he woodshed where we'd been locked in by
our new man teacher and which you know about if you've read _One
Stormy Day at Sugar Creek_, and behind the woodshed was the great big
schoolyard where we played baseball and blindman's buff and other
games in the fall and spring, and where we play fox-and-goose in the
winter. For a few minutes I forgot I was supposed to be gathering
eggs, and was doing what Pop is always accusing me of doing, which is
"dreaming." I was thinking about what had happened that afternoon,
such as the trip we'd taken through the cave to Old Man Paddler's
cabin, and the prayer he'd made for all of us, and especially for Old
Hook-nosed John Till, which Little Tom had heard, and it had made him
cry and want to go home. Poor Little Tom, I thought. What if I had had
a pop like his, instead of the kinda wonderful pop I had, who made it
easy for Mom to be happy, which is why maybe Mom was always singing
around our kitchen, even when she was tired, and also why, whenever
Pop came into our house after being gone awhile, Mom would look up
quick from whatever she was doing and give him a nice look, and
sometimes they'd be awful glad to see each other, and Pop would give
her a great big hug like pops are supposed to do to moms. Poor Little
Tom's mom, I thought.

Well, while I was still not thinking about finishing gathering the
eggs, I looked in the last direction I hadn't looked yet, which was
toward our house and over the top of the spreading branches of the
plum tree and over the top of our gate which Dragonfly had had his
ride on, and on down toward Bumblebee hill where we'd coasted and had
fun and made the snow man of Mr. Black, but say! right that second,
I saw something moving--in fact, it was somebody's cap moving along
just below the crest of the hill, but all I could see was the
bobbing-up-and-down cap, and right away I knew whose cap it was--it
was the bright red cap of the new tough guy in our neighborhood whose
name was Shorty Long, and right away I knew who it was that had
written Poetry's poetry and put it on the sticks into Mr. Black's
stomach....

I had a queer, and also an angry feeling inside me, 'cause I just
_knew_ Mr. Black had seen the poem, and since it had been signed "The
Sugar Creek Gang," we would all be in for still more trouble Monday
morning in school.

While I was up there in that cupola, I made up my mind to one thing,
and that was that no matter how much we didn't like our te