The Sugar Creek Gang Digs for Treasure — John Shaqi
The Sugar Creek Gang Digs for TreasureHutchens, Paul
General
The Sugar Creek Gang Digs for Treasure
Hutchens, Paul
Adventure and adventurers -- Juvenile fiction; Christian life -- Juvenile fiction; Treasure troves -- Juvenile fiction
Because the rain wasn’t falling on the window, I opened it and looked
out and noticed that water was streaming down the hill like there was a
little river up there and was pouring itself down onto the cement walk
and rippling around the outside of the cabin. I thought for a jiffy how
smart the owners of the cabin had been to put that cement walk there,
so the water that swished down the hillside could run away and not pour
into the cabin.
It was while I was at the window that I noticed there was an old rusty
wire stretched across from the stubby pine tree toward the cabin. I
yelled to the rest of the gang to come and look, which they did.
“’Tsa telephone wire,” Dragonfly said, and Poetry, squeezing in between
Dragonfly and me and looking up at the wire, said, “I’ll bet it’s a
radio aerial!” Poetry’s voice got excited right away and he turned
back into the kitchen and said, “There might be a radio around here
somewhere.”
With that he started looking for one, with all of us helping him, going
from the kitchen where we were, to the main room where the fireplace
was, and through the hanging curtains into the bedroom, which had the
rollaway bed in it, all folded up against the wall; then we hunted
through the screened porch, and looked under some old canvases on the
porch floor, but there wasn’t any radio anywhere.
“There’s got to be one,” Circus said. “That’s an aerial, I’m sure.”
Poetry spoke up and said, “If it is, let’s look for the place where
it comes into the cabin,” which we did, and which we found. It was
through the top of a window in the bedroom. But that didn’t clear up
our problem even a tiny bit, on account of there was only a piece of
twisted wire hanging down from the curtain pole and it wasn’t fastened
to anything.
Well that was that. Besides what’d we want to know whether there was a
radio for? “Who cares?” I said, feeling I was the leader, and wishing
Poetry wouldn’t insist on following out all his ideas.
“Goof!” he said to me, which was what he was always calling me, but
I shushed him, and said, “Keep still, Goat! Who’s the head of this
treasure hunt?”
He puckered his fat forehead at me, and half yelled above the roar of
the rain on the roof, “If there’s a radio, it means somebody’s been
living here just lately.”
“And if there _isn’t_, then what?”
It was Dragonfly who saw the edge of a newspaper sticking out of the
crack between the folded-up mattress of the rollaway bed which was
standing in the corner. He quick pulled it out and opened it, and we
looked at the date, and it was just a week old. In fact, it was dated
the day before we’d caught the kidnapper, so we were pretty sure he’d
been here at that same time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account