The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

by Campbell, Julie

  Your TRIXIE BELDEN Library

  1 The Secret of the Mansion

  2 The Red Trailer Mystery

  3 The Gatehouse Mystery

  4 The Mysterious Visitor

  5 The Mystery Off Glen Road

  6 Mystery in Arizona

  7 The Mysterious Code

  8 The Black Jacket Mystery

  9 The Happy Valley Mystery

  10 The Marshland Mystery

  11 The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

  12 The Mystery of the Blinking Eye

  13 The Mystery on Cobbett’s Island

  14 The Mystery of the Emeralds

  15 Mystery on the Mississippi

  16 The Mystery of the Missing Heiress

  17 The Mystery of the Uninvited Guest

  18 The Mystery of the Phantom Grasshopper

  19 The Secret of the Unseen Treasure

  20 The Mystery Off Old Telegraph Road

  21 The Mystery of the Castaway Children

  22 Mystery at Mead’s Mountain

  23 The Mystery of the Queen’s Necklace

  24 Mystery at Saratoga

  25 The Sasquatch Mystery

  26 The Mystery of the Headless Horseman

  27 The Mystery of the Ghostly Galleon

  28 The Hudson River Mystery

  29 The Mystery of the Velvet Gown

  30 The Mystery of the Midnight Marauder

  31 Mystery at Maypenny’s

  32 The Mystery of the Whispering Witch (new)

  33 The Mystery of the Vanishing Victim (new)

  34 The Mystery of the Missing Millionaire (new)

  Copyright ©1977, 1963 by

  Western Publishing Company, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Produced in U.S.A.

  GOLDEN®, GOLDEN PRESS®, and TRIXIE BELDEN® are

  registered trademarks of Western Publishing Company, Inc.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN 0-307-21586-5

  All names, characters, and events in this story are entirely fictitious.

  Discovery ● 1

  I HATE RAIN! It’s simply pouring down, and it’s darker than night outside.”

  Trixie Belden’s usually merry blue eyes were rebellious. She pressed her face against the big picture window in her Uncle Andrew’s fishing lodge, deep in the Ozark Mountains. Outside, rivulets of water ran down the glass. Thunder rolled in the distance, and wind whipped the branches of the pines and oaks on the rocky ledge where the lodge perched.

  “It’s never going to stop raining! Why did we ever come here?”

  Mart Belden, fifteen, just eleven months older than his sister, looked up from the reel he was fitting to a limber fishing rod. “What’s the matter with you? On the way here yesterday, you were so excited about everything you couldn’t even sit still in the wagon.”

  “Yesterday everything was different,” Trixie answered. “I’d never even seen a mule before, and then to ride the last few miles of our journey in a mule wagon driven by a girl my own age! The sun was so bright, and the hills were so beautiful. Who’d ever have thought we’d be drowning today?”

  “Well, settle down. It won’t kill you to wait out the rain. Try to get into the dart game with Jim and Brian.”

  “I hate darts!”

  “Well, help Honey hem the curtains for the windows here in the lodge. You chose the material and had it sent out from New York, so get busy and help make the curtains.”

  “I hate to sew!”

  “Gosh, go ahead and grouch, then, only keep it to yourself. If you could only see your face. It’s worse than the rain clouds. You look so furious that even your hair is almost bright red.”

  “I don’t care!” Trixie stamped her foot impatiently, and her short sandy curls bounced as if they, too, were impatient. “I wish Uncle Andrew never had invited us to come here. If we’d stayed home, we’d have been earning some money now for the new Bob-White project. That’s what Dan’s doing. We’ll feel plenty silly if we have nothing to contribute toward the station wagon to take handicapped children to the Sleepy-side School. I hate this whole place!”

  Trixie’s older brother Brian stopped tossing darts for a minute. “That doesn’t sound like you, Trixie. You’re usually the best sport in the world. What do you suppose Linnie’ll think of you?”

  Trixie clapped her hand over her mouth and turned to Linnie... Linnie Moore, the daughter of Uncle Andrew’s housekeeper at his fishing lodge.

  “Oh, Linnie, I am a goop. I didn’t mean a word of it. It’s just frustrating not to be able to get out and do something. I never could stand to be cooped up.”

  “No one likes to be shut in, Trixie.” Linnie’s voice was quiet. “The rain will like as not stop just as suddenly as it started. It mostly does. What did you mean, though, about a station wagon for handicapped children, and what is a bobwhite? I know you can’t be talking about a real bobwhite bird. What is it?”

  Trixie laughed. She had liked Linnie from the moment she had met her. That had been when the Ozark Mountain girl had waited for the Bob-Whites at the railroad station in White Hole Springs, Missouri. She had waited with the mule team and wagon that would take the visitors the last few miles of their journey from Westchester County, New York, where they lived, to the lodge in the Ozarks. No car ever could have traveled over the winding, rocky road.

  “The Bob-Whites are us,” Trixie explained. “Bob-Whites of the Glen. It’s our club. Back in Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson, we have a clubhouse. We always have a project we work on as a group—something we try to do to give help where it’s needed.”

  “That sounds wonderful. No wonder you’re fretting now, with nothing to do. Is it a big club?”

  “There’s Honey, for one.” Trixie put her arm around honey-haired Honey Wheeler, who sewed away patiently on curtains for the lodge. “Our clubhouse is on the grounds of her beautiful home. Then there’s Jim, Honey’s adopted brother, and my older brothers, Mart and Brian. Mart’s not even a year older, but Brian’s almost seventeen. Di Lynch is a member of the club, too. She’s fourteen, the same age as Honey and me.”

  “Me, too,” Linnie said.

  “Di is out in California right now with her parents and twin brothers and twin sisters. Di is simply beautiful. Oh, yes, there’s Dan—Dan Mangan. He’s at home in Sleepyside, working for Honey’s father’s gamekeeper. Last and least, there’s me. I’m sorry I was such a grump. I’m not always like that.”

  “No, she’s not, Linnie.” Honey spoke up loyally. “She’s just the most wonderful—”

  “Take it easy,” Mart drawled. “She’s far from perfection’s prototype right now.” Mart loved to use big words.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Linnie said, “but I like Trixie. I like all of you. Not many people around my own age come here. Mostly it’s older people who come to visit your Uncle Andrew. Then I have to help Mama. There’s lots to do around here—not today, of course, when it’s raining. Except, it is getting on toward lunchtime now, and I’d better

  go and see if Mama needs me.”

  “She’s sweet, isn’t she?” Trixie asked Honey as Linnie left the room. “She’s so calm. I’d give anything if I could stop getting so excited about everything.”

  “So would I,” Mart agreed.

  “It’s this great, overpowering hunk of nature all around her that makes Linnie so calm,” Jim said, “though we do have a good supply of nature ourselves back home, right in the lap of the Catskills.”

  “And with that big game preserve on Honey’s father’s land,” Brian added.

  “But none of it is as wild as this land is.” Trixie picked up
a magazine, riffled through it, then settled down near a table. “It was fascinating country that we came through yesterday. The mules practically stood on their heads coming down that steep road; I can’t wait to explore it.”

  “There you go again,” Mart said, disgusted. “Settle down and give the rest of us a break. Keep your nose in a magazine for a while.”

  Mart unreeled his line, wound it again, and made a short cast into a corner by the huge fireplace. “What’s got into you now, Trixie?”

  Trixie, her eyes glued to the pages she was turning, mumbled incoherently, the words tumbling over one another. Then she jumped to her feet, flapping the pictured pages dramatically. “Look! Just listen to this! See the funny ghost-white fish in this picture? Listen!” The pictured fish looked like almost any creek fish, except that it was snow-white. Also, where its eyes should have been, there were only little rises covered with flesh.

  Mart reeled in his line.

  Trixie’s brother Brian and his partner, Jim, left their dart game.

  Honey looked up quickly from her sewing.

  They were used to Trixie’s bursts of enthusiasm, and they always paid attention to her. Life with her might be exasperating at times, but it was never dull. She had led them into and out of some mighty thrilling episodes.

  “Listen!” she repeated, then read from the magazine. “ ‘Biologists and other men engaged in medical research are showing great interest in fish found in underground caves. These fish, trapped by shifting earth or cavern breakdown, couldn’t escape to the outside.’ ”

  “So what?” Mart asked. “Why all the agitation?”

  “Be patient! I’m getting to it. ‘Because they couldn’t escape outside, and because it was pitch-dark inside, gradually, through thousands of years, as generation followed generation, their eyes became mere mounds of flesh, then disappeared altogether.’ ”

  “That’s interesting,” Mart agreed. “It isn’t earth-shaking, though. Evolution is going on all the time. That’s how human beings lost their tails. There are times when I could use a prehensile tail, I can tell you —when I’m playing basketball, for instance.”

  “This article I am reading is very important, Mart. Please may I go on?”

  “Shoot! But make it a fast draw.”

  “The magazine goes on to say, ‘Scientists want to make an intensive study of these fish, to determine the effect of environment on blindness and to observe how nature works to help animals adjust to blindness.’ “Now I’m coming to the part that’s important to us. This magazine,” Trixie said impressively, “is prepared to pay a reward of five hundred dollars for live specimens of Ozark cave fish in three stages of evolution—with fully developed eyes, with partly developed eyes, and eyeless.”

  Brian, who was fascinated by science and intended to become a doctor, was instantly intrigued. “That sounds interesting, Trixie. May I look at the article?”

  Trixie handed him the magazine and jumped excitedly from one foot to the other. “Just think! Here we are, right on the scene. Doesn’t it say in the article, Brian, that the fish are most likely to be found in caves in the vicinity of Lake Wamatosa? Well, isn’t that Lake Wamatosa right down there below us? And doesn’t it say that a representative of the magazine will be in White Hole Springs within a week or so? What’s to keep us from going after those fish and presenting him with the three specimens he wants, and—” Trixie paused for effect—“collecting the five hundred dollars for the station wagon fund? If it would only stop raining!”

  “What do you mean, ‘stop raining’?” Mart asked.

  ‘When you were pointing out that window to Lake Wamatosa, you didn’t even see that the sun is shining.”

  “Then let’s start hunting for those fish!”

  Mrs. Moore had been working quietly in the dining end of the big lodge living room, putting lunch on the table. Linnie, who had been helping her, had just brought in a bowl of salad.

  “I think you’d better wait,” Mrs. Moore said. “Why?” Trixie asked, surprised.

  “Because your Uncle Andrew isn’t here.”

  “Don’t you think he’d want us to go and hunt for the fish, Mrs. Moore?”

  “I don’t know. Exploring caves can be dangerous. Linnie knows that, don’t you, Linnie?”

  “It is likely to be risky,” Linnie admitted reluctantly, “if you don’t know anything about exploring caves.”

  “We do, though,” Trixie said. “There’s a cave in Honey’s father’s woods.”

  Honey laughed. “That old thing! We know every inch of it. There’s certainly no danger there.”

  Mrs. Moore seemed worried. “Caves round about here have sinkholes in them. They have dangerous ledges and falling rocks. You could run into a wild animal or a snake. You probably would be perfectly safe, but I’d much rather you’d talk it over with your Uncle Andrew first. He’ll be home for dinner tonight.”

  “All right. We’ll wait till morning,” Brian said. Brian was the conservative, dependable Belden. “Another few hours won’t make much difference. You act as though you could walk right into a cave, Trixie, take the fish out with a dip net, and pocket the money. It couldn’t be that simple, or they wouldn’t be offering a five-hundred-dollar reward. We’ll wait, won’t we, gang?”

  “I wish we didn’t have to waste a whole day!” Trixie said.

  “You are on a rebellious kick,” Mart said. “Why don’t we go fishing after lunch? I’m dying to try out this reel. You bet me a dollar you’d catch the first fish. Don’t forget that, Trix. If you don’t go along, it’ll cost you a dollar, because I’m going to get a bass. See if I don’t.” —

  “Oh, all right,” Trixie agreed reluctantly. Then a thought struck her. A mysterious smile crept round her lips. It could be that they just might find a cave, and if they did....

  Uncle Andrew’s lodge was built of logs. It was located deep in the Missouri Ozarks, where life was still quite primitive, but he had managed to have some comforts brought to his mountain home.

  A great rough stone fireplace dominated one end of the big living room. The comfortable chairs and divans were of peeled hickory and had been made by the mountain people. Woven rag rugs covered the floors. From high above the lodge, clear, cold spring-water flowed by force of gravity through pipes to the kitchen and shower room. Hanging oil lamps provided mellow light for reading.

  Uncle Andrew’s bedroom was on the first floor in back, and stairs led from the living room to two large dormitories, equipped with comfortable bunk beds, on the second floor.

  Through the wide-paned windows, where Trixie had watched the rain so impatiently, a glorious vista opened. Limestone ledges made a serrated pattern down to Ghost River, which emptied into the huge basin of Lake Wamatosa. Pines, walnuts, hickories, butternuts, papaws, dogwoods, redbuds, and wild crab apple trees tangled, in dense clumps, with wild grapevines and spiraling woodbines.

  In a cleared place just beyond the lodge, Mrs. Moore’s cabin stood. She had known no other home. Her grandparents had built the two-room log house when they migrated from Kentucky years before. After Linnie was born, Mrs. Moore and her husband, Matthew, had added a third room. From year to year, they had managed to clear a little more ground for gardening.

  Ten years before, when Linnie was only four years old, Matthew Moore had gone on a fishing and hunting expedition. He never came back.

  The evening before, after the Bob-Whites had unpacked and had dinner and Mrs. Moore and Linnie had gone to their own cabin, Uncle Andrew told them all he knew of the tragic affair. “The mayor of Wagon Trail,” he said, “a little town south of Springfield, sent Mrs. Moore her husband’s knapsack. With it was a letter saying that her husband’s body had been found at the foot of a cliff, where, quite evidently, he had fallen to his death.”

  “How sad!” Trixie said. “It must have been dreadful if they had to bring his body here in that mule wagon.”

  “They couldn’t bring his body home to be buried,” Uncle Andrew explained, �
��because they had great difficulty in contacting Mrs. Moore. They did the best they could; they buried Matthew near where he had fallen. When Mrs. Moore received the letter and the knapsack, her husband had been dead for more than a month.”

  “What did she do?” Trixie asked.

  “Here in the Ozark hills, people have learned to accept death stoically; when it happens, the family just goes on living. Mrs. Moore had to support herself and her child somehow. She gathered ginseng and other herbs in the woods and sent them with a neighbor to White Hole Springs, to be sent to city drugstores. She wove baskets, made pottery, and made dewberry and blackberry preserves. She carried her products by muleback, then sat patiently all day long by the roadside, hoping to sell them to passing tourists.

  “She gathered wood and split it to keep Linnie and herself warm in winter. She canned vegetables and wild fruits. She shot squirrels and rabbits and canned some of them for winter use. She even managed to buy Martha, the cow, and Shem and Japheth, the mules. Things are a little easier for her now, since I was fortunate enough to employ her as a housekeeper.”

  The Bob-Whites quickly consumed the sandwiches Mrs. Moore had made, plus a big bowl of garden lettuce mixed with wild poke greens. There were little onions and radishes from Mrs. Moore’s kitchen garden.

  “Moms has lettuce and radishes in her garden at home,” Trixie told Mrs. Moore. “Brian and Mart planted it for her, and they help her hoe and water it.” Mrs. Moore seemed surprised. “Then you all have chores to do at home. Do you hear that, Linnie?”

  “I’ll say we do,” Mart said. “Plenty of them, the year round. Trixie helps Moms a lot by taking care of our little brother, Bobby, and with dusting—her favorite chore. Brian and I have the really hard work to do, though, shoveling snow, working in the garden, and carrying in wood. Jeepers, we get the tough end of it, huh, Brian?”

  “We have all the time we want for Bob-White work and basketball and baseball practice and skating,” Brian answered. “You know that, Mart.”