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
His voice scared me ’cause I’d thought he was asleep. “We’ve been
out looking for the invisible-ink map,” my fat goat answered for
me--“either somebody stole it out of Robinson Crusoe’s shirt pocket, or
we lost it back on the trail somewhere this afternoon.”
“Oh, is _that_ where you’ve been?” my Man Friday said. “Why didn’t you
tell me? I’ve got it here under my pillow. I was afraid somebody would
steal it, so I took it out of Crusoe’s pocket and hid it here.”
“WHAT!” I said fiercely, more disgusted with him than I had been for a
long time. I made a dive for him, so half mad I could have beat him up.
“Don’t hurt me!” he cried, turning his face and burying it in his
pillow, which, the minute he did it, his nose objected to it by making
him sneeze. “Your Man Friday--_kerchew!_--has to look after you,
doesn’t he?”
Well, that was that. Poetry and I were so tired and so sleepy that we
didn’t feel like telling Dragonfly and Circus what we had seen going on
up at the old cabin.
I got the map away from Dragonfly and put it down inside my sleeping
bag with me, next to my chest, happy that it wasn’t lost, and feeling
cozy and warm and glad to have a warm bed to sleep in, and the next
thing I knew it was morning. Our mystery was still unsolved, but it was
a very pretty wonderful sunshiny day, with a pretty blue sky, and the
lake was as smooth as a pane of blue glass.
Little Tom Till was our main problem. Barry still hadn’t come back, so
Big Jim was in charge of us till noon. I’d promised to let Little Jim
play Robinson Crusoe with us today--but what to do about Tom Till? I
hated to tell him his daddy was up here in the North Woods and that the
police were looking for him.
“How’ll we get away without taking Big Jim and Little Tom Till and
without having them ask all kinds of questions?” I asked Poetry who
grinned and said, “’Tsas easy as pie. The rest of you just sneak away
without anyone noticing you, and I’ll leave this note on Big Jim’s tent
pole.”
Poetry had a note already written. It was in poetry and was:
“Please,--Big Jim and Little Tom Till--
Do not worry, for we will
All be back in time for lunch--
We are following a hunch.”
(Signed) Robinson Crusoe, his Man
Friday and his Three Goats.
It was an easy way for us to get away without having to explain where
we were going and why.
In only a little while we were gone, following the sandy road toward
the place where the week before Poetry and I had found the little
Ostberg girl, all of us explaining some of the mystery to Little Jim as
we went along, my Man Friday carrying the spade we were going to dig up
the money with, and Little Jim carrying his stick and an empty gunny
sack he’d found.
“What’s the gunny sack for?” Dragonfly asked him, and Little Jim said,
“We’re going after buried treasure, aren’t we?”--which we were.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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