The Red Trailer Mystery (19 page)

“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.”

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.

So
, she thought excitedly,
you can see it from here too
. Then she turned around and stared in the opposite direction, and what she saw made her scream at the top of her lungs to Honey. The rise of ground she was standing on, dropped down sharply on the west side to another hollow, and, parked in a small cleared space between
tall evergreens, was the missing red trailer!

“Honey, Honey,” she yelled. “We’ve found it at last.” And as Honey hurried to join her she added breathlessly, “At least, Bud did. See, Sally’s playing on the step. That’s where your little black puppy spent the night.”

Honey was too thrilled to do anything but stare for a minute. “You knew it all along,” she got out finally in an accusing voice. “That’s why you’ve been so cheerful all morning.”

“I only guessed,” Trixie told her. “If I’d been wrong, you would have died of disappointment. Come on! Let’s go make a nice neighborly call on the Darnells.”

Trixie was already slipping and sliding down the steep side of the hill, but Honey hung back. “They won’t be at all glad to see us,” she objected. “They’ll be furious that we discovered their hiding place.”

Trixie tripped on a stone and sat down suddenly, clutching at the branches of a scrub pine tree to keep from skidding all the way to the bottom. But the branches slipped through her fingers and, a second later, Trixie was sprawling on her back at the foot of the hill.

“Oh, oh,” Honey cried, thinking Trixie must be hurt. And she stumbled headlong down to help her to her feet.

Both of Trixie’s elbows were skinned but otherwise
she was all right, and she stood up, brushing the dirt from the seat of her dungarees. “That’s one way of getting someplace quickly,” she began with a rueful chuckle, and stopped with her mouth open as she saw Mrs. Darnell hurrying toward them under the cedar trees in the dense woods of the hollow.

“Oh, please go away,” she sobbed when she came closer. “
Please!
Don’t you think you’ve caused us enough trouble already?”

Trixie stared at her, tongue-tied, but Honey said quickly, “We haven’t meant to cause you any trouble, Mrs. Darnell. We only—”

The woman covered her tired face with her thin, work-worn hands and burst into tears. “So you know our name now,” she groaned. “Darney said you’d never give up until you tracked us down. I’ve been a fool. I thought you were kind. I even hoped Joeanne might be with you. She said you were nice girls, and we’ve never laid eyes on her since she took back your puppy. I’ve prayed every night since she ran away that she had hidden in your trailer and that she was safe in your care.”

Impulsively, Honey put her arms around the woman’s shaking shoulders. “Don’t cry, Mrs. Darnell,” she begged. “We are your friends, really and truly we are.”

The frail woman pulled away from her.
“Friends!”
she repeated hoarsely. “You’ve been spying on us from the beginning and setting your dog on us. You knew how my little Sally loved him. You knew he would lead you to our hiding place. I should have shut him out last night and left him to shift for himself in the woods. He’s been the cause of all our troubles.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Honey cried, on the verge of tears herself now. “We never meant to spy on you. And we’ve been trying to find Joeanne ever since she ran away.”

“It was your dog that made her do it,” Mrs. Darnell sobbed. “ ‘It’s bad enough to have a thief for a father,’ she told me, my oldest girl, and my only comfort. ‘But when my little sister starts taking after her father and stealing too, I can’t bear it.’ And those were the last words she spoke.”

Trixie found her voice at last. “You mustn’t worry about Joeanne any more, Mrs. Darnell,” she got out. “She’s perfectly safe and a friend of ours has been taking good care of her.”

Mrs. Darnell stopped crying and hope gleamed in her reddened eyes. “Are you telling me the truth?” she demanded. “How can I trust you? Darney had a fine job with a good home for us at the Smith farm, and then you
girls turned up. He was going to return the trailer to Mr. Lynch just as soon as the beans were picked, but when Sally told us she had seen you from the upstairs window, Darney wouldn’t stay at the Smiths’ another night. Oh, why did you have to ruin everything?”

She began to weep again but stopped abruptly as Trixie suddenly shouted. “Lynch! Oh, now I remember where I saw the
Robin
before. It belongs to Diana Lynch’s father. They have a big place just outside of Sleepyside on the river,” she explained to Honey in a rush of words. “Diana was in my class at school last year and invited me for lunch one Saturday. She showed me inside their trailer, but I’d forgotten all about it until this minute.”

Mrs. Darnell wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron and set her thin shoulders. “There’s no use pretending any more,” she told Trixie. “Darney should never have done it, but what else could he do with four children and me so sick I could hardly move from room to room? The landlord said we’d have to get out the first of August if we didn’t pay the rent. There were doctor bills and hospital bills and Darney barely on his feet again after the operation on his eye. And the farm not producing anything, what with him too sick to do the spring planting.” She looked at them, imploring for sympathy. “Then Mr. Lynch stopped by one morning and asked Darney to keep an eye on his house while he and his family were away on vacation. He was our nearest neighbor, you see, and very friendly although Darney was too proud to let him know about our troubles. So after the Lynches had gone, Darney went over to see if the house was locked up and everything as it should be, and there in the big garage was the trailer, all hitched up and ready to go with the keys in the tow car.”