The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

Discovery ● 1
     
    I HATE RAIN! It’s simply pouring down, and it’s darker than night outside.”
    Trixie Belden’s usually merry blue eyes were rebellious. She pressed her face against the big picture window in her Uncle Andrew’s fishing lodge, deep in the Ozark Mountains. Outside, rivulets of water ran down the glass. Thunder rolled in the distance, and wind whipped the branches of the pines and oaks on the rocky ledge where the lodge perched.
    “It’s never going to stop raining! Why did we ever come here?”
    Mart Belden, fifteen, just eleven months older than his sister, looked up from the reel he was fitting to a limber fishing rod. “What’s the matter with you? On the way here yesterday, you were so excited about everything you couldn’t even sit still in the wagon.”
    “Yesterday everything was different,” Trixie answered. “I’d never even seen a mule before, and then to ride the last few miles of our journey in a mule wagon driven by a girl my own age! The sun was so bright, and the hills were so beautiful. Who’d ever have thought we’d be drowning today?”
    “Well, settle down. It won’t kill you to wait out the rain. Try to get into the dart game with Jim and Brian.”
    “I hate darts!”
    “Well, help Honey hem the curtains for the windows here in the lodge. You chose the material and had it sent out from New York, so get busy and help make the curtains.”
    “I hate to sew!”
    “Gosh, go ahead and grouch, then, only keep it to yourself. If you could only see your face. It’s worse than the rain clouds. You look so furious that even your hair is almost bright red.”
    “I don’t care!” Trixie stamped her foot impatiently, and her short sandy curls bounced as if they, too, were impatient. “I wish Uncle Andrew never had invited us to come here. If we’d stayed home, we’d have been earning some money now for the new Bob-White project. That’s what Dan’s doing. We’ll feel plenty silly if we have nothing to contribute toward the station wagon to take handicapped children to the Sleepy-side School. I hate this whole place!”
    Trixie’s older brother Brian stopped tossing darts for a minute. “That doesn’t sound like you, Trixie. You’re usually the best sport in the world. What do you suppose Linnie’ll think of you?”
    Trixie clapped her hand over her mouth and turned to Linnie... Linnie Moore, the daughter of Uncle Andrew’s housekeeper at his fishing lodge.
    “Oh, Linnie, I am a goop. I didn’t mean a word of it. It’s just frustrating not to be able to get out and do something. I never could stand to be cooped up.”
    “No one likes to be shut in, Trixie.” Linnie’s voice was quiet. “The rain will like as not stop just as suddenly as it started. It mostly does. What did you mean, though, about a station wagon for handicapped children, and what is a bobwhite? I know you can’t be talking about a real bobwhite bird. What is it?”
    Trixie laughed. She had liked Linnie from the moment she had met her. That had been when the Ozark Mountain girl had waited for the Bob-Whites at the railroad station in White Hole Springs, Missouri. She had waited with the mule team and wagon that would take the visitors the last few miles of their journey from Westchester County, New York, where they lived, to the lodge in the Ozarks. No car ever could have traveled over the winding, rocky road.
    “The Bob-Whites are us,” Trixie explained. “Bob-Whites of the Glen. It’s our club. Back in Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson, we have a clubhouse. We always have a project we work on as a group—something we try to do to give help where it’s needed.”
    “That sounds wonderful. No wonder you’re fretting now, with nothing to do. Is it a big club?”
    “There’s Honey, for one.” Trixie put her arm around honey-haired Honey Wheeler, who sewed away patiently on curtains for the lodge. “Our clubhouse is on the grounds of her beautiful home. Then there’s Jim, Honey’s adopted brother, and my older brothers, Mart and Brian. Mart’s not even a year older, but Brian’s almost seventeen. Di Lynch is a member of the club, too. She’s fourteen, the same age as Honey and me.”
    “Me, too,” Linnie said.
    “Di is out in California right now with her parents and twin brothers and twin sisters. Di is simply beautiful. Oh, yes, there’s Dan—Dan Mangan. He’s at home in Sleepyside, working for Honey’s father’s gamekeeper. Last and least, there’s me. I’m