The Happy Valley Mystery

by Campbell, Julie

  “I don’t think so,” Trixie said. “There’s no house around here as close to the water as this barn. It’s all lowland, Ben told me, and nobody builds here or tries to raise crops. It’s flooded every year.”

  “Not like this,” Jim said, “with even the bridge out. Think of all those chicken houses and the drowned animals. Where did they come from, if there aren’t any people around?”

  “Way up the river, maybe,” Honey said. “Jim, I think my battery is getting weak. Doesn’t the light look a lot dimmer to you?”

  “It sure does,” Jim answered. “We’d better save it till we catch sight of some boat.”

  “Then Honey and I had better yell again,” Trixie said. “Your voice is almost gone.”

  Both girls cupped their hands around their mouths and called at the top of their voices, “Help! Help! Help!”

  Not a sign of anything appeared on the water. Their voices just echoed back, till finally, as hoarse as Jim, they had to give up. They could only whisper.

  “What can possibly be keeping the rescuers?” Honey asked. “It must be near midnight. Of all the times for us to leave our watches at home... every one of us!”

  “It isn’t midnight,” Jim said. “I’m sure of that, but I’d have thought the police would have a search party out on the water long before this.”

  Trixie heard the anxiety in Jim’s voice. But she had something worse to worry about. No one else had seen it yet.

  Water had crept up over the eaves and was slowly, but surely, rising. Trixie had noticed it about fifteen minutes before. Since then it had risen at least an inch.

  There’s no use telling Jim, Trixie thought. There’s nothing else we can do. There’s no place else for us to go. We have to stay right here and....

  She couldn’t even think the word drown. Why, oh, why doesn’t someone come? she asked herself desperately. If I were back there at Happy Valley Farm, I’d know by this time that we must be out here trapped by the flood or else....

  Trixie hadn’t fooled Jim. That was apparent to her now, when she saw his eyes turn away and look down the slanted roof.

  Water seems so harmless, she thought, her mind half deadened by the shock of their growing danger. It’s just rippling away down there as it creeps higher up the shingles—rippling away— She thought of something. “Jim!” she cried out loud. “Jim!”

  “Yes, Trixie,” Jim asked, “what is it?”

  “There’s always the top of the cupola!”

  “It won’t hold more than two people,” Jim said. “What are you two talking about?” Honey asked. “No one can sit or even stand on top of that cupola.” Honey had been putting her fingers between the bars of the cupola, playing with the puppy’s paws, resigned to wait it out till someone found them. Now she turned an anguished face toward Jim and Trixie. “After all we’ve been through,” she said, “is there more danger?”

  “I’m afraid so, Sis,” Jim said, his voice but a hoarse whisper. “Give me the light. I’ll have to signal with it till the battery goes dead. I can’t yell anymore. Neither can either of you. Txixie’s voice is the worst of all.”

  Honey handed him the flashlight.

  Both girls watched as Jim pushed the switch, waited for the light, and pushed the switch again. Finally, as he realized the battery had at last died, they saw him throw it, with an angry gesture, far out into the water.

  A Sound in the Dark • 18

  SOMEHOW JIM’S GESTURE of despair made Trixie angry clear through.

  “See here,” she said. “We just can't give up. Jim, I’m surprised at you. You’ve been so wonderful, and now you’ve lost heart.”

  “I have not, not for a single minute, Trix,” Jim said. “I can get mad as well as you, can’t I? That darned old flashlight!”

  “You’re both putting on an act,” Honey said. * I can tell. How could we possibly be in a worse spot? Look out at that water. It’s creeping higher and higher all the time. We’re freezing cold. We’re starved. We’re so hoarse we can’t even call for help anymore. Now the flashlight’s gone. Even you can’t find a bright side to the fix were in, Trixie.”

  “Oh, can’t I?” Trixie asked. “You listen to me, Honey Wheeler. We could easily have drowned out there when that boat turned over, but we didn’t.”

  “What difference does it make where we drown?” Honey wailed.

  “And furthermore,” Trixie went on, “we’re high up, on top of this barn. It could be pitch-dark, but the moon is giving more light all the time. We’re way off from the main current of the river. Maybe the water is rising. Maybe it’ll get higher and higher, but were in the backwash. Even if we were in the main current, the foundation of this barn is just like rock. So pull yourself together, Honey.”

  “I’m sorry I’m such a goon,” Honey said. “I’d like to be big and noble like you, Trixie—”

  “Oh, rubbish,” Trixie said. “I’m not big and noble, and you know it. I just have confidence that were going to get out of this. Say, why don’t we get our minds off the whole thing for a while? We’ll all flip if we keep talking like this. Let’s play Twenty Questions!”

  The suggestion set Honey laughing for some reason or other. That sounds good, Trixie thought.

  “Maybe playing a game sounds silly,” she said aloud. “But let’s do it, anyway. I’m thinking of something.”

  “Animal or mineral?” Jim asked, glad to get into the game to help take their minds off their predicament.

  “Animal.”

  “Manufactured?” Honey asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Does it belong to any one person?”

  “No.”

  “Is it alive?” Honey questioned.

  “Oh, Honey,” Jim teased, “how could it be manufactured and alive? Is it edible?”

  “Yes,” Trixie whispered. Even her whisper was hoarse now.

  “I know what it is,” Honey said, tears in her voice. “It’s Mrs. Schulz’s fried chicken, and I’m so hungry and cold, and I’m terrified! I don’t want to play any old game. I just want— Jiminy, do you see what I see? Over there toward what you said was Sand Hill?”

  Trixie, who had hardly taken her eyes from the spot since darkness came, said exultantly, “Yes, Honey—oh, yes, Honey—I see it—a light—and it’s coming this way. Hey!”

  She tried to call. Nothing came but a hoarse croak.

  Jim tried to call, too. But his voice had gone completely.

  Honey tried—in vain.

  Only the small dog’s half-whimper, half-yip cut the silence.

  “Nobody will pay any attention to the dog,” Honey whispered. “How can we let them know where we are?”

  Jim pulled a piece of iron loose from the cupola. When the putt-putt-putt of the outboard motor grew nearer, he beat hard against the hinges of the cupola windows. The noise was loud, but evidently no one in the boat heard. The frightened little dog inside the cupola cried more plaintively.

  The light of the boat came nearer. “It’s Mr. Gorman’s flash lantern,” Trixie said. “It’s a boat from Happy Valley! Oh, make him turn that flash lantern this way! What can we do?”

  In the pale light of the moon, they could see two figures in the boat.

  “One of them is Mr. Gorman,” Trixie said.

  “The other is Mart, I think,” Jim said. “If only they’d cut off that motor for a little bit, we just might be able to make them hear us somehow.”

  As though they had heard Jim’s mind, the motor was cut off, and the boat drifted. Someone took a megaphone and called, “Jim! Jim! Trixie! Trixie! Honey! Honey!”

  “It’s Mart!” Honey choked.

  Oh, heaven, let one of us be able to answer, Trixie prayed. Together they tried. The hoarse, frantic sounds almost burst their throats. But no one could possibly hear them.

  The boat drifted nearer and nearer, near enough that they could hear the voices of the people in it.

  The puppy yipped. The water in the river lapped quietly, menacingly, against the roo
f. Trixie tore off her jacket and waved it frantically. So did Honey. Jim beat on the iron hinge.

  In the boat, Mart held the megaphone to his mouth and called, “Jim! Jim! Trixie! Trixie! Honey! Honey! Are you out there somewhere? Answer! Jim! Trixie! Honey! Trixie-e-e!”

  Suddenly Trixie dropped the jacket she was waving, and, with an exultant hoarse cry, she put her two fingers to her lips and whistled shrilly: bob, bob-white! bob, bob-white!

  Out in the boat Mart threw his arms in the air for joy, and back came the answering whistle: bob, bob-white! bob, bob-white!

  Jim and Honey, overcome with joy, sat silent.

  Off in the high water, the motorboat came alive. Its motor turned over, started up, and, straight as an arrow, came to the edge of the old red barn.

  Mr. Gorman raised his gun and shot into the air.

  From the far edge of the water another gun answered.

  “They know you’re safe,” Mr. Gorman said. “Thank God!”

  When the boat grounded at the foot of Sand Hill, a crowd of about fifty people waited. There were men, women, boys, and girls, even a dozen or so from the Rivervale High crowd.

  Brian and Diana joyously threw their arms around the trio. Someone wrapped blankets about them. Someone else herded them into a waiting car.

  Up the hill they went, with all the cars following.

  In Trixie’s arms, the puppy went to sleep.

  Back at Happy Valley Farm, Mrs. Gorman waited. Immediately she took charge of the blanketed Bob-Whites. “It’s into warm baths for all of you,” she said. “Hank, you take Jim—”

  “Holy cow,” Jim said, “I can still bathe myself!”

  It broke the tension. Everyone laughed, even Mrs. Gorman. Jim’s big, lanky form towered above stocky Mr. Gorman.

  “Heavens, I didn’t mean that!” Mrs. Gorman said. “I just meant for Hank to draw the water. We want to do something!”

  She herded Honey and Trixie ahead of her. “Heat the coffee, Diana,” she called back. “As soon as they get into some dry clothes, they’ll need food and lots of it... and then rest.”

  “We’ve been roosting up there on top of that barn so long we don’t need any rest,” Jim said, “but, oh, boy, dry clothes and food!”

  “Someone give the little puppy some warm milk, please,” Trixie said. “We found him out in the river, floating on a chicken house.”

  “Come on, Moses,” Mart said and picked up the puppy.

  “That’s a perfect name for him,” Diana said, laughing and crying at the same time. “Moses!”

  When the castaways finally came down to the kitchen, Mrs. Gorman had banished everyone except

  Ned and the Hubbell twins. They all sat around the big kitchen table, everyone talking at once.

  “What took you so long to come after us?” Honey asked.

  “We didn’t think about the boat on top of Ben’s car,” Mart said. “We were hunting for you in the jalopy. We thought-let’s not talk about it, shall we?”

  “All right,” Trixie said. “Then I’ll tell you something mighty important.” She described the two men she had seen on the high point near the woods, the truck filled with bundles of wool, and the shorn sheep s carcass that had floated near them.

  “Then you really did see a light off in the woods,” Mr. Gorman said. “I didn’t believe it could possibly be true at first, but you were so sure. I told the police about it today when I went to Valley Park. Sheriff Brown just laughed at me. I’ll go call him. He won't laugh now.”

  “The worst thing about all of it,” Jim said, “is losing Ben’s jalopy.”

  “Well, gosh, Jim,” Ben said, “if you think I’d ever give that a thought...

  “When my daddy and mother hear about what almost happened to us,” Honey said, “they’ll get Ben the finest car to be found in the city of Des Moines.

  “Wouldn’t I look funny in a fine car?” Ben said.

  “Trixie’s Uncle Andrew will replace Ben’s car, Mr. Gorman said. “When I think of how I've made fun of him for keeping that boat on top of his car! He ought to get the Carnegie medal for keeping it there,” Mr. Gorman added vehemently.

  ‘Amen!” Trixie said. “Oh, Ben, how glad we were to have that boat when the bridge went out!”

  “A boat’s a handy thing,” Ben said. “Say, where is it now?”

  “Fastened to the window on the haymow of the red barn,” Trixie said. “It’s underwater now. Ben, when you get your new car, there’s going to be a new boat fastened on top of it, if we have to dip into Bob-White funds to get it. When I think of what might have happened....”

  “Don’t!” Mrs. Gorman begged.

  “Well, Gumshoe Trixie tracked down the sheep thieves, after all,” Mart said. “Belden and Wheeler, private detectives, always get their man!”

  Somehow, no one felt like laughing. Even Mart couldn’t enjoy his attempted joke. The price of Trixie’s triumph this time had been almost too high.

  The Missing Clue • 19

  IT WAS LATE when Jim came up to the house and Trixie and Honey came into the kitchen the next morning, Saturday. Trixie was the latest of all.

  She found the kitchen in an uproar. Moses was barking as the kittens spat at him. The kittens won, and Moses retired to shelter behind the big cookstove.

  “That puppy should have been named Jeremiah, Mr. Gorman said. “He wailed all night. Didn’t you hear him?”

  “I couldn’t have heard Gabriel blow his horn last night,” Trixie said. “Poor little puppy. He was lonesome. I should have taken him up to my room.”

  “He isn’t lonesome anymore,” Mrs. Gorman said as she put a plate of steaming pancakes in front of Trixie. “Ben has adopted him—unless, of course, we find his owner. He says he’s going to make a hunting dog out of him. He will, too. Moses is a fine puppy, and Ben can train any animal. He’s even taught squirrels to climb up on his shoulder to find nuts in his pocket.”

  “Ben’s awfully nice not to have made a fuss about his car and boat. He loved that old jalopy. Mr. Gorman, did the sheriff go out after those men on the point?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Gorman answered. “Took them to Valley Park and put them in jail there. That jail itself ought to cure them of sheep-stealing.”

  “I’m sure sorry that I got Honey and Jim into so much danger,” Trixie said, shaking her head, “but it is a good thing to have that mystery about Uncle Andrew’s lost sheep solved, isn’t it?”

  “It would be if we were sure that it’s solved,” Mr. Gorman said. “It’s no cut-and-dried case.”

  “What do you mean? The men came from back there in the woods, where they were hiding. They had a truck full of wool. No one keeps sheep back in those woods.”

  “They claim they bought the wool over in Warren County. The sheriff isn’t too sure they didn’t. They’re making a big fuss about being kept in jail. Sheriff Brown says he has no right to detain them for more than the rest of this day.”

  “Oh, Mr. Gorman, that’s terrible,” Trixie said and got up from the table, leaving her food untouched.

  “I’m sure they’re the ones who stole the sheep.”

  “I have a feeling they are, too, Trixie, but that’s not proving it. Sheriff Brown says they asked him how on earth they could get away with all those sheep, right in plain sight, with the dogs around.”

  “They have a point there,” Mrs. Gorman said. “Don’t worry, Trixie. Sit down and finish your breakfast. Right’s right.”

  Trixie tried to eat but couldn’t. To come so near to a solution! To be so sure she was right! Something in the back of her mind bothered her. She felt there was some clue, somewhere, that she had missed. What could it be?

  Mrs. Gorman let the kittens out into the yard, and Tip and Tag came racing into the house. They caught sight of the new puppy and rolled him around with their paws, nuzzling him.

  Suddenly Trixie snapped her fingers. Something in the dog’s play sparked her memory. “Where’s Jim?” she asked.

  “In the next room,�
�� Mrs. Gorman said, “looking at the newspaper with Honey. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason just now,” Trixie said. “I’ll just go and talk to them for a while.”

  In the living room Trixie huddled with Honey and Jim. There was the sound of low voices talking fast. Then Trixie and Honey streaked upstairs, put on their jackets, and were downstairs and out the door with Jim, like lightning.

  Tip and Tag ran after them and around them and ahead of them, barking, sniffing the ground, sniffing the air, so glad to have someone to walk with.

  “I remembered the dogs,” Trixie said, “and the way they acted down there in the comer of the field when we were hunting jackrabbits.”

  “With the sheep bunched in the comer,” Honey said. “Yes, and they scattered when we made so much noise. They seemed to have found something very attractive down in that comer. And there are a lot of sheep over there right now,” Trixie said.

  “They look as though they were hunting something,” Jim said. “Something may grow there that they particularly like to eat. Hey, Trixie, what is it?”

  “Something they like to eat, all right,” Trixie said, “but it doesn’t grow here. See here, Jim!”

  Trixie held up a long pan. Sticking to it were the remains of some mixed grain mash. Not far from it was another pan just like it—and another.

  “No one would ever carry warm mash this far out in the field, away from the barn, would they?” Trixie asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Honey said slowly. “Trixie, do you see all those bunches of wool on the fence?”

  “I see something worse than that,” Trixie said. “I see big patches of what must be dried blood... there on the fence and here on the grass. If it hadn’t rained so hard, I could tell better.”

  “Someone has been luring the sheep down here with mash and then killing them,” Jim said.

  “Isn’t that terrible?” Honey asked. “The poor things. The thieves must have dragged them under the fence.”

  “Of course,” Trixie said. “That’s where those tufts of wool on the barbed wire came from.”