The Black Jacket Mystery

to where she was along the trail. Susie was beginning to slow down a little as she got some of the friskiness out of her system in the uphill climb, when suddenly Trixie recognized a familiar spot. Under the tall birches at the meeting of two brails, the snow on the ground was trampled by many feet. Several birch branches lay around, evidently broken off by the heavy wind. This was where Mr. Maypenny had been struck by the falling branch last night.
    On an impulse, she stopped the mare and slid out of the saddle. “Take it easy a few minutes, girl,” she told Susie, stroking her soft nose. “We still have a mile to go, and a steep one at that.”
    She looped Susie’s bridle around a sapling beside the trail and wandered over to look around and to stretch her legs. She wondered idly which branch had fallen on poor Mr. Maypenny.
    There was a small branch lying at one side. It was only about twenty inches long, and someone had cut all the side twigs off it. It looked more like a length of trimmed firewood than a fallen branch.
    Trixie picked it up, curious as usual. She was surprised to see that it wasn’t a branch of the birch that towered overhead. It came from a crab-apple tree.
    “That’s funny,” she told herself. “I don’t see a crab-apple tree anywhere around here. Somebody must have brought this here to whittle on.”
    But just as she decided that, she noticed for the first time that there was a dark stain at the heavy end of the piece of wood. And caught in the grain of the wood was a small tuft of gray hair. Hair like the hair on Mr. Maypenny’s head!
    The stain could only be his blood! And it was this homemade weapon that had struck him down, not a branch of the birch tree!
     

Runaway Dan • 17
     
    FOR A MINUTE or two, all Trixie could do was stare in horrified surprise at the telltale length of crab-apple branch in her hands. Then, as the full meaning of it came to her, she started to fling it away, shivering. She stopped with the club poised to throw.
    Someone had struck down poor Mr. Maypenny last night with this, probably as he was looking around for Dan to tell him the good news that the kids had found evidence that seemed to clear Dan. Someone had sneaked up on the old gamekeeper from behind. And he didn’t suspect it. He blamed a falling branch.
    It could happen again to him, if he weren’t warned. And it seemed that she had to be the one to warn him, because no one else had noticed the broken length of branch with its ugly stain.
    She looked around her with a shudder. At any moment, Mr. Maypenny’s attacker might show himself and see that she had guessed the truth. He might strike at her.
    She ran for her horse and scrambled up into the saddle. It wasn’t far to Mr. Maypenny’s house, and if anyone tried to stop her, she would hit him with the length of wood and ride on. “Come on, Susie-pie! Let’s go!” She gave the reluctant Susie a little kick with her heels, and the indignant young mare set out with a leap and carried her up the trail.
    But she hadn’t gone over a hundred yards when she saw a figure approaching mounted on a sturdy old horse, which she recognized moments before she guessed who was riding it. It was Mr. Maypenny’s old Brownie, the ancient mare who never moved faster than a dignified walk that matched her fifteen years of age. And the figure on her back was Mr. Maypenny himself, his head neatly bandaged. He still seemed shaken.
    “Oh, Mr. Maypenny! I’m so glad you are all right!” she called. She dismounted and waited for him.
    “Well, now, I wouldn’t say that exactly,” Mr. Maypenny corrected her, lifting a hand to touch the bandage rather gingerly. “Still got an almighty nuisance of a headache to plague me. What you doin’ out here alone? That catamount’s been yowlin’ again up in the hills.”
    “I won’t hang around out here long,” Trixie told him, after a nervous glance around. “I was coming to tell you something.”
    “Well, tell away, and then you skedaddle for home,” he said severely.
    So Trixie, showing him the crab-apple branch with its telltale stain, told him she had found it at the place where he thought a branch had fallen on him.
    She was puzzled when he didn’t show any surprise at the information. He reached for the length of wood, regarded it gravely for a moment, and then dropped it into his saddlebag.
    “Thanks, youngster. I had a notion maybe it wasn’t an accident. I’m missing my wallet and the five dollars