The Katydid Kaper: Chapters 1-5

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The

Christian Conqueror’s Camping Club

Adventure #1

“The Katydid Kaper”

Danny Baer

Written – 1988

©2002

I.

I was sure I heard something.

I looked up, and Johnny and Mike were sound asleep in the sleeping bags just as they had been an hour before. But I obviously wasn’t. In fact, I had not been asleep the entire night.

Now don’t get me wrong. Camping out was one of the greatest things that I had ever done. Just the thought of gathering up a bed roll, an old army ‘mess kit,’ and some food such as bacon, eggs, bread, beans, and the like, and going up into the woods behind the other two boys’ grandma’s house was as exciting as when my own grandparents would take me to the state fair. I couldn’t wait from one time to the next when we would get together in Sunday school, and make plans for our next outing.

This trip had started out like most all the others. Mom had taken me to Johnny’s house, and, as usual, took the opportunity to talk with Johnny’s mother who had been a widow ever since Johnny, and I were only five years old. Johnny’s dad had been working in an old barn, trying to repair it by jacking it up to replace some old rotten beams. He was too late, however, because the whole thing fell on him. Our families had been very close before then and continued to keep in contact during the past seven years since it happened. Johnny, and I, being born only three weeks apart were best of friends, and we would go down to his cousin Mike’s house to play because he lived beside their Grandma, and in front of large fields, and the woods that I lay in with the other two, and Mike’s little brother, Ronnie, at that very minute.

I heard it again, and this time I was sure. Something, or someone, was just in the brush about 15 to 20 yards from our campsite. It sounded as though it. or he, was sneaking up to us behind the old lean to’ that the other boys had fashioned out of some logs that lay around the woods, but had never used, preferring to lie out in the open instead of in an old stuffy cabin. We were sure that the tin roof would at least help some if we got caught in an unexpected shower.

“Johnny,” I whispered.

I scooted my feet around in my sleeping bag to reach his as best I could with lying on my back, and all twisted up in the bag from moving around like that. “Johnny.” This time I accented my whisper with a kick to his leg.

“Ouch,” he groaned. Half in a hurting—half in a mad voice.

‘Wake up. There’s somebody out there.”

“You’re crazy,” Johnny said. This time the mad outweighed the hurt in his voice.

“No, I’m not,” I shot back in defense. “I’ve been hearing something all night. Listen.”

There was dead silence. Well, as dead a silence as you expect on a hot July night. The katydids which were bright green grasshopper-like insects that sang a song that sounded like “Katy did,” “Katy did,” were in a weird kind of duet with the tree frogs from the pond just over the hill that we had been swimming in the day before.

Then we both heard it. A dry twig snapped just as sure, and as plain as if someone had taken two hands, and broken it before throwing it in our campfire that lay smoldering with a few red embers left in its center.

“Did you hear that?” Johnny whispered in now a slightly excited voice, not the least bit of mad or hurt coming through. In fact, he sounded as though he was on the brink of scared just as I had been when I called out his name.

“That’s what I told you.” I explained with an excitement in my voice that surprised even me. No wonder though, my heart was racing as fast as Johnny’s little beagle pup races after a rabbit. “I’ve been hearing those things for quite a while now, and every time the noises seem to be closer, and closer.”

In just a few minutes we had Mike awake, and after convincing him that we were not lying, the most convincing argument being the noise he heard that seemed to come from right behind the cabin, we decided to do two things, to stoke up the fire so as to scare off a wild animal

If it was a wild animal, and not to wake Ronnie seeing that he was so young and may start crying or calling out for mommy or something. I didn’t want to admit it to the others, but I would have liked very much to be lying in my own bed at home knowing that Mom and Dad were in the next room.

Just then something happened that, if it didn’t happen so fast probably would have been the death of me.

It sounded like the cabin was about to fall in. In a jiffy I figured out that the noise was coming from someone throwing a handful of rocks or sticks on the tin roof.

At the same time a cry, like someone screaming when you go into the tunnel on a very fast drop on a roller coaster ride, came from the right side of the cabin, the side that Ronnie was closest to. Needless to say he was immediately awake, and along with the rest of us, was on the other side of the fire in a jiffy.

Bushes, and trees started to rustle like mad, and suddenly there appeared something that none of us expected.

“Oh no” Mike shouted...

II.

“Beanie,” We all said at once, almost as if we had rehearsed it to say together like one of our Easter ‘poems’ we recited at church, year in, and year out.

“Hi guys,” Beanie said nonchalantly as he strode over to the fire and stooped down as if to warm his hands. “Did I scare you?”

“What in the world do you think you’re doing, you nut?” exclaimed Mike in a tone that was neither hurt nor scared, but a bit angry as Johnny was when I had kicked him just a few minutes earlier.

“Oh, I thought that I would join you guys tonight,” explained Beanie whose real name was Willard Miller. Of course, with a name like Willard you try to find a nickname as soon as possible -- at least when you get old enough to realize that your name sounds like the result of a cruel joke that your mother played on you when you were born. Beanie lived a couple of doors away from Mike, and Ronnie, and was about Ronnie’s age. He was what you would call a pest, except when you needed something done that you know you would not want to get caught doing, but you knew Beanie wouldn’t care to do. He would try anything once, like the time he stripped down to almost nothing, and dove from a limb overhanging the pond. The problem was that the pond was only about four feet at its deepest point. When he started to dive, he lost his balance, and tumbled out of the tree only to fall feet first into the water instead of headfirst like we dared him to do. If he had gone headfirst, he would probably still be stuck in that mud with his feet straight up in the air.

Anyway, Beanie was in our camp, and as far as I was concerned, had made an effort to try to sneak up on us, and scare us out of our wits. I for one was still shaking although I wouldn’t admit it for a minute.

“Join us, will you?” Johnny spoke up in a loud and obviously upset voice. “How would you like for your face to be joined with my fist?”

The next thing I knew Johnny, and Mike were around the fire, and on top of Beanie, not really wanting to hurt him, but trying their hardest to put a scare in him like he had put in us.

Johnny grabbed his arms, and Mike put a head lock around his neck, and proceeded to give him a ‘Dutch rub’ on his freshly cut hair that was shorn in the fashion of all of us -completely cut off down to just long enough that when you rubbed your head it felt like the shell of a coconut.

“Ow!” Beanie yelled. “Get off of me.”

About that time, he did what he was best at doing. He squirmed and wiggled his skinny frame that reminded you so much of a bean pole that you figure that’s the way he got his name. Well, anyway, he wiggled so fast that he was out of their grip in a second with both boys tumbling, and everyone, including Beanie, Mike, and Johnny laughing, which was probably more to shake off the nervous energy the events of the past few minutes had brought on, than anything else.

“You guys are gonna thank me for coming when you hear what I saw.” Beanie’s voice seemed to be a bit more serious now.

“Oh Bean Head,” Johnny said using the name that we all used when we wanted to make Beanie seem really dumb because of what he was doing. “You been seeing ghosts again?” Johnny had been thinking of the time Beanie convinced all of us to take the long hike up Simmering Hill to go ghost hunting in the old house abandoned by the Haynes family many years before only to find that the ghost that Beanie had heard just a screech owl that had taken up residence in the attic.

“Go ahead and make fun.” Beanie shot back in his usual whiny type of voice. “I know what I saw, and I think we ought to do something about it.”

“What is he talking about?” The question came from Mike who was pouring some water from a thermos into a pan probably because he wanted some coffee. That sounded like a good idea to me -- not that any of us really liked coffee, except for Mike, but we had seen Westerns where the men sat around the camp fire drinking coffee, and it just seemed the thing to do.

“I’m telling you that I saw them down by the Franklin place.”

“Saw who?” I said it before I realized I did. The excitement in my voice came out more than I wanted. But after all, I was the one who, for the last hour, had been awake listening to what had turned out to be Beanie come up the hill, and explode into our camp like a wild maniac or something.

“Yea!” Ronnie added, “Saw who?”

Beanie leaned over the fire, and looked Ronnie straight in the eye, and with as serious a voice as I ever heard him use he whispered what I never thought I would have heard in this part of the country. “I saw rustlers.”

III.

The morning sun was shooting through the trees to make broad, bright streaks in the fog that still lay over the community of South Webster, and surrounding area which was where Mike, and Johnny lived—Johnny living in town, and Mike living on just the outskirts. We were coming in early because Mike had to help his dad on his milk route, and we all were very tired considering we got almost no sleep the night before. I guess the sleep we had managed to get in our sleeping bags was quite a bit more than Beanie had gotten since he slept on a pile of leaves with an old rug we had taken up there to use in the cabin. He probably would have slept a bit better, but we kept him pretty riled up by calling him ‘Partner,’ and ‘Tex’ for quite some time after he had disrupted our camp in such a flurry and claimed to see ‘rustlers.’ Beanie just kept saying “You’ll see. You’ll see,” and the rest of us had just about the best laugh we had in a long time—the kind that makes your cheeks hurt, and your side start aching. I guess that our laughs turned into almost what our Sunday school teacher calls ‘scorn.’ It became pretty obvious that we were just laughing to make Beanie feel pretty silly. After a while I noticed that Johnny had stopped, and so did I, followed by the other two. I think it was about then we realized that we had been working a long time to try to get Beanie to church with us, and hopefully accept Jesus Christ as his Savior like we had, and if we didn’t lay off we may drive him completely away. After all, he had promised to go with us that very Sunday.

“You’ll see.” Beanie said for the umpteenth time as we walked into Mike’s yard carrying our supplies, and as he disappeared into his own yard. As he went into his house, we looked at each other, and were trying not to burst out laughing when we heard someone pull into Mike’s driveway, and looked up to see Joe Franklin, who was in his dad’s pickup, poke his head out the window, and holler “Hey fellows. Come here, quick.” We could tell right away that Joe was up in the air about something which wasn’t his style. Joe, being about two years older than Mike, and just getting his driver’s license, always was the big tough guy around us. Not that he roughed us up, or anything, but he was definitely bigger, and occasionally, while we were wrestling for fun, would show us that he could put us down about anytime he wanted.

“Were you guys up by the cabin last night?” Joe asked as we were trotting up to his truck.

“Sure were,” Johnny answered.

“Well did you hear anything or see anything strange.”

“Yea, we saw, and heard something really strange, about as strange as you want to see,” Ronnie said as Joe’s eyes were getting about as big as the silver dollars my Grandma kept in her kitchen cabinet. “We saw Beanie.”

All of us guys couldn’t contain ourselves anymore, and we laughed so loud that Mike’s mother called through the kitchen window that was just above our head. “You boys pipe down out there. You’ll wake up Jill,” who, by the way, was Mike’s baby sister.

“No. you guys.” Joe was more upset now that ever, probably at us as much as whatever else he was upset about. “I mean, did you hear any of our cattle up that way? For the last two nights we have had two or three of our calves get out, and I can’t for the life of me find where they are, or any sign of anyplace they can even be getting out. It’s mighty strange.”

Joe’s dad owned a pretty large farm for that part of Southern Ohio, and even though it certainly was not cattle country, most of his more than one hundred acres was fenced in for pastureland where he kept about seventy or eighty head. There were mainly cows (the common name for female cattle) to breed in order to sell the calves each fall. On the remainder of his land he raised hay to feed the cows, and his one, big, mean bull, during the winter. His newest calves were doing really well, and now they were disappearing. Joe was especially upset because his dad was in Roanoke at a training session for his regular job on the railroad, and Joe had been left to look after the place.

Joe must have noticed the surprise in our faces. “What do you guys know?”

Everyone was silent. We were just glancing at each other, and at the ground.

“You guys know something and aren’t telling me. Now what is it?”

Mike simply said “We never saw or heard anything. Sorry.”

After Joe pulled out, we all gathered quickly into Mike’s garage, in which the attic had become sort of a hideout for us along with the loft in his Grandma’s barn. Once we all were in with the door safely bolted Mike turned to us with his finger to his mouth as if to tell us to keep quiet because all the way up the ladder to the attic we were asking such questions such as “What are we going to do?” and “Why didn’t we tell him the truth?” and “Old Bean Head was right after all.”

“Shhh!” Mike made the noise loud enough that we knew he was serious, and then in a hushed voice he continued. “This is our chance.”

“Chance for what?” I asked. “A chance to get in trouble for lying?”

“No, a chance to have the real live adventure that we have been wanting to have ever since we started our Christian Conqueror’s Camping Club.”

We had started the club a few weeks earlier with the vow to “Preserve the right, and right the wrong, we’ll show our might, and sing our song.” We really weren’t much for singing, but it’s the only word we could think of that rhymed with ‘wrong’ when Johnny had his wood burning set with him so he could burn our motto in the wall along with our name, and a coat of arms we had designed with the four panels having a sword, a Bible, a campfire, and a sling shot.

“Besides,” Mike continued “I didn’t lie. We didn’t see anything. It was Beanie that saw it, and not us, right?”

“Well, I guess you’re right,” Johnny replied. “What do we do now?”

“Here’s my plan,” Mike answered. “We go back up to the cabin tonight, take Beanie with us so he can show us where to look, and take turns watching during the night. When one of us hears something, we wake the others, and we all sneak down to the edge of the Franklin’s pasture, follow the rustlers, and write down their license plate number. Tomorrow we take the number to Joe, and the case is solved. Simple, huh?”

Even though the plan seemed fool proof, I had a feeling deep inside like I had just swallowed a whole egg or something. Somehow, I knew that our ‘first big adventure’ could turn out to be our last.

IV.

“How did I ever get myself into this?” I said softly, perched on a stump that was only about 50 yards from our cabin, and where, with Beanie’s help, we had decided would be the best lookout point to spot the rustlers. It was shortly after midnight, and according to what he had told us earlier, the action would probably be any time now.

We were lucky to get any information from Beanie at all. After we came down from the garage attic that day Beanie was outside to meet us.

“What did Franklin want?” Beanie asked in his usually whining way.

“How would you like to go camping with us tonight, Beanie?” Mike offered, acting as if Beanie had said nothing. “We’ll even take some blankets along to make you a nice bed, and we’ve got plenty of food.”

“Hey, that sounds great!” Beanie responded excitedly. But then, as if to catch himself, he drew back, and said, “Now wait a minute. Why all the sudden do you want me to go when you haven’t asked me before?”

He was right. Our parents had told us that if we were going to have some sort of club that we had to have all Christian members because the Bible said something about ‘unequal yokes’ or some such thing. Anyway, it meant that you need to have only Christians for close friends. We were supposed to be friendly to unsaved folks, and so we talked ourselves into inviting Beanie for the night instead of just trying to get what information we needed, and leaving him stranded. Maybe that would make up for the way we treated him.

We all must have looked sort of like my dog does when he has been running through Mom’s flower beds. Beanie knew something was up.

“Did Franklin see those rustlers? Is that it?”

“Well, no,” Johnny replied, “Not exactly. Just come along with us tonight, and we’ll explain everything.”

“No! You explain now! I want to know what Franklin said to you, and why you want me or I’m not going tonight or Sunday to your church either.”

“Now wait a minute, Beanie,” I blurted in. “You promised to go with us to ‘Bring a Buddy day’ Sunday. You gotta go.”

“I don’t have to go anywhere. And besides, what kind of buddy am I? Is this the way you guys treat all your friends?”

Mike stepped toward Beanie, and held his hands up, and said “Now calm down Beanie. We owe you an apology. What you saw last night must have been rustlers. Joe said he’s been missing some of his dad’s feeder calves, but he thinks they are just getting out. We know better though, don’t we? And with your help we’ll catch those thieves red handed. Now are you with us or not?”

Mike, Johnny, Ronnie, and I put our hands on each other’s, and Beanie walked over, and placed his on top, and said, “I’m with you.”

Now, Beanie was probably fast asleep, along with Mike, and Ronnie, while Johnny, and I kept watch, Johnny being just a little ways from me down along the fence line. We signaled each other about every five minutes with the small clickers that Mike had found in his closet, left ever from last year’s New Year’s Eve party we had at our church. We would push the things only once, which was actually a “click, click,” to let each other know we were still there, and we were to make three double clicks in rapid succession if we saw anything. There was a time or two that I could hardly tell if Johnny clicked at all. The clickers sounded almost like the katydids that were singing up a storm. Probably all the better, though, for we had a perfect signal that blended with the forest noise.

The night was so peaceful. Once I had been there for about an hour my heart finally settled down, and my mind started drifting while I gazed at the stars overhead. I must have drifted very far, maybe so far as to doze off, because I was jolted back to reality with the sudden noise of “Pete, you okay?” It was Johnny.

“Yea, I’m Ok. How about you?”

“I guess you didn’t hear my katydid clicker.”

“No. I guess I didn’t.” I replied not wanting to admit my laziness on my post of duty.

Johnny was walking toward me in the dark, and came over, and set on a log beside my stump.

“I thought Beanie was going to get saved tonight.” Johnny said.

“Me too,” I said, echoing Johnny’s thoughts.

We had devotions around the campfire as we had every time we were out this summer. After Mike read some verses, we prayed. Mike, then me, then Johnny, then Ronnie prayed as we took turns around the circle. Then, to the surprise of all of us, Beanie started praying. His prayer was a mixture of the ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’ prayer we all said as children, and asking God to bless the animals, and trees.

None of us knew just what to say when he said ‘Amen’ so we didn’t say anything—each of us being as stunned as the other. Johnny, and I just got up, and left to take our turns as lookouts, and the other boys snuggled down in their sleeping bags.

As we continued to talk about the strange occurrence, we failed to notice the light in the valley below us. Well, at least we failed to notice until we heard quite a racket coming from one of the young calves in the Franklin herd.

We both stood in amazement and looked at each other hoping the other would give the order to continue with our plan.

I couldn’t talk, and neither could Johnny.

There we were, just a couple of kids, and we were expected to go over the hill, and face a band of cattle rustlers right in the act of their thieving work.

I was scared to death.

V.

“I’ll go get the other guys,” I said, finally getting the courage to speak.

“No! Wait.” Johnny grabbed my arm as I started getting up. “By the time we get back they might be gone, and besides, we will be more likely to sneak up on them if there are just two of us.”

“I guess you’re right,” I conceded.

“You go down the fence row till you come to the corner and follow the east side of the pasture. I’ll cross the fence here and check out the north side. They’ve got to have their truck on one of those two sides.”

Johnny gave the order almost as well as Mike always had. We were getting older, but Mike always seemed to have the upper hand over all of us, though. I know he would like to have been out there, but he was so sure that the action would take place closer to dawn.

“Oh well,” I said to myself as I slipped through the saplings that lined the fence row. “I wanted adventure, and I got it.”

Somehow I had always viewed our ‘future adventures’ as times when we discovered old boxes in ditches that were filled with money or something like that. Sneaking up on cattle rustlers in the middle of the night was the furthest thing from my mind when we started our ‘Triple C’ club, the three C’s being for the name we picked out, the ‘Christian Conqueror’s Camping’ Club.

When I reached the corner of the fence row, I could no longer hear any calves or see any lights. All of the sudden I realized that I was probably too far from Johnny to signal him. I tried a couple of clicks with my ‘katydid’ clicker, but with no success. I was alone. All I had was my pocketknife, a pack of chewing gum, my flashlight that I would use to spot the license plate, a stub of a pencil, and a paper to write it down, and my ‘pocket katydid.’

I almost chuckled out loud when I thought of the clicker we used as a signaler - a ‘katydid.’ In fact, I did snicker when I realized that this whole ‘adventure’ could be called ‘The Katydid Caper.’ Little did I realize that that’s exactly what we would call it for years to come--the ‘Katydid Caper.’

The east side of the Franklin’s pasture went from the top of the ridge that we camped out on, down to a valley, and back up another hill before it met the north fence that Johnny was heading for at that very minute. When I was about halfway down the hill, I heard the calf again. Kinda hoping that the noise was from Johnny’s side, I crept on. The closer I got to the bottom the louder the noise was. Ever once I a while I would get a glimpse of a light flickering through the trees. They were on my side, all right, and it was up to me to do my job.

I decided that with the noise that calf was making, they wouldn’t much hear me, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Ever so lightly I used my best techniques to slip up on them that I had learned squirrel hunting with Dad, and got close enough that I could hear them talking.

“Quick, let down the gate.” One of them said, only in a whisper so I couldn’t tell who they were if I knew them or even how old they were. “That’s it. Now throw me the rope.

Finally, I was close enough that I could peep through the brush and see them. There were two of them. One had a flashlight that he turned off and put in his pocket just as I saw them, and the other had the end of a rope which was temporarily wrapped around a fencepost to keep the calf still that the other end was tied to.

Their truck was just a regular pickup that looked like it must have been black or some dark color like blue or green. At least it looked black in the moonlight. The tail gate was facing the fence that I was beside so I couldn’t get a look at the back license plate. I wouldn’t dare try anyway because they would see my light for sure. It was best to wait till they loaded the calf and drove away. Then I could turn on the light, and keeping it focused on the ground, I could flip it up, just at the right time, get the license number, and get out of there so even if they did see it I would be long gone.

One of the guys, the one with the flashlight, climbed into the back of the pickup by way of the back of the cattle rack on the truck that was folded over the fence to make a ramp. That’s the way they could get the calves out without a trace of a break in the fence.

The fellow outside threw the end of the rope to the other guy in the truck, and while the one pulled, the other got behind the calf to coax it along in the truck. Pretty soon they had it in, and the gate shut up. Then, quick as a flash, they were both over the fence, and in the truck.

They started it up so quickly, I barely had time to do anything. By the time I turned on my flashlight, and shown it toward the truck, they had already gotten out of sight. I could hear the truck slow a bit to go across the creek that I knew was just a few yards from the fence in which we would seine for minnows during most of the spring or at least until the creek dried up for the summer. Then I heard them coming up the creek bed, and then all of the sudden realized that they would be passing no more than twenty-five feet from where I sat. I know I would have no chance to get the license number because of the weeds, and really didn’t know what to do.

Just then I realized that I was sitting right next to a poke berry bush. I could see a purplish- red clump of berries shining in the moonlight. These were the very same type of berries we used to mash and use the juice for ink by using a chicken feather as a quill.

My older brother insisted many times that the early settlers used the juice for ink all the time. My sister didn’t believe him, and every time we were down over the hill from our house, they would get in an argument about it. That wasn’t so strange though. They were in an argument most of the time. My brother always thought he knew the answer to every question that could possibly be imagined, and my sister disagreed with everything he said even if she knew he was right.

It really didn’t make a very good ink, but it made a terrific stain. And I knew that if I could just hit that truck, that just maybe we would be able to identify it later by the stain even if we didn’t know the license number. As quick as a wink I grabbed the clump of berries just as the truck was passing by and threw them with all my might. They found their mark with a loud thump. Luckily, the truck was making so much noise going through the heavy brush that the rustlers never heard it.

I guess luck really didn’t have anything to do with it. The fact was, that the good Lord was watching over me, and protecting me just like our Sunday School teacher said he does. I sure was glad then that I was a Christian.