We’d been having a wonderful time, playing pingpong and checkers, and Little Jim was playing the organ in Poetry’s basement while Poetry and I made a lot of boy noise playing a tie-off game of pingpong, when we heard a door open at the head of the stairway leading down into the basement, and somebody sneezed, and we knew it was Dragonfly who had come over to play with Poetry. Poetry’s parents had gone visiting somewhere, calling on some sick people in the Sugar Creek hospital, so we could make more noise and it wouldn’t disturb any grown-up people’s nerves, and would also be good for ours, it being almost as hard on a boy’s nerves to be quiet, as it is on a grown-up person’s nerves when a boy is noisy.

Poetry and I stopped our game and yelled up to Dragonfly to come on down and “play the winner,” which meant either Poetry or me.

Dragonfly sneezed twice on his way down, he maybe being allergic to something he’d smelled when he came in, or else it was the change from the cold outside air to the warm inside air.

Poetry won that last game, and it meant he was the champion, so he and Dragonfly started in like a house-afire batting that pingpong ball back and forth, back and forth, bang, sock, whizz, sizzle, ping-ping-ping-ping, pong-pong-pong-pong, sock, sock, sock.... Say, that little spindle-legged Dragonfly was good. He won the first game right off the bat. He really was a good athlete for such a thin little guy. “Hey, you guys!” he said, pretending to be very proud of himself, “Isn’t there a window somewhere we can open? I want to throw out my chest,” which was an old joke, but sounded funny for Dragonfly to say it, his chest being very flat.

“Sure,” Poetry said, “but we can get air quicker by opening the door at the top of the stairs,” and with that he shuffled up the stairs and opened the door, and just as he did so, I heard a horse sneeze and a man’s voice saying, “Whoa, there, Prince! Stand still!” and I knew it was our new teacher, Mr. Black. Just that second, Dragonfly sneezed again, and said to Poetry, “I’m allergic to horses. Shut that door!”

“Hello!” a voice called. “Anybody at home?”

Well, I can’t tell you all that happened for the next fifteen minutes, on account of I have to hurry with the rest of this story, but Mr. Black was very kind to us boys. He came down into the basement, and took a flashlight picture of us with our pingpong balls and paddles and with Little Jim at the organ, and didn’t say a word about the snow man we knew he’d seen yesterday, or the book, or anything. He was very nice, and a little later when he rode away on his great big beautiful prancing saddle horse, I thought maybe he was going to be a good teacher after all. The last thing he said to us just before he swung prancing Prince around and jogged up Poetry’s lane to the house, was, “Well, I’ll see you boys in the morning at school.... I’m going to ride over now and get the fire started. I let it go out over Saturday to save fuel.... But the weather report is for a cold wave tonight, so I think I’ll get the fire going good, and it’ll be cozy as a bug in a rug tomorrow morning when everybody comes.”

It certainly was a pretty horse, and he certainly knew how to ride him; and the big beautiful brown saddle and Mr. Black’s riding habit made me wish I had a big brown horse and a riding outfit and could go galloping around all over Sugar Creek territory.

Almost right away, we all decided to play outdoors awhile, ’cause if there was going to be a real cold wave tonight, it meant that tomorrow we’d all have to stay inside the school most of the time, ’cause sometimes a cold wave in Sugar Creek territory meant twenty degrees below zero.... Poetry went in the house and got his binoculars and we all climbed up on their chicken house which didn’t have any snow on its roof, and started to look around Sugar Creek at different things. Little Jim grinned when he noticed there wasn’t any snow on the roof of the chicken house, and said, “That certainly was a good sermon this morning,” then he grunted and sat down astride the chicken house roof, right close to a little tin chimney out of which white smoke was coming, there being a kerosene heater inside the chicken house.

“It sure was,” Poetry said, with the binoculars focused in the direction Mr. Black had gone.

“Here, Bill, look at him, will you.... He’s stopping at Circus’s house. Suppose maybe he’s going to take a picture of one of Circus’s sisters?”

Dragonfly giggled when Poetry said that, and I felt hot inside, on account of Circus had a lot of sisters, and one of them was a real honest-to-goodness girl who wasn’t afraid of mice or spiders, and sometimes I carried her dinner pail to school. I knew Dragonfly was trying to tease me, so I said, “Here, let me see.”

A jiffy later I was looking at Mr. Black stopping his big horse at Circus’s house. Just that second, Dragonfly shoved his hands against my knees behind me, and both my knees buckled, and I swung around a little, and when I looked again toward Circus’s house, the binoculars were focused, not on his house, but on our red brick schoolhouse farther across the field, and all of a sudden I let out a gasp and a yell, and felt a queer feeling inside of me, for right there on the north side of the schoolhouse was a ladder leaning up against the eaves and yes, I could see it as plain as day, there was something that looked like a flat board lying right across the top of the schoolhouse chimney....

It was even plainer than day what had happened, and that was that Shorty Long and Bob Till had been to our house and barn while we were in church and had stolen Snow-white and some other pigeons and then seeing how nice and light and easy to carry Pop’s new ladder was, and remembering the story of The Hoosier Schoolmaster, and both of the boys not liking the Sugar Creek Gang, and Shorty Long especially not liking me terribly much, they had borrowed the ladder and had used it to put the board on the chimney, so Mr. Black would be smoked out when he started the fire, and I, Bill Collins, and maybe all the Sugar Creek Gang, would get into even more trouble with Mr. Black, and

I was thinking all those worried thoughts in less than a jiffy while I was looking through those binoculars, and was still standing on the roof of Poetry’s pop’s chicken house, with Poetry and Little Jim beside me.

I must have let out a very excited gasp, ’cause Poetry said, “’Smatter, Bill?” and Little Jim said in his mouse-like voice which was also excited for a change, “See anything important?”

Dragonfly was on the ground in front of me and he yelled up and said “What’s the matter?” then he sneezed, which is what people sometimes do when all of a sudden they look up and the sun gets into their eyes, which it did in Dragonfly’s eyes right that second.

“Quick!” I yelled to the gang. “Come on, we’ve got to get to the schoolhouse before Mr. Black does or the schoolhouse will catch on fire maybe.” The ladder was on the side of the schoolhouse where I knew Mr. Black wouldn’t see it when he got there. I whirled around, made a leap for the ground, landed in a snow drift, got out of it in a hurry, and raced as fast as I could down Poetry’s lane toward the highway.

Poetry and Dragonfly and Little Jim came whizzing along behind me, yelling what was the matter and why was I in such a hurry, and how on earth could the schoolhouse catch on fire, and why did we have to get there first, before Mr. Black did.

I still had Poetry’s binoculars in my hand, and was running, panting, dodging drifts, and all the time I could see in my mind’s eye Pop’s new ladder leaning up against the schoolhouse, and I knew that if Mr. Black ever saw it and found out whose it was, I’d have a hard time explaining it to him that I hadn’t done it.

In between pants, I managed to get it into the heads of the rest of the gang what I’d seen, and why I was in a hurry. “We’ve got to get there first, and get that board off the chimney or the room will be filled with smoke and maybe there will be an explosion.”

I remember that in The Hoosier Schoolmaster, there had really been some smoke....

Poetry who was my best friend, almost, was as mad as I was, and he said, behind me between his short breath, “Those dirty bums! They’re the cause of all our trouble with our new teacher!”

And would you believe it? Little Jim heard him say that, yelled to us, and said, “Are you sure?” Imagine him not being sure.

We took a short cut we knew about, and once when we were on the top of a little hill in Dragonfly’s pop’s woods, we stopped and Poetry and I took a couple of quick looks through his binoculars toward Circus’ house, to see if Mr. Black was still there, and his horse was, so we guessed he was too.

I saw him out in their back yard and a whole flock of girls was lined up against their woodshed and he was taking their picture. I didn’t see Circus there anywhere, and I wished he was with us, on account of he could run faster than any of us and also climb better.

“Come on!” I yelled to the rest of the guys with me, “we can make it, I think.” Away we went.

“Wait!” Dragonfly yelled from pretty far back. “I’m out of breath. I can’t can’t run so fast!” which he couldn’t.

All of a sudden, Poetry stopped and said, “We’re crazy, Bill, we can’t make it. Look! There he goes now, right straight toward the schoolhouse. Quick! Drop down! He’s looking this way!”

He ducked behind a rail fence which is where we were at the time, and I dropped down beside him. Dragonfly was still coming along not more than fifty feet behind us, with little Jim staying back with him.

I hated to stop, and I hated to have to realize what was happening, but it was, and that was that Mr. Black was going to get to the schoolhouse first and he’d start the fire in the schoolhouse stove first, on account of he wouldn’t see the ladder first, ’cause it was on the opposite side of the school from the woodshed where he kept his kindling wood.

I’d seen Mr. Black start fires in the Poetry-shaped iron stove before, and this is the way he always did it.... He’d go straight to the corner of the schoolhouse under the long shelf where we all kept our dinner pails, and pick up a tin can of kerosene which he kept in the corner, and in which he kept some neat little sticks standing. Those little sticks would be all soaked with kerosene from having stood there all night or longer, and he’d take them to the stove and lay them in carefully, along with other small pieces of wood and a few larger pieces, and then he would very carefully light a match and touch the flame to the kerosene-soaked sticks, and right away there would be a nice fire....

I knew it would take Mr. Black only a little while to lay the fire, and in a few minutes the fire in the stove would be roaring away. But with the board on the chimney, the smoke couldn’t get out, and it’d have to come out of the stove somewhere, which it would, and the schoolhouse would be filled with smoke in a jiffy; also I remembered the Christmas tree which we’d left up since Christmas, wasn’t more than fifteen feet from the stove, and its needles were dry enough to burn....

Something had to be done in a hurry, and yet there was Mr. Black getting closer and closer to the schoolhouse.... In fact, it was already too late to get there before he went inside, without being seen. I knew that if I got there in time to hurry up that ladder and take off the board, I’d have to do it after Mr. Black got inside, and before he could get the fire laid and started....

The rail fence behind which we were hiding right that minute was on the same side of the school the ladder was, and about as far from the school as our barn is from our house....

All of us were squatted down behind the fence now, and I took charge of the gang and said, “You guys stay here. The very minute he gets in, I’ll dive out of here and make a bee-line for the schoolhouse, and zip up the ladder and take the board off. Then I’ll climb back down, take the ladder and drag it around behind the schoolhouse quick, and come back here.... Then tonight or sometime after Mr. Black goes home, some of us’ll sneak over and bring the ladder home, and everything’ll be all right.”

It was a good idea if only it would work, which it had to, or I just knew that the gentleman I’d made up my mind I was going to try to be, would get a terrible licking, which any gentleman shouldn’t have to have, or he isn’t one, which I wasn’t, yet, anyway....

“Let ME do it,” Poetry said beside me, puffing hard from the fast run we’d just had, and Dragonfly said, “The ladder’d break with you on it,” trying to be funny and not being.

Little Jim piped up and said, “All the snow’s off the roof right next to the chimney.” I looked at him real quick, and he had a far-away look in his eyes, like he was not only looking at the dry roof all around the schoolhouse chimney, but was thinking something very important, which he’d heard in church that morning, but which I hadn’t....

“Here goes,” I said, my heart beating wildly. “You guys stay here, and watch,” and Little Jim piped up and said, “We will we’ll watch and and ” I knew what he was going to say even before he said it, and for some reason it seemed like it was all right for him to say it, and it didn’t sound sissified for him to, either. While I was climbing over that rail fence and making a dive for the schoolhouse and the ladder, Little Jim’s whole sentence was tumbling around in my mind, and it was, “We will we’ll watch and and pray.”

Little Jim was almost as good a friend of mine, as Tom Till was, I thought....

A jiffy later I reached my pop’s new ladder and started to start up when I heard somebody running behind me and saying in a husky whisper, “Hey, Bill! Stop. Wait! Let me hold the ladder.”

I looked around quick and it was Poetry behind me, and I knew he was right. My pop had taught me never to go up a ladder until I was sure the bottom of it was safely set so it wouldn’t slip, or unless somebody stayed at the bottom to hold it so it couldn’t.

A jiffy later, I was on my way up, and another steenth of a jiffy I was at the eaves, and, being a very good climber, I scrambled up the other little ladder that was made out of nailed-on boards, to the red brick chimney. I had to be as quiet as I could, though, on account of not wanting Mr. Black to hear me on the roof. I also was going to have to be careful when I took the board off so the sound of it sliding off wouldn’t go down the chimney through the stove.

In another jiffy I’d have had the board off, and have given it a toss far out where it wouldn’t have hit Poetry, and then I’d have been on my way down again, but when I took hold of the wide, flat board, I couldn’t any more get it off than anything. I gasped out-loud when I saw why I couldn’t get it off, and that was that there was a nail driven into each end of it, and a piece of stove pipe wire was wrapped around the head of each nail and then the wire was twisted around and around the brick chimney, down where it was smaller, and that crazy old board wouldn’t budge an almost new board, rather, and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the board out of the swing which we have in the walnut tree at our house.... Why, the dirty crooks! I thought. They wanted it to be sure to look like Bill Collins put it up here.

I was holding onto the chimney, in fact I was sort of behind it, so I wouldn’t slide down.... I could hear sounds down in the schoolhouse of somebody doing something to the stove, which must have been Mr. Black finishing laying the fire, ’cause right that second I heard a sound like an iron door closing on the big round iron Poetry-shaped stove, and almost a second later, a puff of bluish smoke came bursting out through a crack where the board didn’t quite cover the chimney on one side, and I knew that the fire was started. I knew that in a few jiffies that one-room school would be filled with smoke, and a mad teacher would come storming out to see what on earth was the matter with the chimney, and I’d be in for it.

“Hey!” I hissed down to Poetry, shielding my voice with my hand so the sound would go toward Poetry instead of down the chimney. Poetry heard me and dived out far enough from the schoolhouse to see me, and I hissed to him, “It’s too late. The fire’s already started. What’ll I do. I can’t get it off. They’ve wired it on. If I had a pair of pliers, I could cut the wire.”

And Poetry yelled up to me and said, “There’s a pair in the schoolhouse.”

The awfulest sounds came up the chimney from down inside the schoolhouse, and I could just imagine what Mr. Black was thinking, and maybe was saying too. Smoke was pouring out of the chimney beside my face, but I knew the crack was too small for all the smoke to get out, and the room down there would be filling up with smoke....

What on earth to do, was screaming at me in my mind.... Then Poetry had an idea and it was, “Come on down quick, and let’s run. Let’s leave the ladder and everything!”

“But it’s my pop’s ladder, and it’s our swing board, out of our walnut tree swing.”

“I say, let’s run!” Poetry half yelled and half hissed up to me, and for some reason, knowing I couldn’t get the board off the chimney, and guessing what might happen if I got caught, it seemed like Poetry’s idea was as good as any, and so I turned and started to scoot my way down the board ladder on the roof to the ladder Poetry would be holding for me, and then well, I don’t know how it happened, but my boot slipped before I could get my feet on pop’s ladder, and I felt all of me slipping toward the edge of the roof slipping, slipping, slipping, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. In a jiffy, I’d be going slippety-sizzle over the edge of the eaves and land with a wham at Poetry’s feet. I might even land on him and hurt him; and even while I was sliding, I heard a sickening sound in the schoolhouse somewhere, like a stove was falling down, or a chair was falling over or something, and then my feet were over the edge, and I was grasping and grasping with my bare hands at the slippery roof, and they couldn’t find anything to hold onto, and then I heard another sound that was even more sickening than the one I’d heard in the schoolhouse and it was a ripping and tearing sound, and then felt a long sharp pain on me somewhere and I knew my trousers had caught on a nail or something....

R-r-r-r-r-r-ip!... R-r-r-r-r-r-ip! Tear-r-r-r-r-! And I knew that when I would hit the ground in a few half jiffies, there would be a big hole in my trousers which I’d have to explain to Mom when I got home, as well as a lot of other things to both Mom and Pop.

The next thing I knew I was off the edge and falling and the very next thing I learned awful quick, was I had landed ker-wham-thud in a snow drift at the foot of the ladder.