Part 1

Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Sue Clark, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

_NORTH WOODS MANHUNT_

(A Sugar Creek Gang Story)

by PAUL HUTCHENS

_Published by_

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

_North Woods Manhunt_

Copyright, 1948, by Paul Hutchens

All rights in this book are reserved. No part may be reproduced in any manner without the permission in writing from the author, except brief quotations used in connection with a review in a magazine or newspaper.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Chapter Page 1 3 2 10 3 17 4 25 5 34 6 45 7 56 8 66 9 75 10 83

1

I tell you, when you just _know_ there’s going to be some exciting trouble in the next twelve minutes or less, you have to make your red head do some quick clear thinking, if you can.

Not a one of the Sugar Creek Gang knew _what_ was going to happen, but the very minute I heard that outboard motor roaring out on the lake, the sound sounding like it was coming straight toward the shore and the old icehouse we were all in, I said to us, “Quick, Gang! Let’s get out of here and get this ransom money back to camp!”

Little Jim’s gunny sack had a lot of money in it right that minute, which we’d dug up out of the sawdust in that abandoned old icehouse. The gunny sack was nearly filled with stuffed fish,--the big and middle-sized northern and wall-eyed pike with thousands and thousands of dollars sewed up inside.

I won’t take time right now to tell you all you maybe ought to know about how we happened to find that ransom money buried in the sawdust of that old icehouse, ’cause that’d take too long, and besides you’ve probably read all about it in the last story about the Sugar Creek Gang, which is called, “Sugar Creek Gang Digs for Treasure.” I maybe better tell you, though, that a little St. Paul girl named Marie Ostberg had been kidnapped and the kidnapper had hidden up in the Chippewa forest of northern Minnesota in what is called “The Paul Bunyan Country,” where we were camping. Our gang had found the girl in the middle of the night and captured the kidnapper in an old Indian cemetery the next night, and then we had had a very mysterious and exciting time hunting for the ransom money in one of cuckoo-est places in all the world to find money, and at last had found it in this very old icehouse, and, as I told you, the money had been sewed up inside of these great big fish which we’d been digging up and stuffing into the gunny sack.

In maybe another seven minutes we’d have had it all dug up and stuffed into the gunny sack and would have been on our excited way back to camp, but all of a startling sudden we heard that outboard motor roaring in our direction from out on the lake and we knew that unless we stepped on the gas, we wouldn’t even get all of us climbed out of the opening and far enough away in the bushes not to be seen.

“What’s the sense of being scared?” Dragonfly, the pop-eyed member of our gang, asked me right after I’d ordered us all to get going quick. “The kidnapper’s caught and in jail, isn’t he?”

“Sure, but Old hook-nosed John Till’s running loose up here somewhere,” I said--Old Hook-nose being a very fierce man who was the fierce infidel daddy of one of the members of our gang. He had been in jail a lot of times in his wicked life and was staying in a cabin not more than a quarter of a mile up the shore from where we were right that minute.

Poetry, the barrel-shaped member of the gang, who knew one hundred and one or two poems by heart and was always quoting one, swished around quick, scrambled back across the sawdust we’d been digging in, peeped through a crack between the logs toward the lake.

“Who _is_ it?” I said, and he said in his duck-like squawky voice, “I can’t tell, but he looks awful mad.”

Well, anybody knows anybody couldn’t see well enough that far to see anybody’s face well enough to tell whether it had a mad look on it, but if it was John Till who hated us boys anyway, he’d probably be mad and would do savage things to all of us, if he caught us in that icehouse getting the money.

So in another six or seven jiffies we were all scrambling as fast as we could _out_ of that icehouse and out into the open, carrying Little Jim’s gunny sack full of fish. We made a dive across an open space to a clump of bushes, where we wouldn’t be seen by anybody on the lake.

Circus, the acrobatic member of our gang, was with us, too, and he being the strongest one of us, grabbed up the sack, swung it over his shoulder and loped on ahead of us. “Hurry!” we panted to each other, and didn’t stop running until we reached the top of a hill, which we did just as we heard the outboard motor stop. There we all dropped down on the grass, gasping and panting, and tickled that we were safe, but I was feeling pretty bad to think that there were probably a half dozen other fish still buried in the sawdust in that old log icehouse.

“Quick, Poetry, give me your knife,” Circus ordered.

“What for?” Poetry said, and at the same time shoved his fat hand in his pocket and pulled out his official boy-scout knife and handed it over to Circus, who quick opened the heavy cutting blade and started ripping open the sewed-up stomach of a big northern pike which he’d just pulled out of the sack.

“There’s no sense in carrying home a six pound northern pike with only a quarter of a pound of twenty dollar bills in it,” Circus said, and I knew he was right, ’cause it was a long way back to our camp, and if for any reason we had to run fast, we could do it better without having to lug along those great big fish, especially the biggest one.

I didn’t bother to watch Circus though, ’cause right that second I started peering through the foliage of some oak undergrowth back toward the lake, just as I saw a man come swishing around the corner of the icehouse and stop in front of the opened door.

“Hey _look!_” Dragonfly said to us, “he’s got a big string of big fish.”

And sure enough he had.

Little Jim, who was beside me, holding onto his stick which he always carried with him when we were on a hike or out in the woods, whispered close to my ear and said, “I’ll bet he’s got a lot more money sewed up in a lot more fish, and is going to bury it in the sawdust where these were.”

I happened to have my high-powered binoculars with me so I quick unsnapped the carrying case they were in, zipped them out, raised them to my eyes and right away it seemed like I was only about one-third as far away as I was. I gasped so loud at what I saw--or rather _who_ I saw--that my gasp was almost like a yell.

“SH!” Circus said to us, just like he was the leader of our gang, which he wasn’t, but I was myself--that is, I was _supposed_ to be, ’cause our real leader, Big Jim, wasn’t with us, but was back at camp with Little Tom Till, the newest member of our gang.

“It’s Old Hook-nose, all right,” I said, and knew it was. I could see his stoop-shoulders, dark complexion, red hair, bulgy eyes, bushy eyebrows, and his hook nose.

“What if he finds we’ve dug up part of the fish and run away with them?” Little Jim asked in a half-scared voice.

“Maybe he won’t,” I said, and hoped he wouldn’t.

While I was watching John Till toss his stringer of fish up into the opening and clamber up after them, Circus was slashing open the fish and taking out the ransom money which was folded in nice flat packets of oiled paper like the kind my mom uses in our kitchen back home at Sugar Creek.

We also all helped Circus do what he was doing, all of us maybe more excited than we’d been in a long time, while different ones of us took turns watching Hook-nose do what he was doing.

I knew that in only a few jiffies he would be out of that icehouse again, and probably would go back to the big white boat he’d come to shore in, shove off and row out a few feet, and then there would be a roar of his motor and away he would go swishing out across the sunlit water, his boat making a long widening V behind him. Then we would sneak back and get the rest of the money.

Everything was pretty clear in my mind as to what had been going on the last day or two, and it was that John Till had maybe been what police call an “accomplice” of the real kidnapper and it had been his special job to look after the ransom money. He’d decided that the best way in the world to hide it where nobody would ever think of finding it would be to catch some big fish, cut them open, clean out the entrails, fold the money in packets of oil paper, stuff it inside the fish, and sew it up, like my mother sews up a chicken she’s stuffed with dressing just before she slides it into the oven for our dinner. Then he would dig down deep in the sawdust of the icehouse till he came to some ice, lay the fish on it, and cover it up. Nobody would ever think to look inside a fish for money. Even if they accidentally dug up a fish, it’d be covered with wettish sticky sawdust, and they wouldn’t see the stitches in its stomach.

Say, while I was thinking that and also watching the shadow of John Till through the door of the icehouse, all of a sudden there was a quick gasp beside me, and I said to Circus, “What on earth?” thinking maybe he’d found something terribly special, but he hadn’t. He dropped his knife, leaped to his feet, and said, “You guys stay here! I’ll be right back.”

“Stop!” I said. “Where you going?” I remembered I was supposed to be the leader, but say, Circus had his own ideas about that. He squirmed out of my grasp, almost tearing his shirt, on account of I had hold of it and didn’t want to let go.

The next second there were only four of us left--barrel-shaped Poetry, kind-faced, swell Little Jim, pop-eyed Dragonfly, and red-haired, fiery-tempered, freckle-faced Bill Collins, which is me. Circus, our acrobat, was streaking out through the bushes as fast as he could go toward the lake and the icehouse, but not getting out in the open where John could see him.

“What on earth?” I thought. I didn’t dare yell, or try to stop him by whistling or something, or John Till would have heard me, and who knows what might have happened? I didn’t have the slightest idea what Circus was up to until a moment later, when I saw him dart like a scared chipmunk out from some bushes not far from the icehouse and make a dive for the open door.

“Why the crazy goof!” I thought. “He’s going to try to--What _was_ he going to try to do?”

And the next thing I knew, I quick found out. It happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to think. But the very minute I saw Circus start to do what he was starting to do, I knew he was going to do it.

SWISH! Wham! A half-dozen fast flying movements, and it was all over. Circus grabbed that icehouse door, swung it shut, lifted the big heavy bar and threw it into place, and Old hook-nosed John Till was locked inside!

2

Circus hadn’t any more than slammed that icehouse door shut and dropped the heavy bar into place, locking Old Hook-nose in than there was a loud pounding on the door and a yelling that sounded like there was a madman inside.

What on earth to do next was the question. We were an awful long way from camp, and we five kinda-smallish boys certainly weren’t big enough to capture him ourselves. Besides yesterday when we’d first seen him, he’d had a big hunting knife and who knows but he might have a gun too. Anybody as fierce and as mad as John Till maybe was right that minute--well, you couldn’t tell what he might do, if he got a chance.

Circus was coming in our direction now as fast as he could, and when a few jiffies later he came puffing up to us, he exclaimed, “Come on, Gang. Let’s run back to camp and get help.”

And right that minute I got a bright idea of my own. In fact it had been swishing around in my mind ever since I’d seen Circus wham that door shut, so I said, “Come on, Gang. Follow me and we’ll get help in a hurry.”

I grabbed up the gunny sack which had the rest of the stuffed fish in it and the packets of the ransom money, and it felt as light as a feather as I started on a fast dash right straight toward the icehouse again.

“Hey, where are you going?” Poetry hissed and yelled to me at the same time.

“Back to camp,” I said. “Come on!”

“Camp’s in this other direction,” Dragonfly called after me.

“Do as I say,” I yelled back over my shoulder, and kept on running like a deer straight for the icehouse.

It felt good to realize that all the gang was coming swishing along after me, that I was actually the leader--for awhile anyway. I had what I thought was a swell idea--which my pop told me once is what happens to a person when he becomes a leader--first he gets an idea about something which he thinks is wonderful, and that ought to be done, and right away he starts getting a lot of people to help him do it.

Here’s what I’d planned to do:

You see, while Circus was slamming that door and shutting Old Hook-nose inside, and I was watching him with my binoculars, I’d seen John’s white boat which was beached there at the lake and had noticed that the outboard motor, which was tilted forward in the stern, had a beautiful black shroud, and was the same kind our camp director had, and which I’d been learning how to run during the past week. It had a powerful seven-horsepower motor and could go terribly fast on a lake. If there was anything I’d rather do than anything else, it was to sit in the stern of a boat, with one hand on the rubber grip of the steering handle, and, facing the prow, go roaring out across the water with fast wind blowing into my freckled face and also feeling the shoreline flash past very fast.

I also knew that the water in many of the big blue-watered lakes up here in the North was kept fresh because the Mississippi river flowed through them, and also flowed from one lake to another. I’d studied the map of the territory and knew that if we could use that boat and motor, we could go roaring up the lake terribly fast, pass--in three or four minutes--the old Indian cemetery, and a little later, come to a place where the Mississippi flowed out of this lake into a long narrow channel and into the other very large lake on which we had our tents pitched. Once we got into that other lake we’d race up the shore, and get back to camp in less than half the time it would take us to hike through the woods, carrying a big heavy sack of fish.

We could leave John Till locked up in the icehouse while we were gone, and hurry back with Big Jim and maybe some other help, and before long we’d have John Till _really_ captured. After that, we’d tell the police what we’d done and then we could claim the reward for finding the thousands and thousands of dollars which the little Ostberg girl’s daddy had paid to the kidnapper.

In a jiffy almost, I was hurrying past the icehouse with my gunny sack of fish. I stopped for a split-jiffy to listen, but everything was pretty quiet. I noticed that the heavy door was really strong and I didn’t see any way John Till could get out. There also was only one place where he could even _see_ out and that was through a crack on the side next to the lake.

In a jiffy all of us were in the boat, and had shoved off and rowed out to deep enough water to make it safe to start the motor without its propeller striking on the bottom.

I was pretty nervous, and also scared and brave at the same time. It wasn’t our boat or motor, but we weren’t stealing it, but were amateur detectives using the criminal’s boat to help get some help to help capture him.

It was a terribly pretty sunshiny day, with only a few scattered white clouds in the sky. In another minute we’d be gone. Poetry was in the middle, on a seat by himself, Dragonfly and Little Jim in one right in front of me, and Circus had a narrow seat up in the prow.

“I don’t see why you don’t let _me_ run it,” Poetry complained. “After all, I taught you how to run it in the first place.”

“SH!” I said, “can’t you co-operate?” which is a word my pop sometimes uses back at Sugar Creek when he wants me to obey him. “You keep your eye on the gunny sack there between your feet.”

I quick opened the gasoline shut-off valve as far as it would turn, being sure first that the air vent on the tank was open, shoved the speed control lever over to where it said “Start,” primed the motor, and gave the starter knob a very fast sharp pull, and in a jiffy that powerful motor roared itself to life and our boat went whizzing up the lake. I made a couple of quick other adjustments like I knew how to do, and away we went, the wind blowing hard in our faces or against our backs, depending on which direction we were facing.

Right that second Circus yelled over the tops of the other kids’ heads to me, and said, “Hey, Bill. He’s yelling and screaming for us to stop.”

“Let him yell,” I said. “We’ll give him something to yell about a little later.” I shoved the speed control lever as far to the right as it would go, and our boat really shot forward, Circus’s prow raised itself up part way out of the water and we went flying up the shore at a terrific rate of speed.

It had been a wonderful vacation for all of us, I thought, and yet we still had a half-dozen days before we would get into the station wagon and drive the long day and a half back to Sugar Creek. We’d had a lot of fun fishing and swimming and solving mysteries, such as finding the kidnapped little girl, capturing the kidnapper, and digging up the ransom money, a lot of which was right there in the boat with us in the stomachs of the fish we had in the gunny sack. The rest of the money was probably all sewed in the other fish which John Till had with him right that minute while he was locked up in that icehouse jail. Of course we still had to actually capture him.

Thinking that, I said to Poetry as he sat grinning in front of me--one of his fat hands holding onto the gunwale on one side and the other on the other--, “I’ll bet Big Jim’ll want to call the police and let _them_ capture John.”

Not a one of us liked the idea very well, and we all said so, although we’d all had enough dangerous experiences for one vacation.

It was Little Jim’s newest hobby which helped make this last story of our northern camping trip one we’d never forget as long as we lived.

This is the way his hobby got mixed up with our mystery. Our boat had just rounded a bend and was about to swish past the old Indian cemetery where we’d had so many exciting experiences, and as you maybe know, where we’d caught the kidnapper himself one spooky night, when all of a sudden Little Jim yelled out to us, “Hey, Gang, there’s a whiskey bottle floating out there in the water. Let’s stop and get it.”

He pointed toward the shore where the cemetery was, and sure enough, there in the water was what looked like an upside-down whiskey bottle on the surface of the water.

“We don’t have time to stop,” I yelled to Little Jim, and didn’t even bother to throttle the motor even a little bit. But say, when I saw that little guy’s happy face suddenly get a sad expression on it and saw him kinda drop his head, like a friendly little dog does when you scold it, I felt sorry for him, and decided that maybe seventeen seconds lost time wouldn’t make any difference. So I shoved the speed control lever of the motor back to “Slow,” and shoved the steering handle around so we’d cut a wide circle, and in a jiffy we were putt-putting slowly back toward the floating bottle.

You see, all of the members of the Sugar Creek Gang were almost as interested in Little Jim’s new hobby as he was. For about a week he’d been getting all the old empty whiskey bottles he could find, and he--being an honest-to-goodness Christian boy who hated whiskey on account of it was a terrible enemy of mankind and made so many people in the world so sad and caused so much murder and stuff--had been putting what is called “a gospel tract” in them and a little note which he scribbled in his own handwriting. A gospel tract, just in case you might never have heard what one is, is a little folder with a printed message on it telling whoever reads it, something important out of the Bible, especially how to be saved and become a Christian. The kinda awkward scribble which Little Jim always tucked into each bottle along with the tract, always said the same thing, which was: “Whoever finds this, please believe that God loves you, and if you’re not saved, remember Jesus died on the cross for you, and hurry up and pray to Him and thank Him for doing it, and give your heart to Him _quick_. If you don’t know how to do it, send me your name and address and I’ll send you a free book telling you how.” Then Little Jim would sign his name which was _Jim Foote_, and he also gave his Sugar Creek address.

Then he’d cork up the bottle good and tight and toss it out into the lake for somebody to find and read. We’d all been having fun helping him, and we could hardly wait till we got back home to Sugar Creek to see if Little Jim had any mail from anybody who had found one of his notes.

You see, Little Jim had his mind made up that some time maybe when he was grown-up, he was going to be a missionary, but he couldn’t wait that long to be one so he was trying to be one _now_. He being that kind of a swell little guy and also being one of my best friends, I had decided I wasn’t going to wait till I was any grown-upper than I was, before doing it, too.

In a jiffy our boat was gliding slowly up alongside the bobbing bottle, and Circus, who was closer to it than Little Jim, reached out his hand and caught hold of it and started to hand it over to Little Jim. Then he let out a yell and said, “Hey, it’s got something tied to it!”

And sure enough, it had. I could see there was a piece of heavy fishing line, tied around the bottle’s neck, and that something was fastened to the other end away down in the water somewhere.

3

Say, the very second I realized there was something tied to the other end of that fishing line I was afraid it might be some heavy object, and at the rate our boat was traveling, if Circus held onto the bottle, the line might break, so I yelled to him, “Hey, let go! The line might break!” At the same time, I quick shut off the gas to almost nothing and swung the boat around in a half circle, so, in case Circus _didn’t_ let go, the line wouldn’t have too much strain on it and break, ’cause I was wondering what on earth might be on the other end.

My motor made a couple of smoky coughs right that minute and stopped, which was maybe a good thing on account of we _might_ have broken the line, if it hadn’t.

You could have knocked me over with a pine needle when we found out what kind of a message was in that bottle. There wasn’t anything on the other end of the very strong fishing line except a great big old-fashioned horseshoe. It was covered with weeds and lake bottom dirt, which meant it had been used as a weight so the waves wouldn’t wash the bottle away.

It only took us a few jiffies to read what was in the bottle, because we didn’t even have to take out the cork, on account of a piece of paper with black printing on it was rolled up inside, with the words as plain as anything visible right through the glass. Poetry read them out loud to us in his squawky voice and they were: