The Mystery Off Glen Road (20 page)

Trixie slid weakly out of the saddle. “I sure did,” she said. “But, Mr. Maypenny, this isn’t your property.” She nodded toward Honey. “This is Honey Wheeler. All of these woods belong to her father. It’s part of his huge game preserve.”

To Trixie’s amazement, he moved closer and shook hands with Honey. “Well, now, I’ve seen you around, too, and I know your father. A real pleasant gentleman; a bit stubborn, like all redheads, but pleasant.”

Honey couldn’t help smiling as she dismounted. “But I don’t understand,” she said. “Mr. Lytell told me that you owned land around here, but I didn’t think it was in the middle of Daddy’s preserve.”

“Sure is,” he said with a broad grin. “Right smack in the middle of it. A pie-shaped section consisting of ten acres. It’s belonged to me and my family for nigh onto hundred years. Good land, too. I’ve lived off it man and boy since I was your age. Mr. Wheeler, he knows it’s good land, too. Offered me a fancy price for it, but of course I just laughed. What good would twenty thousand dollars do me if I didn’t have a house and garden and plenty of fish and game? Grow my own vegetables, I do. Store some in a root cellar and can others. Dry out some of the meat and can some. Just finished canning a dozen jars of venison stew. Real tasty. There’s still plenty in the pot. If you’ll come inside and set down I’ll dish you up some.”

In a stunned silence the girls looped the reins of their horses around branches of a tree and followed him into the cabin. Trixie liked Mr. Maypenny but she felt that she
had been cheated out of a mystery. Finally she said:

“Well, you’re a trespasser. Every time you leave your property or go back to it you have to trespass on Mr. Wheeler’s property.”

He shook his head. “There’s a law about that to protect property owners. Now Mr. Wheeler, he got real angry when I laughed at his offer of a thousand dollars an acre. Said he was going to block up the paths and trails so I’d be penned up like a bull in a fenced pasture. I kept on laughing and told him to talk to his lawyer. Next day he came back real meek-like, for a redhead, and offered me twenty thousand dollars for the land.” The old man, chuckling reminiscently, ladled the delicious-smelling stew into earthenware bowls.

Honey giggled. “I wish I’d been there. Daddy—meek! It must have been a riot. He’s so used to buying anything he wants.” She tasted the stew. “Yummy-yum. It’s divine, Mr. Maypenny. I wish you were cook at our house. The one we’ve got now is just terrible. Nothing has any flavor.”

“Well, now,” Mr. Maypenny said, sitting on the bunk, “a stew just isn’t worth putting into a pot unless you put everything in your garden in it. In that I got turnips and parsnips and carrots and potatoes and beans and corn. And I don’t use any water a-tall. Why
should I? Onions and cabbage and tomatoes are full of water—the right kind of water. I must have used a peck of tomatoes in that goo-lash. Spices, too. I’m a bit heavy with garlic and basil and thyme. There may be some folks who don’t go for such, but it suits me to a T.”

Trixie had been eating steadily and now felt less disgruntled. “It suits me, too,” she said, grinning. “But, Mr. Maypenny, you’ve been setting snares for rabbits. That’s illegal, even on your own property.”

“No, ma’am,” he replied pleasantly but emphatically. “Rabbits is varmints. The little robbers would get everything in my garden before I did if I didn’t catch ’em first. I got a license to trap ’em. Coon and fox, too. There’s a bounty all year round on fox pelts. I trap otter and mink, too, because they go after the trout in my section of the stream. With the money I get for the skins, I buy what I can’t grow. Sugar, salt, canned milk, coffee, tea, and such. I don’t need a lot, so I don’t trap a lot. Personally I like the little critters, but they’d eat me out of house and home if I didn’t discourage ’em.”

Honey scraped her bowl clean and said, “Mr. Maypenny, Daddy will be home tomorrow. He’s going to spend the whole weekend trying to get a deer. If he does, will you show our cook how to make this stew?”

“Better than that,” he said. “I got plenty of venison
left from the deer I shot with my longbow on Sunday. I aim to pot some of it in a day or so. I’ll just pot double the amount. Half for you folks and half for me. I’ll put some up in jars for you, too, if you’ll bring me the jars. I like to be friendly with my neighbors, though I don’t get time to see much of ’em.” He chuckled. “Your paw and I could be good friends if he weren’t so derned redheaded stubborn. Told him he could shoot over my property so long as he gave me notice. He seemed pleased because it’s sort of hard to tell exactly where the boundary lines are.”

Trixie suddenly remembered something. “Mr. Maypenny,” she asked, “is there a crazy person loose in these woods?”

Honey gasped and covered her mouth with both hands. “I forgot all about that. He is crazy, Mr. Maypenny, because he rides around on a unicycle. Trixie saw the tracks.”

The old man shook with silent laughter. “I’m your lunatic, girls. Those tracks were left by my deer-carrier. It’s a one-wheeled contraption and mighty handy. I’m not as young as I used to be. Get sort of tuckered out if I tote a deer carcass more than a mile or so.” He led them outdoors and around to the back where the deer-carrier was parked. It looked like a huge super-market basket which had been attached to a bicycle wheel.

“Daddy would adore to have one of those,” Honey cried admiringly. “It’s wonderful!”

Mr. Maypenny sniffed. “Matt Wheeler is just a boy. If he can’t tote his own game, his bow and arrow should be taken away from him. A likeable lad, but what he doesn’t know about how to run a game preserve would fill a library.” He frowned, sucking in his lips. “That Fleagle! Do you mean to stand there, Honey Wheeler, and tell me your paw paid that man good money? Why, that redheaded adopted brother of yours, Jim Frayne, has more sense in his little finger!”

Honey gasped again. “Do you know Jim, Mr. Maypenny? I mean, does Jim know about your property here in the woods?”

“Imagine so,” the old man said easily. “Stopped in real sociable-like the other day when he and that Belden boy were out fixing up the bird-feeding stations that were knocked down by the storm. Gave ’em a few hints which they found helpful, or so they said.”

Trixie and Honey stared at each other. Then they both hugged each other, almost hysterical with laughter. “It all comes from keeping see-cruds,” Trixie finally managed to murmur.

Honey turned and slipped her arm through Mr. Maypenny’s. “You,” she told him pleadingly, “could be
the answer to all of our problems. Please, please, say yes you will.”

“Well, now, girl,” he said with a pleased expression on his weatherbeaten face, “it would take a stronger man than I am to refuse you anything. If you’d just tell me what you’re talking about.”

Honey merely winked. “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about, Mr. Maypenny. You’re the only man in the whole wide world who should be the gamekeeper for Daddy’s preserve. He would engage you tomorrow if Jim and I told him that you would accept.”

He winked back at her with such a droll expression on his face that Trixie burst into laughter. “Well, now,” he said, laughing as hard as she was, “I sort of got the impression that you kids were the gamekeepers. Wouldn’t want to cut you out of any money.”

“Oh, no,” Honey cried. “On account of school and all, we can’t work after this weekend. We only did it because there wasn’t anybody else, and besides, we had to have the money.”

Both talking at once they told him the whole story then. When he heard about Trixie’s ring and Brian’s car, and the clubhouse, he threw up his hands. “Why, it’s like something out of a book,” he chortled. “If ever a bunch of kids needed help, it’s you all. But I must say
I admire you for carrying on by yourselves.”

“We tried,” Trixie said forlornly. “But if you don’t think we deserve that fifty dollars tomorrow, we won’t accept it.”

He frowned at her. “Never said anything of the kind. In my opinion, you’ve done a grand job. Why, Fleagle would never have noticed those single-tire tread marks, and he’d never have found my dead deer and the rabbit snare unless he fell over them.” He stared at his gnarled fingers. “Got a touch of arthritis. Means a storm’s coming. Most likely a blizzard. The thing to do first is make that clubhouse weatherproof. And I know how. Jim Frayne knows about as much as I did when I was a boy of his age, but don’t forget that I’ve learned a lot since. If I had a horse, now, I’d ride over to that clubhouse and teach Jim a few tricks.”

“Oh, oh,” Honey cried. “I’m so glad you know how to ride, Mr. Maypenny. Daddy’ll buy you a horse as soon as you accept the job, but right now you take Starlight—the chestnut gelding. Trixie and I’ll take turns riding back on Lady. Won’t we, Trix?”

Trixie shook her head and carefully strapped Bobby’s compass around her wrist. “You ride to the clubhouse with Mr. Maypenny, Honey. I feel like walking—and thinking. It’s all so wonderful I don’t want to hurry.”

The blizzard started with a snow flurry around nine o’clock that night. Trixie fell asleep without any worries because, thanks to Mr. Maypenny, the clubhouse was as tight as a drum. The whole day had been so wonderful that she tried to stay awake as long as she could so she could think over all the nice things that had happened.

In the first place, Bobby had been so delighted when she gave him back his compass that he rushed to his mother, crying:

“Oh, I’m such a bad boy! I tookted Trixie’s ring, and losted it, but she didn’t get mad, ’cause it wasn’t the right ring. The
right
ring ’longs to Mr. Lytell on account of Brian’s car. But it really ’longs to Trixie, so I’m going to get it back when I give him my squirrel-bird.”

He went on with his strange and garbled version, chanting loudly every now and then:

“Old lamps for new. Old lamps for NEW. Hey! I’m Aladdin.”

So in the end Trixie had had to explain the whole
transaction to her parents. To her relief they were very sympathetic and did not scold her at all.

“You’re a banker at heart, Trix,” Mr. Belden said cheerfully. “But next time you want to borrow money on that ring, I hope you will consult me. Poor Mr. Lytell! He must have been flabbergasted when you made him take it as security.”

“I’ve always said he was a very nice man,” Mrs. Belden said, “and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he and Miss Trask got married some day. Also,” she finished rather smugly, “I never objected to Ben Riker. He really is a sweet boy. You can’t expect an only child to be as well-adjusted as one with—”

“Siblings,” Trixie finished, giving her mother a hug. “I’m so glad there are so many siblings in this family and that nobody’s mad at me.”

Feeling very close to tears of sheer joy, Trixie had rushed up to her room. It was then that she noticed that big fluffy flakes of snow were falling. The wind came up as rapidly as the temperature dropped and the snowflakes were turned to swirling masses of powdered sugar.

When she awoke in the morning the sun was shining with dazzling brightness on the thick white carpet that covered the ground and almost every inch of the
pine and spruce trees. Trixie dressed hurriedly and dashed out to join her brothers.

“Perfect sledding weather,” Brian said. “When I get my car, Trix, I’ll drive up and down the Wheelers’ driveway until the snow is hard-packed.” He gave her a hug. “Thanks to you, I can get my jalopy right after breakfast.”

“How come?” Trixie asked. “Our week isn’t up until this evening. If I remember right, we started last Sunday morning.”

“True,” Mart put in, “but we can’t patrol today. Not on horseback in this deep snow.”

“Miss Trask and Mr. Maypenny arranged it all last night after you went home, Trix,” Brian told her. “He assured her that we were in for a blizzard, so she gave me a check then and there. All it amounts to is this: We owe Mr. Maypenny a day’s work. He says he’d rather have it strung out in hours here and there. And best of all, Jim has a permanent job with him as part-time assistant gamekeeper.”

“Swell,” Trixie cried enthusiastically. “How does Regan like Mr. Maypenny? That’s important.”

“They’re crazy about each other,” Mart replied. “Not that it really matters. They won’t see much of each other because Mr. Maypenny is going to keep his horse
in a stall on his own place which we promised to help him build. We owe him something for the work he did on the clubhouse yesterday. What a man! As nimble as a monkey and a wizard with carpentry tools.”