The Black Jacket Mystery

or helpful.
    He had been making a snare for one of the Wheeler pheasants that was to furnish a meal for a small party of Mr. Wheeler’s friends a few days later. He stood with the snare in his hands, feet planted apart, as he glared defiantly at the two girls. “What do you want to talk about? I told you I’ve got work to do!” he barked at Trixie, who had volunteered to approach him.
    “You don’t need to snap my head off!” Trixie retorted. “We just wanted to tell you that we’ve decided that it was somebody else who found Honey’s watch and sold it to Mr. Lytell. Not you.”
    “What am I supposed to say? ‘Thank you, ma'am'?”
    “Of course not!” Honey rode a few feet closer to the dark-faced boy and smiled down at him. “We just want you to know that we’re going to tell Mr. Maypenny right now that we’re sure we were mistaken.”
    “Don’t bother!” he snapped with a scowl. “I’m getting out of this backwoods joint in a coupla days, and what that old square thinks about me means exactly zero.” He turned his back on her and went to work on the snare.
    Honey hesitated a moment, and though Trixie couldn’t see her face, she felt sure Honey had tears in her eyes. She wasn’t used to being talked to like that.
    “Come on, Honey,” Trixie called to her friend. “Let’s leave before Mr. Hydrophobia gets sore enough to bite one of us!”
    Honey wheeled Lady and rode away without speaking, but Trixie saw her dash a tear from her eye with the back of her hand.
    “I have a good mind not to tell Mr. Maypenny we may have been wrong about that—that character!” Trixie sputtered as they rode side by side.
    “Oh, no! We must tell him. And Regan, too. It doesn’t matter if Dan wants to be disagreeable. I guess we can’t blame him, if he’s innocent.”
    “I suppose not,” Trixie admitted grudgingly. Then she started up the narrowing trail.
    But Honey pulled in and looked back at Dan Mangan. Sunlight was slanting down through the tall evergreens, and a shaft of it struck Dan as he stood looking after them with drooping shoulders. On an impulse, she waved.
    To her surprise, Dan snatched off his cap and waved in answer. “He’s up at Storm King hunting for that wildcat!” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth.
    “We’ll find him. Thanks!” Honey called back and waved again before she wheeled her horse and followed Trixie.
     

Mr. Maypenny’s Accident • 14
     
    YOUSEE! Dan does want us to tell Mr. Maypenny what we found out. That means he wouldn’t have been so glad to be sent back to wherever-it-isl I’m glad I waved to him!” Honey’s eyes sparkled.
    Trixie only said “Hrmph!” and kept riding along. They were getting close to the clearing that surrounded the sturdy little log cabin that Mr. Maypenny’s grandfather had built almost a hundred years ago. There was no smoke coming out of the cobblestone chimney, so they knew that he hadn’t yet returned from the hunting expedition.
    Trixie glanced at her wristwatch. “I don’t think we’ll wait too long. We want to be at the lake well before sunset. I hope the boys have a nice big fire going for us.”
    They dismounted to give the horses a rest while they waited. In a few minutes, Mr. Maypenny, astride old Brownie, rode in from the north trail that led through the woods into the labyrinth and beyond that toward the high peaks.
    “Glad to see you youngsters,” he said. “Didn’t the boy ask you inside?”
    “He’s way back there, fixing a snare,” Trixie explained. “We don’t have much time, anyhow. We just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes.”
    “Good! If you’ll just wait till I put away my gear and settle this old nag of mine in the barn, I’ll be with you. Go on in and light the fire for some hot soup or a cup of chocolate.”
    “Never mind the food,” Trixie told him cheerfully. “We’ll come along with you and talk there.”
    “All right, if that’s how you want it,” he agreed, chuckling. “First time I’ve heard Miss Trix turn down hot chocolate! Must be something important on your mind.”
    “We think so.” Trixie grinned. “I guess you will, too.”
    They walked toward the barn with him, and they told him their reasons for thinking they had made a mistake by identifying Dan as the person who had sold Honey’s watch to Mr. Lytell.
    “It was on account of those weird cowboy boots he wears that we blamed Dan,” Trixie said honestly. “Now we’ve found out there’s