. I made two copies in invisible ink—one for myself and the other for Bob. But I lost mine somewhere, and you boys found it.”

  “But why, if you only wanted the thousand-dollar reward, did you bury the money in the fish in the icehouse?” we asked him.

  “I didn’t,” he said, just as Tom shoved a stick into the fire and about a thousand yellow sparks shot in different directions up toward the sky. “The kidnapper buried it there. I’d been digging it up. I had five thousand dollars already dug up and was coming back to get the rest of it, but you boys beat me to it. Then when I went into the icehouse, you slammed the door on me and barred it,
and I would have stayed there until the police came, but Bob, who had just gotten up here, heard me hollering and let me out.”

  Poetry spoke up and said, with doubt in his voice, “But if you were only after the money so you could get the reward for finding it, why did you run away?”

  “I was afraid the police wouldn’t believe my story.”

  Well, there is the whole mystery untangled for you, and a wonderful camping trip was all over. Boy oh boy, I hope I get to go again next year—if not to the same place, then up to Canada or somewhere where there will be even more exciting adventures than there were this year.

  But before that happens there’ll be a whole year full of different things that will happen back home at Sugar Creek. I just know that something terribly interesting will happen to us before another summer rolls around.

  In fact, there was a letter from my folks in our mailbox at the dock the very day we left camp, saying, “We’ll be looking for you, Bill, and do we ever have interesting news for you! Don’t try to guess what it is, because you can’t.”

  And, well, all the way home in our station wagon, I did just what my parents told me not to—I kept trying to guess what the interesting news would be.

  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