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    The Winter Rescue
    The Winter Rescue
    The Winter Rescue
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    The Winter Rescue

    By Paul Hutchens

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The tales and travels of the Sugar Creek Gang have passed the test of time, delighting young readers for more than fifty years. Great mysteries for kids with a message, The Sugar Creek Gang series chronicles the faith-building adventures of a group of fun-loving, courageous Christian boys. Your kids will be thrilled, chilled, and inspired to grow as they follow the legendary escapades of Bill Collins, Dragonfly, and the rest of the gang as they struggle with the application of their Christian faith to the adventure of life. The last swim of the summer ends miserably for the Sugar Creek Gang when someone steals Little Jim's pet baby bear. The search for the missing bear cub takes the gang through the woods to Old Man Paddler's cabin. When winter arrives, the boys return to the cabin, where they receive a startling surprise. Join the gang as they discover the power of prayer.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMoody Publishers
    Release dateJun 1, 1997
    ISBN9781575677378
    The Winter Rescue
    Author

    Paul Hutchens

    The late PAUL HUTCHENS, one of evangelical Christianity's most prolific authors, went to be with the Lord on January 23, 1977. Mr. Hutchens, an ordained Baptist minister, served as an evangelist and itinerant preacher for many years. Best known for his Sugar Creek Gang series, Hutchens was a 1927 graduate of Moody Bible Institute. He was the author of 19 adult novels, 36 books in the Sugar Creek Gang series, and several booklets for servicemen during World War II. Mr. Hutchens and his wife, Jane, were married 52 years. They had two children and four grandchildren.

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    • 5/5
      When the Sugar Creek Gang finishes swimming in the swimming hole, Little Jim Gets a horrible shock. His pet bear named, Triangle is missing, and all that's left is his collar, cut in half. The Hell Fire Gang could have done it easily. When winter comes around, Old Man Paddler has disappeared. When the Gang goes to his cabin to see if he's ok, they find a big surprise! Without any matches to make a fire, night draws closer and the snow storm picks up and they didn't tell anyone where they were going. The only thing the Gang can do is pray. Hoping that God will give them an idea. Great book and lots of wondering:" What's going to happen?"

    Book preview

    The Winter Rescue - Paul Hutchens

    Calf

    1

    Beginning to write a story is something like diving under a cold shower—or taking the first plunge into Sugar Creek when the water’s cold. It’s hard to get started. But after I’m in, paragraph deep, and my thoughts are splashing around a little, it certainly feels great. My words go swimming and diving and having a good time—in ink, of course, because I always use a pen when I write.

    So, hurrah! Here I am, already started, trudgening along faster than anything on a brand new Sugar Creek Gang story. Does it ever feel good to be writing again!

    In just a minute I’ll explain what I mean by trudgening. That is, I’ll explain it when I’m telling you about the last time our gang went in swimming before school started that fall.

    That was kind of a sad day for us—that last Saturday. Especially for Little Jim, and I’ll have to tell you about it even though I don’t like to write about sad things.

    Hm, I wonder how many miles the point of a boy’s pen travels while he’s writing a long story like this one’s going to be. Hundreds and hundreds of miles, I guess, although I never figured it up. Not liking arithmetic very well is the main reason.

    Well, none of us boys wanted school to begin, even though we knew every boy ought to have an education if he wanted to amount to anything. But at last that wonderful summer was over, and we knew there wasn’t any way to get out of it. Going to school is like starting to swim too. After you get in, it’s fun, and it’s good for you. It washes all the ignorance off a boy and makes him feel good.

    It was Saturday, the last Saturday of our summer, and it was noon at our house. I took the last bite of my three-cornered piece of blackberry pie and chewed it as long as I could because it tasted so good I hated to swallow it. Then I looked across the table at my dad’s bushy blackish-red eyebrows to see if he was going to say no when I asked him if I could go swimming.

    Charlotte Ann, my three-month-old, black-haired baby sister, was in her blue-and-white bassinet, kind of half lying down and half sitting up like a baby bird in a nest full of pillows. She was smiling as if she was happier than anything and was gurgling and drooling, which means she was making bubbles of saliva tumble out of her soft little lips. And her arms and legs were going like four windmills whirling all at once. Her pretty little ears looked like the halves of dried peaches, which somebody had glued onto the side of her head.

    She’s getting prettier all the time, I thought. If only she doesn’t get red hair like mine. I could see that someday maybe there’d be freckles on her nose, and I felt sorry for her because I had freckles myself and didn’t like them. In fact, there were freckles all over my face.

    Dad’s big eyebrows were halfway between up and down, and Mom was busy eating her pie and smiling back at Charlotte Ann. In fact, Dad was looking at Charlotte Ann too, as if Bill Collins—that’s my name—wasn’t even important anymore. I had had to take second place at our house ever since Charlotte Ann was born. That’s what a boy has to do when a new baby comes to his house to live.

    I sighed, thinking about how hot it was and looking over the top of a stack of dirty dishes in the sink by the window. I was wishing I was outdoors running through the woods toward the spring, where I knew Dragonfly, Poetry, Circus, Big Jim, and Little Jim would be waiting for me and where old Sugar Creek would be almost screaming for us to come and jump into it.

    The creek wanted to prove to us its water was still warm enough to swim in, even if it was going to be fall pretty soon. Then it would be winter, and Sugar Creek would have a cold, sad face until the spring rains came and washed it again and the sun melted its ice coat and made it happy. Say, if I were old Sugar Creek, about the only time I could ever be happy would be when a gang of boys was swimming in my warm, sparkling water.

    I looked away from the window without seeing the dishes and was looking at the little Scottish terrier design on Charlotte Ann’s bassinet when I said, Look at her wave her arms and legs, Dad! I’ll bet she could swim without even having to learn how.

    My dad could read my thoughts just like I could read an electric sign on a city store. You should have seen his big eyebrows drop like a grassy ledge caving in along Sugar Creek. Those aren’t swimming movements, he said, taking a last bite of pie. Those are movements a boy’s hands make when he is doing the dishes.

    That’s why I was the last one of our gang to get to the spring that day.

    It seemed to take almost an hour to wash those dishes. While I was doing them, I looked down at Charlotte Ann, who was still making spit bubbles. Her lips were like two red rose petals all wet with dew, and I thought, Go on, little innocent child, and have your play! Someday you’ll grow up, and then you’ll have to work! And for a minute I was mad at her for not growing faster.

    But pretty soon the dishes were all done and set away, and I was feeling happy again. I made a dive for my straw hat, which was on the floor in a corner where I wasn’t supposed to put it. Mom always wanted me to hang it up. A jiffy later I was outside, my bare feet carrying me lickety-sizzle down the path through the woods to the spring.

    I tell you, it was great to be with the gang again. Maybe I’d better tell you about our gang just in case you may not have read my other Sugar Creek Gang stories—although it seems everybody in the world ought to know about us, with all the newspaper publicity we got after Little Jim killed that fierce old mother bear. If he hadn’t, she might have ripped him all to pieces with her horrible teeth and claws or maybe hugged him to death the way bears do.

    Well, this was our gang: Big Jim, our leader, who was so big he had actually shaved his fuzzy mustache once and who had been a Scout; Little Jim, a great little guy with blue eyes like Charlotte Ann’s and the best Christian in the world; Circus, our acrobat, who right that very minute was sitting on the first limb of a maple sapling looking like a chimpanzee; Poetry, who was short and globular—which means round, like a globe—and who knew 101 poems by heart; Dragonfly, whose eyes were very large like a dragonfly’s eyes—he could see better than the rest of us; and me, Bill Collins.

    The new member of our gang was there too, Little Jim’s pet bear, the little black baby bear whose savage mother got killed in my last story. That brown-nosed bear was the cutest, most awkward little fellow you ever saw. He could already do a half dozen tricks. We had named him Triangle because there was a three-cornered white spot on his chest like black baby bears sometimes have.

    Little Jim had put a new leather collar on Triangle’s neck with the word Triangle engraved on it. And Little Jim’s favorite Bible verse was right below that: Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.

    I never saw anybody in my life who was a better Christian than Little Jim, and he wasn’t ashamed of being one either. In fact, he was proud of it.

    Poetry had made up a good poem about Triangle, which started like this:

    Black little, bad little, brown-nosed bear,

    Frowzy little fellow with a tail that

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