Chapter III: Part 3

Tom and I were alone a minute at the end of the dock that night just before we went to bed, and he had both hands clasped around the slender flagpole and was swaying his body forward and backward and sidewise not saying anything for a minute, and neither was I. Then he said, “I wish I could find my daddy.”

There was a tear in his voice and I knew he felt pretty terribly awful inside, and because I liked him, I felt the same way for a minute.

“Nobody knows where he is,” I said, and Tom surprised me by saying, “Only _one_ Person,” and as quick as I realized what he meant, I said, “Yes, that’s right. He knows everything in the world at the same time.”

The moon shining on the water looked like it nearly always does in the moonlight--like silver--also like a field of oats on Pop’s farm would look if somebody had painted it white and the wind was blowing.

Santa, who, as you know, had his cabin not very far up the lake from where we were camped, had gone away for the night, and so Big Jim and Circus had been selected to stay all night in his cabin to sort of look after things for him--they being the biggest members of our gang and Barry giving them permission.

All the rest of the gang were in the tents, maybe undressing, and Tom and I were really alone, when all of a sudden I heard a movement on the shore and a voice calling in a low husky whisper, saying, “Tom! Hey--Tom!” and I was sure I’d heard the voice before.

I saw the bushes part and a dark form move out in the moonlight, and at the same time Tom let go of the flagpole, and made a dive for the shore, beating it up the dock as fast as he could.

I was so surprised I couldn’t move, but felt weak in the knees and sick at the stomach. Tom was there in a flash, and I watched him and somebody, standing side by side, talking in whispers, and then the dark form I’d seen come out of the bushes, dived back again, and a second later I heard footsteps going lickety-sizzle up the lake shore; then Tom started back to me and I met him in the middle of the dock.

“Who _was_ it?” I said, thinking I knew. “Was it your daddy?”

“No,” Tom said, “it was my brother Bob. I gave him the letter from Mother, and he’s going to give it to Daddy.”

8

Can you imagine that! Big Bob Till, Big Jim’s worst enemy, and, except for Big Jim, the fiercest fighter in the whole country anywhere maybe! He was what people called a “juvenile delinquent,” which means he was a bad boy who didn’t like to behave himself and had done things that were against the law.

Maybe I’d better tell you right now, in case you don’t know it, that Mr. Foote, Little Jim’s daddy, had used his influence back at Sugar Creek to keep Bob from having to go to reform school, and Bob had been what is called “paroled” to him, and Little Jim himself had been glad ’cause he’d rather anybody would be _good_ than to have him be _bad_ and have to be punished for it. But Bob was still not behaving himself, on account of he hadn’t been trained at home like most of the rest of us. Even we were having a hard enough time to be even half as good as we thought we were, and we had had training all our boy lives.

When Tom said to me there in the moonlight in the middle of the dock, that he’d given his mom’s letter to his brother Bob, and I realized that Bob was up here in the North Woods--in fact had been standing right over there behind those bushes only a second ago--you could have knocked me over with a moonbeam, I was so surprised. Of course, he was gone now--somewhere or other--but where?

I asked Tom a question that was trying to get out of my mind, and it was, “Where IS your daddy?” and he said, “I don’t know, but Bob does, and he’ll take Mother’s letter to him.”

It seemed like the rest of the gang ought to know Bob was up here, and yet for some reason it seemed like Poetry ought to know it first, so the very second I had a chance after I got into my tent a little later, and the lights were out, and Dragonfly had been quieted down from talking and laughing--in fact, his noisy nose sounded like he was asleep--I reached out my hand and touched Poetry and said, “You asleep?” and he whispered quietly, “Yes,” which meant he wasn’t. So I told him about Bob and he said, “That explains a lot of things.”

“What, for instance?” I asked, and he said, “It explains who opened the icehouse door and let John Till out.” Then Poetry and I decided to get up and go outside where we could talk without being heard.

I was surprised we were able to get up and out without being stopped by Dragonfly’s waking up and asking questions or insisting on going along, he not being able to let anybody have any secrets without wanting him to divide them up with _him_.

A good place to talk without being heard would be down at the dock, we decided, so away we went toward the lake where the waves were sighing and lapping against the shore and dock posts and making the boats rock a little--one of the boats making a little scraping noise against the dock.

“Where was Bob standing?” Poetry asked, and when I pointed to the bushes he started straight toward them. As you maybe know he wanted to be a detective some day and was always looking for what detectives and the police and the FBI call “clues”; and also Poetry was always finding one, or something he thought was one.

As soon as we were both behind the bushes, where anybody at camp couldn’t see us, he turned on his flashlight and shined it all around where Bob and Tom had been standing.

“What’re we looking for?” I asked, and he answered like he always does, “A clue.”

“What kind of a clue?” I asked, and he replied, “I’ll tell you just as soon as I find it.”

Well, I certainly didn’t expect we’d find anything, but all of a sudden I heard a sound from up the shore like footsteps coming toward us, so I said in a husky whisper, “I think I _heard_ a clue coming from somewhere”--and then I _knew_ I had heard one for up the path not very far away I saw a flashlight flash on and off in a very fast fleeting flash like a firefly’s flash flashing on and off down at Sugar Creek.

We crouched low, hardly daring to breathe, knowing that somebody was coming for sure, and wondering who it was, and what did he want, and was it Bob Till or maybe Old hook-nosed John Till himself, or who?

Right that second, I saw something white lying where my feet had been a jiffy before. It looked like a folded white handkerchief or something, so I stooped down, reached out my hand to touch it, and it was an envelope of some kind.

“Little Tom’s mom’s letter,” I thought. “Bob dropped it, and is coming back to look for it.”

Poetry and I kept even quieter than we had been, he not knowing of course, what I’d just found and had tucked into my pajama pocket--he and I not taking time to dress but were in our pajamas--I in my green and white striped ones and Poetry in his purple ones.

It was a queer feeling we had, right that second. For some reason we decided to get ourselves out of there, which we did, sneaking back maybe fifteen feet before we decided to stop and wait to see who it was and what he was looking for and why, if we could.

In only a few excited jiffies, whoever it was was right where we ourselves had been, and was flashing his flashlight on and off, all around, right where a little while before I’d picked up the envelope. I could see he wasn’t very tall--not as tall as Big John Till, so I decided it might be Bob again. Poetry had hold of my arm so tight it actually hurt, which showed, even though he was usually calm in a time of excitement, while I was the one that always got all nervous inside, this time he was pretty tense himself.

I certainly didn’t know what to do, and would have been afraid to do it even if I had. Besides I wouldn’t have had time to do much of anything, for right that jiffy whoever it was, stopped looking for whatever he was looking for, which was maybe the envelope I had in my striped pajama pocket, and I heard his footsteps going on past, and in the direction of Santa’s dock, which was several hundred yards farther on.

For a worried jiffy, I remembered the envelope in my pocket and thought that it wasn’t mine, which it wasn’t, and thought I ought to call out to whoever it was, and say, “Hey, there, mister, whatever you’re looking for, I’ve got it, whatever it is!” but I didn’t. A little later, Poetry and I were alone with ourselves, and the only sound there was, was the friendly lapping of the waves against the dock posts and the washing of other waves against the sandy shore. Away out on the lake there was a great big shimmering silver spot of moonlight which was very pretty. Still farther was the shadow of the trees on the little island on the other side of which we had caught our walleye that afternoon and where Wally had lost his life, and right that minute was maybe half digested in the stomach of a great big ugly-snouted northern pike.

I could feel my heart beating with excitement, but there was something else I was feeling too, and it was the envelope I had in my pocket, which I quick took out, and whispered for Poetry to turn on his light, which he did, and this is what we saw on the envelope written in pencil, that was kinda smeared like pencil marks on a letter are when a boy has carried it around in his pocket or in his hands awhile. We saw written in a big awkward scrawl, the name _Bob Till_, but there wasn’t anything else, not even an address--and no postage stamp.

Quick as anything, not stopping to think that that letter was private property and he had no right to open it, Poetry had the inside out of the outside and was unfolding it, and I was holding his trembling flashlight on it to see what it said, and--would you believe it?--it was a sheet of white typewriter paper and there wasn’t a thing on it, not even a pencil mark.

“’Tsanother invisible-ink map,” Poetry said to me, and I remembered quick the other one we’d found which I told you about in another story, and which when we’d warmed it up had turned out to be a map of the territory up here, showing where the little kidnapped girl had been found, and which way the broken twig trails led and we had followed them and finally found the ransom money in the old icehouse.

“And here’s a _note_,” Poetry whispered, as a little folded piece of paper with writing on it tumbled out.

That note, which was printed in pencil, said,

“Dear Bob:

Santa’s away tonight. Get my boat which is tied to his dock and
pick me up at the Indian cemetery at 10 o’clock and we’ll get the
rest of the ransom money.... If I’m not there, wait till I come.

Your Dad.”

Well, when I saw what Poetry’s trembling flashlight showed us was written on that unfolded piece of paper, you could have knocked me over with a question mark, I was so surprised. Our mystery had come to life again and we were going to have another exciting adventure before our vacation was over.... Hurrah!... Boy oh boy!

Poetry spoke first, saying excitedly, “I’ll bet Bob’s going down to get the boat _right now!_ We’ve got to stop him!”

“Why?” I said, and he said, “Stop him and make him tell us where his dad is. Then we or the police can capture him.”

“Bob wouldn’t tell us,” I said, being sure he wouldn’t.

“Well, for goodness’ sake, let’s do _something!_” Poetry exclaimed to me, and when I said “What?” he said, “Get the gang and beat Bob to the cemetery!” which made as good sense as anything I could have thought of, especially since right that minute I heard an outboard motor somewhere and guessed that Bob had already started the powerful black-shrouded motor that was on the boat John Till had had, and which the police had left at Santa’s dock.

We didn’t have time to decide anything right then, though, ’cause almost as quick as a lightning bug can flash his flash on and off, we heard somebody running toward us from the direction of Santa’s cottage and, a second later, two forms came puffing out into the moonlight and into our camp--and it was Big Jim and Circus, who, as you already know, were staying all night in Santa’s cabin, just to sort of look after things for him.

I thought of Tom Till, and hated to have him know what was going on, which he would if there was a lot of boy noise and the whole camp should wake up and come scrambling over each other down to the dock in crazy-looking pajamas, talking and wondering “What on earth?”

So Poetry and I shushed Big Jim and Circus and the four of us started to tell each other what we knew.

“Somebody took John Till’s boat!” Circus puffed. “Hear him?--there he goes now!”

About two hundred yards from shore I saw a shadow of a boat out in the moonlight and heard the roar of a powerful motor, and knew we’d have to hurry if we got to the Indian cemetery first.

“Let’s step on the gas and get going,” Circus said as soon as we’d told them about the note we had found, and Poetry said, “What kind of gas--outboard motor, or station wagon?”

Big Jim, knowing that most of the Sugar Creek Gang had more bravery than good sense and that we sometimes did things that were dangerous, without thinking first, said, “This is another job for the police,” but Poetry spoke up and said, “Let’s be policemen ourselves. By the time we could phone them and they could get there, it’d be too late,” which it would be, I thought, so we decided we ought to try to get to the cemetery first by driving there as fast as we could in the station wagon.

What to do about Tom, was our first problem, but we wouldn’t have much time to try to solve it--some of us simply had to get going to the cemetery to be there before Bob could get to the Narrows, zip through it, and into that other lake where the cemetery was. It was half past nine right that second, and Bob was supposed to meet his dad there at ten. If only we could get there before either one of them did, and hide somewhere in the bushes. Then maybe we could sneak up on them, and get both of them at once--’cause it looked like Bob was in on the business of being a helper to the kidnapper too.

Barry and Little Jim and Tom Till were the only ones left in Barry’s tent. Barry must have heard our excited talk, ’cause in a jiffy his tent flap plopped open and out he came and wanted to know what on earth all the excitement was all about. We told him and showed him the note and he also heard Bob’s motor on the lake at the same time. We didn’t stop to try to figure out why John Till had _written_ to Bob instead of just _telling_ him where to meet him, or came tumbling out of Barry’s tent and in our direction, and anything. Right that minute almost, Little Jim and Tom Dragonfly came out of the other tent, and there we all were--too many--and some of us too little--to go on a kidnapper hunt.

I guess I never was so disappointed in my life as I was right that minute, though, ’cause Barry took charge of things quick, and said, “You boys all stay right here, and look after camp. I’ve a phone call to make--and I want to see the firewarden a minute.”

“Is there a fire somewhere?” Tom Till asked quick, sniffing to see if anything smelled like smoke, and Dragonfly did the same thing, and sneezed just like he had actually smelled something he was allergic to, which he is to nearly everything in the world anyway.

A jiffy later, Barry in the station wagon was riding down the lane toward Santa’s boathouse and I knew that in a few jiffies more he’d be pulling in low up a steep hill, swishing along a sandy trail at the top, and driving like mad down a winding road through the forest to the firewarden’s house, which you know about if you’ve read “The Sugar Creek Gang Goes North.” There he’d make a terribly fast phone call to the police--or else let the firewarden’s wife do it while he and the firewarden would beat it on to the Indian cemetery. They’d probably stop before they got there though, and sneak carefully up along the lake shore to where Bob’s boat would be coming in, and, if they could, they’d capture both Bob and John. I felt terribly disappointed inside, like I’d just blown up a very pretty great big colored balloon, and somebody had stuck a pin into it and it had burst--not knowing there was going to be more excitement where we were than where Barry and the firewarden would be.

9

The station wagon hadn’t any sooner disappeared and the whirring sound of its motor faded away, leaving us all with Barry’s orders to go back to bed ringing in our ears, than I remembered the blank sheet of typewriter paper I had in my pocket and which we hadn’t bothered to show to Barry but only John Till’s note to his boy, Bob.

Little Jim and Tom Till didn’t know anything about what was going on, and they, being sleepy anyway, seemed glad to get back to their tent and make a dive back into the sleep from which they had dragged themselves a little while before.

Dragonfly was suspicious, though, and when he noticed Poetry and Big Jim and Circus and me talking together, he got a stubborn expression in his voice and whined a question at us which was, “You guys got a secret of some kind?”

We didn’t want him to start any fuss; besides sometimes he wasn’t such a dumb person to let in on a secret, so for a little while we left Little Jim and Tom Till alone in their tent and the five of us went into the other tent, lit a lantern, unfolded the piece of typewriter paper and heated it over the hot top of the lantern, and in only a few minutes we were looking at a map of the territory up here--showing the camp where we were and the place where the little Ostberg girl had been lying, just like the other map we’d found. Also different other places were identified, such as Santa’s boathouse, the firewarden’s cabin, and the broken twig trail which led off in different directions....

“Both maps are alike,” Circus said, and it looked like they were. Poetry traced the faint markings of the new one with his pencil so we could study it better.

“What do you suppose Bob had two maps for?” Dragonfly asked, and Poetry answered by saying, “He maybe had only one at first, but when he lost it,--the one we found last week--he or Hook-nose made him another one.”

“Yeah,” I said, with a questionmark in my voice, “but why draw them in invisible ink?”

“Maybe so nobody would think they were maps.”

“But how could Bob _himself_ know the different places if he couldn’t see the lines and different marks?” I asked, wondering how.

It was Dragonfly who answered my doubt by saying, “Oh he probably had what they call an ‘original’--and as soon as he’d memorized it, he drew another one in invisible ink and tore the first one up!” His idea made sense, I thought, and said so, and so did Poetry.

Well, we weren’t getting anywhere--and weren’t supposed to anyway. It certainly didn’t seem fair to us that Barry hadn’t let us go with him, but he was camp boss and that was that, and we were supposed to crawl back into our sleeping bags and go to sleep. Imagine that! Right while Barry and the firewarden, and maybe the police, were capturing Old hook-nosed John Till and his son Bob! _Imagine_ it! It was terribly disappointing.

And then all of a sudden Dragonfly gasped and said, “Hey, Gang! Look!” He had the newest map and was holding it up between his dragonfly-like eyes and the light. His voice had contagious excitement in it, so we all looked quick to see what he saw. But it wasn’t anything--only two crude-looking fish away off on the part of the map which was supposed to represent a lake.

“A couple of fish,” I said, disgusted with him for getting us excited over nothing. “That’s to show you there is a lake there.”

“Yeah,” he said, still excited, “but look where they _are!_ They’re right over there where that island is where we caught our walleye today.”

Big Jim answered that by saying, “Maybe they’re supposed to locate a good fishing place.”

And then Dragonfly got another idea which sent our minds whirling like summer cyclones at Sugar Creek, when he said, “You know what that is? That’s where the island is, and that’s where John Till has been catching the big fish to put the ransom money in, and that island’s where maybe the rest of the money is right this very minute. I’ll bet that’s where they’ll go to get the rest of it, if Barry or the police don’t catch ’em first!”

Well, sir, you could have knocked me over with an invisible ink map, when Dragonfly gave us that wonderful idea. It seemed like he was exactly right, and it seemed a shame that I hadn’t thought of it first--in fact, for a minute it almost seemed like I had, because all of a sudden I was remembering what I’d thought in the afternoon when Poetry and I had been exploring that island looking for clues. Also I remembered that that island is where I’d wanted to go to start hunting for the treasure in the first place when I’d thought of playing Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday and also Treasure Island. I just knew that Dragonfly and I were right, so as quick as a flash I said, “If we really want to capture Bob and Old Hook-nose, we’d better beat it over to that little island, and be hiding there somewhere when they get there, and capture them ourselves.”

Big Jim answered me in a tone of voice that sounded like he thought I was only about half bright when he said, “Who wants to get the living daylights knocked out of him in the middle of the night? When you saw him the _first_ time, didn’t he have a big hunting knife?”

I remembered he had--in fact, in my mind’s eye, I could still see that wicked looking knife with its five-inch-long blade that looked like it could not only make a quick slice into the stomach of a fish but could do the same thing to a boy. When Big Jim said that to me like that, it seemed like maybe he was right and I was very ignorant for wanting to be brave without using good sense.

“Besides,” Big Jim said, “those two silly looking fish out there on the map don’t mean a thing. We’d better all get some sleep or we’ll be as tired as wrung-out dishrags tomorrow.”

Well, that was orders, and a boy is supposed to obey anybody who has a right to be his boss--such as a schoolteacher or a camp leader or either one of his parents, or somebody he is working for. Big Jim didn’t always get obeyed, though, on account of our gang nearly always voted on important things to decide what to do, so right away Poetry, who thought my idea wasn’t so bad after all, spoke up and said, “I move we all get into Barry’s big boat and go roaring over to that island, beach the boat on the sandy shore of the cove behind some willows and be there waiting when Bob and Hook-nose come--if they do.”

“Second the motion,” I said quick, but Big Jim exploded our idea by saying, “It’s _Barry’s_ orders to go to bed.”

It certainly wasn’t easy to go to bed when there was so much excitement we’d rather be mixed up in, but orders were orders, so pretty soon I was in my sleeping bag in the same tent with Dragonfly and Poetry--Big Jim and Circus having decided to go back to Santa’s cabin to spend the rest of the night like they’d planned to in the first place.

Pretty soon, in spite of feeling excited and wondering whether anybody would catch Old John Till and his son Bob, I dropped off to sleep--not even knowing I was going to do it--as a certain poem says, “No boy knows when he goes to sleep.” It seemed like even in my sleep I could hear an outboard motor roaring out on the lake, first coming close to us, then fading away and then a little later coming back again.

Once when I was half awake and half asleep, I heard Poetry turn over beside me and then I heard him whisper, “Bill--listen, will you? Somebody’s out there in a motor boat going back and forth in front of our dock.”

It took a jiffy for me to realize where I was, and why, and then I was actually listening to an outboard motor away out on our lake like somebody was doing what Poetry said he was.

A second later, Poetry sat up, scrambled over to the tent flap, worked it open, and in another jiffy I had my red head beside his, and we were both looking out across the moonlit water, and seeing a dark fast-moving boat out there.

“The crazy goof!” Poetry said to me in my left ear, and I said to him in his right one, “He’s cutting big wide circles,” which is what whoever it was was doing.

It seemed silly for anybody to do what he was doing; so, because it was a crazy night anyway, and so many crazy things had happened on our fishing trip, Poetry and I squeezed our crazy way through the tent flap and went down to the dock to see what on earth anybody was doing out there going round and round like that. And then all of a sudden, Poetry gasped breathily and said, “Hey, _there isn’t anybody in that boat. It’s empty!_”

Just that second the boat came out into the middle of a big wide silver path which lakes have on moonlight nights, when you look out across them in the direction of the moon. And sure enough, Poetry was right. I could hardly believe my surprised eyes, but in that silver path was a row boat 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 two-cylinder 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.

And then, Poetry said something else, which was, “Hey, it’s getting _closer!_ The wind is blowing it toward the shore. It gets closer every time it makes a circle!”--which I noticed it was.

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, on account of when the wind blows, like it was right that second, mosquitoes’ smallish wings can’t control their flight, and they stop looking for boys to bite.

_Whirr! ... Roar! ... Whizzz! ..._ and also _Plop! ... plop! ... plop! ..._--the motor doing the whirring and the whizzing, and the bottom of the boat doing the plop-plop-plopping on the waves.

“It’s empty!” we said to each other, and it looked like it was, for sure.

“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 motor could do that, and 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 until it rammed into an island or a shore somewhere.... Then, almost before anything could happen if there had been anything to, that boat straightened out a little, like the motor’s steering handle had swung around--which they do sometimes when nobody holds onto them--and the boat came roaring straight toward our dock at a terrific rate of speed.... In another half minute maybe it would crash ker-wham-splinter-smash into the end of the dock where we were--right there by the flagpole. It was coming toward us as straight as a torpedo and almost as fast, I thought, just like this was a war and somebody had shot a torpedo straight for 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 and shook the dock, glanced sidewise, swerved up along its edge and ran ker-squash-jam into the sandy shore, while at the same time or just before, the propeller, down in the water, struck the shallow sandy bottom, which made the motor tilt forward.

The motor made a couple of ridiculous-sounding discouraged sneezes and coughs, and stopped. Then almost before the sound of the crash had stopped splitting my ear-drums, I was over near the boat, looking down into it and shining my flashlight into it. There lying in the bottom was a great big 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 it out.

The waves of the lake were washing against the dock post and lapping at the shore and the boat, and I knew it was a terribly tense minute. And then Poetry, who was beside me, grabbed my arm like he had just heard something terribly important, and said, “Listen ... SH! ... _Listen!_”

I listened, and didn’t hear anything at first, and then all of a sudden I did, and it was a scared voice calling from somewhere saying, “HELP ... HELP ... HELP...!”

10

I certainly didn’t dream that things were going to turn out the way they did when that mad boat came racing toward us and whammed itself into our dock and up onto the shore and turned part way over on its side, and when I 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 somewhere drowning and had to have help right away quick. Santa’s house was several hundred yards up the shore and any yelling I or 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 waked them up, it would maybe be 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 say, I didn’t have to tell Poetry to step on the gas 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 quick picked up two oars that were lying there and tossed them into a row boat that was on the opposite side of the dock, and a jiffy later was unwinding the anchor rope from around the dock post. Then he yelled to me, “Hurry up and get in quick, 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, it seemed 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--keep the prow headed toward the oncoming waves, or you’ll maybe get your boat filled with water.

Right that minute 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 on earth 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 step on the gas and get Santa’s motor boat 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 upset or something, 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 our boat would be well balanced, on account of he was almost 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 a squeaking noise in the locks and the blades made a little splashing sound in the water, and also the waves plopping against the prow of the boat, made it hard for us to hear the call 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. For a jiffy 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--we were _praying_ as hard as anything, too. Anyway I was, and I was asking God to please help us get there quick--for when a boy is in the middle of such a 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. I tell you, all of a sudden, I was thinking of Little Tom and his swell mother and it just seemed like it would be terrible for them to lose their daddy, 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, on account of my parents had told me the Bible says that, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Anybody who knows what Pop calls the “ABC’s of the Gospel,” knows that you can be born again just by letting the Saviour 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 like I shoot arrows with my bow when I’m back home around Sugar Creek. In fact, for a jiffy it seemed like I was sort of shooting prayer-arrows up to God, and that on the end of each one, instead of a little feather, I had written a note on a strip of paper, and on each note it said, “Please, God--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 a minute--LISTEN!”

I let my oar rest a fourth of a jiffy and right away the waves made our boat swerve a little, like it would swing around if we didn’t keep on rowing, but I heard a voice not more than fifty feet farther on, and looking quick, I saw something dark in the water, struggling, and the voice with a desperate gasp, said, “Hurry--I--HELP....” Then it stopped.

I tell you we hurried and I kept on sending up arrows--grunting and pulling and wishing. Then without knowing I was going to say it, I said, “O please don’t let him drown. ’Cause 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 like maybe John Till had to be saved, on account of it seemed like that promise in the Bible was especially about him. Then 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 beside me 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--like my parents had taught me to, when I was little, and which I still liked to do, even though my folks sometimes might wonder if I ever did or not, on account of 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.

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

I quick grabbed up a 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 sling shot on the giant that time in the Bible. The pillow landed with a ker-plop right in front of Old John and I saw him make a fierce desperate lunge toward it and grab hold of it with both arms and heard him yell in a sputtering voice something I never dreamed I’d hear from Old John Till’s voice that night, and it was, “_Thank God, I’m saved!_”

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

In another jiffy 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 say, in spite of being exhausted and gasping for breath, Old John Till still had good sense, and 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 and 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 lay his terribly wet self down 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 ’cause you helped do it, but if you believe what Poetry and I believed, you feel like you and the Heavenly Father are very good friends--which is maybe the best feeling a boy ever has.

But say, I’ll have to wind up this story quicker than anything, for if it gets very much longer the people who make it into a book for you will want me to cut off the end of it so it won’t make too many pages.

Anyway that is the last part of the last story that happened to us on our camping trip, and it was the best vacation we’d had in our whole lives, although I suppose there will be a few more camping adventures before the gang grows up, and if there are and if anything especially interesting happens, I’ll see how quick I can write it for you.

As we rowed along toward shore, Old John just lay in the bottom of the boat like a terribly big wet fish that had just been caught, and was so tired out he couldn’t move. Pretty soon, Poetry whispered, “D’you s’pose he’s pretending to be good--and that he just said those religious words back there, to fool us, and is maybe playing possum? D’you s’pose when we get to shore, he’ll quick make a dive for the bushes and run away?”

I’d seen possums act like that back home--be terribly lively until they were caught, and 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 and then they would come to quick life, scramble to their ridiculous looking hands-like feet and run possum-ety sizzle 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 what he said back there.” I wanted to believe it, ’cause I wanted Tom Till to have a brand new daddy like Circus had got 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, and 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 also stopped to read the message in the other whiskey bottle which 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 portable radio to the radio 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 read and listened to, came splashing into his mind; and without stopping to think that he didn’t even 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’d rescued him, he had had the other $5,000 of the ransom money in his trousers pocket. It was pretty wet, but 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!

“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 Till spoke up and asked. All of us were sitting around a camp fire 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 being wrapped in blankets too.

John looked down at his red-haired, freckled-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 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 $1,000 reward, did you bury the money in the fish in the icehouse?” we asked him.

“I didn’t,” he said, just as Little Tom Till shoved a stick into the fire and about a thousand yellow sparks shot in different directions of up toward the sky. “Old Brains Powers, 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 a doubt in his voice, “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 all over for another year.... 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 at 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 mail box 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--’cause 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 END

The GANG’S thrilling experiences in the North Woods come to an exciting climax in NORTH WOODS MANHUNT. Two of the boys become first-rate sleuths and do a night solution to the entire mystery. This is the fourth book in the new Sugar Creek Gang Series by Paul Hutchens, the happy friend of all Young America.

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

THE SUGAR CREEK GANG GOES NORTH
ADVENTURES IN AN INDIAN CEMETERY
THE SUGAR CREEK GANG DIGS FOR TREASURE
NORTH WOODS MANHUNT
LOST IN A SUGAR CREEK BLIZZARD
SUGAR CREEK GANG ON THE MEXICAN BORDER
GREEN TENT MYSTERY AT SUGAR CREEK
10,000 MINUTES AT SUGAR CREEK
BLUE COW AT SUGAR CREEK
OLD STRANGER’S SECRET AT SUGAR CREEK
THE SUGAR CREEK GANG AT SNOW GOOSE LODGE
THE SUGAR CREEK GANG GOES WESTERN
WE KILLED A WILDCAT AT SUGAR CREEK
THE HAUNTED HOUSE AT SUGAR CREEK
TRAP LINE THIEF AT SUGAR CREEK
WATERMELON MYSTERY AT SUGAR CREEK
DOWN A SUGAR CREEK CHIMNEY
WILD HORSE CANYON MYSTERY

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

_Published and Distributed Exclusively by_

SCRIPTURE PRESS SCRIPTURE PRESS PUBLICATIONS, INC. 1825 College Avenue · Wheaton, Illinois

Transcriber’s Note:

The Contents has been added by the transcriber.

Punctuation has been standardised. Variations in hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the original publication. Changes have been made as follows:

Page 61
which he quick shook _changed to_
which he quickly shook