The Mystery at Bob-White Cave (14 page)

“Oh, I
hope
so,” Trixie said and looked expectantly at Jim and Brian. “I
know
we can find all the fish if we just get a chance to look for them without anything else happening.”

“I wish you had a guide to go with you to replace Slim.”

“I honestly think we know more about a cave than Slim does... Bob-WhiteCave, at least. Linnie said she’d go with us if her mother would give her permission. May she, please, Mrs. Moore?”

“I suppose so,” Mrs. Moore said reluctantly. “I wish you’d just content yourselves with going fishing in Ghost River or the lake.”

“With Slim gone, we’ll get along just fine in the cave,” Trixie urged.

“Do you think it’ll be all right?” Mrs. Moore asked Uncle Andrew.

“If Linnie may go, yes. The Bob-Whites have proved themselves pretty reliable in the woods around their home in Sleepyside. Come back before five o’clock, and observe all the rules for spelunking!”

Over in the cave, in the big entrance room, Honey asked, “Do you have your lights? Three kinds for each one of you?”

They all checked and nodded.

“Do you have waterproof matches?”

Trixie held up the plastic envelope to show Honey. “How could we forget? Every time we come into the cave you check and double-check. Have we left a note outside? Have we brought our ropes? Do we have extra carbide for our lamps? Canteens? Chocolate bars?”

Honey looked dismayed. “I didn’t know I was such a bossy person.”

“Heavens, you aren’t, Honey! We’re as grateful as can be. At least, I am. I always get so excited about things that I never remember anything I should do. I couldn’t accomplish anything without you, Honey.”

“Well, now that the Admiration Society has concluded its meeting, shall we explore a little?” Mart asked. He led the way to the tunnel.

As they neared the wall, Trixie cried out, “Why, that’s my bait bucket!”

“It is!” Honey said. “It’s been right here all the time. That makes us look pretty foolish.”

“It makes the bait bucket animated if it’s been here all the time. It didn’t walk over here to the wall. I left it just inside the opening to the cave. Hurry; let’s look inside!” Trixie threw back the lid and saw the ghost fish and crayfish.

“It
is
my bucket,” she cried delightedly. “I wonder if Slim got scared and brought it back. Do you suppose it was Slim we saw on the lake last night? I’ve never known so many things to happen. I’m almost convinced that there
are
ghosts. I won’t be separated from that bait bucket again. Here, Mart, see if you can push it ahead of you through the tunnel.”

Mart led the procession. The crawlway was short, and they soon stood in the other room. They had forgotten how beautiful it was and turned their heads about, flashing their carbide lamps on the gleaming stalactites. “Mercy, what happened to them?” Honey cried. “They’re broken off—dozens of them. Who’d do a thing like that?”

Apparently someone had taken a blunt instrument and deliberately knocked off the tips of many of the beautiful calcite formations.

“What a horrible thing to do!” Linnie said. “Some crazy person or somebody very evil did that.”

“It was Slim,” Trixie said positively. “No one else but us knew about this cave or this room. I hope Uncle Andrew gets the sheriff to find him.”

“If it
was
Slim, it’s sure strange about the bait bucket,” Honey said. “He didn’t have a change of heart and bring back the fish and then come on in here and wreck everything. I’m not too sure we should stay here. I think your uncle would want us to go right back to the lodge.”

“There’s no one here now. Please, Honey, let’s look around and see if we can’t find some more fish while we’re right here on the spot,” Trixie begged. “I just can’t make any sense out of what’s going on.”

“I
think Slim is in cahoots with that Englishman,” Mart said.
“I
think they’ve been out here early this morning before we got here.
I
think they left the bait bucket here and didn’t think we’d be over here today, after roaming the woods last night.
I
think it was Slim who shot that rifle last night, and
I
think he’s working with that Mr. Glendenning.”

“I’m
sure
it was Slim who fired the gun, but who was the man with the pack on his back? And what did he have in that pack? It wasn’t the bait bucket,” Trixie said.

Mart threw up his hands. “Let’s forget the whole thing and work fast, before they get back. It was right over in this stream that Trix found the fish we do have.”

Mart went down on his haunches and beamed his head lamp into the shallow water.

Trixie peered into the water, got up, went farther along the spring, and crouched again. “That’s strange,” she said. “I can see shadows on the bed of the stream, but I can’t see anything in the water, can you?”

“They’re the shadows of crayfish,” Brian said. “They’re transparent, like the one you have in the bucket. Though you can see right through them, the light doesn’t go through very well, so a shadow is left. There aren’t any fish here. Let’s look farther along the stream.”

Carefully they made their way around the hard flowstone, across wet clay, and over slippery rocks.

“It’s the blackest black in this cave that I ever saw in my life,” Honey said.

Mart laughed. “You can’t
see
blackness.”

“I wonder. Let’s put out our lamps and find out how dark it would be.”

“Not now!” Trixie said quickly. “Not when we’re trying to find the fish!”

“Just for a little while,” Honey said. “The rest of us would like to try it. That is, I think so. Wouldn’t you?”

“We’ll never have a better chance,” Brian said. “You can imagine you’re a ghost fish, Trixie, and tell us where a bunch of spelunkers could find you.”

Trixie laughed good-naturedly and put out her carbide lamp.

One by one, the others did the same.

The darkness was unbelievable. Not a person could see an inch in front of his face. It was eerie—and also frightening.

“Are we all here?” Honey asked breathlessly.

They laughed aloud to reassure themselves.

“Let’s join hands,” Linnie suggested. “Then we won’t be so scared.”

“Who’s scared?” Mart asked, but he grasped Linnie’s hand and held it hard. His voice echoed and reechoed in the vaulted room.

Somewhere there was a rustling noise, as though a large animal had moved.

The drip-drip of the stalactites boomed as drops fell to waiting pools.

A fragment of limestone broke from the ceiling and dropped with what seemed a deafening crash.

A strange, weird sound came from inside the wall, a scratching sound, then a low moan!

“Was that someone groaning?” Trixie asked with a trembling voice.

A muffled sound answered her, unintelligible but unmistakably human.

“There’s someone besides us in this cave!” Trixie cried and turned on her flashlight.

Other flashlights clicked, illuminating faintly the expanse of wall across the stream.

A deep, low moan came again, then the words “Get me out!”

“Hold it!” Jim answered. “We hear you.”

Hurriedly the Bob-Whites lit their carbide lamps and gathered at the opening from which the voice came.

Trixie, more daring, her light leading her, crawled ahead into the tunnel. Not far from the opening, the passage narrowed sharply, and just ahead of her she saw blue-jeaned legs and the soles of shoes.

“Can you hold on a minute?” she asked.

“Get me out!” the voice cried.

Trixie backed. “There’s a man stuck in there,” she said. “Jim, you’re the strongest. He’ll have to be pulled out.”

So Jim crawled in and tugged. The walls of the tunnel were slimy and wet. Jim pulled and pulled. Brian and Mart pulled at Jim’s feet.

“He’s easing out!” Jim cried. “Don’t jerk my legs off. He’s sliding on the wet clay. Get out of the way, Brian, Mart. Here we come!”

The boys inched back through the opening. Then Jim came out, covered with slimy yellow clay.

Then Slim!

The Bob-Whites’ former guide was a sorry sight. His hands and face were masked over with clay through which blood oozed from raw scratches. He sat on the floor, gasping yet snarling, in spite of near exhaustion and suffocation.

“Wait till he gets his breath,” Trixie said. “Then we’ll soon find out what he’s doing in Bob-White Cave.”

Slim muttered angrily.

“And why he broke all the beautiful stalactites,” Honey added indignantly.

“Let’s give him a drink of water before we ask him anything,” Trixie said. She opened her canteen and held it to him.

Slim slapped it to the ground. “Don’t do me no favors!” he said. “Let me out of here!”

“That’s enough of that!” Brian said disgustedly. “You’re nothing but a stupid bully. You must have gone crazy to do all the damage you did around here.”

“Yeah,” Slim agreed slyly, “yeah... that’s what it was. I dropped my candle. It went out. I went nuts in the darkness. I hammered around till I found that hole I got stuck in. You know how it is without any light. I heard you when you put your lights out. What would
you
do? Bust things up?”

“I hardly think so,” Trixie said thoughtfully, “but I might go crazy and not know what I was doing. Why did you come here? Bob-White Cave is
our
cave. And why did you decide to bring back my bait bucket that you stole?”

“What bait bucket?” Slim asked, his dirt-encircled eyes darting around. Then, when he saw the bucket with the ghost fish, he got up, cursed, and fiercely kicked it over. The ghost fish and crayfish slithered toward the stream, but Trixie was quick enough to recapture them and give them fresh water.

“That was a rotten, mean thing to do!” Jim said in a cold voice. “We
can
put you back in that crawl hole, fella. There are three of us.”

“No, you won’t!” Slim cried. “I’d die!”

“It’s about time you realized that.” Jim’s voice was stern. He pointed. “That way out! Start walking!”

“And stay out of our cave!” Trixie added.

Slim stopped at the exit and said contemptuously, “Whose cave? This cave belongs to anyone who wants to explore it. It’s state property.”

“It’s our cave,” Trixie insisted. “It’s on property that belongs to my Uncle Andrew. He said we could call it our cave.”

“You’d better talk to the law,” Slim said.

“You’re a fine one to mention the law,” Trixie said angrily. “You’ll have some explaining to do to the sheriff about the fire that burned Mrs. Moore’s property. If anyone had been—”

“I didn’t set that fire!” Slim said. “There ain’t nobody can prove I did. That guy in the ghost cabin did it. He ain’t no ghost. He don’t keep chickens in that chicken house of his’n. He keeps gasoline rags. If you don’t believe me, go and look—lessen you’re too scared,” he added insolently. “I ain’t afraid of you or the sheriff. I ain’t afraid of nobody.”

Slim started through the passage to the exit in the other room. “And I can come into this cave anytime I want to,” he added. “When I signed up so’s I could get the reward for the fish, I was told that I could try and find them in any cave around here. What do you think of that?”

“They meant if you had the owner’s permission,”

Trixie said, “and you’ll never get permission to explore Bob-White Cave.”

“Who needs permission?” Slim asked sarcastically and disappeared into the short crawlway.

“Now I don’t know what to believe,” Mart said. “If there
are
gasoline rags at the ghost cabin, then—”

“I’d have to see them to believe Slim,” Jim said. “We’ll tell your Uncle Andrew, and the sheriff will look into it. After last night, I’m not in favor of any more amateur sleuthing.”

“Well,
I
am,” Trixie said, undaunted. “I’m not misled by Slim’s talk about the gasoline rags. Did you happen to hear what he said about registering? Do you suppose we have to register before we can qualify for the reward?”

“It sure looks like it,” Brian said. “If we’d had any sense, we’d have found out all the facts from that man from the magazine the last time we were in White Hole Springs.”

Trixie picked up the bait bucket and threw the nylon rope over her shoulder. “It’s just one more hurdle,” she said resignedly. “If we have to register, we have to register. I just hope we’re not too late.”

Wild-Goose Chase • 14

AREN T YOU BACK pretty early?” Uncle Andrew asked. “Did you get discouraged? Give up?”

“No!” they exploded in one voice. Then they told Uncle Andrew and Mrs. Moore what had happened.