The Mystery of the Castaway Children

by Campbell, Julie

  Trixie’s eyes swept the wide, peaceful scene. Clean, fly-free stables, a supply barn that allowed for the circulation of fresh air, whitewashed fences, and meadow corners without weeds—all these things reflected Regan’s love of animals, and Matthew Wheeler’s good sense in hiring Regan.

  “I knew that was no keg shoe,” Regan went on. “What’s that?” Trixie wanted to know.

  “A factory-made iron plate ordered by blacksmiths in bulk in kegs. An ordinary riding hack can use them with no trouble if he doesn’t have foot problems. Now, a race animal would have been wearing aluminum plates so thin they’d only be good for one race.”

  “The shoe wasn’t that thin,” Trixie said.

  “I agree,” Regan said. “And it didn’t belong to a walking horse. They sometimes carry into the show ring as much as thirty-six ounces on each foot.”

  Trixie shook her head. “It wasn’t that heavy.”

  “There you go,” Regan said. “It was simply a matter of elimination, shoe by shoe, to realize it had to belong to a Shetland.”

  “You mean, Sergeant Molinson doesn’t know the shoe belongs to a Shetland?”

  “No. Like I said, after he left, I was thinking about it. So I came in and checked our work records to see if we’d replaced a shoe for Mr. Pony while he was here. We hadn’t. Nobody else I know of owns a Shetland. That pony has to be a transient.”

  “Oh, Honey, Davy Dodge owns a pony,” Trixie bubbled.

  “Which may have been auctioned,” Honey argued. “Besides, how do we know someone didn’t kidnap the pony along with the children? On the other hand, some other pony could have come down the path—not Wicky, and not Mr. Pony.”

  Regan looked thoughtful. “I’ll tell you this— that Shetland belonged to somebody with money enough to take care of him and love enough to notice his particular need.”

  “There wasn’t much money left at the Dodge farm, but there was certainly lots of love,” Trixie declared. “If Davy owned a pony, his dad would take care of it.”

  “What does love have to do with it?” Honey asked.

  “Like I said, this shoe wasn’t factory made,” explained Regan. “This fellow wore a corrective shoe. He toes in.”

  “You mean he looks kind of pigeon-toed?” Trixie asked.

  Regan nodded. “Especially when he’s barefoot.”

  “What if nobody had him reshod after he lost that shoe?” asked kindhearted Honey.

  “They can take off the rest of the shoes. We let our horses go barefoot several weeks out of the year, you know. It keeps their frogs and horns in good condition.” Regan glanced at his watch. “Got to go. Doc’s coming to check teeth this morning. Jupe may have to have his teeth floated.”

  “Floated?” Trixie repeated. That horns and frogs were parts of the hoof, she knew. But what on earth was there in a horse’s mouth that floated?

  “His teeth might have to be filed down to an even level to help him grind his food,” Regan explained.

  “Not drilling!” Trixie cupped her own jaw in vivid recollection of her most recent trip to the dentist.

  “More like cleaning,” Regan said cheerfully as he disappeared into the barn.

  Trixie helped Honey put the scrap back into the bin, then straightened and swiped a rusty hand across her damp forehead. It was such a hot day that the air danced.

  “I’ve got a superdooper idea,” she announced. “Let’s go for a swim instead of taking a bath!” Luscious! agreed Honey. “I’ll have to dig out an extra suit for you.”

  Let s just swim in our clothes,” suggested Trixie. We’d be dry by the time we got to my house. You can have lunch with me. We’ll take care of Dodgy this afternoon and let his mother rest.”

  “Terrific,” Honey chirped. “You can borrow one of our bicycles.”

  The girls coasted most of the way down the well-beaten path to the lake. Within sight of the boathouse, Trixie noticed the blurred remains of hoofprints. “Have you ridden here since the rain?” she asked.

  “No, I’ve been exercising Lady in the meadow,” answered Honey.

  “That reminds me,” Trixie groaned. “I haven’t exercised Susie in ages.”

  “Nothing’s more important than taking care of Dodgy and finding Davy,” her friend reassured her.

  “Thanks for not saying ‘trying to find,’ ” Trixie said soberly.

  “You’ll find him. You always do,’ Honey told her.

  “We always do,” Trixie corrected. Just then, she saw a fairly deep print on the side of the path. “I wish we had that horseshoe,” she fretted. “That print looks like the right size.”

  All thoughts of horseshoes and kidnappers were temporarily shelved when the girls caught sight of the sparkling blue lake. They hopped about on the hot boards of the dock just long enough to remove their sneakers, then they dived in at the same time. By the third stroke, Honey had pulled ahead of Trixie.

  After a few minutes of porpoiselike splashing and playing, Trixie decided, “I still feel sticky. I’m going to shore for the soap.”

  Honey flipped over and floated lazily. “Toss it to me when you’re through.”

  Chunks of soap were kept in a covered plastic carton nailed to the edge of the dock. When Trixie reached for the top bar, she found that the bottom of it was wet. That’s odd, she thought. There were drainage holes punched in the plastic carton. All the soap should be bone-dry.

  Trixie waded back in, ducked under, lathered her arms, and ducked again. She was more thorough in her second lathering and took time to study the shores of the small lake, watching for movements. She saw none.

  Trixie swam out far enough to lob the bar to Honey. “Has anybody been swimming this morning?” she asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Honey said as she lathered her own hands and arms. After she rinsed, she said, “Reflections from the water are going to give us a dandy sunburn pretty soon. We’d better go to shore.”

  Trixie pointed to the opposite side of the lake. “I see a nice shady spot where we could rest.”

  Honey agreed, and the girls paddled to shore, where they jumped from stone to stone until they found a rock large enough to stretch out on.

  “I could stay here all day if I wasn’t so hungry,” sighed Trixie as she got herself comfortable.

  “Me, too. The only thing is, we’re not making things come out right,” Honey complained. “Our sneakers and bicycles are at the boathouse, and the soap is over here.”

  “If Mart were here, he’d spout quotations,” Trixie said.

  “A rolling stone gathers no soap?” Honey suggested helpfully.

  Trixie snorted, then recited triumphantly, “When we have not what we like, we must like what we have.”

  “I’ll buy that,” Honey declared.

  For the moment, Trixie liked what she had. She lay on her stomach, chin propped on folded arms. Blue sky, tall pines, and flowing water combined to give her a feeling of total isolation. Lining the Hudson not far away were brickyards and cement factories, automotive assembly plants, railroads and highways. Here in the woods, the earth was undisturbed. Trixie liked it that way, especially when she had a puzzle that needed to be worked out.

  She squinted through sandy lashes, and the whole scene went slightly out of focus. A glare of light was bothersome. After a minute, she got up impatiently.

  “Do we have to go now?” Honey asked. “I wasn’t planning on moving a muscle for at least six months.”

  “I just want to pick up something over there,” Trixie said. She sprinted into the woods to see what was littering one of her favorite spots. It turned out to be a glass bottle... with ounce-levels marked!

  “Honey!” she shrieked. “I’ve found one of Dodgy’s bottles!”

  Honey waved a lazy hand. “Bobby must have carried off one of the baby’s bottles to catch minnows or something,” she mumbled.

  Trixie ran back and squatted beside Honey. “This isn’t one of the disposable bottles you bought. Honey, it’s glass—and there’s dried
milk in the bottom!”

  Honey was forced to pay attention. Suddenly she said, “If this is Dodgy’s bottle, it means that whoever left him in the doghouse could still be hanging around.”

  “Jeepers!” whispered Trixie. “And the soap in the plastic carton was wet, like somebody’d used it.”

  Quietly the girls turned from side to side, searching for signs of another human being. They saw nothing, but Trixie urged, “Let’s have a closer look.”

  Back she hopped to the edge of the lake. Carefully she examined the whole area. “There’s crushed grass,” she called to Honey, who was working her way toward the woods. “And some kind of pushed-in places. Come and look.” Honey obliged. It was she who found a dime and two pennies in the mashed grass. “Sit down here and put your heels in those little holes,” she commanded.

  “I see what you mean!” Trixie exclaimed. “Someone sat here by the brook and dug in his heels. He lost the coins out of his pockets. You know, I’ll bet it was Davy who sat here and lost this money.”

  “Couldn’t it have been the kidnapper?” Honey asked.

  “The heel marks are too small for a grown man,” Trixie countered. “Besides, don’t you remember? Eileen said Davy broke some piggy banks. Dimes and pennies are piggy-bank food!”

  “But the kidnap note,” Honey said earnestly. “We might be trailing a grown man, and a dangerous one at that.”

  Trixie gulped. “Well, let’s take these things to Sergeant Molinson,” she said, dropping the coins into the bottle. “He beat us to the horseshoe, but these discoveries should even the score.”

  “Oh, Trixie, you talk like this is a basketball game. This could be a life-and-death matter!”

  “I know, I know,” replied her friend. “That’s why it’s so important that we don’t blow it by missing clues or something.” Then she scowled with exasperation. “Now, how am I going to swim with this bottle?”

  “Carry it in one hand and swim with the other,” Honey said.

  “And make the sergeant go purple with rage? No, I’m sure I’ve ruined some fingerprints already. I’ll have to make a raft.”

  Trixie searched through the ground duff—the leaves, twigs, needles, dried grass, and fallen branches—until she came across a scrap of the blade of an oar, dry and white with age. “Instant raft,” she announced.

  Honey had waded back into the lake, and Trixie soon followed, carefully pushing the oar with its cargo.

  Once back at the boathouse, they decided to examine it. Honey unlocked the door, and together they stood just inside it. The shelves were stocked with summer sports equipment and various hardware items. Nothing seemed out of place. There were no tracks on the floor, and the locked windows didn’t seem to have been tampered with.

  Trixie let out a sigh. Half of her was relieved that the Wheeler property hadn’t been invaded and that no one was likely to jump out of hiding. However, the sight of Davy Dodge in the boathouse would have been welcome.

  Honey locked up the boathouse, and both girls put on their sneakers and started pedaling toward Crabapple Farm. Trixie carried the bottle and coins in her basket. She glanced back and noticed that Jim’s huge beach towel was draped on the towel line. “We should have put that inside,” she commented.

  “Next time,” Honey said. “It’s okay where ... it is.”

  As they rode, the girls kept their eyes open and were soon rewarded by the sight of a pile of branches, leaves wilted, in the shape of a lopsided tepee. With a surge of excitement, Trixie flipped down the kickstand of her borrowed bicycle and ran across a glade sheltered by a great oak. Something white was visible underneath those branches. She bent down and yanked it out.

  “Aw, just an old rag—” she began, then looked more closely. “Why, it’s part of a T-shirt. It’s the half that matches Dodgy’s diaper!”

  Honey caught up to her and agreed. “If we are following a kidnapper, he’s the oddest one I ever heard of,” Honey sighed as the two of them scouted the area around the oak tree. “You’d think he’d have stayed in a place where he could take care of a baby, instead of wandering around in the forest with a pony and no diapers.”

  “ ‘Wandering’ is right,” affirmed Trixie. “From the clues we’re finding, it seems like whoever we’re following is traveling around in circles— no direction whatsoever. This tepee is the weirdest clue yet. It’s too small for Davy—or even for Dodgy.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Honey, shuddering. “All I can think about is germs. How on earth could Dodgy have survived?”

  “He must be a stronger baby than he seems,” Trixie said.

  “How could someone expect Dodgy to survive without supplies and without care?” Honey fretted.

  “He didn’t think,” Trixie said, then flushed. The words were all too familiar. She heard variations of them practically every day of her life from her parents and her brothers. She even heard them from her friends if she plunged in over her head while working on a mystery. Was she looking for someone like herself, someone who acted first, then did the best he could to patch things up?

  Or was she looking for a hardened criminal, someone vicious enough to abuse a tiny baby, kidnap a boy and his pony, and terrorize two young parents?

  Twenty Thousand Dollars • 9

  AFTER THEIR SEARCH had revealed no recognizable prints around the oak, the two girls stood close together, listening to the lazy midday sounds of insects, birds, and creaks of the forest as it shifted its weight in millions of imperceptible movements.

  “We’d better go home before we starve to death,” Trixie declared finally. She tried to concentrate on the task at hand—wobbling back over the ruts to Crabapple Farm.

  “There’s one point we’ve been overlooking,” Honey said from behind her.

  Instantly Trixie turned her whole attention to what Honey was saying.

  “The rider couldn’t have been far from a milk supply,” Honey said. “Milk spoils fast in this weather.”

  “What a brilliant deduction,” began Trixie. Then she almost fell off her bike. “Jeepers, there’s a convention at our house!” Three extra cars were parked in the turnaround. Dan’s Spartan munched grass along the orchard fence, and Jim’s bicycle was propped against a porch post.

  When the girls pedaled closer, they saw a picnic being organized in the backyard. Eileen and Di were setting the table. The three Belden boys, plus Jim and Dan, carried food that Mrs. Belden handed through an open kitchen window. Miss Goodley sat in a garden chair, writing her report with Dodgy on her lap. Observing Dodgy were Dr. Ferris and Sergeant Molinson, who in turn were closely watched by Reddy.

  “My goodness!” Honey gasped. “What if— Do you suppose the police have found Davy, and we’re the only ones who don’t know?”

  “I—I hope so,” Trixie managed to gulp. She was too ashamed to admit the truth to Honey. How could she explain that she wanted to be the one who solved this mystery, who led a healthy boy to a pair of frantic parents?

  “Slowpokes!” Di sang out.

  “Coming,” Honey called.

  “What’s going on?” Trixie asked when she came face-to-face with Mart and a huge tray of sandwiches.

  “Other than an acute attack of inanition,” replied her brother pompously, “not much. Everybody except you was still working here at noon, so Moms asked them all to stay for lunch.”

  Trixie was unaccustomed to munching salad while sitting between a doctor and a police sergeant. Nor was she used to facing a social worker while she ate a juicy sandwich. However, her hunger overcame her shyness.

  “More salad?” she asked Miss Goodley, who nodded.

  Mart went to the kitchen to refill the salad bowl. When he appeared again, he was trying to balance the bowl in one hand and a large pitcher of lemonade in the other.

  Trixie ran to his aid. “What did you say you were having?” she asked sweetly. “An attack of the clumsies?”

  “Help me, you fiend,” growled Mart.

  Trixie grabbed
the heavy pitcher. By the time she and Mart made sure that everyone had more salad and lemonade, Dr. Ferris was speaking.

  “You young people have done a great job with this baby,” he said. “His weight is nearly back to normal, and those bruises and pin stabs are clearing up just fine.”

  Brian glanced over to where Dodgy’s basket sat in the shade. “How do you think he got the bruises, sir? It’s puzzling that they’re just on his stomach and under his arms, and that they don’t reach his back, don’t you think?”

  Dr. Ferris shook his white head. “I’ve seen a lot of battered children in my day. This one doesn’t fit the pattern. His injuries are neither serious nor permanent, and there’s nothing to suggest that abuse took place prior to his present bruises. It’s my opinion that those bruises were accidental and inflicted quite recently.”

  “But he’s so thin!” Trixie burst out. She blushed. Who was she to argue with a doctor who’d dealt with injuries most of his life?

  Dr. Ferris didn’t seem to mind a difference of opinion. “At this age, weight seems to fall away overnight when something goes wrong,” he explained. “Weight can be regained just as quickly.

  He’s an alert, strong infant. He’ll be plump and rosy in no time.”

  Eileen Dodge smiled widely while winking back tears.

  Trixie turned to the sergeant. “Any news about Davy?”

  “I followed up on that tip you gave me about the horseshoe. I had a farrier check it. It belongs to a Shetland.”

  “I know,” Trixie said impatiently.

  The sergeant raised an eyebrow. “We’re checking out the Shetlands in the area to make certain the shoe belongs to Wicky.” He helped himself to sliced tomatoes and glanced at his watch. “I’m standing by for a call from Saw Mill River. It may be from David Dodge.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” Eileen began, then added hesitantly, “I—I think.”

  She looked so frightened by the possibility of bad news that Trixie offered the first consolation she could think of—the morning’s discoveries. She fetched them and, with Honey’s help, told the story of the search they had made.