The Green Tent Mystery at Sugar Creek by Paul Hutchens (red white and royal blue hardcover txt) 📕

We were all the way to the Sugar Creek bridge before Mr. Everhard stopped to say, “Where’s the shovel you took with you when you left the tent?”

She laughed a very musical laugh and answered, “I gave it to Mr. Paddler. He needs a new one for his flower garden up in the hills. Besides, I don’t think I’ll ever need it again—will I, darling?” she said to Charlotte Ann whom she was carrying.

But Charlotte Ann didn’t seem to understand what it was all about. “I’m hungry,” she said.

Just that second there was a rippling bird voice from somewhere in the woods and it sounded like it was saying, “O Lottle-lee ... Lottle-lee,” and it was an honest-to-goodness wood thrush, which now that the storm was over, probably felt extra happy about something.

When we got to the green tent, Mrs. Everhard just stood looking at all the damage the storm had done, none of us saying anything for a minute, not even Charlotte Ann. I was sort of expecting her to make some kind of a woman’s exclamation, and feel terribly bad, but instead she said quietly, “Well, that’s that. It was God’s storm, so we’ll have to accept what it did to our property,”—and I thought what a wonderful teacher Old Man Paddler had been.

Then she seemed to forget that Charlotte Ann and I were there, ’cause she said, “It’s been a wonderful vacation, John, wonderful! I’ll never be able to thank God enough for such a thoughtful husband, and for that dear old man in the cave.”

Well, I can’t take time now to tell you any more about what happened that day, except that I did get home with Charlotte Ann at just about the same time my folks drove up to Theodore Collins on our mailbox. Mom was so thankful that we were all right that she didn’t say much about the rain water on the kitchen floor, and my wet clothes. Besides, the Everhards were there with me, and it seems like Mom thinks I am a better boy when we have company than when we don’t. Also, besides, Mr. Everhard was all wet too, and it might not seem right for a boy to get a scolding for something it was all right for a grown-up person to do.

The Everhards couldn’t stay in the tent that night, so Little Jim’s mom kept them at their house, they having one of the best spare rooms in all the Sugar Creek territory. Tomorrow the bobwhite and his wood thrush wife could move back into the tent again—after it had been dried out and pitched in a new and better location.

Big Jim himself picked out the best camp site in the woods, for the Everhards, and with some of our pops helping a little, we moved the tent and all their equipment—the best place being about fifty feet from the linden tree. Then we called a special meeting of the gang to talk over all the exciting things that had happened, especially to Charlotte Ann and the turtledove—who had turned into a wood thrush—and her bobwhite husband. We spent maybe an hour walking around through the woods to see how many trees had been blown down or uprooted, and some of our favorite trees had, which made us feel kinda sad, but it was good to be together even though we couldn’t go in swimming on account of Sugar Creek’s ordinarily nice, clear, friendly water was an angry-looking brown and was running almost as fast all along its course as it does all the time just in the riffles. Both ends of the bayou were so full they came together in the middle to make one big, long pond, and I thought about how sad the cute, little barred pickerel must feel to have their playground all spoiled for them. It certainly wouldn’t be much fun for them to have to look at everything through muddy water. Besides, who wants to have muddy water in his eyes all the time, which the barred pickerel would have to have?

There wasn’t very much we could do that was exciting enough for a gang of boys and we couldn’t even lie down and roll in the grass—it was still so wet.

“We can all go home and help our folks—maybe offer to hoe potatoes or something,” Poetry said with a heavy sigh, and Circus answered, “It’s too wet to work the ground today—don’t you know that?”

“Sure I know that,” Poetry answered with a grin. “That’s why I said it.”

“What can we do?” Dragonfly asked in a discouraged, whining voice.

It was Little Tom Till who thought of something that sounded interesting. “Let’s all go down to the cave and see the way Old Man Paddler has fixed it up.”

“Yeah,” Little Jim chimed in, “and let’s all go through it up to his cabin and see if maybe he will offer to make us some sassafras tea.”

From the old linden tree, where we were at the time, we rambled along toward the bridge following the shore above the creek, which certainly didn’t look friendly today, even with the cheerful afternoon sun shining down on it. I wished it would hurry up and get back to normal because if there is anything in the world that gives a person a sad feeling, it is to have his favorite swimming hole spoiled by a heavy rain.

“Ho hum,” I sighed as I was climbing over the rail fence at the north road.

“Ho hum, yourself,” Poetry sighed back at me.

Only Little Jim seemed happy. He was standing on the flat surface of the top rail of the fence when he answered Poetry’s and my “ho hum’s,” saying, “What you guys so sad for?”

“Sad?” I answered. “Who’s sad?”

“Yeah, who is?” even Big Jim said sadly.

“What are you grinning like a simpish ’possum for?” Dragonfly asked Little Jim, who quick scooted himself down on the other side of the fence, saying over his shoulder as he ran across the gravel road, “Because next winter I get to go to the Everhard’s new resort at Squaw Lake and go ice fishing and I can take two of the gang along with me, whichever two of you wants to go. They just bought a resort up there last week and are going to move there this fall,”—Little Jim having found out about it while the Everhards were at his house last night. He was halfway up the fence on the other side of the road when he finished telling us about it.

Well, this has got to be the last part of this story because I have to get started as quick as I can on the next one—a long and happy and also exciting story about how all the gang got to go to the Everhard’s resort up in the wilds of the North for a few days’ ice-fishing—up where there were a lot of wild animals living all around in the forest. Talk about a different kind of fun, and also a different kind of adventure! Boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

I also have to tell you something else that happened that very afternoon when we got to the cave—what we found in an envelope tacked to the door.

“Hurry up,” Little Jim called to us—and for some reason his cheerful voice made me begin to feel wonderful as all the rest of us swished across the road, up the embankment on the other side and started on a helter-skelter gallop toward the cave.

THE END