The Mystery at Bob-White Cave (8 page)

While Trixie fretted at the delay, she and the other Bob-Whites followed each step Brian made, then watched expectantly as he cupped his hand over the Elector to trap some of the gas and brushed his hand against the flint built into the inside of the reflector to ignite the flame.

Slim had lighted the stub of a miner’s candle he had brought, but he couldn’t keep back a shout of amazement when the lamps on the Bob-Whites’ hats lighted the darkness.

The room where they stood was immense. All about them stalactites gleamed above stalagmites that rose from the floor beneath. On the walls, dozens of crystal formations came into view—draperies that flowed like velvet yet were stone, flowers that sent out delicate frondlike tentacles of limestone and sparkled in the reflected light like semiprecious jewels.

The ground under their feet was slippery with moisture, and the air about them was chilly. A stream trickled through the center of the big room, disappeared into a rocky crevice, and emerged farther on in a path it carved, only to disappear again under a cluster of limestone mounds.

“Haven’t you ever been in here before?” Trixie asked Slim breathlessly. “Not even once?”

“Nope. There’s nothin’ in here you won’t find in Bascomb’s Cave I told you about or in the one at Turkey Knob. They’re all alike, and I don’t want none of ’em. If you’ve got any huntin’ to do, let’s start.”

“Just a minute!” Trixie said. “I have an idea. This cave is on Uncle Andrew’s property. It’s a new cave. Does that make you think of anything?”

“Nothing but the fish we’re after,” Mart said. “What are you getting at?”

“Just this—a new cave should have a name.” Trixie unscrewed the top of her canteen, poured water into it, held it up, and, as it dripped, said, “I christen thee—”

“Bob-White Cave!” they all chorused.

“Exactly! Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Bob-Cat Cave’d be a better name,” Slim said with contempt.

The Bob-Whites ignored him and searched the cavernous room with their flashlights. Time passed swiftly as they followed the stream, inch by inch, shining their lights on each ripple.

“Do you see anything?” Honey asked.

“Not yet, but I’m sure this would be the kind of place to watch. Was that a flash of white?”

The girls knelt on the rocky ground, the beams from their carbide lamps concentrating on the moving water. “Quick!” Trixie cried. “Right there under your nose. Jim! Brian! Mart! It’s here!”

“It’s not now,” Honey said sadly. “I’m not even sure I saw it. Why didn’t you dip it right out the instant you saw it?”

“It
was
there,” Trixie insisted. “There it is again, right over there on the edge of the stream!” She reached frantically with her dip net, lowered it, and brought up a grayish, emaciated cricket from the water’s edge. Its feelers were as long as its body, and the poor thing struggled weakly in the dip net.

“That’s a fish?” Mart asked.

“You know it isn’t,” Trixie answered. “But where there are ghost crickets, there are bound to be ghost fish.”

“Let’s get outa here!” Slim commanded.

Trixie looked at him, amazed.

“I don’t hold with no kind of spirits—even fish spirits. The devil lives in caves. Anybody hereabouts will tell you that. Don’t go beyond this here room, or you’ll find that out. And them white things you see, 1 in the water and out, they’re evil. They’re even poison!”

“Do you call five hundred dollars poison?” Mart demanded.

Slim’s head went up. “Five hundred dollars?”

Mart, who’d been quickly shushed by four indignant Bob-Whites, just sputtered. “Forget it! Maybe they are poison, at that. We’d better leave ’em alone, huh, Trixie?” Mart walked over to the far wall and pretended deep interest in the formations.

“So that’s it,” Slim said half aloud. “Shucks, though, you was just talkin’ big. Braggin’.”

“When you know my brother better, Slim, you’ll find out he spends a lot of his time doing just that— I bragging.” Trixie dipped her head to throw the light from her head lamp on the low edge along the stream.
 
“Do you see those pinpoints of light?” she asked. “Is that some little animal, Slim? See it peeking around the edge of that shelf?”

“It’s a pack rat,” Slim said. “Like as not its nest is on that shelf.”

“I don’t like rats,” Honey said, shivering. “Those big old water rats near the Hudson at home are really dangerous!”

“Pack rats aren’t the same thing at all,” Brian explained. “They’re as clean as squirrels and just as thrifty. They bring in their store of winter food and stow it away just inside the cave entrance. They’re shy, afraid of humans. If you look down here on the floor, you’ll see the tracks of their feet in wet clay. I read someplace that people trapped in caves have followed the tracks of pack rats to safety outside.”

“Do you study things like that in biology?” Honey asked, always impressed by Brian’s knowledge.

“Not exactly,” Brian told her, “but I’ve been thinking that a person could do a lot of medical research in a place like this—molds, you know, and blind fish and crickets. It has lots of possibilities.”

For the next two hours, the Bob-Whites continued their search, hardly aware of the passing of time.

“How’s about leavin’ here?” Slim suddenly asked. “It must be gettin’ toward five o’clock.”

“It can’t be!” Trixie said, aghast. “We haven’t been here half an hour. I’m going on into one of those passages, the one where the stream leaves this room.”

Mart held his wristwatch up to the light of his carbide lamp. “Not today you won’t,” he said. “It’s not only five o’clock—it’s already ten minutes past.”

“Your watch is wrong!” Trixie said positively.

“It’s right, Trixie,” Honey said and held out her own wristwatch to show Trixie.

“Where
could
three hours have gone?” Trixie asked.

“This is the most fascinating place in the whole world. Can’t we stay just another half hour?”

“Nope!” Slim answered.

“Jim? Brian?” Trixie pleaded.

“I said nope!” Slim snapped.

“Jim, is that Simon Legree our boss?” Trixie, incensed, inquired.

“When we’re exploring caves, I guess he is,” Jim said. “But take it a little easier, will you, fella?” he asked Slim. “I don’t care for your tone of voice.”

“Take it or leave it,” Slim replied. “Everybody out, right now!”

Out of the cave, Slim swaggered. He led the way down to the boat and, when they had all settled in, rowed briskly toward shore. Once there, he went first to Mr. Glendenning’s boat, still beached on the shore, peered inside, and examined the bundle lashed to the seat; then he nimbly scrambled up the path, ahead of the Bob-Whites.

When they reached the lodge, Slim had already untied his mule and was riding off.

“Be here real early in the morning!” Trixie called after him. “We want to get back to the cave and have enough time to explore things.... Now, I don’t know whether he heard me or not,” she added impatiently.

“He’ll show up,” Mart said blithely. “It butters his bread. He sure had a peeve of some kind today, didn’t he?”

“He has a perpetual peeve,” Jim said. “If he keeps putting that chip on his shoulder all the time, one of us will have to knock it off.”

“Not me,” Mart said. “I wouldn’t want to get in the way of one of his wallops.”

“He’s probably nine-tenths big talk,” Jim said. “I believe he really thinks the devil lives in caves.”

“I don’t. I think he’s cruel. I think he wanted to scare Honey and me. He seems to have a special hate for me.”

“It’s because you’re a girl, Trixie, and you know a few things he doesn’t. Who cares what he’s like?” Mart held the lodge door open. “After all, he’s just an indispensable adjunct to our ichthyological quest.”

“Is that bad?” Uncle Andrew, chuckling, asked the Bob-Whites as they hurried through the open door and threw their gear in the corner.

“It’s been a terrific day!” Trixie exclaimed as she dropped into the nearest chair. “Who ever even heard of such a day? We save a man from drowning, then find Aladdin’s cave. It’s the most marvelous cave in the universe, and we named it ‘Bob-White Cave.’ It would take all summer to explore that one cave.”

“That would please me, all right,” Uncle Andrew said. “I wish you
could
stay all summer. ‘Bob-White Cave’ it will be. I’ll see that the name gets on the map in the engineer’s office at the state capitol.”

“Jeepers!Really?” Trixie asked.

“Really,” Uncle Andrew promised. “So the afternoon of cave exploring was a success?”

“Only partly,” Trixie said ruefully. “We didn’t find the ghost fish. And, Mart, we never will get the reward if you keep sounding off about the five hundred dollars when Slim is listening.”

Mart looked sheepish. “Don’t worry about Slim. He didn’t have any idea of what I was talking about.”

“Don’t be too sure of that. I wish I felt I could trust Slim one hundred percent.”

“Was he a competent guide?” Uncle Andrew inquired quickly.

“Oh, he was that, all right,” Jim said. “It’s just his attitude—his arrogance.”

“Maybe he feels you don’t like him or trust him. If he’s related to Mrs. Moore....”

“He isn’t, exactly.” Mrs. Moore, setting the table, overheard the conversation. “He’s related to my husband’s cousin. Here in the mountains, it seems everyone is kinfolk to everyone else. I don’t want you to think, though, that I’ve vouched for Slim in any way.”

“Try to be a little more tolerant of him,” Uncle Andrew urged. “Then if it doesn’t work out, we can take it from there. Is that satisfactory?”

“Okay,” Brian, the spokesman for the Bob-Whites, assured his uncle.

“Where is Linnie?” Trixie asked. “Oh, yes, she went with Mr. Glendenning. Did he feel all right when he left?”

“He seemed to have recovered completely. He didn’t even want us to take him home in the wagon. He said it was only a ‘bit of a way’ to where he was staying. I thought, when he was trying to tell us where he lived, that he meant Dewey’s cabin Over near Turkey Knob.

It turned out it wasn’t that at all. Here’s Linnie. She’ll tell you about it.” Mrs. Moore’s face was serious. “I just can’t talk about it.”

“Mr. Glendenning’s living in that haunted cabin!” Linnie said in a low tone.

“By himself? He stayed there overnight?” Trixie asked. “Did he tell you he’d seen the ghost of the man who was murdered?”

“Oh, Trixie!” Uncle Andrew said, exasperated.

“Did he?” Trixie persisted. The other Bob-Whites looked expectantly at Linnie.

“No, he didn’t. When he told me to let him out at the top of the knoll above the ghost cabin, I couldn’t believe my ears. Mama and I told him to be careful when he passed there, and we asked him where he lived.”

“What did he say then?” Trixie asked eagerly.

“He laughed and said, ‘I live right there. The ghost takes good care of me. He’ll give me a dose of herb tea tonight, and I’ll be as good as new tomorrow.’ ”

“Then what did you say?” Honey whispered.

“I was so scared, I couldn’t even say a word. Do you think Mr. Glendenning is a ghost himself? Mama does.”

“Now, Linnie, don’t go imagining things. The Englishman just liked to tease.” Uncle Andrew seemed upset by more talk of ghosts.

“He wasn’t teasing, was he, Mama? A person doesn’t go right from saying their thank-you’s to teasing you. I know he wasn’t. And if you don’t think he’s a ghost or that he’s in cahoots with ghosts, what do you think of this, Mr. Belden? When I was turning the mules around to come back home, I heard a dog bark. It was Jacob’s bark. But Jacob wasn’t anyplace around. I whistled for him. Still he didn’t come. Then Mama and I saw the door of the ghost cabin open, and a man came out....”

“Yes, Linnie, hurry up!” Trixie urged.

“He had a bag over his shoulder.”

“What did he have in the bag?” Honey asked Linnie eagerly.

“He’d been poaching, probably, and bagged a rabbit,” Jim said, remembering the game preserve around the Manor House at Sleepyside.

“He didn’t... it may have been a—a—body!” Trixie said.

“Oh, Trixie!” Mart hooted. “What an imagination!”

“Are you laughing at me?” Linnie asked.

“Not a chance,” Mart assured her. “Go ahead; tell us more about the ghost.”

“Well, when the door opened, Jacob ran out, too. He ran like mad and jumped into the wagon.”

“Gosh! Was the man you saw Mr. Glendenning?”

“No, it wasn’t, Mart. The man I saw had a white cloud around his head. Mr. Glendenning seemed to fade out of sight.”

“He’ll be seen no more,” Mrs. Moore said in a hollow voice.

“Oh, Mrs. Moore, I keep telling you—”

“I know, Mr. Belden—that there aren’t any ghosts.

Wait till Linnie tells you the rest.”

“Jeepers, is there still more?” Mart asked, finally impressed.

Trixie’s eyes were as round as saucers and nearly as big. “Go on, Linnie, tell us!”