The Mystery at Bob-White Cave (13 page)

“What I really hoped was that I could talk you out of going,” Linnie whispered. “It’s dangerous in the woods at night.”

“You told me it was dangerous in the woods in the daytime, too. I really intend to go, Linnie, so, please, don’t try to stop me. You’d better get Jim’s rifle, Mart.”

“He won’t need to; I have it myself,” a low voice answered from the foot of the stairs. Jim came into the ring of Trixie’s flashlight. Back of him came Brian and Honey.

“If you’re going, so are we,” Honey said. “I brought your boots, Trixie.”

“Jeepers, thanks!” Trixie sat on the floor and laced up her high boots as quickly as possible.

They closed the living room door softly behind them. Outside, Jacob rose, stretched himself, and padded along after Linnie.

“For goodness’ sake, don’t let him bark!” Trixie

warned. “If he were to wake Uncle Andrew....”

“He’ll be as quiet as any of us if I tell him to be.” Linnie stroked the big hound’s ears.

She led the Bob-Whites along the corkscrew trail winding through the ravine that paralleled the river and skirted the lake. To follow the mule trail to the ghost cabin would be to run the risk of alerting every hound from the Stacy family’s Old Blue to the Jenkinses’ Jethro.

They kept their flashlights trained on the ground. Overhead, the sky was polka-dotted with stars, and the moon sent little bypaths of silver through the tangled underbrush.

The frogs in the marsh by the river sang their
roua-roua-rou,
some tenor, some bass, and some that just snapped off in a hiccup. The katydids kept up a constant, high-pitched, blatant chorus. “I can’t even hear myself think, they’re so loud,” Trixie complained. “Your mother said to tie a knot in my handkerchief and they’d stop. Wait a minute.”

“Oh, that’s to stop a whippoorwill,” Linnie said. “You bang on a tree to quiet katydids. Try it, Jim.”

Jim banged with the toe of his boot, and the clamor in the trees above stopped. It stopped in the next tree, too, and on and on, in a wave of silence that was more ominous than the racket of the insects.

“Someone has been along this trail recently,” Trixie said. “See the broken branches? I smell tobacco smoke, too.”

“Yeah?” Mart said. “Your imagination’s working again. Why would anybody—what’s that?”

A branch snapped nearby, followed by a rustle in the leaves.

“It was an old coon—no, it couldn’t have been, or Jacob would have been after it. What was it, Jacob?” Linnie asked. Jacob just wriggled his body and wagged his tail. “It must have been some animal—a red fox, maybe, on the way to Mama’s chicken house. Thank goodness, the chickens are safe. I mean, thank you, Jim and Brian and Mart.”

“Doesn’t Jacob go after foxes?” Mart asked, curious.

“Not when I have hold of his collar,” Linnie answered.

The trail turned sharply upward, and the Bob-Whites followed Linnie over rotted tree trunks and through knee-deep beds of dead leaves collected in gullies. On a level piece of ground near the top of the ridge, a stream swollen by the recent rain rushed toward the river and lake far below.

“There goes our visit to the ghost cabin!” Jim said. “We’ll drown if we try to cross that. I’ll bet it’s full of sinkholes a mile deep. Remember those gullies we just crossed?”

Linnie stepped gingerly to the edge of the rushing water. “I think we can cross it,” she said, “though I’ve never before been up here after a rain. Come, Jacob! Can we cross?”

Jacob plunged into the water and half paddled, half scrambled to the other side.

“There’s our answer,” Brian said. They crossed without any trouble. “Good dog, Jacob!” Brian rubbed the hound’s back.

“The cabin shouldn’t be far from here now,” Linnie said. “Wait, Trixie!” Trixie, impatient, fell back to let Linnie lead through the tangled grass, ferns, and wet leaves.

In the clearing ahead of them squatted the old log house. Moonlight played across the sagging porch. The deeply set windows looked out like great staring eyes. Across the valley in back of the cabin, a star trailed across the sky, and a screech owl whimpered in a nearby tree.

Suddenly a rifle shot spat through the trees above the Bob-Whites, and they fell to the ground.

“Don’t move!” Jim commanded.

“That shot came from the woods,” Linnie said. “Oh, I wish we’d stayed at home. No good ever comes from spying on a ghost.”

“Shhh!” Trixie cautioned. “Someone is coming over the rise toward the cabin!”

“It’s nothing human!” Linnie said in a choked voice. “It’s floating in a white cloud, just like we saw that other time, when we were on our way home from town. Oh, I
wish
I hadn’t listened to you when you tried to tell me there aren’t any ghosts.”

“There aren’t, Linnie!” Trixie said in a loud whisper. “Watch!”

“I can see a shape walking. It’s all wrapped in white,” Linnie said. “If it isn’t a ghost....”

“It’s a man!” Jim said. “A man with a huge growth of snow-white beard. And his hair looks like Einstein’s... or like Israel’s former prime minister’s. What’s his name?”

“Ben-Gurion,” Mart answered.
“Non fatuus persecutis ignem
.”

“We’re half-murdered and you quote Latin,” Honey said. “Mart, don’t you have any fear—”

“Of spirits?” Linnie finished the sentence.

“All I said was ‘It is no will-o’-the-wisp I have followed here,’ ” Mart said, “and it isn’t. That old guy is real. He has a pack on his back, too, just like the man Bill Hawkins said he saw. There’s your thief, Trixie, and the arsonist, too.”

“All that is very interesting,” Brian said, “but what was his motive?”

“Who knows? Maybe it was some old feud. I think Slim is mixed up in it with him. Where the heck did he go?”

“Into thin air,” Linnie whimpered, “just like any ghost. It’s the same ghost Mama and I saw when we took the Englishman home after he nearly drowned.”

“It
wasn't
a ghost,” Jim said, “and I think he was going someplace right now to hide the loot he had in that bag.”

“That loot is probably my ghost fish,” Trixie said, “in the bait bucket. But where did he go?”

“Into some cave, maybe,” Mart said. “Let’s keep our eyes open for him.”

“Let’s keep our eyes wider open for the person who shot that rifle,” Trixie said.

Just then it cracked again.

“It’s someone hunting squirrels,” Linnie said.

“At night?”

“They do, sometimes.”

Trixie was not convinced. “Then explain to me why a number-one coon dog like Jacob wouldn’t flush a squirrel.”

“Didn’t you hear him panting to go after that noise? I still have him by the collar.”

“Don’t let him loose, then, or we’re dead ducks,” Mart said.

Just then Jacob pulled free and dashed off into the woods, wagging his tail expectantly.

“Come back here, Jacob!” Linnie called. “Oh, dear, maybe I’ll never see him again. The ghost will get him!”

“The ‘ghost’ isn’t home now, that’s for sure,” Mart said. “I feel like a cat at a mousehole. Say, Trixie, do you want to take a closer look now that the ‘ghost’ is away?”

“I want to find my fish, but I think the ‘ghost’ is hiding it.”

“Let’s take a look around, anyway,” said Mart eagerly.

“Look out!” Linnie cried. “That big black dog—it’s the ghost’s dog. He’s set it to watch for us. You never can kill him, Mart, or frighten him. Don’t try. A person could throw an ax right through a ghost’s black dog, and it wouldn’t budge.”

“That’s a black dog?” Mart asked. He threw a rock.

It sailed through the air, hit the “black dog,” and ricocheted into a clump of bushes.

“See? You couldn’t kill it!” Linnie wailed. “
Please
, let’s go back home.”

“Stop teasing her!” Trixie commanded Mart. Then she put her arms around Linnie. “It’s nothing but an old black stump. Turn your head around. You can see it plain as day in the moonlight. Here’s Jacob, too. You didn’t need to worry about him. That man has gone off into the woods; he doesn’t know we’re here. Let’s just take a quick look into his house and see what he’s up to, and then we’ll take the mule trail home.”

Linnie stepped forward bravely after Jim and Brian. “All right, if you say it’s safe,” she told Trixie.

Slowly, single file, the Bob-Whites stole up to the side of the house and stood in the shadow.

Trixie raised herself on tiptoe and peeked through the window, flashing her light. It traveled over the stone fireplace. Strings of pumpkin and wild onion hung from the mantel, drying. Fagots were piled on the hearth below. On the far side of the room, a little cot stood, neatly made up, and beside it were an old kitchen chair and a rickety table with a kerosine lamp.

When Trixie started to draw her light away, she saw something that made her gasp. Just inside the door, off to one side, stood a bait bucket.

“It’s mine!” she cried. “Just look at it! Someone who lives here stole my fish. Maybe Slim lives here. I

never heard anyone say where he
does
live. I
wish
I could go in there and get my fish!”

“That’s one thing I won’t help you to do, break into someone’s house,” Jim said positively, “and no other Bob-White will, either.”

“I wasn’t going to break in. I only said I wish I could get my bait bucket. I’ll never see it again if I have to wait till Uncle Andrew gets the sheriff to search this place.”

“And I say it probably isn’t your bait bucket at all,” Mart said. “Everyone around this lake has a bait bucket.” He backed away from the window. “I think it’s a good idea to go home.... There!” he added triumphantly as they went around the house. “You completely forgot what Linnie told you, didn’t you, Trixie? She said she saw that wildcat’s pelt nailed to this cabin, and there it is! Do you think someone who saved your life would be likely to steal from you and set fire to Mrs. Moore’s cabin?”

Trixie hung her head. “I guess not, Mart, but I’m baffled. Say, nobody’s even mentioned the Englishman. Linnie thought he lived here. I saw that dip net and bucket in his boat. Maybe
he
took my fish.”

“There you go again, guessing,” Brian said, shaking his head. “You’re a dedicated flatfoot, all right. If the , Englishman took your fish—and that’s pretty improbable—then who set the fire? Who fired those shots in the woods just now?”

“There’s only one person mean enough to fit the whole picture,” Trixie answered.

“Right!” Mart said. “We’ll be smart if we leave it to the sheriff from now on.”

Back at the lodge, all was still and dark.

“Thank goodness,” Trixie said, “we didn’t waken Mrs. Moore or Uncle Andrew. Listen! Listen!”

The katydids and frogs were quiet. In the hush, out on the lake below, they could hear the soft and regular splash of oars. The moon shone bright from a cloudless sky, and, as they all watched, a boat slid into its silver path, a lone figure at its oars.

Unexpected Meeting ● 13

IN SPITE OF their expedition into the woods the night before, the Bob-Whites were up early. Trixie, Honey, Linnie, and Mrs. Moore were stirring around in the kitchen when Uncle Andrew came in.

“I guess you didn’t rest any better than I did last night, did you?” he asked. “Most of the night I kept hearing queer noises. I imagined I heard someone moving about the house. I got up once and didn’t see anyone and decided it was just my imagination. Did you hear anything?”

Trixie looked at Honey questioningly before answering him.

“Go ahead,” Honey said. “We agreed before we came downstairs that we should tell Uncle Andrew all about last night. It doesn’t matter, now that it’s all over.”

Uncle Andrew looked puzzled. “What are you talking about?”

So Trixie told him. The boys came into the kitchen while she was talking, looked sheepishly at one another, then interrupted her to add details she had forgotten.

“I told Mama, too,” Linnie said. “She didn’t like it.” Uncle Andrew’s face was red. “I don’t like it, either,” he said emphatically. “I should have know that Trixie wouldn’t rest until she went after that fish. I didn’t think I’d have to sit up all night and watch. I guess I should be glad she didn’t go alone. Trixie, you constantly keep me on pins and needles!”

“I’m sorry,” Trixie said contritely. “I couldn’t stand not knowing what happened to my fish.”

“Now that you’ve been there, you don’t know any more than you did before. I want to get to the bottom of the matter. I’m going to White Hole Springs to talk to Sam Owens. I suppose Slim is a hundred miles away from here by this time. He probably set the fire and skipped. The stranger you saw, man or spirit, doesn’t sound to me like a criminal. The sheriff will throw some light on the matter.”

“If Slim is gone, who fired that rifle?” Trixie asked. “That’s one of the things we must find out. When we do, we’ll know whom you saw out on the lake at midnight last night, too. Are you planning to row across to that cave again today?”