The Mystery Off Glen Road (16 page)

“Why sure,” Regan replied, hoisting the little boy to a seat on his broad shoulders.

Honey had already saddled and bridled Starlight and Susie. She handed the black mare’s reins to Trixie and mounted the chestnut gelding. “Di and Ben,” she told Trixie, “drove into town to get some stuff Ben forgot this morning. Isn’t that typical of him? He brought back everything but the most important items: the turkey and pumpkin pies!”

“Oh,” Trixie moaned. “I can’t go until they come back. Who’ll keep an eye on Bobby?”

“I will,” Regan offered good-naturedly. “There’s a whole box of crinkly red tissue paper upstairs in my room. It’ll make a grand fire, won’t it, Bobby?” He set Bobby down astride the little engine and rang the bell.

Starlight shied and if Honey hadn’t been such an excellent horsewoman she might have fallen off. “That will teach you,” Regan said, frowning up at her. “Sitting
there like a sack of meal, with the reins slack! You should know better, Honey Wheeler, and if you don’t, it’s time you learn.”

Honey flushed. “I am getting awfully careless, Regan,” she admitted. “It’s just that Trixie and I have done so much riding lately that I feel more at home in the saddle than I do in a chair.”

“Feel at home as much as you like,” he retorted. “But don’t forget that a horse is a live animal. A chair isn’t. Even the best rider can get thrown and dragged by the gentlest, best-schooled horse in the world.” He turned on Trixie the moment she had swung into the saddle. “You’ve been getting careless lately, too. If you don’t remember to keep your heels down you won’t be allowed to ride anything around here except a saw-horse.” He grinned suddenly to let them know that he wasn’t really cross. “Get going, you two. What are you waiting for—a street car?”

They walked their horses down the driveway, and as soon as they were out of earshot Trixie said to Honey: “Regan is really so wonderful. I don’t know how he stands us. Taking care of Bobby when this is supposed to be his afternoon off, isn’t it?”

Honey nodded. “Regan adores Bobby, and besides, you know how he is about his day off. He usually hangs
around here anyway.” They crossed the road and in a few minutes were trotting along the trail.

“Today,” Trixie said firmly, “we’re not going to stick to the trails. It won’t get dark for another three hours. So we’ve just got to explore the paths.”

“Oh, Trixie,” Honey wailed. “Today of all days!”

“What’s wrong with today?” Trixie demanded. “Tomorrow I’ve got to spend most of the time helping Moms. We may even wake up and find ourselves in the midst of a blizzard. If so, we won’t be able to go near the paths for days, and our week is up on Saturday. We can’t accept fifty dollars from Miss Trask then if we didn’t at least
try
to catch the poacher.”

“I know, I know,” Honey moaned. “But don’t you realize, Trix, that we’re riding the two new horses, Starlight and Susie? If we get lost, they—”

“Gleeps,” Trixie interrupted in dismay. “I should have figured that out this morning before we patrolled the other side of the preserve on Strawberry and Lady.”

“Besides,” Honey continued just as though Trixie hadn’t interrupted, “I really don’t think there is any poacher.”

“Anyway,” Trixie went on just as though
Honey
hadn’t said anything, “we’re not going to get lost. I’ve got a compass.” She pushed back the sleeve of her sweater
and displayed a wrist compass. “See? It’s really Bobby’s but he won’t know the diff.”

“Bobby’s?” Honey stared in amazement. “If it belongs to him, it can’t be any good. He breaks just about everything he gets his hands on.”

“That’s the point,” Trixie said, giggling. “And I’m not talking about a point of the compass. Aunt Alicia gave this to Bobby on his birthday, but it cost a lot of money, so Moms has been keeping it for him until he’s old enough to take care of it properly.”

“Oh,” Honey said. “Does your mother know that you borrowed it? Suppose we break it? It would be just our luck.”

Trixie grinned. “No, Moms doesn’t know I borrowed it. I meant to tell her, but right after I strapped it on my wrist she came in and reminded me that I was supposed to take care of Bobby this afternoon. That made me forget everything. But she won’t mind. I mean, it’s been sitting on the mantelpiece for ages so anybody but Bobby could borrow it. It isn’t as though it had been locked up in a safe or something. It’s not
that
valuable.”

Honey laughed. “Well, just don’t fall off Susie and break it. I know Bobby. He doesn’t mind breaking his own things, but if anyone else touches them, well, revenge is sweet.”

They had reached the clearing at the fork now and stopped their horses. “You take this path,” Trixie said, pointing, “and I’ll take the one that leads to the spot where I found the dead deer. That’s where I think we’ll find clues.”

“Oh, fine,” Honey jeered. “I have no intention of leaving you for one minute. You’ve got the compass, remember?”

For answer, Trixie unstrapped it and handed it to her. “Okay. Meet you back here in about ten minutes.”

But Honey refused to accept the compass. “Not me. I’d be sure to break it. Anyway, I can’t read all those queer symbols. Besides, I think you have to know where north is first and face in that direction, don’t you?”

“That’s easy,” Trixie replied. “You’re facing north now because the sunset is on your left.”

Honey twisted her head around in a semi-circle. “The sunset seems to be all over the place. That’s the trouble with them. They don’t stay put in one neat little spot. I just don’t trust them—or compasses.”

“Oh, Honey,” Trixie cried impatiently. “The compass is supposed to figure all those things out for you. If you just lay it on a flat rock the arrow will point to north.”

“What good is that going to do me if I get lost?”
Honey demanded. “I’d never have the luck to be near a flat rock at that moment. And even if I did, knowing where north is wouldn’t do me any good. If I get lost I certainly want to get back home, not end up at the North Pole.”

Trixie howled with laughter. “I guess you’re right. This compass isn’t going to do either of us a bit of good. I can’t understand the symbols either, and I feel just the way you do about north. If we can’t travel in a straight line, knowing where the points of the compass are wouldn’t do us a bit of good.”

“And these paths,” Honey agreed emphatically, “do anything but travel in a straight line. Even if we could understand what that compass was trying to tell us, we’d have to get off and lay it on a flat rock every five minutes. Pretty soon it would be too dark to find a rock, let alone read the compass.”

Trixie strapped it back on her wrist. “When Bobby’s old enough to figure it all out, I hope he explains it to me. Brian and Jim and Mart are over my head when it comes to directions. So I guess we’d better stick together, Honey.” She nudged Susie into a walk and led the way along the path that led to the other, smaller clearing.

In a few minutes she stopped and yelled over her
shoulder, “Oh, look, Honey. There’s all the proof we need.”

Starlight edged past Susie into the clearing. “I don’t see anything,” Honey said, vaguely peering around into the brush.

“Look up, not down,” Trixie cried impatiently, pointing. “See that dead rabbit hanging from that sapling? He was caught in a snare. Mart drew a diagram of a rabbit snare for me. A partridge snare, too. If the poacher wanted to catch partridges by the dozen all he’d have to do was set up snares around the feeding stations. And I’ll bet he has!”

“How horrible,” Honey gasped. “Daddy will have a fit if anyone has been catching his valuable birds. Do you suppose the poacher has been setting snares for pheasants, too?”

“No,” Trixie said. “They can be shot at quite easily because of their bright-colored feathers. But partridges sort of blend into the underbrush so you can practically step on one before you see it. Then they zoom up suddenly with a
whir-r
of their wings, and disappear before the hunter has time to aim.”

“Jim has shot lots of partridges,” Honey said. “But then, of course, Jim is awfully smart. And I remember he said that you shouldn’t really shoot them unless you have a gun dog because they’re so hard to find. That’s why he bought a springer spaniel and has spent so much time teaching Patch to retrieve. Jim says unless you hunt with a good retriever there is apt to be a lot of useless killing of birds, and worse, a cripple can get away and later die a slow death of misery.”

Trixie nodded. “That’s one thing about snares. The
bird dies quickly and almost painlessly once he tries to force his way through the noose. He’s held a prisoner, too, so his body can’t get lost. But anybody who sets a snare usually keeps a close watch on it because a fox or a catamount can get the bird even before the trapper gets there.”

Honey shuddered and said in a scared whisper, “That poacher might be in the thicket right now listening to every word we say. Let’s go, Trixie. He probably has a gun.”

And then, as though in proof of her statement, two shots rang out in rapid succession. The blasts were so close by that Susie shied violently. While they had been talking both girls had let the reins go slack, and, almost before they knew it, both horses had bolted and were tearing along the narrow path.

Susie was in the lead and by the time Trixie did gather up the reins, she was out of control. Branches of evergreens slapped Trixie in the face and brought blinding tears of pain to her eyes. She pulled as hard as she could on the curb, yelling, “Whoa! Whoa!” to no avail. Susie flew along as though pursued by a thousand devils. The “devil” in this case was only Starlight, but Trixie guessed that he, too, was panic-stricken. He was following Susie so closely that Trixie knew if the mare suddenly
stopped there would be a terrific collision and Honey might be badly hurt. Susie showed no signs of even slowing, but she might stumble on a rock, and then both girls would probably be thrown. To make matters worse, the path wound dizzily through the woods so that instead of galloping in a straight line, Susie kept swerving abruptly, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, so that it was hard for Trixie to keep her seat in the saddle. If only Honey, who was so much more experienced a horsewoman, were in the lead!

But finally, from sheer exhaustion, Trixie guessed, Susie gradually slowed from a dead run to a canter and at last to a trot. As the path widened, Starlight came up so that the girls were now riding abreast.

“They’re under control now,” Honey gasped, her face very white, “but where are we?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion,” Trixie got out, panting. “Let’s stop and see if Bobby’s compass will be of any help.”

And then they came around a bend and found themselves in a large clearing, and to their amazement, right smack in the middle of it was a rustic cabin. The horses stopped of their own free will, as though they, too, were surprised.

Not far from the cabin was a pit in which were
dying embers of a wood fire. Above it hung a black pot, and a mingling of delicious odors from it permeated the air in the clearing.

In an awed silence, the girls dismounted and stared at each other. “Could this be where the poacher lives?” Honey asked.

“I guess so,” Trixie said. “But he must have been poaching for a long, long time. That cabin wasn’t built in a few days. Look how long it’s been taking the boys just to fix the roof of our clubhouse.”

They moved over and peered through a window. The interior was neat and clean but sparsely furnished. A bunk was in one corner and in the center of the room there were two homemade chairs and a table. Hanging from the ceiling near the two windows on the opposite side of the cabin were several thick strips about twelve inches long which looked rather like leather.

“Why, it’s pemmican,” Trixie suddenly cried. “I mean, jerked venison. The Indians used to make it into pemmican. It keeps for months like that and doesn’t have to be cooked.”

“Venison,” Honey cried. “Then those strips must be what’s left of that dead deer.”

“Maybe,” Trixie said. “But I doubt it. That deer is probably still hanging.”