We waited in our hiding place for maybe about ten minutes, listening and watching before we decided nobody was inside, and before we decided to look in the windows and later go inside, ourselves. We didn’t think about it being trespassing, on account of there was an old abandoned house back at Sugar Creek which our gang always went into anytime we wanted to, and nobody thought anything about it, because that old cabin back home belonged to a very old long-whiskered old man whom everybody knows as Old Man Paddler, and anything that belonged to him seemed to belong to us, too, he being a very special friend of anybody who was lucky enough to be a boy.
Anyway, we, all of us, were pretty soon peeking in through the windows, trying to see what we could see, but it was pretty dark inside, so we knew if we wanted to see more we had to find some way to get in.
Right that second I decided to see if my Man Friday was my Man Friday or not, so I said, “O.K., Friday, go up and knock at that door.”
Say, Dragonfly got the scaredest look on his face. As you maybe know, if you’ve read some of the other Sugar Creek Gang stories, Dragonfly’s mother believed in ghosts, and good luck happening to you if you find a four-leaf clover or a horseshoe, so Dragonfly believed it too, most boys believing and doing what their parents believe and do.
Dragonfly not only had a scared look on his face but also a stubborn one, when he said, “I won’t!”
He refused to budge an inch, and so in a very fierce voice I commanded Poetry and Circus, “O.K., cannibals, eat him up!”
“They’re NOT cannibals!” Dragonfly whined. “They’re goats, and goats only eat tin cans and shirts and ivies and things like that!”
“What’s the difference?” the fat goat said, and started head-first for Dragonfly.
But we couldn’t afford to waste any time that way, so Poetry, being maybe the bravest one of us, went up to the door, while we held our breath, I knowing that there wasn’t anybody inside but wondering if there was, and if there was, who was it, and was he dangerous, and what would happen if there was a fierce man in there or something.
First Poetry brushed away the spider web, then he knocked on the door.