The Black Jacket Mystery

the black leather jacket hastily and coming toward her with it. “Here, get into this! I won’t need it!”
    “But you’ll be cold!” she protested, but she didn’t resist as Dan helped her into it.
    “Not if we move fast,” he assured her. “Besides, I can take it better than a girl.”
    Trixie couldn’t help smiling to herself in the darkness as they started following the white woolen string back toward Bobby. “I guess all boys are like Mart and think they’re smarter and stronger than girls,” she thought and let him lead the way with his flashlight, though she felt that she really could have gone faster if she had led.
    They were soon at the mouth of the cave, and Trixie called out softly as they went into it, “Bobby, honey, are you awake?” while Dan played the flashlight around and then centered it on the gaping hole in the floor.
    Trixie ran forward and knelt at the edge. “Bobby,” she called uncertainly, “are you asleep?”
    There was no answer. But neither were there any catamount tracks visible in the soft dirt of the cave floor. She breathed more freely as she saw that.
    “Better let me get down,” Dan advised. “He’s probably fast asleep, so don’t try to wake him up till I get a chance to see the lay of the land and find out what’s holding him.”
    “A rock, he said,” Trixie answered, swallowing a lump in her throat that made her voice tremble.
    “Might be just some earth,” Dan said quickly. “Quit getting hysterical! Girls make me sick!” And with that he let himself and his flashlight down into the hole.
    “I’m sorry,” Trixie admitted in a small but firmer voice. “Tell me what to do to help, and I’ll do it.”
    There was a momentary silence, and she saw the reflected beam of the flashlight moving around down there. Then, to her infinite relief, she heard Bobby’s voice as it said sleepily, “Hello, mister. Did you failed down the hole, too?”
    And Dan’s answering cheerfully, “Sure did, boy! But we’re going to climb out real quick, aren’t we?”
    “Uh-huh,” Bobby’s voice agreed. “Where’s Trixie? She runned away.”
    “I’m right here, Bobby!” Trixie called down to him as cheerfully as she could manage. “And this is Danny Mangan, honey, who’s come to get you out of that mean old hole!”
    “That’s good!” Bobby’s voice said a little faintly. “But hurry. I’m hungry.”
    “Be right back, Bobby,” Dan told him. “I’ve got to get something.”
    “Awright,” Bobby said and then was silent.
    Dan stood on tiptoe in the hole and beckoned Trixie over to the edge. She leaned down as he whispered, “Here, take these matches and get a fire started. As big a one as you can, so somebody’ll be sure to see it! The air down there is getting bad, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take to chip away the rock that’s holding Bobby’s legs.”
    “But you don’t have anything to chip it with!” Trixie moaned. “What are you going to do?”
    “Use this.” Dan held up a sinister-looking pocket-knife and flicked open the long blade with a touch of his thumb. “Luke just gave it to me. He brought it for me to use when we held up the Wheelers.”
    “Oh!” Trixie stared at it fascinated. “What a horrible-looking thing! Is that a switchblade?”
    “Yeah! And I dam near wouldn’t take it! Boy, am I glad now I did!” He ducked down again and left her in darkness.
    A moment later, as she still crouched there feeling a little sick at the thought of what might be happening at the Wheelers’ tonight after Luke broke in, she heard Dan start to chip away at the rock.
    “Say, this isn’t as hard as it looked,” she heard him tell Bobby cheerfully. “Got another big hunk loose. You just stay flat there, sonny, and we’ll have you out before you can say:
     
‘Tip-tap, rip-rap,
Ticka tack, too!
This way, that way,
So we make a shoe!’
     
    That’s what the fairy shoemaker sings, my mother told me!” And the chipping continued steadily.
    “Tip-tap, rip-rap,” she heard Bobby repeat sleepily. “Say it again!” He wasn’t afraid now. He loved rhymes.
    She moved back from the rim of the hole and hurried outside with the matches. There were plenty of small twigs lying around, and within a couple of minutes she had gathered them and started a brisk little fire.
    Soon it was blazing high enough to be seen for a mile, at least, against the night sky. And as she turned her back to it and looked around, she saw flashes