The Mystery at Bob-White Cave (7 page)

“Maybe about a couple dozen of ’em,” Slim answered and took a deep swallow of coffee. “Trouble is, they might be too rough goin’ for a tenderfoot. Wouldn’t want to get too dirty. There’s spider webs and bats and maybe a lot of slush and sharp stones in them.”

I guess we’d better have a little better understanding,” Uncle Andrew said, aware of the Bob-Whites’ growing impatience with Slim. “These young People may come from a different part of the country,b ut they can probably outswim you, outhike you, and, you don’t watch your way of talking, outfight you.

They can go anyplace you go and do anything you do.

I just want you to guide them and obey rules that are just good common sense. I’ve already gone over them with you to refresh your mind. Do you think we understand one another now, Slim? I’m willing to pay you well to guide the Bob-Whites. They respect: you and your skill as a woodsman. Give them the same respect for their talents. I think you may be in for a surprise.”

Slim, who had reddened and bristled at the beginning of Uncle Andrew’s conversation, changed his expression when reminded of good pay. He forced a  grin. “All right. I’ll call it quits if they will. I know my way around here, and I’m willin’ to guide ’em. Never had no trouble before with guidin’.”

“I think I know a good place for them to go,” Linnie said timidly.

“Where?” Trixie asked eagerly.

“You’ll have to take the boat. It’s across the inlet I after you pass the cove at the bottom of the path,”
m
she explained to Slim. “I was over there one day, and right under the cliffside, exactly kitty-corner from this lodge, there’s the entrance to a real big cave. I don’t think it’s ever been explored. It’s beautiful inside, just like a palace!” Linnie’s eyes glowed. “I’ve only been just inside the entrance. There’s a stream runs through it, too, Trixie. You might find a ghost fish there.”

“What would you want with one of them skinny f little things?” Slim asked.

“Then you’ve seen ghost fish in caves?” Trixie asked quickly.

“Once or twice,” Slim said. “Gosh, what would you do with ’em? Now, if it’s fish you’re after, I know a place for bass.”

“It isn’t bass we’re after,” Trixie said, then added, “just now. I guess maybe Easterners are peculiar, don’t you think, Honey?”

Honey nodded. She knew Trixie was trying to confuse Slim.

“Do you think we’ll find any ghost fish in the cave across the inlet?” Trixie asked, trying to disguise the eagerness in her voice.

“As likely there as anyplace. But what in tarnation you want with ’em, I’ll never know.”

“That’s as it should be,” Trixie answered. “Let’s go, Bob-Whites!”

She went into the living room, gathered up her bucket and dip net, put on her hard hat with the carbide lamp, and called a cheerful good-bye to Mrs. Moore, Uncle Andrew, and Linnie.

Then the Bob-Whites followed Slim single file down the winding path to the lake. He was as agile as an Ozark coonhound, but, slipping and sliding, they did manage to keep up. At the lake’s edge, they threw their nylon ropes and other paraphernalia into the boat and climbed aboard. Slim and Jim took the oars. Mart pushed off from shore, then jumped into the aft seat.

Here we go!” Trixie exclaimed.

Small waves rocked the boat, for a brisk breeze had come up. They sang as they went,

“Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily...

“Heavens, what on earth is that? Someone’s in trouble.” Trixie pointed. “Look, Jim—Brian!”

Jim dropped his oar quickly and went over the side. Mart and Brian, then Trixie, followed. They knew they could never get their boat to the rescue in time.

A gray-haired man was struggling in the water beyond the cove, clearly losing strength. He had no chance of reaching his overturned boat. Jim swam like a water rat, while Trixie, with strong, even strokes, followed close behind him.

“Stay with the boat, Honey,” Brian called back. “Pull it over here when we reach him!”

Jim, pushing himself at an amazing pace, reached the man first and tried to grasp the neck of his shirt to keep him afloat. Frenzied, the man put both arms around Jim’s neck, pulling them both underwater.

Jim bobbed to the surface, gasped desperately for breath, and shook the drowning man like a terrier to try to loosen his spasmodic grip. Trixie, closing in, with the boys right behind her, grasped the man’s fingers and twisted them to break his hold. He fought her with all his might, his face distorted in agony, but Trixie persisted, twisting vainly to free Jim’s throat. Then, before Brian or Mart could help her, she drew back her doubled fist and brought it up sharply under the elderly man’s chin. It struck with such force that at once the stunned man relaxed his hold.

It was a matter of seconds for Brian and Mart to take over. Mart freed Jim and began swimming back to the boat, pulling Jim’s weakened body after him. Brian grasped the elderly man under his chin and swam with short, fast scissors kicks and a fast arm pull. After a few strokes, he slid his hand down across the chest of the inert man and towed him. Trixie then righted the man’s boat, retrieved the floating oars, and pulled the boat through the water.

All of them converged on the lodge boat, which Slim, at Honey’s urging, propelled toward them.

Trixie held the elderly man’s boat still while Brian hoisted him in. He was already showing signs of returning strength when Brian took up the oars.

As the two of them headed toward shore, Trixie, her face reflecting the deep anxiety she felt for Jim, swam toward the lodge boat.

“What do you know, Trix?” Mart said as she climbed aboard. “Jim even swam part of the way here.”

“It would take more than that to knock me out,” Jim said huskily. “Don’t think I don’t know what you did, though, Trixie... all of you, for that matter. That man’s arms are made of steel.” He rubbed his throat.

Back where you come from, does it always take three men and a girl to rescue a person?” Slim asked sarcastically.

“Back where we come from,” Trixie answered coldly, “we don’t draw straws when a man is drowning.”

“If you mean why didn’t I go for him, too, I’ll tell you. With four of you in the water before I could say scat, I wasn’t hankerin’ for no swim. I figured, too, that a man with horse sense wouldn’t go out in no boat lessen he could swim. I ain’t no coward.”

The Bob-Whites neither affirmed nor denied his statement. Paying no attention whatever to Slim, Trixie said, “We’ll take the man to Mrs. Moore. She’ll know what to do.”

By the time they had beached the boat, the elderly man had regained some strength. “I think I can walk now,” he told the Bob-Whites. “Sorry to be so much trouble to you all.”

He couldn’t really walk steadily, however, and the boys half carried him the rest of the way up the path to the lodge.

Mrs. Moore and Linnie ran out to meet them, and Mrs. Moore told them to take the man into the living room and bring pillows and blankets. For a while they were so busy getting hot coffee and hot-water bottles for the man that no one had a chance to explain what had happened.

When the revived man tried to talk, Mrs. Moore shushed him and directed the Bob-Whites to get into dry clothing immediately. Honey, who hadn’t been in the water, could help her, and Linnie prepared some hot food while Uncle Andrew sat with the patient. “There’s plenty of time to tell what happened,” Mrs. Moore said. “We don’t want to add pneumonia to our troubles.

The Bob-Whites obediently started upstairs, talking and gesturing vigorously.

Slim had been leaning against the doorjamb. “I’ll come back later if you ’uns want to try it again today,” he said.

He was out and astride his mule before anyone could answer.

“I doubt very much that there will be another expedition today,” Uncle Andrew said.

“Uncle Andrew,
please!”
Trixie begged from the stairs.

“We’ll find out first what this is all about,” her uncle said. “It looks as though a tragedy has been averted. That’s no laughing matter.”

“Everything’s all right
now,”
Trixie insisted. Then, when her uncle said no more, she followed her brothers and Jim upstairs.

The gray-haired man pulled himself up, threw off the blankets, and announced, “Everything is all right. How does a man even attempt to thank someone for saving his life?”

“What happened?” Uncle Andrew asked the man quietly.

“My name is Glendenning. I’m a visitor in this area. My home is in London. I have a variety of interests. I suppose you would call me an archaeologist or a geologist. Whatever the designation, there’s one thing certain: I’ll never be able to master a simple Ozark rowboat. It’s as balky as the mules around here. I thought I was doing very well, when all at once I was catapulted into the water. I think one of my own oars saved me. I suppose, really, I’d be in Davy Jones’s locker now if it hadn’t been for the young people. It’s always a question of whether a man’s life is worth saving, but I’ve a wife and daughter back in England who may think I’m of some value. I say, how do I go about it now to row back to where I started?”

As the man and Uncle Andrew talked and Mrs. Moore, Linnie, and Honey bustled about preparing lunch, the Bob-Whites trooped down the stairs, no worse for their experience. Honey hurried to tell the others what Mr. Glendenning had told Uncle Andrew.

“It’s wonderful to see you looking so well—” Trixie began but was stopped quickly by the man’s rushing words of gratitude.

“You’re no bigger than my daughter Gwen back in England,” he said, then rubbed his chin, “but you pack a better punch! You’re certainly a fine brave lass, and I thank you.”

He took Trixie’s hands in his and bowed. Then he shook hands with Honey, Jim, Brian, and Mart and warmly thanked them. “I owe you all a real debt. I hope I haven’t spoiled your whole day.”

The Bob-Whites, not at all at ease when they were being thanked for anything they did, quickly assured him that the best part of the day was still ahead of them.

This promised to be true, too, for Slim rode into the yard just as they finished their lunch.

In spite of the Englishman’s protest that he could find his way on foot to the cabin or row his own boat back, Mrs. Moore had persuaded him to let Linnie drive him. “I’m going up the road with her to take something to a neighbor who’s ailing,” she insisted. “It’ll be easier for you to ride with us.”

The Bob-Whites, sure that Mr. Glendenning was in good hands, again followed Slim down the path to the lakeshore.

Though their guide’s code differed radically from theirs, and though they found it hard to understand his role in the morning’s episode, by tacit agreement they accepted him for what he was—their guide but not necessarily their friend.

“Now, I wonder,” Jim said as the boat was headed across the inlet, “just what that Englishman, clearly a cultured Englishman, is doing in this part of the world.”

“You’ll wonder no more,” Trixie said sadly, “when I tell you something I saw. In the excitement of getting him to the lodge, I forgot to tell you. I saw it again just now. Do you know what Mr. Glendenning has lashed to the seat in that boat?”

“Out with it!” Mart said. “What did you see?”

“A dip net and a carbide lamp, that’s what I saw,” Trixie told him. “That Englishman is after exactly the same thing as we are.”

Five-Hundred-Dollar Poison • 7

THE BOB-WHITES beached the boat at the foot of a limestone cliff that towered forty or fifty feet above, making a sharp, protruding ledge. \

Impatiently, Trixie ran ahead up the shore. “Jeepers, did you feel that?” she shouted as a blast of cool air rushed out from under the center of the rock roof. “It’s the entrance to the cave!” She pushed aside a curtain of vines and climbed over a pile of crushed stone that half filled the entrance.

“Just a minute, miss,” Slim called. “Just a minute. There’s things to be done. Jim, put that board up outside the cave and mark just what time we’re goin’ in and when we’ll be out. It’s downright foolish, but it’s one of the things your uncle said to do.”

Jim made a marker and set it up outside the cave. “It’s about two o’clock now, and we’d better make it... well, say about four?”

“That’s only
two
hours,” Trixie protested. “What could we find in two hours?”

“All right,” Jim said patiently, “let’s make it five o’clock then.”

“If you’re goin’ to spend three hours in every cave we go into...” Slim began, but he was talking to air, because Trixie was over the pile of rubble and inside the cave.

She couldn’t see a thing ahead of her. There was only subdued light at the entrance, and beyond that, darkness. “Our carbide lamps! It’ll take an hour to light the old things,” she said. “Mart, please shine your big flashlight.”

“We’ll light our carbide lamps,” Brian said authoritatively. “I’ll show you how they work.”

He took off his hat and lifted the lamp from the clamp. Then he unscrewed the two halves of the metal cylinder, poured water into the top half and carbide into the lower, and screwed the two halves back together. He set the valve in “on” position and waited till the water started dripping into the carbide. Acetylene gas, thus formed, escaped through the pin-sized hole in the concave metal reflector.