a rock, and spit on it and turn it over and lay it down again very carefully upside down, and your side will quit hurting."
Right then, I stumbled over a log and fell down on my face, and scrambled to my feet and we hurried on, and I said to Poetry, "What do you do when you get a sore toe from stumping it on a log—stoop over and scrape the snow off the log and kiss it, and turn it over, and then—?"
It wasn't any time to be funny, only worried, but Poetry explained to me that it was the stooping that was what did it. "It's getting your body bent double, that does it.—Hey! Look! There he is now!"
I looked in the direction of our house, since we were getting pretty close to Bumblebee hill, and sure enough, there was our teacher sitting on his great big beautiful brown horse which was standing and prancing right beside the old iron pitcher pump not more than twenty feet from our back door. Mom was standing there with her sweater on and a scarf on her head talking to him or maybe listening to him, then I saw Mr. Black tip his hat like an honest-to-goodness gentleman, and bow, and his pretty horse whirled about and went in a horse hurry to our front gate which was open, and being held open by my pop, and he went on, galloping up the road, his horse galloping in the shadow which they made on the snowy road ahead of them.
Well, that was that, I thought, and Poetry and I who were at the top of Bumblebee hill hurried down to where he and I had left our sleds, the rest of the gang having taken theirs with them when we'd gone to the cave. At the bottom of the hill, we saw the great big tall snow man. The sun was still shining right straight on it, but wouldn't be, pretty soon, but would go down. So Poetry and I stopped close to it, and he got his camera ready.
"You get The Hoosier Schoolmaster, Bill, and turn it around and stand it up against the Hoosier schoolmaster's stomach." Poetry ordered, "so I can get a good picture of it," which I started to do, and then gasped.... There wasn't any Hoosier Schoolmaster! The book was gone. "It's gone!" I said to Poetry, and it was, and there was a page of yellow writing paper, instead.
"Hey!" I said, "There's something printed on it!" Sure enough, there was. The piece of yellow writing tablet was standing up on the two sticks, leaning against the snow man's stomach, and was fastened so the wind wouldn't blow it away, by another stick stuck through the paper and into the snow man's stomach.
"It's your poem, Poetry," I said, remembering the poem which Poetry had written about our teacher. "How'd it get here?" Right away I was reading the poem again, which was almost funny, only I didn't feel like laughing on account of wondering who had stolen the book and had put the poem here in its place. The poem was written exactly right:
"The Sugar Creek Gang had the worst of teachers,
And 'Black' his named was called,
His round red face had the homeliest of features,
He was fat and forty and bald."
It had been funny the first time I had read it, which was not more than a week ago, but for some reason right that minute it was anything in the world else. I was gritting my teeth and wondering who had done it, and who had stolen The Hoosier Schoolmaster. There wasn't a one of the gang that could have done it, 'cause we had all been together all afternoon; and at the cave all the rest of the gang had gone to their different homes.