The Red Trailer Mystery

by Julie Campbell

“Has Jim got a deep voice?” Miss Trask promptly demanded.

  “It’s sort of husky,” Honey said. “But I don’t think it would sound like a grown man’s over the telephone.”

  “I just thought,” Miss Trask went on, “it seems like rather a coincidence that those men would make up a story about a redheaded boy hiding in a barn at the same time and in the same neighborhood where we’re looking for Jim.”

  And then the girls told her that they were pretty sure that they were on Jim’s trail at last. They even confessed that they had been hiding in the loft when the troopers arrested Al and Jeff. They carefully avoided mentioning that Al had threatened to kidnap Honey, but even then she was horrified.

  “Gracious,” she gasped, “you girls must be more careful. Promise me you won’t go inside any abandoned barns or houses from now on.”

  “We won’t,” Honey assured her. “But the first thing tomorrow morning we want to explore the woods. If we start out early enough we might even find Jim in his camp.”

  “Or Joeanne,” Miss Trask said. “I wish I had known her father had gone off and abandoned her. I would have reported it to the troopers at once. What kind of a man would do such a thing? I’ve a good mind to notify the police right now.”

  “Oh, please don’t,” Honey begged. “He didn’t really abandon her, Miss Trask. She ran away, and he had to think of his wife and the other children. As soon as he found a home for them I’m sure he meant to go back and look for Joeanne.”

  “Anyway,” Trixie added, “Joeanne knew where her family was going.” She clapped her hand over her mouth too late. She had not meant to let Miss Trask even guess that the stolen red trailer might be somewhere in the vicinity. If she knew that it had been parked in the Smith garage until the night before she would certainly feel that she should report it to the police.

  Fortunately Miss Trask’s suspicions were not aroused, and Honey quickly changed the subject. “We’ll find Joeanne when we find Jim,” she said so positively that even Trixie was impressed. “I’m not worried about her at all now that Jim’s looking out for her.”

  She slipped her arm through Trixie’s as they followed the governess out of the cafeteria. Miss Trask stopped at the magazine stand, and the girls went down the steps to the park. “Listen,” Honey whispered, “she wants to go to the outdoor movies tonight, but we’ll say we’re too tired, which is the absolute truth. Only, after a short rest, let’s go back and see if we can find someone sleeping in that tent at Jim’s camp. If we find Joeanne we’ll make her tell us where Jim is.”

  “Wonderful,” Trixie cried. “We can get there and be back long before the movie is over.”

  Honey nodded. “I wouldn’t deceive Miss Trask for anything in the world, but you know perfectly well she would never give us permission to go into the woods at night. And it seems to me it’s the one sure way of finding somebody at Jim’s camp. After it’s all over and we’re back safely, she’ll understand why we had to do it without telling her.”

  “I know,” Trixie agreed. “She’s an awfully good sport. I was terrified back at the table that she’d start the troopers looking for Joeanne.”

  “Miss Trask knows we want to find her when we find Jim,” Honey went on. “But if we don’t find one or both of them by tomorrow she’ll have to notify Mr. Rainsford as well as the police.”

  “We’ve got to find one of them this evening,” Trixie said grimly. Then she chuckled. “You’re always calling yourself a fraidy-cat but I notice you don’t seem at all scared at the idea of going into the woods tonight.”

  Honey’s hazel eyes widened in surprise. “Of course not! It’ll be as light as day with that big moon shining. It’s still almost as bright as it was last Wednesday when you and I and Jim went for a moonlight ride, remember?”

  “I sure do,” Trixie said. “And I haven’t forgotten how Reddy kept delaying our start. Oh, golly,” she interrupted herself. “That reminds me. Where are those dogs now?”

  Miss Trask joined them as they stopped by the swimming pool. “You girls look tired,” she said. “I’ll run along to the movie and let you topple into bed. You must go to sleep early if you want to look for Jim the first thing tomorrow morning.”

  She smiled and hurried past them on her way to the parking lot.

  “Those dogs,” Honey groaned. “I can’t remember now whether or not they were with us when we found Jimmy Crow’s towel rack. Can you?”

  Trixie thought for a minute. “Reddy was. I was so disappointed and turned around to go home so suddenly I almost tripped over him.”

  “That’s right,” Honey went on, “and I do remember now. He was with us when we got back to the trailer. He barged by us when we opened the door and jumped up on the couch where Miss Trask was reading. She pushed him down and brushed off his muddy footprints. I just took it for granted that Bud was with us too.”

  They hurried to the Swan and sure enough, Reddy was there, looking bored and hungry. But there was no sign of the little black cocker spaniel puppy.

  “We’re perfectly awful, Honey,” Trixie said as she opened a can of dog food. “We don’t deserve to have pets if we can’t take better care of them. The water in their pan hasn’t been emptied and refilled for ages I’ll bet.”

  “I did it this morning,” Honey said quickly. “That’s what I was doing when Miss Trask burned herself. Oh, dear, Trixie, where do you suppose Bud is?”

  Trixie grinned suddenly. “At least, we have a good excuse now to go back to the woods across the road. He must be around there. Maybe his sense of direction is no better than ours. He’s nothing but a puppy, so when he got tired of looking for us, he may have collapsed under a tree and gone to sleep.”

  “I hope so,” Honey said as she followed Trixie out of the Swan, carefully shutting Reddy inside. “The first thing I’m going to do when we get back home is to teach that little wretch to heel.”

  Trixie laughed. “You’d better first train him to come when called. He’s as bad as Reddy who only comes when he hasn’t anything better to do.”

  “It seems to me,” Honey complained as they hurried down the Autoville driveway, “that we never have less than three things to look for at the same time. Wouldn’t it be heavenly if Bud met Jim in the woods and we found them both at the camp?”

  “Bud doesn’t know Jim,” Trixie objected. “Reddy does, but you always shut Bud inside the house when we went up to the mansion.”

  “Bud knows Joeanne,” Honey pointed out. “He spent a whole morning in the red trailer. Maybe he’s asleep in the tent with her right now.”

  “It’s too hot and too early for anyone to be asleep,” Trixie said. “The movies started at eight so it’s only a little after that now.”

  They walked along in silence until they came to the Pine Hollow road. As they rounded the bend they saw that Mr. Currier’s automobile was no longer there, then they cut through the woods.

  With the aid of their flashlight and the bright moonlight, they easily followed the path, and in a short while they arrived at the little camp in the clearing. There was no sign of life and Bud did not appear in answer to their shouts and whistles.

  “The ashes are cold,” Trixie said, patting the remnants of the fire between the two forked sticks. “Nobody has been cooking here today.”

  Honey lifted the mosquito-net flap to the tent. “Everything is exactly as we left it,” she sighed. “Even that wrinkle in the blanket I forgot to smooth out after Bud yanked it off the bed.”

  “Well, I’m going to leave a note for Jim,” Trixie said, refusing to become depressed. “Sooner or later, he’s bound to come back after his mug and Bible.”

  “But we haven’t any paper or pencil,” Honey said, looking as though she were going to cry.

  “I’ll tear a label off one of the cans,” Trixie told her, “and write on the back of it with a hunk of charred wood from the dead fire.”

  “You’re wonderful,” Honey cried, cheering up as she slipped out of the tent and hurried
back with a piece of charcoal. “What are you going to say?”

  Trixie thought for a minute and then she wrote.

  Jim: Honey and I are at the Autoville trailer camp. It is perfectly safe now for you to come to see us. Trixie.

  “There isn’t room for another word,” she said, “but he trusts us so he’ll come. I’ll stick the note inside his christening mug so he can’t possibly miss seeing it.”

  “Now what’ll we do about Bud?” Honey demanded as they replaced the corner of the blanket over the foot of the bed and scrambled out of the tent.

  “We could climb up to the top of that shrubby hill,” Trixie suggested, “but I doubt if we could catch a glimpse of him from there, not in the moonlight.”

  “Oh dear,” Honey moaned. “I can’t bear to think of the poor little thing spending a night alone in the woods.”

  “It won’t hurt him at all,” Trixie declared emphatically. “It’s very warm and there’s plenty of water for him to drink. He may even have caught a small field mouse for his supper.”

  “I suppose the sensible thing for us to do is go home and look for Bud again early in the morning,” Honey said after they had called and called in vain.

  “That’s right,” Trixie agreed. “I’m so tired I don’t think I could climb that hill and that’s probably where he is. Both dogs were with us when the trees thinned out and began to be shrubs. That’s the last time I remember seeing Bud. He raced ahead of us but Reddy stayed close by for a wonder.” She yawned wearily.

  “I’m exhausted too,” Honey admitted. “Let’s give up.”

  On the way home Trixie suddenly thought of something, but she decided not to say anything to Honey for fear of arousing false hopes.

  What Trixie thought of was a little barefoot girl in a patched sunsuit, cradling a black puppy to her thin body. “My puppy,” Sally had crooned the day they had first met the red trailer family.

  Did Bud’s disappearance mean that the stolen Robin was hidden somewhere nearby?

  “If it is,” Trixie whispered to herself as she curled up in bed, “we should be able to see it from the top of that shrub-covered rise of land. Maybe Jimmy Crow has done us a favor after all. If it hadn’t been for his shiny towel rack, I would never have noticed that mound.”

  Chapter 16

  A Surprising Slide

  The girls slept soundly until dawn. They ate a hurried breakfast of dry cereal and milk and left the Swan.

  The sun had not yet burned off the dew, and there were still mud puddles in the Autoville driveway, left over from yesterday’s rain. A heavy mist blotted out the treetops but Trixie felt sure that before noon the sky would be clear and bright. She was also sure, with a growing sense of excitement, that before the day was over they would find not only Jim and Joeanne, but the red trailer family as well.

  Joeanne might well have spent the night in the Robin with her parents. She told herself that was why Joeanne wasn’t in the tent at Jim’s camp. She had probably discovered the trailer in the woods somewhere yesterday.

  “I had the funniest dream last night,” Honey said as they left the Pine Hollow road and cut through the woods toward the little camp in the clearing. “And it was all in color like a Technicolor movie.”

  Trixie grinned. “Only people with very vivid imaginations dream in color. You’ll probably be a writer or an artist someday, Honey. What was the dream about?”

  “It was just as plain as could be,” Honey told her. “Bud had grown to an enormous size and he was hitched up to the red trailer. I was riding on his back and you and Jim were running alongside. Jim’s hair was as red as the sunrise, and then suddenly it turned as black as night and I saw it wasn’t Jim, but Joeanne. She ran along with her hair flowing behind her like a black cloud, screaming, ‘Nevermore, nevermore,’ and sobbing heartbrokenly. All of a sudden she changed into a large black raven and flew away, flapping her wings and croaking.”

  Trixie giggled. “What happened to me? Did I change into a pumpkin or something?”

  “No.” Honey smiled. “You stayed just the way you are, and it was perfectly maddening. I kept yelling at you, ‘Catch her! Catch her!’ but you just grinned at me like the Cheshire cat in ‘Through the Looking Glass.’ ”

  “Like this?” Trixie screwed her face into an evil grin.

  Honey nodded soberly. “I know this sounds crazy, but that nightmare makes sense in a way. I mean,” she hurried on as Trixie stared at her, “about Joeanne. I’ve been thinking about her ever since I woke up and how she cried ‘Nevermore’ in the dream. Don’t you see? What she was really sobbing was, ‘Never again. Never again.’ ”

  “Why, Honey Wheeler,” Trixie gasped, “you’re positively a wizard! I get it now. Joeanne ran away but she was sorry right afterward, so she started out to look for her family. She must have known her father was going to try to get work on one of the big truck farms around here, and he knew that she knew it, so that’s why he didn’t worry about her too much. He was sure she’d show up sooner or later in this farming district.”

  “That’s the way I figure it,” Honey said slowly. “Except that I think her family worried an awful lot about her but couldn’t do anything.”

  “I’ll bet her father felt it served her right,” Trixie said, “and that spending a night in the woods would teach her a good lesson. I ran away from home once,” she went on with a rueful giggle, “when I was just about Joeanne’s age. I hid in the woods between your place and ours and waited for them to come and find me with bloodhounds and mounted policemen. I had a wonderful time thinking how sad they were going to be when they found me starved to death under a tree, and I kept watching the house for signs of excitement. But nothing happened at all. Everybody went on about his business just as though nobody had even missed me. They had a lovely picnic supper out on the terrace, and I almost gave up when I saw they were having vanilla ice cream with hot fudge sauce for dessert.”

  Honey burst into gales of laughter. “I bet that just about killed you! What finally happened?”

  Trixie grinned. “Well, after supper, they calmly and coolly went to bed. One by one, the lights went out and it got darker and darker in the woods. I made up my mind I was going to stick it out but just then a huge owl swooped down so close I could have touched its wings, hooting, ‘Who-who, whooo!’ and that finished me. I scampered for home, bawling like a baby.”

  “Did you get an awful scolding?” Honey asked.

  Trixie shook her head. “Nobody said a word, not even Bobby. Dad let me in the back door just as though it was perfectly normal for me to be out until ten o’clock, and I went right upstairs to bed without even asking for something to eat although I was ravenous. I can tell you,” she finished, “I’ve never had any desire to run away since, and I’ll bet Joeanne has learned her lesson too.”

  “I guess she has,” Honey agreed, “but all the same, I’m glad Jim has been looking out for her. The poor little thing, all alone in the woods without anything to eat and in all that rain!”

  “I know,” Trixie admitted, “but she didn’t have to stay in the woods. Any of the farmers around here would have taken her in. Farmers are usually kind and hospitable, like Mrs. Smith.”

  “How do you suppose she got all the way up here from that picnic ground?” Honey wondered out loud. “She couldn’t have walked that far between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.”

  “She hitchhiked, of course,” Trixie said, “and probably arrived in this part of the river country at about the same time we did. Miss Trask drove at the rate of twenty miles an hour, but a car without a trailer would travel much faster.”

  “I wonder where she spent Saturday night,” Honey wanted to know. “I’m glad it didn’t rain, aren’t you?”

  Trixie nodded. “And it was nice and hot. I remember thinking I was going to suffocate inside the Swan. It was probably a perfect night for sleeping outdoors, and you know yourself, Honey, eleven-year-old girls aren’t exactly babies. We were that age only a couple of
years ago. Joeanne seems pathetic to us because she’s so thin, but remember how grownup and independent she acted that first evening when we parked beside the Robin?”

  “That’s true,” Honey said. “She was a regular little mother to Sally, and she was the only one in the whole family who didn’t look scared when the father ordered them inside the trailer.”

  “The eldest child in a big family,” Trixie explained, “always grows up fast, because he or she has to help with the younger children. Why, when Brian was only nine Dad taught him how to shoot, but I’ll bet he doesn’t let Bobby, who’s the baby, touch a gun until he’s fifteen.” She laughed. “I was the baby in our family until Bobby was born six years ago. And was I ever spoiled!”

  “I don’t believe it,” Honey objected. They cut through the clearing and peeked inside the tent, but everything was exactly as they had left it the evening before. “Your father and mother are too smart to spoil anyone,” Honey continued as they began the slow climb to the shrubby mound. “You don’t know how lucky you are, Trixie, to have such wonderful parents and three brothers.”

  “Cheer up,” Trixie said, “you may not be an only child for long. We’ll see to it that your mother meets Jim somehow. She couldn’t help liking him an awful lot.”

  Honey looked at her with sudden suspicion. “You seem awfully optimistic this morning, Trixie. The way you’ve been talking one would think we’d already found Jim and Joeanne, not to mention the red trailer.” She sighed. “I don’t think we’re going to see anything from the top of that hill, and I’m sure we’ve lost Bud for good.”

  And then they heard the sound of joyful barking, and in another minute Bud came wriggling out from the underbrush. Honey scooped him into her arms and he licked her face happily, but he did not look at all as though he had spent a forlorn night in the woods. His coat was sleek and free of mud and burrs, and his tummy was the firm, rounded tummy of a puppy who has just bolted a large and satisfying breakfast.

  “Well, that’s that,” Trixie cried, and pushing past Honey, raced to the top of the hill. At first she squinted to the east of the main highway and saw the Smith farm and the neat green rows of healthy plants in the rich brown earth of the truck garden. The abandoned orchard sloped away from the cleared land near the house, and, shading her eyes with one hand, Trixie caught a glimpse of the peaked roof of the old high-ceilinged barn down in the hollow.