The Mystery Cave
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
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.
Read more from Paul Hutchens
The Green Tent Mystery at Sugar Creek Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA New Sugar Creek Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Mystery Cave
Titles in the series (36)
The Chicago Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Killer Bear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Brown Box Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Locked in the Attic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Screams in the Night Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Battle of the Bees Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lost Campers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Timber Wolf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Runaway Rescue Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Green Tent Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The White Boat Rescue Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Case of the Missing Calf Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lost in the Blizzard Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Western Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Treasure Hunt Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Watermelon Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Haunted House Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Winter Rescue Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ghost Dog Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Palm Tree Manhunt Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Swamp Robber Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tree House Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Bull Fighter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On the Mexican Border Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One Stormy Day Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Indian Cemetery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Blue Cow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Teacher Trouble Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secret Hideout Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cemetery Vandals Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related ebooks
One Stormy Day Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Secret Hideout Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Winter Rescue Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Haunted House Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Chicago Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Killer Bear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Brown Box Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Blue Cow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Timber Wolf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On the Mexican Border Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Battle of the Bees Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Swamp Robber Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Killer Cat Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The White Boat Rescue Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trapline Thief Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Runaway Rescue Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Teacher Trouble Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Locked in the Attic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Case of the Missing Calf Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tree House Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Palm Tree Manhunt Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mystery Thief Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ghost Dog Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Green Tent Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lost in the Blizzard Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Campers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Screams in the Night Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Western Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Indian Cemetery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Thousand Dollar Fish Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Children's Readers For You
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sideways Stories from Wayside School Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fortunately, the Milk Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bob Books Set 1: Beginning Readers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Jokes for Kids Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pete the Kitty Goes to the Doctor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Into the Wild: Warriors #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Horse and His Boy: The Chronicles of Narnia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: The Chronicles of Narnia Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bob Books Set 2: Advancing Beginners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silver Chair: The Chronicles of Narnia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The School for Good and Evil: Now a Netflix Originals Movie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Battle: The Chronicles of Narnia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bob Books Sight Words: Kindergarten Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trumpet of the Swan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sarah, Plain and Tall: A Newbery Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Julie of the Wolves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amelia Bedelia Gets the Picture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pete the Kitty and the Unicorn's Missing Colors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Three Bears Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Best Seat in First Grade Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes: Now a Netflix Originals Movie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pete the Cat's Trip to the Supermarket Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amelia Bedelia Chapter Book #1: Amelia Bedelia Means Business Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Broke My Butt! Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amelia Bedelia Lost and Found Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dog Who Watched TV Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bob Books First Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Mystery Cave
8 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A coon hunt starts this adventure off, but it's not the most important thing that happens. When the Sugar Creek Gang goes to Old Man Paddler's cabin for some sassafras tea (Little Jim's favorite),they get interrupted by a in-a-rush banging on the secret tunnel's door. Then the Gang gets a surprise when they find a man's head lying out in the swamp!I think it's miraculous how this story ended. It was a pretty good book.
Book preview
The Mystery Cave - Paul Hutchens
America
PREFACE
Hi—from a member of the Sugar Creek Gang!
It’s just that I don’t know which one I am. When I was good, I was Little Jim. When I did bad things—well, sometimes I was Bill Collins or even mischievous Poetry.
You see, I am the daughter of Paul Hutchens, and I spent many an hour listening to him read his manuscript as far as he had written it that particular day. I went along to the north woods of Minnesota, to Colorado, and to the various other places he would go to find something different for the Gang to do.
Now the years have passed—more than fifty, actually. My father is in heaven, but the Gang goes on. All thirty-six books are still in print and now are being updated for today’s readers with input from my five children, who also span the decades from the ’50s to the ’70s.
The real Sugar Creek is in Indiana, and my father and his six brothers were the original Gang. But the idea of the books and their ministry were and are the Lord’s. It is He who keeps the Gang going.
PAULINE HUTCHENS WILSON
1
The things that happened to the Sugar Creek Gang that dark night we all went hunting with Circus’s dad’s big, long-bodied, long-nosed, long-tongued, long-voiced dogs would make any boy want them to happen all over again, even if some of them were rather spooky and dangerous.
Let me tell you about our hunting trip right this minute—that is, as soon as I get to it. As you probably know, Circus is the name of the acrobat in our gang. His dad, Dan Browne, makes his living in the wintertime by hunting and trapping—catching animals whose fur is used to keep people warm and to trim hats and collars for women’s coats.
Anyway, the Sugar Creek Gang were all invited by Circus’s dad to go hunting with him that Friday night. We expected to have a lot of fun, walking by the light of kerosene lanterns through the dark woods along the creek, listening to the mournful bawling of the hounds on the trail of—well, most anything, such as raccoons, possums, and even skunks. We also all hoped we might run into another bear. Remember the one Little Jim killed in one of the other stories about the gang?
Friday night finally came, which is the best night for a boy to be up late, because there isn’t any school on Saturday and he can sleep late in the morning if he wants to. And if his parents want him to, which some parents sometimes don’t.
Right after chores were done at our farm—we did them in the dark by lantern light as we always do in the late fall and winter—the Collins family, which is ours, ate a great supper of raw-fried potatoes and milk and cheese and cold apple pie and different things. Boy, it was good!
I looked across the table at my baby sister, Charlotte Ann, who was half sitting and half sliding down in her high chair. Her eyes were half shut, and her little round brown head was bobbing like the bobber on a boy’s fishing line when he is getting a nibble, just before he gets a bite and kerplunk it goes all the way under and the fun begins. Just that minute Charlotte Ann’s round brown head went down a long way, and my grayish-brown-haired mom, who has a very kind face and the same kind of heart, stood up, untied the cord that held Charlotte Ann in the chair, lifted her carefully, and took her into the bedroom to put her into her crib, which I knew had a Scottish terrier design on its side.
I felt proud to think that I knew nearly every kind of dog there was in the world, certainly all the different kinds there were in Sugar Creek, which is a very important part of the world. I even knew the dogs by name, but for some reason we had never had a dog in the Collins family.
Well, for a minute Dad and I were alone, and the way he looked at me made me wonder if I had done anything wrong, or if maybe I was going to and he was going to tell me not to.
Well, Son,
he said, looking at me with his blue eyes, which were buried under his big, blackish-red, bushy eyebrows. His teeth were shining under his reddish-brown mustache, though, and when his teeth are shining like that so I can see them, it is sort of like a dog wagging his tail. That meant he liked me, and there wasn’t going to be any trouble. Yet trouble can happen mighty quick in a family if there is a boy in it who likes to do what he likes to do, which I did.
What?
I said.
Dad’s voice was deep, as it always is, like a bullfrog’s voice along Sugar Creek at night, as he said, I’m sorry, Bill, to have to announce that—
He stopped and looked long at me.
All of a sudden my heart felt as if some wicked magician had changed it into a lump of lead. What was he going to announce? What was he waiting for, and what had I done wrong, or what was I about to do that I shouldn’t?
Just that minute, while Dad’s sentence was still hanging like a heavy weight of some kind about to drop on my head, Mom came in from having tucked Charlotte Ann into bed. I’ll fix a nice lunch for you to take along in your school lunch pail, Bill. Apple pie, warm cocoa, sandwiches, and—
My dad must have been thinking about what he was going to say and not hearing Mom at all. He went on with his sentence by saying, "Sorry to have to announce that Dr. Mellen called up this afternoon and said he would be ready for you to get your teeth filled tomorrow morning at eight. I tried to arrange some other time for you, but we had to take that or wait another week, so you’ll have to be home and in bed a little after eleven.
I’ve made arrangements for Dan Browne to leave you and Little Jim at Old Man Paddler’s cabin, where Little Jim’s daddy will pick you up. Little Jim’s piano lesson is at nine in the morning anyway, so his mother—
Well, that was that. Little Jim and I couldn’t stay out in the woods as late as the rest of the gang. My heart was not only lead but hot lead, because I didn’t like to go to a dentist and have my teeth filled, and I didn’t want to come home till the rest of the gang did.
I felt sad and must have looked sadder.
What’s the matter?
Mom said. Don’t you like apple pie and cocoa and sandwiches?
I was thinking about a cavity I had in one of my best teeth, and I was thinking about how I would look with a little piece of shining gold in one of my front teeth, so I said to Dad, What kind of filling?
And Mom said, Roast beef and salad dressing.
And Dad said, Gold, maybe, for one and porcelain for the others.
And Mom exclaimed, "What in the—" and stopped just as we heard the sound of steps on our front porch, and I saw the flashing of a lantern outside the window and heard different kinds of voices at different pitches. I knew the gang was coming.
In a minute I was out of my chair and into my red crossbarred mackinaw, with my red corduroy cap pulled on tight. I was making a dive for the door when Dad’s deep voice stopped