Haunted Cabin Mystery (8 page)

“Cap,” Violet cried, running to hug him. “What a wonderful idea. Would she do that, Susie? Would your mother do that?”

“I'm sure she would,” Susie said. “She likes taking care of people more than anything in the world.”

The tiniest tinge of light was showing over the woods when Susie and Ned left for home. As Benny stood at the door, watching them leave, he looked up at Cap. “Doesn't anyone want to hear about me and the fox?” he asked.

“What fox?” Cap looked down at him, confused.

“The one that ran into the chicken yard just as I turned the floodlight on.”

The girls sprang to their feet and would have started right out to the chicken house but Benny stopped them. “He's gone now. I ran after him and threw rocks,” he explained. “He snapped at me but he kept on running.”

Henry stared at Benny with his mouth open, remembering that something had brushed by him just as he saw Jessie's signal. And Benny's shouts while Henry was pinning Susie to the wall. “Take that,” Benny had been yelling. “Get going!”

“Did you beat him to the chickens?” Cap asked, grinning.

Benny nodded. “They were all flapping around on the ceiling when I went in. I drove him off before he caught any. And I locked them up safe, too. He smelled bad anyway.”

Cap leaned on his cane as he rose from his chair. “I hope you children haven't any more excitement up your sleeves for me. I've just about had my share for this year and the next one coming.”

As Jessie undressed for bed, she thought about their mystery man, Mr. Jay. Maybe it was just as well they had never mentioned him to Cap. But she still wondered why he had been walking up and down Cap's road, and why he always seemed to be spying on them and was so unfriendly.

That next day went all too quickly. Jessie suggested that they not even try to ride Pilot into town. “You know how much fun it is to make do with what we've got.”

Mrs. Hodges came with Susie and Ned right after lunch. She looked very unhappy when she came, but when she and Cap and the children finished talking in the living room, she was smiling.

Susie and Ned sat on the back porch drinking lemonade with the Alden children.

“The thing we hate the most is that Cap fell in that hole of ours and got hurt,” Ned said quietly.

“He's fine now,” Violet reminded him. “It isn't like he broke a bone or anything.”

By the time they left, everyone was tired. “Is that grandfather of ours ever going to get here?” Benny asked as he tumbled into bed with his eyes already half shut.

“Tomorrow,” Violet said.

CHAPTER 13

The Final Surprise

W
hen Cap, with only a cane for support, came to the kitchen door, he laughed. “Look at you! The sun's barely up, and you already have breakfast started. Where are the boys?”

“Henry's out taking care of Pilot, and Benny is gathering eggs,” Jessie told him. “Grandfather could get here early, and we want to be ready.”

“That's right,” Cap said. “This is the day of the big party, isn't it?”

“A really big party!” Violet said. “Grandfather, and Mrs. Hodges, and Susie and Ned all at once. Won't it be fun?”

“I guess I don't even know what we're going to eat,” Cap said, looking around the kitchen. “You never did get to take that shopping trip into town.”

Jessie laughed. “We didn't need any grocery store. And dinner today is going to be a surprise. You do like surprises, don't you?”

Cap laughed. “If I didn't before, I've learned to this past week. I've sure had enough of them since you came.”

Benny was the first to see his grandfather coming. He was in the chicken yard when he saw the long black car pull up in front of the cabin. He went flying around the house without even thinking to close the gate.

First there were hugs all around, then the children had to take their grandfather for a tour of the barn and garden and orchard. Finally he joined Cap on the front porch, talking over old times.

All four of the children were working on their special meal when Benny looked out the porch window and began to yell. They crowded around him to see why he was so excited.

Violet, still wearing her long apron, ran to the front porch. “Oh, Cap, Grandfather,” she shouted. “Come and see what's happening out in back.”

As the men came around the side of the house, they saw a huge red hen walking out of the woods, clucking happily. Behind her came about a dozen little chicks, peeping and scratching their way toward the gate of the hen yard that Benny had left open.

“Rhoda!” Cap cried. “Doodle, look at that! We'd given up our good friend Rhoda for lost. Now she's come home!”

Jessie asked, “Where do you suppose they've been?”

Cap laughed. “Rhoda has always had a mind of her own. She must have gotten out about the time I was hurt and made her nest in the woods. She's lucky that a fox or a hawk didn't get her or those babies.”

Mr. Alden looked at his old friend a moment. “Do you mean that you're going to welcome her back even though she went off the way she did?”

Cap stared at him. “Of course,” he said. “She was only following her own nature like any creature would.”

“
People
do that, too,” Mr. Alden reminded him, his voice suddenly very quiet.

Cap stared at him. “I'm not sure I know what you're getting at, but you sound mighty serious.”

Mr. Alden took Cap's arm and led him back to the porch. “Don't you?” he asked. “I'm talking about your son, Jason, that's what. He and I have been writing letters back and forth for almost a year. He wants to come home in the worst way but has been afraid to. He wasn't sure he'd be welcome.”

Cap fell silent, staring at his hands. “He's welcome,” he said gruffly. “I've never quit missing him. It's been even worse since I've had your grandchildren here. But I don't even know where he is.”

“He's at the hotel in town,” Mr. Alden told him. “I talked to him just this morning. When he heard you were hurt, he tried to call you but didn't have the nerve to talk.”

“That was Jason breathing on my phone?” Cap asked.

Mr. Alden nodded. “He left his ship when the children came. But he didn't know how to make peace with you.”

“There's no peace to make,” Cap said crossly. “He was young and stubborn and I was older and stubborn. That's long years ago now. I want to see my boy!”

Mr. Alden rose and called into the house. “How long until dinner's ready, Jessie?”

“About a half hour,” she called. “Is that too long?”

“It's perfect,” her grandfather said. “Tell Violet to set another plate. Cap and I are going to town, but we'll be right back with one more guest.”

Violet had set the table with a white cloth and a great bowl of wild blue larkspur in the center. “It's the closest I could find to a violet color,” she said wistfully.

The Hodges family arrived right away. Benny had taken Susie and Ned out to see the new baby chickens when the big black car returned. Jessie watched from the window as her grandfather got out, helped Cap out, and handed him his cane. Then she gasped. “Violet! Henry!” she called. “Our mystery man, Mr. Jay, is here. I don't believe this.”

Then Cap called, “Hey, children, come meet my son.”

“Jason,” Henry whispered. “Mr. Jay is really Jason.”

Now Cap's son smiled, a broad sweet smile that was a little bit like Cap's. “We've met,” he said, shaking hands with each of them. “We even traveled together, didn't we?”

The children nodded and glanced at their grandfather.

“Jason was pretty envious that you children were coming to where he wanted to be,” their grandfather said.

“Well, he's here now,” Violet said with a smile. “And as welcome as can be!” Her eyes flew wide open. “Jessie,” she squealed. “Do I smell something burning?” The two girls flew off to the kitchen. But within a minute Violet was back.

“Just one thing, Mr. Jay,” she said. “If you knew who we were and that we were coming here, why were you so unfriendly? Every time we saw you, you just turned your back and hurried away like you couldn't stand the sight of us.”

“I'm not Mr. Jay to you, Violet, I'm just Jason. And the reason I turned away was that I didn't know what my father looked like anymore. For all I knew, you might have recognized that we were father and son.” He grinned and tugged lightly at his father's beard. “If I had known about this bush he is wearing, I wouldn't have acted like that.”

Cap laughed right along with Violet and the others.

Benny was the last one to meet Jason Lambert. He sighed, put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out the little fire engine he had found in the tree house.

“This is yours,” he said quietly.

Jason lifted the little metal toy and looked at it carefully. Then he placed it back in Benny's palm. “I believe you're right, Benny,” he said. “And I'm glad to have it. It's the perfect present for me to give you. Would you like to keep it to remember Owl's Glen by?”

Benny smiled and closed his fingers around the tiny toy. “Oh, yes,” he cried.

The meal was beautiful. The canned ham was glazed with rings of apples dyed red with cinnamon candies. Tiny new potatoes swam in butter beside a bowl of ruby-red beets.

Mrs. Hodges finally put down her fork with a sigh. “What a wonderful meal,” she said.

“And every single thing except the canned ham is from Cap's garden and orchard,” Jessie told her.

“We have dessert, too,” Benny said.

“I don't know where I'll find room for it,” Jason said.

Cap took a spoonful of Violet's apple bread pudding with caramel sauce and grinned at his son. “Don't even try to eat this, Jason,” he said. “Just pass it right over here. One serving of this isn't going to be near enough for me.”

“You and I are a lot alike, Cap,” Benny said, smiling at him. “We both like good things in our mouths, don't we?”

The grown-ups sat over coffee while the children cleaned up the dishes, then played games in the backyard. Before they left, Mrs. Hodges asked Violet for her recipe for apple bread pudding and caramel sauce. “It's just delicious,” she told Violet. “I'll want to make it for Cap to remind him of you. I just wish you could stay.”

“We might come back,” Benny said. “I like it here.”

As Mr. Alden's car pulled away, Cap waved back with his rooster on his shoulder and his son at his side. “This may have been our best mystery adventure ever,” Jessie told her grandfather thoughtfully.

Benny said, “Yes, but I want to get home and see Watch and our boxcar.”

Jessie grinned at him. Funny little boy. But Jessie knew Benny was only saying what each of them felt.

About the Author

G
ERTRUDE
C
HANDLER
W
ARNER
discovered when she was teaching that many readers who like an exciting story could find no books that were both easy and fun to read. She decided to try to meet this need, and her first book,
The Boxcar Children,
quickly proved she had succeeded.

Miss Warner drew on her own experiences to write each mystery. As a child she spent hours watching trains go by on the tracks opposite her family home. She often dreamed about what it would be like to set up housekeeping in a caboose or freight car—the situation the Alden children find themselves in.

When Miss Warner received requests for more adventures involving Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden, she began additional stories. In each, she chose a special setting and introduced unusual or eccentric characters who liked the unpredictable.

While the mystery element is central to each of Miss Warner's books, she never thought of them as strictly juvenile mysteries. She liked to stress the Aldens' independence and resourcefulness and their solid New England devotion to using up and making do. The Aldens go about most of their adventures with as little adult supervision as possible—something else that delights young readers.

Miss Warner lived in Putnam, Connecticut, until her death in 1979. During her lifetime, she received hundreds of letters from girls and boys telling her how much they liked her books.

The Boxcar Children Mysteries

T
HE
B
OXCAR
C
HILDREN

S
URPRISE
I
SLAND

T
HE
Y
ELLOW
H
OUSE
M
YSTERY

M
YSTERY
R
ANCH

M
IKE'S
M
YSTERY

B
LUE
B
AY
M
YSTERY

T
HE
W
OODSHED
M
YSTERY