The Mystery at Bob-White Cave (9 page)

“As we turned the bend and looked back, we saw, flat against the wall of that cabin, the pelt of a wildcat!”

When Linnie finished speaking, even Uncle Andrew had nothing to say. Mrs. Moore placed each knife and fork carefully on the table, all the while nodding her head knowingly. “Spirits,” she said, half to herself. “Spirits at work.”

Nothing but Trouble ● 8

NEXT MORNING the clock in the lodge living room showed eight o’clock, eight-thirty, then nine o’clock. “What can be keeping Slim?” Trixie asked.

“Maybe he has chores to do,” Uncle Andrew said. “There are many hours ahead of you.”

“Where does he live?” Mart asked.

“I don’t really know. Back in the woods someplace. Bill Hawkins knows.”

“I wish he’d show up,” Trixie said. “Other people may be ahead of us, hunting for those specimens. Mayn’t we please go without Slim?”

“I’d feel much better if I thought he was with you. What do you boys think?”

“Slim’s a pain in the neck,” Mart said.

“But is he a competent guide? Do you think you’d be safe in the cave without him?” Uncle Andrew addressed his question to Brian.

“We know the cave pretty well,” Brian answered. “At least, I think we do. I’d really like to try it with Slim another day, though. I just wish he weren’t such an oddball.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Yes, I guess so. Trixie doesn’t, though, and she has a sort of sixth sense about people.”

“Oh, why, why doesn’t Slim show up, if he
has
to go with us?” Trixie asked impatiently. “Uncle Andrew, I
saw
those fish. I know I did. And the stream runs right through a great big room. Nothing could possibly harm us if we went by ourselves. Slim certainly wasn’t any help to us in saving Mr. Glendenning. If we don’t get to the cave soon, Mr. Glendenning will be there ahead of us. I’m sure he’s after the blind fish, too. Don’t you think we could go without Slim?”

“It won’t be necessary to make that decision today. Slim just rode into the yard.”

Down at the lake, Trixie’s sharp eyes noticed that the Englishman’s boat had been picked up. “Now, who do you suppose took that boat?” she wondered aloud.

“Me,” Slim said.

“When? Why? And why didn’t we hear you going down to the lake?”

“I took it back last night, and I did it because the man asked me to. And you didn’t hear me because I didn’t think I had to stop and ask your leave to get the boat, Miss Nosy.”

“That’s enough of that!” Jim warned.

“Who says so? Want to make somethin’ of it?”

Jim, who had seen the distressed look on Honey’s face, didn’t reply but shepherded the other Bob-Whites into the flat-bottomed boat and pushed off.

“It’s pretty queer,” Trixie thought. “Slim is afraid of ghosts, and yet he must have gone to the ghost cabin to see that Englishman. I suppose he offered to take the boat back if the man would pay him. There’s something mysterious going on.”

She forgot about Slim and his actions, however, as the boys beached the boat and they all went on to the cave. Inside, Bob-White Cave seemed even more wonderful than it had the day before.

Trixie and Honey swung their large flashlights to all four sides of the room. At the far end, the floor rose in a series of ledges, ending in a flat wall. The wall was an odd shade of brown. It looked as though it might be covered with moth-eaten bearskins.

“What is it, Brian?” Trixie asked.

“Bats.Thousands of them. They’re asleep. Gosh!” As Brian threw his light on the wall, it startled the bats, and, without warning, the bits of fur flew round and round. Then, like dive-bombers, they flew straight at the Bob-Whites.

Honey, terrified, beat them off. “Go away! They’ll get in my hair, and I’ll never get them out!”

“Don’t be afraid!” Trixie said. “They won’t hurt you.

That’s a superstition—bats getting in people’s hair.”

“I don’t care. I don’t like them!” Honey wailed. “They’ve settled down now, since you took your light off them,” Jim said. “They’re interesting. Bats fly by radar; did you know that?”

“At least they have their own warning signals,” said Mart, who seemed to know something about almost everything. “They send out a high-pitched beep. Humans can’t hear it.”

“It must be something like the whistle we use to call Reddy back home,” Trixie said.

“They seldom bump into anything,” Brian explained further. “They send out those beeps, and the sound waves bounce back from any obstruction in their paths. When they fly, they screech at the rate of about thirty times a second. Aren’t they something? I’d like to know a lot more about bats.”

“Here’s your chance,” Slim said. “Wait’ll you see what the buzzards and hawks do to ’em!” He picked up a handful of rocks and threw them against the far wall. The startled bats roared into flight, circling the cave clockwise and beating against the Bob-Whites, almost knocking them down. Everyone waved their arms wildly and ran out of the cave. Slim, pushing the others aside, ran ahead of them.

The whirring wings of the frenzied bats sounded like the roar of an express train as they found the exit. Outside, they flew in disorganized flight till hawks, flashing down from the sky, pounced on the helpless creatures.

The scene that followed was sickening. Trixie and Honey hid their faces as little brown balls of fur fell to the ground around them, dropped from deadly claws. The hawks were startled by the sudden appearance of the young people.

Gradually the bats escaped into the sky, and several ugly buzzards that had lurked on the outskirts of the fray, afraid to claim the little bodies on the ground, disappeared from sight.

“That was the cruelest thing anybody ever did!” Trixie said, her eyes flashing fire. “I hate you, Slim! Those poor little things!”

“Can we bury them?” Honey asked, trembling.

“We’ll dig a trench with the pickax,” Brian answered her.

When the grave was ready, the tiny victims were covered completely with sand, then mounded over with stones.

Slim watched the whole proceeding, evidently arrogantly unaware of the Bob-Whites’ indignation. When the bats were buried, he spat contemptuously and announced to the sky, “Now I’ve seen everything.”

“Not everything,” Jim answered slowly, anger reddening his face. “You march down to the boat!” he commanded.

“Who says so?” Slim inquired belligerently.

“We do!” Brian said, backing up Jim. “We’re through with you. March!”

Slim snarled viciously and came at Brian, head lowered. Suddenly he seemed to realize that he was outnumbered, so he stopped and swaggered down to the boat.

Jim and Brian, their faces stern, followed him. “You stay with the girls, Mart. Brian and I’ll be back as soon as we deposit Slim’s mean hide on the other shore.”

“I
hope
that’s the end of Slim,” Honey said with a big sigh as the boat pushed off.

“It won’t be,” Mart said. “I think we’ll have more trouble with him.”

“He’s mean, hateful, and cruel,” Honey said and shuddered.

“You sure called the turn on him the first time you saw him, Trix,” Mart said. “I guess Jim and Brian will go up to the lodge and tell Uncle Andrew about Slim and why we’re through with him.”

Mart, Trixie, and Honey extinguished their carbide lamps to save fuel and sat huddled on the beach, waiting for Jim and Brian to come back. Shading their eyes, they saw the boys put Slim ashore; they saw him turn on them and shake his fists, then go up the steep bank. They saw Jim and Brian go up the path to the lodge, then return, get into the boat, and shove off for the cave.

Uncle Andrew said it’s okay without Slim,” Brian shouted from the boat. “Man, what a relief!”

Hooray!” Trixie cried. “I feel as though Plymouth Rock has rolled off my chest.”

Their carbide lamps again gleaming, the Bob-Whites reentered the cave. Brian threw a quick flash to the far wall, and they saw that some of the bats I were still clinging there.

“They’ll all be back tonight,” he said. “They’re just like homing pigeons. A guy at school told me that when the Pennsylvania turnpike was being built, a bat colony that had lived there for years just wouldn’t leave. Workmen moved them to a nearby cave so smooth cement walls could be put in the old tunnel, but the bats kept flying back to roost in their old lodgings each night.”

“I’ve had enough; of bats for one day,” Mart said. “Maybe you can continue your research some other time.”

“Yes, please!” Honey begged.

Trixie had left the group and was crouched at the edge of the stream, her eyes searching the shallow water.
“Finally
we can hunt for the ghost fish,” she said.

The other Bob-Whites walked carefully up and down the length of the stream that flowed through the big room. Once they saw another cricket on the rocks, and once Mart was sure he saw the flash of a white tail disappear under the rock where the stream left the room.

“We’re just going to have to follow that stream,” Trixie announced. “There must be some way we can do that. There’s only a trickle of water here, and maybe in another part of the cave there’s a real spring. I intend to find out.”

“I saw a kind of funnel opening midway on this side of the wall,” Mart said. “Do you suppose....”

Trixie was on her feet. Her light shining a short distance ahead of her, she followed the wall till she found a small opening.

“It’s easy to crawl through here,” she announced.

“Here I go!”

Before anyone could speak, she lay flat on the ground and wriggled into the passage. Mart was close after her. “There’s plenty of room,” he called back.

“I can even see the opening ahead,” Trixie’s muffled voice announced. “Come on in, all of you!”

Brian had already entered the crawlway. Honey slid along after him, followed by Jim.

The passage, only about fifteen feet long, led to a room smaller than the one they had left. Here, however, they heard the rush of running water from a spring.

The ceiling was domed, exposing a dozen different strata—brown, orange, yellow, white, and a deep layer of black. The dome had the appearance of an upside-down pothole worn by some long-ago stream that had rushed with terrific force down through the cavern.

The floor was covered with fragments of limestone that had scaled from the dome and fallen to the cave floor. Iron, brought in by dripping water, had colored fantastic flowers and fernlike spirals that protruded from the wall and ceiling. Huge stalactites hung down, constantly dripping water that formed thick stalagmites or rimstones that cradled nests of calcite balls. It was a lovely fairyland, sparkling and scintillating under the searching lights of the Bob-Whites.

Trixie, usually sensitive to beauty, was so engrossed with her search for the fish that she didn’t see the rock formations around her. Her hand clasping Honey’s, she walked along the side of the stream.

Suddenly she let out a whoop, dropped to her knees, and brought up a ghost fish!

Mart came stumbling over the rough floor. Brian and Jim tore themselves from a study of the stratified dome to answer Trixie’s cry.

“It’s a fish! It’s a fish! What shall I do with it? Where shall I put it? Oh, why didn’t I bring the bait bucket?”

“Hold tight, Trixie, and I’ll run for the bucket!” Jim said and vanished through the tunnel.

Trixie had the agonizing experience of watching a crayfish crawl by, followed by its ghostly brother, and still another before Jim returned.

Into the bait bucket went the fish. Then Trixie bent earnestly over the water. She snared a crayfish and added it to her catch. Concentrate as she would, though, not another ghost fish appeared.

The other Bob-Whites, eager to help, struggled over the wet clay, straining their eyes. Finally Brian announced, “It’s almost five o’clock. We’d better go. Uncle Andrew’ll be concerned if we don’t show up soon.”

“Oh, Jim, what shall I do with my ghost fish and my crayfish?” Trixie asked.

“I think it’ll be better to leave the bucket right here, don’t you, Brian?”

“Nobody asked me,” Mart piped up. “Nobody thinks I know anything about cave fish. Any amateur spelunker would know that the specimens are more likely to survive captivity if they are kept in an environment to which they are inured.”

“In other words, leave them here in the cave till tomorrow?” Trixie asked.

“Mart’s right,” Jim said. Brian agreed. So they inched their way back to the big room, Trixie pushing the bait bucket ahead of her.

“I don’t know whether or not bats eat ghost fish,” Trixie said.

Mart hooted. “They only eat insects.”

“I’m not too sure you’re right. To be sure, I’ll buckle down the perforated top of the bucket, and my ghost fish and crayfish will be safe. And, jeepers, isn’t the ghost fish a beauty?”

“It’s the beginning of five hundred dollars’ worth of beauty,” Mart said. “It has those little knobs of flesh where its eyes used to be. We still have to find one with eyes and one without eyes or even knobs before we have a chance at winning all that prize money.”