Part 2

Dragonfly didn’t make a very scared black man. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said; and there wasn’t, I thought--but all of a sudden there was, ’cause the very second Poetry had Dragonfly cut loose and was dragging him toward the imaginary fire, Dragonfly making it hard for him by struggling and hanging back and making his body limp so Poetry had to almost carry him, and just as I peered through the branches of my hideout and pointed my stick at Poetry and was getting ready to yell, “BANG! BANG!” a couple of times, and then rush in and rescue Dragonfly, there was a crashing noise in the underbrush behind me, and footsteps running and then a terribly loud explosion that sounded like the shot of a revolver or some kind of a gun which almost scared the living daylights out of me, and also out of the poor black boy and the cannibal that was getting ready to eat him.

Say, when I heard that shot behind me, I jumped almost out of my skin, I was so startled and frightened. Poetry and poor little pop-eyed Dragonfly acted like they were scared even worse than I was.

When you’re all of a sudden scared like that, you don’t know what to say or think. Things sort of swim in your head and your heart beats fiercely for a minute. Maybe we wouldn’t have been quite so frightened if we hadn’t had so many important things happen to us already on our camping trip, such as finding a little kidnapped girl in this very spot the very first night we’d been up here, and then the next night catching the kidnapper himself in a spooky Indian cemetery.

I was prepared to expect almost anything when I heard that explosion and the crashing in the underbrush; and then I could hardly believe my astonished eyes when I saw right behind and beside Dragonfly and Poetry a little puff of bluish gray smoke and about seventeen pieces of shredded paper, and knew that some body had thrown a firecracker right into the middle of our excitement.

“It’s a firecracker!” Dragonfly yelled at us, and then I had an entirely new kind of scare when I saw a little yellow flame of fire where the explosion had been, and saw some of the dry pine needles leap into flames and the flames start to spread fast.

I knew it must have been one of the gang who’d maybe had some firecrackers left over from the fourth of July at Sugar Creek. Quicker even than I can write it for you, I dashed into the center of things, grabbed up our prune can and in less than a jiffy had the fire out, and then a jiffy later, I heard a scuffling behind me and a grunting and puffing; and looking around quick, the empty prune can in my hands, I was just in time to see Circus, our acrobat, scramble out of Poetry’s fat hands, and in less than another jiffy, go shinning up a tree, where he perched himself on a limb and looked down at us, grinning like a monkey.

I was mad at him for breaking up our game of make-believe, and for shooting off a firecracker in the forest where it might start a terrible fire. So I yelled up at him and said, “You crazy goof! Don’t you know it’s terribly dry around here and you might burn up the whole Chippewa forest!”

“I was trying to help you kill a fat cannibal,” Circus said. He had a hurt expression in his voice and on his face, as he added, “Please don’t tell Barry I was such a dumb-bell,”--Barry being our camp director.

I forgave Circus right away when I saw he was really trying to join in with our fun and just hadn’t used his head, not thinking of the danger of forest fires at all.

“You shouldn’t even be _carrying_ matches, to light a firecracker with,” Poetry said up at him.

“Every camper ought to have a waterproof matchbook with matches in it,” Circus said. “I read it in a book, telling what to take along on a camping trip. Besides,” Circus said down to us, “we can’t play Robinson Crusoe without having to eat food, and how are we going to eat without a fire?” I knew then that he’d guessed what game we were playing and had decided to go along.

“We don’t need you,” I said. “We need only my Man Friday, and a cannibal that gets killed--”

“And turns into a goat,” Poetry cut in and said.

“Only _one_ goat would be terribly lonesome,” Circus said. “I think I ought to go along. I’d be willing to be another goat.”

Well, we had to get Dragonfly’s initiation finished, so I took charge of things and said, “All right, Poetry, you’re dead! Lie down over there by that tree. And you, Dragonfly, get down on your knees in front of me and put your head clear down to the ground.”

“Why?” Dragonfly wanted to know, and I said, “Keep still. My Man Friday doesn’t ask ‘Why?’”

Dragonfly looked worried a little, but did as I said, and bowed his head low in front of me, with his face almost touching the ground.

“Now,” I said, “Take hold of my right foot and set it on the top of your neck--NO” I yelled down at him, “Don’t ask ‘_why_!’ JUST DO IT!” which Dragonfly did.

“And now, my left foot,” I ordered.

“That’s what the blackboy did in Robinson Crusoe, so Crusoe would know he thanked him for saving his life from the terrible cannibals, and that he would be willing to be his slave forever,” I said to Dragonfly. “Do you solemnly promise to do everything I say, from now on and forevermore?” I asked, and when Dragonfly started to say, “I do,” but got only as far as “I--” when he started to make a funny little sniffling noise. His right hand let loose of my foot, and he grabbed his nose and went into a tailspin kind of a sneeze, as he ducked his neck out of the way of my foot and rolled over and said, “I’m allergic to your foot,” which the dead cannibal on the ground thought was funny and snickered, but I saw a little bluish flower down there with pretty yellowish stamens in its center, and I knew why Dragonfly had sneezed.

My Man Friday, in rolling over, tumbled ker-smack into the cannibal and the two of them forgot they were in a game and started a friendly scuffle, just as Circus slid down the tree, joined in with them, and all of a sudden Dragonfly’s initiation was over. He was my Man Friday, and from now on he had to do everything I said.

Up to now, it was only a game we’d been playing, but a jiffy later Circus rolled over and over, clear out of reach of the rest of us, and scrambled up into a sitting position and said to us excitedly, “Hey Gang! Look! I’ve found something--here at the foot of the tree. _It’s a letter of some kind!_”

I stared at an old envelope in Circus’s hands, and remembered that right here where we were was exactly where we’d found the kidnapped girl and that the police hadn’t been able to find the ransom money, and that the captured kidnapper hadn’t told them where it was. In fact, he had absolutely refused to tell them. We’d read it in the newspapers.

Boy oh boy, when I saw that envelope in Circus’s hands, I imagined all kinds of things, such as it being a ransom note or maybe it had a map in it and would tell us where we could find the money and everything! Boy oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!...

3

Well, when you have a mysterious sealed envelope in your hand, which you’ve just found under some pine needles at the base of a tree out in the middle of a forest, and when you’re playing a game about finding buried treasure, all of a sudden you sort of wake up and realize that your game has come to life and that you’re in for an honest-to-goodness mystery that will be a thousand times more interesting and exciting than the imaginary game you’ve been playing.

We decided to keep our new names, though, which we did, although we had an argument about it first. I was still Robinson Crusoe, and Dragonfly was my Man Friday. Circus and Poetry wanted us to call them the cannibals, but Dragonfly wouldn’t. “I don’t want to have to worry about being eaten up every minute. You’ve got to turn into goats right away. Besides, one cannibal’s already been shot and is supposed to be dead.”

“You’d make a good goat yourself,” Circus said to me,--“a _Billy_ goat, ’cause your name’s Bill.”

But it wasn’t any time to argue, when there was a mysterious envelope right in the middle of our huddle where we were on the ground at the base of the tree where Circus had found it, so Poetry said, “All right, I’ll be the goat, if you let me open the envelope.”

“And I’ll be the other goat,” Circus said, “if you’ll let me read it.”

“Let _me_ read it,” Dragonfly said to me. “Goats can’t read anyway.”

“You can’t either,” I said. “You’re a black man that doesn’t know anything about civilization and you don’t know how to read.”

So it was I who got to open the soiled brownish envelope, which I did with excited fingers, and then we all let out four disappointed groans, for would you believe it? there wasn’t a single thing written on the folded white paper on the inside--not one single thing. It was only a piece of typewriter paper.

Well that was that. We all sank down on the ground in different directions and felt like the bottom had dropped out of our new mystery world. I looked at Friday and he at me, and the fat goat started chewing his cud, while our acrobatic goat rolled over on his back, pulled his knees up to his chin, and groaned, then he rolled over on his side and, my Man Friday lying right there right then, got _his_ side rolled onto, which started a scuffle, making my Man Friday angry. All of a sudden he remembered something about the story of Robinson Crusoe. He grunted and said, while he twisted and tried to get out from under the goat, “Listen, you--when Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday got hungry, they killed and ate one of the goats, and if you don’t behave yourself like a good goat, we’ll--”

But Circus was as mischievous as anything and said, while he rolled himself back toward Dragonfly again and laid his head on his side, “Isn’t your name Friday?”

Dragonfly grunted and said, “Sure,” and Circus answered, “All right. I’m sleepy, and there’s nothing better than taking a nap on Friday,” which he pretended to do, shutting his eyes and started in snoring as loud as he could, which sounded like a goat with the asthma.

That reminded Poetry of something funny he’d read somewhere, and it was about two fleas who were supposed to have lived on the island with Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday. Both of these fleas had been chewing away on Crusoe and were getting tired of him and wanted a change, so pretty soon one of them called to the other and said, “So long, kid, I’ll be seeing you on Friday.”

I just barely giggled at Poetry’s story ’cause my mind was working hard on the new mystery, thinking about the blank piece of paper and why it was blank, and why was the envelope sealed, and who had dropped it here, and when, and why?

So I stood up and walked like Robinson Crusoe might have walked, in a little circle around the tree, looking up at the limb where Circus had been perched, and then at the ground, and at Poetry, my fat goat, who right then unscrambled himself from the rest of the inhabitants of our imaginary island, and followed me around, sniffling at my hand, like a hungry goat that wanted to eat the letter I had.

Abruptly Poetry stopped and said to me, “Sh!” which means to keep still, which I did, and he said, “Look, here’s a sign of some kind.”

I looked, but didn’t see anything except a small twig about four or five feet tall that was broken off, and had been left with the top hanging.

My Man Friday and the acrobatic goat were still scuffling under the tree, and didn’t seem interested in what we were doing. “What kind of a sign?” I asked Poetry, knowing that he was one of our gang who was more interested in woodcraft than most of the gang and was always looking for signs and trails and things.

“See here,” he said to me, “this is a little birch twig, and somebody’s broken it part way off and left it hanging.”

“What of it?” I said, remembering that back home at Sugar Creek I’d done that myself to a chokecherry twig or a willow, and it hadn’t meant a thing.

“But look which way the top points!” Poetry said mysteriously. “That means it’s a signal on a trail. It means for us to go in the direction the top of the broken twig points, and after awhile we’ll find another broken twig, and whichever way it points we’re to go that way.”

Say, did my disappointed mind ever come to quick life! Although I still doubted it might mean anything. Right away, we called the other goat and my Man Friday and let them in on our secret, and we all swished along, pretending to be scouts, going straight in the direction the broken twig pointed, all of us looking for another twig farther on.

We walked about twenty yards through the dense growth before we found another broken twig hanging, but sure enough we did find one, and this time it was a broken oak twig, and was bent in the opposite direction we’d come from, which meant the trail went straight on. Then we did get excited, ’cause we _knew_ we were on somebody’s trail.

My Man Friday was awful dumb for one who was supposed to be used to outdoor life, though, ’cause he wanted to finish breaking off the top of the oak twig and also cut off the bottom and make a stick out of it to carry, and to take home with us back to Sugar Creek when we finished our vacation. “For a souvenir,” he whined complainingly, when we wouldn’t let him and made him fold up his pocket knife and put it back into his pocket again.

“That’s the sign post on our trail,” Poetry explained. “We have to leave it there so we can follow the trail back to where we started from, or might get lost,” which I thought was good sense and said so.

We scurried along, getting more and more interested and excited as we found one broken twig after another. Sometimes they were pointing straight ahead, and sometimes at an angle. Once we found a twig broken clear off and lying flat on the ground, at a right angle from the direction we’d been traveling, so we turned in the direction it pointed, and hurried along.

Once when Poetry was studying very carefully the direction a new broken twig was pointing, he gasped and said, “Hey, Gang! Look!”

We scrambled to him like a flock of little fluffy chickens making a dive toward a mother hen when she clucks for them to hurry to her and eat a bug or a fat worm or something.

“See here,” Poetry said, “--here’s where our trail branches off in two directions--one to the right and the other to the left.” And sure enough, he was right, for only a few feet apart were two broken twigs, one an oak, and the other a chokecherry, the chokecherry pointing to the right and the oak to the left.

“Which way do we go for the buried treasure?” Poetry asked me, and I didn’t know what to answer.

Then Poetry let out a gasp and said, “Hey, this one pointing to the right looks like it’s fresher than the other. We certainly are getting the breaks.”

We all studied the two broken twigs, and I knew that Poetry was right. The one pointing to the right looked a lot fresher break than the one pointing to the left. Why, it might even have been made today! I thought. And for some reason, not being able to tell for sure just how long it had been since somebody had been right here making the trail, I got a very peculiar and half-scared feeling all up and down my spine.

“I wish Big Jim was here,” my Man Friday said. I wished the same thing, but instead of saying it, I said bravely, “Who wants Big J--” and stopped like I had been shot at and hit, as I heard a sound from somewhere that was like a high-pitched trembling woman’s voice calling for help. It also sounded a little bit like a screech owl’s voice that wails along Sugar Creek at night back home.

“’Tsa loon,” Circus said, and was crazy enough to let out a long, loud wail that trembled and sounded more like a loon than a loon’s wail does.

I looked at my Man Friday and at my fat goat to see what they thought it was. Right away before I could read their thoughts, there was another trembling high-pitched voice which answered Circus. The second I heard it, I thought it _didn’t_ sound like a loon but like an actual person calling and crying and terribly scared.

You can’t hear a thing like that out in the middle of the Chippewa Forest where there are Indians and different kinds of wild animals and not feel like I felt, which was almost half scared to death for a minute, although I knew there weren’t any bears or lions, but maybe only deer and polecats and coons and possums and maybe mink.

“It’s NOT a loon,” I whispered huskily, and felt my knees get weak and I wanted to plop down on the ground and rest. I also wanted to run.

Then the call came again not more than a hundred feet ahead of us, and as quick as I had been scared, I wasn’t again, for this time it did sound exactly like a loon.

In a jiffy we all felt better and said so to each other. The newest broken twig right beside us was pointing in the direction the sound came from, so we decided there was probably a lake right close by which is where loons nearly always are--out on some lake somewhere swimming along like ducks, and diving and also screaming bloody murder to their mates.

We all swished along, being very careful to look at the broken twigs so we’d remember what they looked like when we got ready to come back, which we planned we’d do after awhile.

My fat goat and I were walking together ahead of my Man Friday and my acrobatic goat. We dodged out way around fallen tree trunks and old stumps and around wild rose bushes and also wild raspberry patches and chokecherries, and still there wasn’t any lake anywhere.

It certainly was a queer feeling we had though, as we dodged along, talking about our mystery and wondering where we were going, and how soon we would get there.

“’Tsfunny how come Circus found that envelope back there with only a blank piece of white paper in it,” I said. “Do you s’pose the kidnapper dropped it when he left the little Ostberg girl there?”

“I suppose--why sure, he did,” Poetry said.

“How come the police didn’t find it there then, when they searched the place last week for clues. If it’d been there then, wouldn’t they have found it?” I asked those two questions as fast as I could ’cause that envelope in my pocket seemed like it was hot and would burn a hole in my shirt any minute.

Poetry’s fat forehead frowned. He was as struck as I was, over the mystery.

All our minds were as blank as the blank letter and not a one of us could think of anything that would make it make sense, so we went on, following our trail of broken twigs. It was fun what we were doing, and we didn’t feel very scared ’cause we knew the kidnapper was in jail. In fact, we were all thrilled with the most interesting excitement we’d had in a long time, ’cause for some reason we were sure we might find something terribly interesting at the end of the trail--if we ever came to it--not knowing that we’d not only find something very interesting but would bump into an experience even more exciting and thrilling than the ones we’d already had on our camping trip--and one that was just as dangerous.

Right that second we came to a hill. I looked ahead and spied a wide expanse of pretty blue water down below us. Between us and the lake, on the hillside, was a log cabin with a chimney running up and down the side next to us, and a big log door. We all had seen it at once I guess, ’cause we all stopped and dropped down behind some underbrush or something and most of us said, “Sh!” at the same time.

We lay there for what seemed like a terribly long time before any of us did anything except listen to ourselves breathe. I was also listening to my heart beat. But not a one of us was as scared as we would have been if we hadn’t known that the kidnapper was all nicely locked up in jail and nobody needed to be afraid of him at all. I guess I never had such a wonderful feeling in my life for a long time as I did right that minute, ’cause I realized we’d followed the trail like real scouts and we’d actually run onto the kidnapper’s hideout, and we might find the ransom money. Boy oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

Why all we’d have to do would be to go up to that crazy old-fashioned looking old house, push open a door or climb in through a window and look around until we found it, I thought. It was certainly the craziest looking weathered old house, and it looked like nobody had lived in it for years and years. The windows had old green blinds hanging at crooked angles, some of the stones had fallen off the top of the chimney, and the doorstep was broken down and looked rotten. I could tell from where I was that there hadn’t been anybody going into that door for a long time on account of there was a spider web spun from the doorpost next to the old white knob, to one of the up-and-down logs in the middle of the door.

“Let’s go in and investigate.”

“Let’s n-n-n-n-not,” my Man Friday said, and I scowled at him and said fiercely, “Slave, we’re going in!”

4

Even though there was a spider web across the door, which meant that nobody had gone in or out of the door for a long time, still that didn’t mean there might not be anybody inside, ’cause there might be another door on the side next to the lake.

Poetry and I made my Man Friday and the acrobatic goat stay where they were while we circled the cabin, looking for any other door and any signs of anybody living there. The only door we found was one that led from the cabin out onto a screened front porch, but the porch was closed-in with no doors going outside, on account of there was a big ravine just below the front of the house and between it and the lake. So we knew that if anybody wanted to go in and out of the house he would have to use the one and only door or else go through a window.

We circled back to Dragonfly and Circus, where we all lay down on some tall grass behind a row of shrubbery, which somebody years ago had set out there, when maybe a family of people had lived there. It had probably been someone’s summer cabin, I thought--somebody who lived in St. Paul or Minneapolis, or somewhere, and had built the cabin up here. I noticed that there was a cement pavement running all around the back side of the cabin, which was set up against the almost cliff-like hill. Also there was a very long stone stairway beginning about twenty feet from the old spider-web-covered door and running around the edge of the ravine, making a sort of semi-circle down to the lake to where there was a very old dock, which the waves of the lake in stormy weather, or else the ice in the winter, had broken down, and nobody had fixed it.

We waited in our hiding place for maybe about ten minutes, listening and watching before we decided nobody was inside, and before we decided to look in the windows and later go inside, ourselves. We didn’t think about it being trespassing, on account of there was an old abandoned house back at Sugar Creek which our gang always went into anytime we wanted to, and nobody thought anything about it, because that old cabin back home belonged to a very old long-whiskered old man whom everybody knows as Old Man Paddler, and anything that belonged to him seemed to belong to us, too, he being a very special friend of anybody who was lucky enough to be a boy.

Anyway, we, all of us, were pretty soon peeking in through the windows, trying to see what we could see, but it was pretty dark inside, so we knew if we wanted to see more we had to find some way to get in.

Right that second I decided to see if my Man Friday was my Man Friday or not, so I said, “O.K., Friday, go up and knock at that door.”

Say, Dragonfly got the scaredest look on his face. As you maybe know, if you’ve read some of the other Sugar Creek Gang stories, Dragonfly’s mother believed in ghosts, and good luck happening to you if you find a four-leaf clover or a horseshoe, so Dragonfly believed it too, most boys believing and doing what their parents believe and do.

Dragonfly not only had a scared look on his face but also a stubborn one, when he said, “I _won’t_!”