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

hour to get Dragonfly’s pop’s cows out of the bayou, we having to drive them out on account of the cornfield being on the other side, and you can’t trust a cow with a cornfield any more than you can trust a boy or a girl with an open cookie jar.

If one of Dragonfly’s pop’s red heifers hadn’t gotten a stubborn streak and decided she wanted to go on a wild run all through the woods, we might not have found the tent for a long time, but while we were chasing her all around through the bushes and up and down the creek, she accidentally took us right to it.

“It was swell of that old red heifer to show us where the tent is, wasn’t it?” Dragonfly said, after we had finally gotten her and the other cows back in Dragonfly’s pop’s dark cattle-shed away from the flies, and we were back again not more than a hundred yards from the tent itself.

“Maybe the heifer smelled the calf-skin in the folded billfold in Bill’s hip pocket, and it scared her. Maybe she thought Bill wanted to make a lot of billfolds out of her hide,” Little Tom Till said, trying to be funny, and Circus said, “I don’t think heifers think.”

One of the first things we noticed about the camp when we got close to it, was that they had picked one of the very worst camp sites in the whole woods. It was up in the middle of the woods, halfway between our house and the spring, away back off the barefoot boys’ path so that I couldn’t have seen it when I had gone galloping to the spring a couple of hours ago. It was under one of the biggest, widest-spreading oak trees around there anywhere and would have shade all day, which would mean it wouldn’t get a chance to dry out after a damp night, which nights often are in any territory where there is a river or a creek or a lake. It wouldn’t have any morning sun on it, at all, like tents are supposed to have.

Any boy scout knows that nobody should ever pitch a tent under an oak tree on account of the droppings from an oak tree will make the canvas rot quicker and before you know it, you will have little holes scattered all over your roof, which will make it leak like everything when it rains. Also, I noticed, they had pitched the tent so the flap would be open toward the west and anybody who lives at Sugar Creek knows that you shouldn’t have the tent flap on the west side because that is the direction most of our rains come from.

Besides, they would have to go too far to get their drinking and cooking water—clear down to the spring or else in the opposite direction to the Collins family’s iron, pitcher-pump.

“They certainly don’t know very much about camp life,” Big Jim said, he having been a boy scout once and had taught us all these different things about the best kind of camp site to pick.

“It’s a good thing they got a shovel,” Little Tom Till said, seeing one standing against an ironwood tree by their station wagon.

“Why?” Dragonfly said and Little Tom Till answered, like a schoolboy who had studied his lesson and knew it by heart, “Because, where the tent’s pitched now, if it rains, the water will run in from all sides and make a lake out of the floor.”

Well, we brought it to a vote to see which one of us had to go up and knock on the tent pole and ask if anybody had lost a billfold.

It took only a jiffy for me to win the election by a six to one vote-six for me and one against me, my vote being the one that was against. So while the rest of the gang kept itself hidden behind some pawpaw bushes, I stepped out into the open and mosied along like I was only interested in seeing different things in the woods, such as a red squirrel in a tree or some kind of new beetle. Also I was walking carefully so as not to awaken them if they were asleep, especially the one who was supposed to take an afternoon nap.

Say, I forgot to tell you that tent wasn’t any ordinary brown canvas tent, but was green and was a sorta three-way tent, shaped like some of the ranch houses that people were building in our town. I could tell just by looking at the tent that it would be wonderful for a gang of boys to go camping in. One of the wings of the tent was only a canvas roof with the sides made out of some kind of netting to keep out different kinds of flies such as houseflies, deer flies and blowflies. It could even keep out a horse-fly or a warble fly if one wanted to get in, which one probably would if somebody’s cow accidentally strayed into the tent. It would also keep out June beetles at night.

Right away I saw somebody was resting on a cot inside one of the wings and as quick as that I was too bashful to go any closer because I could tell it was the woman herself lying there and she was maybe asleep, and it isn’t polite to wake anybody out of a nap if you know he is taking one.

My heart was beating pretty fast on account of I was a little scared to do what I had been voted to do, but the man must have seen me or else heard all of us because right then he opened the flap of the main part of the tent and came out with the forefinger of one hand up to his lips and the other hand making the kind of motions a person’s hand makes when he wants you to keep still and not say a word.

I noticed that the brownish haired man was about as old as my reddish-haired pop and that he had a magazine in his hand like he had been reading. He also motioned for me to stop where I was, which I did and he kept on coming toward me with his finger still up to his lips and shaking a warning finger with his other hand, which meant, “Sh-h-h—don’t say a word.”

I walked back with him to where the rest of the gang was behind the pawpaw bushes and I noticed that he had a very nice face. Also he looked like an important city person, who might be extra smart and maybe had charge of a big office or maybe a store or something.

“Is there anything I can do for you boys?” he said in a very deep-sounding voice.

Even though he had a half-sad look in his eyes, I could tell he was a kind person and probably liked boys.

I looked at Big Jim and he looked at me and we all looked at different ones of us. Finally the rest of the gang’s twelve eyes focused on my freckled face and red hair so I looked up at the man and said, “Ye-s-s, sir, Mr. Bobwhite—I mean. Yes, sir. We found a billfold up along the creek—”

Little Tom Till cut in then and shouldn’t have, saying, “Little Jim here found it and it’s brown and has some dollar bills in it and three fives and one ten—”

“Sh—!” Big Jim shushed Little Tom Till and the man grinned with a twinkle in his eyes and I saw that the edge of one of his upper incisors had gold on it.

“That’s all right. I can describe it for you,” he said, which he did, giving all the details. “It has a tooled flying horse on the leather on the back and the initials F. E., and the name Frances Everhard in the inside on the identification card. The license number of our car is 7-34567. I was just ready to start looking for it.”

There was something about the man that I liked although there was an expression in his eyes that made it seem like he was a little bit worried. I could tell he was the kind of man that would be kind to his wife or his children’s mother—as Pop is to Mom. He might even be willing to do the dishes for her without being asked if she was extra tired. I noticed he kept looking at Little Jim like he thought he was a very wonderful person.

“So you found it, did you, young man?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Little Jim piped up in his mouse-like voice.

“Well, I want to thank you. I have a reward for you. If you boys come back later, say in about an hour, my wife will wish to thank you in person. She has some cookies that she bought on purpose for you—just in case you happened to call to see us. She is having her nap now—doctor’s orders are for her to sleep an hour every afternoon, you know.”

We let the man have the billfold, which he took, and without opening it, shoved it into his hip pocket. “Frances will be so thankful. I think she doesn’t know she lost it yet—and maybe we won’t tell her, eh?”

We promised we wouldn’t and he started to walk backwards a little, which meant he was through visiting and we could go on home or somewhere.

“Wait,” Mr. Everhard said and stopped as also did we because we had also started to start in our own direction. “How would one of you boys like to earn a quarter every day by bringing our drinking water from the spring—or from up there at the Collins family house? One of you the Collins boy?”

I could feel myself blushing all over my freckled face, clear up to the roots of my red hair and I started to say, “Yes,” but Dragonfly beat me to it by saying, “He is,”—jerking his thumb in my direction.

The man went on to explain, “This isn’t the best place to pitch a tent—so far from a water supply—but somebody told us the spring was your gang’s meeting place so we decided to let you have your own privacy.”

Big Jim was pretty smart, I thought, when he spoke up politely, saying, “That was very thoughtful of you.” Then he added with a Big Jim grin, “You’ll probably have more privacy yourself up here away from the noisy spring,”—meaning us. Then he added, “Sure, we will be glad to bring your drinking water every day, won’t we, Bill?”

“Sure,” I said to Big Jim. “I’ll even help you carry it.”

He was almost halfway back to his tent when he stopped and hurried back to us again. “Mr. Paddler has given us permission to dig a few holes around here in the woods,” he said, “so don’t be too surprised if you find a new one every now and then.”

I started to say, “What are you digging them for,” but didn’t ’cause Big Jim scowled and shook his head at me.

A little later at the spring itself we stopped for a drink and Circus said, “Old Man Paddler doesn’t own the cemetery. Who would give them permission to dig out there in the cemetery at night—and why would they want to do it?”

“Maybe they’re studying different kinds of soil. Maybe they have a lot of glass jars full of different kinds of dirt in the tent or in the station wagon,” Poetry suggested.

“They wouldn’t need to dig such deep holes just to get soil samples,” Big Jim said and I noticed he had a little bit of a worried look on his face.

Poetry had another idea and it was, “How are we going to spend our quarter every day—the one Bill is going to earn for us?”—which wasn’t funny.

Our mystery