The Black Jacket Mystery

switchblade knife and snapped it open as he stood facing the direction that the big cat’s cry seemed to have come from.
    Another yowl was nearer, and Bobby pulled himself closer to Trixie, trembling. “Let’s go home!” he demanded tearfully. “I don’t like it here!”
    Now they could hear the shouts of the approaching party. “Trixie!” That was her father calling. “Bobby!”
    Trixie tried to answer, but her throat seemed paralyzed. She held tightly to Bobby, staring into the darkness. “C-Can you see any yellow eyes?” she asked Dan fearfully.
    “Nah,” Dan assured her, but he still held the knife ready in his hand, and his voice shook a little. “It won’t come here as long as you keep the fire going.”
    The words were no sooner out of Dan’s mouth than the mountain Hon yowled again, now unmistakably only a short distance off. But this time the awful screech broke off suddenly as a rifle shot blasted deafeningly somewhere out in the darkness.
    Then for a moment there was complete silence, and the three of them stood frozen, waiting.
    A sudden crashing in the underbrush made Dan’s hand tighten on the knife handle, and he placed himself quickly between Trixie and Bobby and the spot from which the sound was coming. At any moment both he and Trixie expected the great cat to come bounding in at them.
    Instead, it was Bill Regan who shoved his way through the bushes toward them, rifle in hand.
    “Trixie!” he was shouting. “Bobby!” Then he saw Dan, knife in hand, apparently barring his way to the two who were clinging together behind him. “Drop it, Dan!” the big man called out harshly. “Don’t try to use it!”
    Dan stood staring at him in stunned surprise. Regan stalked to him and snatched the knife out of his hand. Dan was bewildered and made no resistance as Regan gripped him by the arm and called back to the others who were crashing through the brush after him. “They’re okay, Mr. Belden!”
    As her father and brothers ran in, Trixie shouted at Regan. “He wasn’t trying to do anything wrong! He was only trying to protect us from that horrible wildcat!”
    Regan looked astonished and turned abruptly to Dan. “Is that the truth, Dan? Out with it!”
    Dan shrugged his thin shoulders, and a bitter little smile twisted his mouth. “What did you think I was doing? Holding them for a kidnap payoff or something?” He was the old Dan now, sarcastic and on the defensive.
    Regan still looked doubtful, and the others were staring at the pair. Trixie could see that none of them was quite ready to believe Dan’s real role.
    Brian brought her a cup of hot broth from his Thermos bottle, but she waved it aside. “Dan needs that more than I do,” she said. “He came right away when I asked him to help us, and he made me wear his jacket so I wouldn’t get cold while he was crawling down into that horrible hole to save Bobby from freezing to death with his legs caught under a rock!” It was a long speech, but it had the effect that she hoped it would. Everyone was looking at Dan now with admiration, and Brian was handing him the cup of broth.
    “Thanks, Dan,” Mr. Belden said quietly, holding Bobby tightly in his arms. “We won’t forget it!”
    Dan seemed embarrassed by their approval. He didn’t know what to say so he started sipping the hot broth.
    Bobby lifted his head as Mart draped a blanket around him in his father’s arms. “I failed in a hole, but the kitty wasn’t there. An’ Dan digged me out, an’ there was a fairy shoemaker an’ he said—” A big yawn interrupted the story, and he ended sleepily, “Tip-tap, rip-rap—” And a moment later he was sound asleep.
    “It was just a little rhyme,” Dan apologized, “about a leprechaun. My mum used to sing it to me.
    “A leprechaun!” Trixie clapped her hands. “I know what we’ll do! We need something special for the carnival! We’ll have Dan recite the rhyme, and Bobby will do his little skating number dressed in a leprechaun costume! Honey can make it in nothing flat!”
    “Sounds like a swell idea!” Mart agreed with his almost-twin, much to her surprise. Usually he found a lot of objections to all her suggestions, and they had to be overcome one by one.
    “Danny’s a good skater, aren’t you, boy?” Bill Regan asked him. “Didn’t I hear that you won a medal in the Police Athletic League games a couple of years ago?”
    “Yeah.” Dan was embarrassed again. “But I haven’t skated for a long