Read Online The Mystery at Bob-White Cave by Julie Campbell - Free Book Online Page A

mounds.
    “Haven’t you ever been in here before?” Trixie asked Slim breathlessly. “Not even once?”
    “Nope. There’s nothin’ in here you won’t find in Bascomb’s Cave I told you about or in the one at Turkey Knob. They’re all alike, and I don’t want none of ’em. If you’ve got any huntin’ to do, let’s start.”
    “Just a minute!” Trixie said. “I have an idea. This cave is on Uncle Andrew’s property. It’s a new cave. Does that make you think of anything?”
    “Nothing but the fish we’re after,” Mart said. “What are you getting at?”
    “Just this—a new cave should have a name.” Trixie unscrewed the top of her canteen, poured water into it, held it up, and, as it dripped, said, “I christen thee—”
    “Bob-White Cave!” they all chorused.
    “Exactly! Isn’t it wonderful?”
    “Bob-Cat Cave’d be a better name,” Slim said with contempt.
    The Bob-Whites ignored him and searched the cavernous room with their flashlights. Time passed swiftly as they followed the stream, inch by inch, shining their lights on each ripple.
    “Do you see anything?” Honey asked.
    “Not yet, but I’m sure this would be the kind of place to watch. Was that a flash of white?”
    The girls knelt on the rocky ground, the beams from their carbide lamps concentrating on the moving water. “Quick!” Trixie cried. “Right there under your nose. Jim! Brian! Mart! It’s here!”
    “It’s not now,” Honey said sadly. “I’m not even sure I saw it. Why didn’t you dip it right out the instant you saw it?”
    “It was there,” Trixie insisted. “There it is again, right over there on the edge of the stream!” She reached frantically with her dip net, lowered it, and brought up a grayish, emaciated cricket from the water’s edge. Its feelers were as long as its body, and the poor thing struggled weakly in the dip net.
    “That’s a fish?” Mart asked.
    “You know it isn’t,” Trixie answered. “But where there are ghost crickets, there are bound to be ghost fish.”
    “Let’s get outa here!” Slim commanded.
    Trixie looked at him, amazed.
    “I don’t hold with no kind of spirits—even fish spirits. The devil lives in caves. Anybody hereabouts will tell you that. Don’t go beyond this here room, or you’ll find that out. And them white things you see, 1 in the water and out, they’re evil. They’re even poison!”
    “Do you call five hundred dollars poison?” Mart demanded.
    Slim’s head went up. “Five hundred dollars?”
    Mart, who’d been quickly shushed by four indignant Bob-Whites, just sputtered. “Forget it! Maybe they are poison, at that. We’d better leave ’em alone, huh, Trixie?” Mart walked over to the far wall and pretended deep interest in the formations.
    “So that’s it,” Slim said half aloud. “Shucks, though, you was just talkin’ big. Braggin’.”
    “When you know my brother better, Slim, you’ll find out he spends a lot of his time doing just that— I bragging.” Trixie dipped her head to throw the light from her head lamp on the low edge along the stream.   “Do you see those pinpoints of light?” she asked. “Is that some little animal, Slim? See it peeking around the edge of that shelf?”
    “It’s a pack rat,” Slim said. “Like as not its nest is on that shelf.”
    “I don’t like rats,” Honey said, shivering. “Those big old water rats near the Hudson at home are really dangerous!”
    “Pack rats aren’t the same thing at all,” Brian explained. “They’re as clean as squirrels and just as thrifty. They bring in their store of winter food and stow it away just inside the cave entrance. They’re shy, afraid of humans. If you look down here on the floor, you’ll see the tracks of their feet in wet clay. I read someplace that people trapped in caves have followed the tracks of pack rats to safety outside.”
    “Do you study things like that in biology?” Honey asked, always impressed by Brian’s