The Mystery at Bob-White Cave (10 page)

“I know that,” Trixie said. “But this is a start. The other specimens are around here someplace, and we’ll come back after them tomorrow.”

Surprise Party ● 9

THERE, THERE, NOW, what’s all the excitement?” Andrew Belden asked as Honey and Trixie burst through the door, almost knocking him down.

“It’s just that we found a ghost fish!” Honey called. “One of them. Trixie found it!”

“We
all
found it,” Trixie announced breathlessly. “As soon as Slim was out of the way, everything clicked. I wish we could have found the other specimens, but ghost fish are rare. You don’t just find them waiting for you around any old corner.”

“Where is it? May I see it? Do you have it, Jim?”

Jim, Brian, and Mart had come in the back way and were talking to Mrs. Moore in the kitchen.

“We left it in the bait bucket in the cave,” Trixie explained. “We have a ghost crayfish, too. We thought the temperature in the cave would keep them much better.”

“That was a wise thing to do,” Uncle Andrew said. “Yes, what is it, Mrs. Moore?”

“See what I have. The boys found it at the back door—and not a sign of anyone around.”

Mrs. Moore held a splint basket in her hand. She sat on a chair Linnie pushed forward for her and took off the cloth that had been laid over the contents of the basket.

“A dressed wild turkey,” she exclaimed, “and two fat squirrels! Where on earth did they come from? It must be one of the neighbors who’s coming here tonight—”

“Mama!”

“Oh, Linnie, what will you and Mr. Belden do to me? I didn’t mean to let it out. It’s a surprise party,” she said to the Bob-Whites. “You might as well know it, anyway, because I never could keep it a secret from five pairs of bright eyes—two pairs of them belonging to famous detectives!”

“A surprise party! We just
love
surprises. Who’s coming?” Trixie forgot her weariness from the cave explorations. Her eyes glowed with anticipation.

“We just let it be known around that we’d have a play-party tonight. The news goes from place to place, and we never really know who’ll be here.” Mrs. Moore got up to take the basket to the kitchen. “Now, wasn’t it nice of someone to leave this offering? We’ll have our dinner right now, and you come and help me please, Linnie.”

“Yes, Mama,” Linnie answered, then added, “It’s a good dinner!”

It was a good dinner. There were shelled garden peas cooked with scraped new potatoes. There were snap beans cooked with an end of salt pork. There was ham, just brought in from the smokehouse that afternoon, along with fried chicken and baked yams.

The Bob-Whites bowed their heads while Uncle Andrew asked the blessing, then ate as though they hadn’t tasted food for days. “How could you possibly cook a dinner like this and plan a surprise party, too?” Honey asked.

“Linnie is a great help to me,” Mrs. Moore said. “Everybody’s going to have to help now, though,” Linnie said. “Trixie, if you and Honey will help Mama with the dishes, and if the boys will help me, we can be ready before the first person comes.”

The girls hurried about, scraping dishes and dipping water for washing out of the big reservoir on the kitchen stove.

At Linnie’s direction, the boys folded up the hooked rugs in the living room, pushed the furniture back, and brought in planks to put across chairs pushed against the wall.

“Will there be that many people? Will they have to sit on planks? Aren’t there enough chairs?” Sitting on a plank wasn’t Mart’s idea of having a good time at a party.

“You’ll see,” Linnie answered. “The women Mama’s age always sit along the wall and watch while we play games and dance. The men will play Pitch Up here in the corner. We’ll put this table there for them. Jim, maybe you’d bring some of those camp chairs in from the porch.”

Before long, the whole character of the lodge living room had changed. It looked just like an old-time Western dance hall.

When the sun began to sink behind the pine-covered hills, the purple shadows lengthened, and Mrs. Moore pulled down the hanging kerosine lamps to light them. Then the first guests came. They were the Bill Hawkins family. The children, dressed to starched discomfort, got down from the wagon and waited, silently and timidly, till their father unhitched his mules, put feed in the wagon, and came up to the house. Then they passed single file through the doorway.

The Bob-Whites, glad to see the children, greeted the family warmly, and soon they seemed quite at home in the lodge.

One after another, other neighbors came, till soon the big room overflowed. Mothers lined up against one wall, as Linnie had predicted, babies in their laps, and chatted happily. In the corner, playing cards snapped as the men played their game. Young people the ages of the Bob-Whites clapped enthusiastically as the last wagon arrived and the musicians came up, one with a concertina, one with a guitar, and a third with a fiddle. The fiddler led a fourth man by the arm, as he was blind, and half a dozen people ran forward to lead him to a seat. Blindness hadn’t taken away his spirit, however, and he tapped his foot to the tempo as the musicians swung into a tune.

The man with the concertina jumped to the middle of the floor to summon young people for a dance. “First thing, we’ll dance the hall!” he announced. Everyone began to stomp. The women cuddled their babies and stomped. The men at the card table stomped. The children playing around the room and in the kitchen stomped. Stomping to the tune, Jim led Trixie to the center of the circle that formed. Then, as Jim and Trixie danced, the circling couples clapped their hands and sang,

“Lost my sweetheart, skip to my Lou,

Lost my sweetheart, skip to my Lou,

Lost my sweetheart, skip to my Lou,

Skip to my Lou, my darling!

“Skip to my Lou, skip to my Lou,

Skip to my Lou, skip to my Lou,

When you’re through, remember my call,

Change partners now and waltz the hall.”

As the man with the concertina called the changes, Jim and Trixie retired to the outer circle and another couple took their place. This continued till all the pairs had “waltzed the hall.”

In the kitchen, Mrs. Moore had pitchers of lemonade waiting, and colas were cooling in the spring. Linnie and Honey and Trixie carried trays of paper cups to the older people in the big room, and the dance started again.

“Put your little foot,

Put your little foot,

Put your little foot

Right there!

“Take a step to the side,

Take a step to the rear,

Put your little foot right down,

And forever stay near!”

For the laughing, shouting, dancing young people, the musicians then bounced out “Black-Eyed Susie,” “Sugar in My Coffee,” and “Cotton-Eyed Joe.”

“I wish the gang at Sleepyside High could hear these boys,” Mart whispered to Jim. “They really lay it on the line, don’t they?” And Mart, who had only lately learned to dance, whirled out onto the floor with Linnie as his partner.

Meantime, a big moon hovered outside the open doors and windows, turning the outdoors to silver. In the yard, Uncle Andrew busily swished about with a spray gun, killing lurking mosquitoes and chiggers. The boys started smudges going, then spread blankets on the grass and took out several camp chairs for the older people and one for the blind man.

When the guests swooped out of doors, the fun went on. The dancing was over, but the blind man borrowed the fiddler’s fiddle, laid it across his knee, and drew out sweet music to accompany his thin voice.

He sang ballads that found their way to the Ozark hills when English-born settlers came from the southern states; French songs that were inherited from
voyageurs
who explored the long rivers in far-off days and tarried to become the ancestors of the people who sat now in Andrew Belden’s yard.

In the lodge clearing, tucked away in the friendly hills, a cool breeze came up from Lake Wamatosa while the people under the starlight sang and traded stories of witches and “haunts.”

Mrs. Moore went into the house to make fresh lemonade and to bring out some cakes she had baked. Trixie followed to help. Everyone called to Linnie to sing, so, as her fingers swept minor chords from her guitar, she sang plaintively,

“Oh, she was a lass of the low countree,

And he was a lord of high degree,

But she loved his lordship tenderlee.

Sing sorrow... sweet sorrow.

“It’s a song my father made up. Mother taught me to sing it,” she said.

Somewhere, almost whispering, a man’s low voice took up the refrain:

“Sing sorrow... sweet sorrow.”

He sang so low that Linnie did not hear him. No one in the listening crowd on the lawn seemed to notice. Trixie, in the kitchen, heard him and thought it was someone outside in the crowd. Jacob heard him and ran around in circles. Mrs. Moore heard the low refrain, paled, and gasped, “Speak to me, Matthew!” When no voice spoke in answer, she said sadly to Trixie, “It was Matthew’s spirit. He brought that wild turkey and the squirrels. He’s trying to take care of Linnie and me. He brought that little lame bird for me to tend, too.”

“That isn’t possible, Mrs. Moore,” Trixie said. “Think back. It’s only lately you’ve been thinking you saw your husband’s spirit or heard it, isn’t it? If he were going to take care of you, he’d have tried when Linnie was younger. I think you’re so lonesome you just imagine things. One of the guests brought the gift as a surprise. That’s the only possible explanation. I’ll ask.”

“You’ll waste your time. No one in this world brought me the turkey and squirrels. It was Matthew’s spirit. I know that for a fact.”

Trixie shook her head. “But there
aren't
any ghosts, Mrs. Moore.”

“You believe your way, and I’ll believe mine. It comforts me, even if I can’t speak to Matthew. Don’t say you don’t believe in spirits, either, Trixie. Honey told me about your Rip Van Winkle.”

“But that’s just a legend. No one really believes that it happened.”

“More’s the pity. Here in the Ozarks we
know
that restless spirits walk. I’ve seen things myself. I saw a white-covered corpse lying in the road. It was wrapped in a sheet. When I looked again, it wasn’t there. It was just before they sent me Matthew’s knapsack and told me he was dead.

“A woman I know rode over here one afternoon on her mule. As she rode, a baby floated in the air right alongside of her most of the way. She knew it for a sign and hurried to her mother’s house, where her children were spending the day. Her baby had fallen off the bed and been killed. But there! I’ll not spoil your party. Just don’t ever tell me there aren’t any spirits here in our mountains. Oh, I wish I could talk to Matthew!” Mrs. Moore dried her eyes on her apron. “Here’s a pitcher of lemonade, Trixie. You take it out in the yard, please. I think everyone is ready for some more refreshments.”

The children, stuffed to bursting and tired with playing, tumbled to sleep in the grass. Babies grew restless and cried. Men hustled to hitch up their mules. The women crowded around Mrs. Moore to thank her for the party and to invite her and her guests to “light and eat” whenever they were near their homes. Trixie and Honey picked up sleepy children in their arms and carried them to the wagons. The boys helped harness the mules. Then they all shook hands with the guests and stood laughing and waving as the crowd went off up the trail in back of the lodge, singing softly,

“I have a Savior, gone to glory,

I have a Savior, gone to glory,

I have a Savior, gone to glory

On the other shore.”

From the far top of the trail, where the lonesome road crawled crookedly through the trees, their voices came back:

“Won’t that be a happy meeting,

Won’t that be a happy meeting,

Won’t that be a happy meeting On that other shore?”

“That was a glorious party! I love every one of those people. I’ve never known anyone like them!” Trixie said enthusiastically.

Honey gave Mrs. Moore a hug and smiled lovingly at Uncle Andrew.

“You know how to give a real party, sir,” Jim said. “It was Mrs. Moore’s idea—and Linnie’s,” Uncle Andrew said. “They did all the fixing for it.”