The Mystery Off Glen Road (13 page)

Trixie hugged her arm. “You’re the one who’s wonderful, Honey,” she said softly. “Practically perfect. Don’t worry about the house party. It’s going to be great. But I’ve got to go now. It must be four o’clock.” She broke away from Honey and ran off.

Back at home, Trixie hastily changed into dungarees and high wool socks. As she slipped her cashmere sweater over her head, the prongs in the setting of Honey’s ring got caught in the sleeve and the ring came off, too. Impatiently Trixie plucked it free and tossed it into her top bureau drawer. Then she donned her old heavy wool sweater and hurried downstairs. One good break was that her parents and Bobby had gone off for a drive after lunch. Without even telling a little white lie, Trixie had let them take it for granted that she was going to spend the whole afternoon and evening up at the Manor House.

At the garage she hopped on her bike and coasted down the driveway. Then she pedaled along the road as fast as she could. The sun was a red ball cut in half by the tops of the towering evergreens in the distance. When the ball of fire dipped down completely into the
Hudson River it would grow dark very quickly. Too late Trixie realized that she should have brought along a flashlight.

It was already gloomy in the woods when she turned off the trail and hid her bike in the bushes. Traveling on foot along that rocky path was very different from riding horseback on it. She soon found out that she couldn’t walk fast without the risk of turning her ankle, and every time she came around a bend the stretch that lay ahead of her seemed to be blacked out by shadows until her eyes grew accustomed to the dusk. Then, a few yards later, the waning light of the sun was almost blinding.

I know how moles feel now
, Trixie said to herself as she stumbled along.
No wonder they can’t see when they come up from their underground tunnels every now and then
.

In order to keep up her courage she began to talk out loud: “I wish I were a mole or a bat or an owl. Do any of them eat carcasses? All that business about ants eating antlers was silly. There are only army ants in the tropics. They
can
demolish a carcass in a matter of hours, but there aren’t any around here.… Mice eat antlers, though. I read about it in one of Brian’s books. I hope there’s an army of field mice in these woods.…
Foxes and catamounts are scavengers, too, but not as thorough as buzzards and jackals.… Coyotes do a good job, but they don’t eat antlers. All of the million buffalo horns that have been whitening for ages on the deserts out west are proof of that. Besides none of the coyotes, which are called brush wolves in the Adirondacks, would come all the way down here just to eat up a dead deer. But there are plenty of big wild cats. That’s why that little purple mountain over there is called Catamount Hill. I wish it were closer.… No, I don’t. Catamounts are supposed to be cowards, but that all depends on your definition of coward. I’m scared to death right now, and I think I’m lost, but you don’t see me running away, do you?
Not that I’d know in which direction to run.…”

For Trixie was lost now. So long as she could see an inch of the sunset between the evergreens she knew where west was, but now there was only a pale-green light in the sky—a yellowish green which usually means that a storm of some sort is on the way. The air was growing colder, too, and there was a moistness in it which Trixie felt sure meant that it would snow before morning.

She stumbled along, her teeth chattering as much from cold as from nervousness, and all of a sudden
found herself at the fork where Honey had waited for her with the horses that morning. Now she knew exactly where she was and in a matter of minutes burst into the other small clearing. There were no shadows here and neither was there any sign whatsoever that a dead deer had ever lain in that spot.

Trixie rubbed her eyes. “I must have been dreaming after all.” She knelt, straining her eyes, and then she saw the impression the body of the deer had made in the bed of pine needles. And some of the red-brown leaves were that color because blood had been splattered on them. There were also unmistakable signs that a human had eviscerated the carcass at this very spot. Trixie knew about these internal organs of animals because she had often cleaned chickens after her brothers had killed and plucked them. Moms had painstakingly taught her how to “draw” a bird so now Trixie was what the family called an “expert butcher.” The heart, liver, and gizzard were used for gravy-making. The lungs and such, or “lights” as professional butchers called them, were boiled into a rich broth for mixing with dehydrated dog food—for Reddy!

Trixie sank to her knees. Reddy and Patch weren’t the culprits after all, thank goodness. All over the damp soil in the clearing were tiny pawprints which proved
that other, smaller animals had done the scavenging job after the human took the venison away. Bluejays had probably swooped down, too, for their share. Jim would know, even in the gloom, exactly what animals and birds had been there. It was Jim who had taught Trixie how to tell the difference between the footprint of a fox and the footprint of a dog. There was an enormous difference in the pawprint of members of the cat family, and Trixie was glad to see that no cat had been near the spot. Not yet, anyway. It wasn’t dark enough for the catamounts to prowl.

Then all of a sudden she saw tracks that made her eyes feel as though they were popping out of her head. Bike tire tracks! Not double, but single-tire tread marks. She followed them across the clearing to the spot where they disappeared on the pine-needle carpet of a narrow path. It wasn’t possible but it was true. Nobody, not even a circus performer, could have ridden any kind of a bike along the muddy paths and trails of these woods. But the tire tread marks proved that somebody had!

Trixie groped her way along the narrow path for a few yards, then returned to the spot where the single bike tire tread disappeared. Visions of tightrope walkers and performing seals danced dizzily through her head as she started back to the fork. Only one thought was comforting. The dogs were not the culprits. They might, tempted by the sport of it, have chased a wounded deer, but they had certainly not killed and eviscerated it. A human had done that and that human must be the poacher.

It was almost pitch dark when Trixie reached the small clearing near the fork, and because of the shadows, she hardly knew which way to turn. By groping blindly, she finally discovered the difference between the narrow paths and the wider trail, and stumbled along it. It seemed to wind through the branches of evergreens interminably. Just when she was sure she had reached the spot where she had hidden her bike, she found that she had emerged from the game preserve on to Glen Road at the very spot where the path, not the trail, ended opposite Mr. Lytell’s store.

“Now when could I have left the trail?” Trixie asked herself as she trudged along the road. She was sure of only one thing: Nothing would induce her to go back into those shadowy woods except in broad daylight. The road was dark enough as it was, but she knew it so well that it wasn’t long before she was back on her bike pedaling the rest of the way home.

When she got there, her parents and Bobby were having supper and they stared at her in amazement. “Why, Trixie,” Mrs. Belden cried, “we thought you were at the Wheelers’. Didn’t Ben Riker arrive after all?”

“Oh, yes,” Trixie told her. “But so did Di Lynch. They’re crazy about each other.” She tried her best to look jealous and heartbroken and resigned, but had a feeling that she only looked rather silly. She could see that both her father and mother were trying hard not to smile.

“Well,” said Mrs. Belden, “have supper with us then. Macaroni with cheese-and-tomato sauce and salad. Bring me a plate, Trixie, and I’ll serve you.”

Trixie was starving so she had two helpings of everything. Her father chuckled and quoted: “ ‘Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ You’re living proof of that Shakespearean bit of wisdom, Trixie.” He leaned across the table. “Tell me.
Wasn’t Ben impressed when you flashed your ring in his face? Or, did you make the mistake of greeting him dressed as you are?”

“Oh, I got all dressed up,” Trixie said hastily. “But Di is so pretty, I knew right away that it wasn’t any use.”

“M-m-m,” her father said thoughtfully. “Well, if you’ve decided to be normal again, I imagine you’ll want me to put your ring back in the vault. It’s hardly the appropriate accessory for the costume you’re now wearing.”

“Oh, Dad,” Trixie cried. “You said I could keep the ring a week. You promised.”

“So I did,” he agreed. “But, with the possible exception of our Thanksgiving party, I can’t imagine when you’ll want to wear it.”

“Every evening,” Trixie said, hating the thought of it, “I’m going to get dressed up. I mean, the Wheelers are having a house party because Di’s spending the holidays there, too. Miss Trask is sure to ask Brian and Mart and me to a lot of meals. Their dinners are always formal. I can’t go there looking like this.”

“Of course you can’t,” Mrs. Belden put in. “Your father’s only teasing, Trixie. But I don’t understand why you’re not up at the Wheelers’ now. What happened? Why did you come back here and change your clothes?” She took a stack of dishes out to the kitchen, beckoning
for Trixie to follow. When they had cleared the dining-room table, she said, “I’ll wash and you can dry, honey. I don’t mean to pry into your affairs, and if you don’t want to answer my questions, don’t. It’s just that you look so worried and I can’t believe that it’s because of Di and Ben.”

Trixie gulped. Moms was such a good sport, and so was Dad. But they wouldn’t approve of the whole business about the ring. And it would be awfully hard to explain why she hadn’t told Jim about the dead deer. Parents could be very understanding at times, but so often they couldn’t understand why you did things that seemed wrong but which were perfectly right.

Suddenly Trixie realized that Jim, in a way, was like her parents. Although she knew now that the dogs weren’t the culprits, she couldn’t tell him about the deer. He would be furious because she hadn’t told him right away while there was still time for him and Brian to have caught the poacher. Mart, when and
if
he ever heard about it, wouldn’t be furious, but he would tease her unmercifully and would call her a “lamebrain” from morning to night.

No, the boys must never know, so there was only one answer to the problem: She and Honey must track down and catch the poacher … 
all by themselves!

Aloud she said quite truthfully to her mother, “I am worried, Moms. It’s about the gamekeeper job. It’s more of a responsibility than I thought it would be.”

Mrs. Belden nodded sympathetically. “You and Honey have an awful lot of territory to cover. So, since you have to get up so early tomorrow morning, I think you ought to go to bed right away.”

Trixie, feeling more guilty than ever, shook her head. “I’ll put Bobby to bed first, Moms,” she offered. “He’ll go up right away if I promise to read the funny papers to him.”

“That would be just wonderful,” Mrs. Belden said gratefully. “He was a dickens all during the drive we took this afternoon. He promised to rest quietly in the back seat because I didn’t make him take a nap, but instead he jumped up and down constantly and asked a steady stream of questions.”

“Oh, Moms,” Trixie cried. “I should have stayed home with Bobby while you and Dad went for a drive alone. You must be awfully tired.”

“Not physically tired,” her mother said cheerfully. “But I am rather tired of Bobby. A little of his conversation goes a long way.” She gave Trixie a hug. “He’s sure to be tired, too, so I don’t think you’ll have to read to him for very long. Make sure that he brushes his teeth
properly. He’s recently acquired the habit of wetting the tooth brush and licking the powder off the palm of his hand, and then he informs me that his teeth are clean.”

They laughed together, and Trixie hurried into the living-room where Bobby was trying to persuade his father to read the comics to him.

“I’ll do it, Bobby.” Trixie took his fat little hand. “Come on. As soon as you’ve brushed your teeth and climbed into bed, I’ll read
Peter Rabbit.”

He pulled his hand away and then stared at her own hand. “Hey! You’re not wearing your ring. Betcha you losted it.”

“Don’t be silly,” Trixie said quickly. “Ladies don’t wear rings when they’re wearing dungarees.”

“Hey,” he jeered. “You’re not a lady.”

Trixie hastily gathered the funny papers and handed them to him. “You carry these while I go ahead and turn down the covers on your bed.”

He followed her upstairs without another word and, after both threats and bribes, brushed his teeth thoroughly. But Trixie had hardly tucked him into bed when he began to ask questions again about her ring. She knew that he was peevish because he was so tired and tried to be patient.

“Betcha you losted it,” he insisted. “Betcha you losted it. Hey! Betcha you losted it.”

Trixie was finally forced to go into her room and scrabble through her top bureau drawer until she found the imitation which Honey had loaned her. She gave it to Bobby and asked exasperatedly: