The Green Tent Mystery at Sugar Creek, Paul Hutchens [best color ebook reader .TXT] 📗
- Author: Paul Hutchens
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The most important thing in the world right then was to find Charlotte Ann and not let her get caught in what I could tell was the beginning of a terrific storm. I was having a hard time to stay on my feet myself and I knew a wind like that would blow Charlotte Ann over as easy as anything. Of course, when a baby falls down it generally doesn’t hurt much because a baby doesn’t have as far to fall as a grown-up person. But a wind like this one could not only blow her off her feet, but could slam her against a tree or a rail fence or into the briers of a rosebush, or if she was anywhere near the creek, it might actually blow her into it.
So, half-scared half to death and worried almost the other half, I yelled to Mr. Everhard, “Come on! We’ve got to find them!”
Say, that man snapped into the fastest life I had ever seen a dignified man snap into in my life. Both of us right away were hurrying past Theodore Collins on our mailbox and soon were out in the woods. “If they are anywhere near the tent or the station wagon, they will probably go there to get out of the rain,” he said. “Let’s go back to camp first—”, which we were already on the way to, before he finished gasping out the last word of what he had started to say.
We hoped that they were not in the tent, though, on account of the wind might blow the tent over. If they had gotten into the station wagon, it would be a lot better. Mr. Everhard was yelling that to me above the roar of the storm as we raced along, dodging around the trees and bushes and leaping over fallen logs. It seemed like we’d never get there. In fact, it seemed like it had never taken me so long in my whole life to get to that part of the woods. Then I felt a splatter of rain on my hand and another on my face and in a jiffy it was just like a whole skyful of water was falling and the rain was coming down the way it does when Mom says it’s coming down in sheets. In fact, it started coming down so hard I couldn’t see which way I was going. The rain in my face and eyes and on my bare, red head kept me straining to see anything.
It must have taken us almost fifteen minutes—which seemed like an hour—to get to the tent, which I noticed was still standing—but not all of it. The wing which had had the green canvas roof and the netting sidewalls was all squashed in. A great big, dead branch from the oak tree under which the tent had been pitched—and shouldn’t have been—had fallen on it, smashing the baby play pen and other things in that little room. The rest of the tent was only half standing.
For a minute, I imagined Charlotte Ann and Mrs. Everhard in there somewhere, the big branch having fallen on them, and they might be terribly bad hurt or even worse. They might not even be alive.
Beside me I could hear Mr. Everhard saying something and it sounded like some kind of a prayer. I couldn’t hear him very well but I caught just enough of the words to make out: “Oh dear God, please spare her life. Spare her and I’ll be a better man. I’ll do right. I’ll—I’ll give my heart to You and be a Christian.”
Even as I stumbled blindly along with him the last few rods to the twisted-up tent, I couldn’t help but think what I had heard our minister say lots of times, which was that even a kind man could still not be an honest-to-goodness Christian. Mr. Everhard might not even have given his heart to God yet and had his sins forgiven, I thought.
I also couldn’t help but think how swell it would be if Mr. and Mrs. Everhard would honest-to-goodness for sure give their hearts to God and be saved and confess it some Sunday morning in the Sugar Creek church like other people did almost every month.
Well, it took us about half a minute, when we get there in that blinding rain storm, to look inside the part of the tent that was still standing to find out that neither Charlotte Ann nor Frances Everhard was there. Say, as glad as I was that the dead tree branch hadn’t fallen on them, I still didn’t feel much relieved because I knew that they were somewhere else and if they weren’t in the station wagon they were still out in the dangerous storm and nobody knew where. I also thought that if the dead branch of this old oak tree could break off in a storm like this, the branches of other trees could do the same thing—and if anybody happened to be under the tree at the time....
We both kept calling and yelling.
We made a dive outside the tent to the station wagon, but there wasn’t anybody there and so we hurried back to the tent again, calling and yelling, trying to make ourselves heard above the roar of the wind and the rain and the thunder, which kept crashing all around us all the time. But we didn’t hear any answer.
WHILE we were still looking into that part of the tent that was still standing, it seemed good not to have any rain beating down on my face and bare head. In the quick look-around I had, I noticed, even in the half dark, the interesting camp equipment such as a three-burner camp stove, a metal rollaway bed and a rollaway table, on which was a pad of writing paper with a flashlight lying beside it. Also on the table was a kerosene lantern which was probably the same one Mrs. Everhard had been using the night we had first seen her digging in the old cemetery, beside Sarah Paddler’s tombstone. Hanging from one of the leaning tent poles was a religious calendar with a picture of the Good Samaritan on it, showing the man who had gone down from Jerusalem to Jericho and had fallen among thieves, who had robbed him and left him half dead. The man was getting his wounds bound up by the Good Samaritan.
For just a second it seemed like I myself was trying to be a Good Samaritan and couldn’t be on account of the person I was trying to be a Good Samaritan to was lost and I couldn’t find her.
I hoped that when we did find Charlotte Ann and Mrs. Everhard they wouldn’t be half dead like the man in the Bible story was.
I also noticed that some of the numbers of the calendar had circles around them which somebody had made with a red pencil or with red ink. Without thinking, I said, “That’s a pretty picture on that calendar.”
Mr. Everhard must not have heard me because he looked all around quick and said above the roar of the storm, “The shovel’s gone! She’s gone out to dig again. Let’s go find her, quick!”
As much as I wanted to help him find Mrs. Everhard I was worrying worst about Charlotte Ann. So I said, “What about Charlotte Ann?”
“Look,” he said, “she’s left a note!” He picked up the pad of paper and shined the flashlight on his wife’s pretty handwriting and started in reading, with me looking over his elbow—I knowing it isn’t polite to do it, but doing it anyway because the note might have something in it about Charlotte Ann—and this is what it said:
“Dearest: I had another one of my spells and when I came to myself I was digging over near the rail fence across from the Collins house. I was still very depressed but when I looked up I saw dear little Charlotte Ann toddling out across the road all by herself. The minute I saw her all the clouds in my mind cleared away and I felt immediately happy. The little darling was all alone. I took her back across the road to the house, but there was no one at home. I couldn’t understand why they would go away and leave her all alone, but it was her nap time and I thought maybe Bill might have gone to camp to take us a jug of water, so I brought her back with me to camp. But you were still away so she and I have gone for a little stroll down along the creek. I think we will go across the north road today because I want to see if I can hear the wood thrush again down by the swamp. If we don’t get back soon and you want to follow us, you will know where to look. I have mastered the wood thrush song at last so I will have a new whistle from now on. Besides the turtledove is a little mournful for one who is beginning to be happy.
All my love,
Fran.”
It was a very nice letter for a woman to write to her husband, I thought, and when I finished I liked both of them better. In fact, for a jiffy I had a kind of homesick feeling in my heart like I wished there was somebody in the world, besides the gang and my parents, who liked me.
But I didn’t have time to wish anything like that because an even worse worry startled me into some very fast action, for I remembered that the path on the other side of the north road, if you followed it far enough, not only led to the old swamp but went on through it—that being the path the gang always takes to go to Old Man Paddler’s cabin in the hills—and about twenty feet to the left of the path, as it goes through the swamp, is some quicksand. Maybe you remember the dark night when Little Tom Till’s drunkard pop got lost in the swamp and sank down into the mire all the way up to his chin an when our flashlights found him out there, all we could see was his scared face and head and it looked like a man’s head lying in the swamp.
“We’ve really got to hurry now,” I said to Mr. Everhard and told him why. “They probably got to the swamp before the storm struck, but it’s so dark down there in that part of the woods they couldn’t see the path and maybe they will get out into the swamp and—quick!” I exclaimed, interrupting myself, “Let’s go!”
I didn’t wait for him to decide to follow me, but swung around, flung open the flopping tent flap and the two of us stormed out into the storm.
To get to the swamp at the quickest possible moment was the first and most important thing in the world.
We stumbled our excited, rain-blinded way toward the Sugar Creek bridge where our path crossed the north road. I led the way myself, being careful to keep out in the open so we wouldn’t run the risk of getting struck by falling trees or branches—also staying away from the tallest trees and especially the tall oak trees, which are the kind of trees lightning strikes more than any other kind.
I won’t even take time to tell you about that wild, worried race. All the way though, I was hoping that we
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