The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

you’re goin’ to spend three hours in every cave we go into...” Slim began, but he was talking to air, because Trixie was over the pile of rubble and inside the cave.
    She couldn’t see a thing ahead of her. There was only subdued light at the entrance, and beyond that, darkness. “Our carbide lamps! It’ll take an hour to light the old things,” she said. “Mart, please shine your big flashlight.”
    “We’ll light our carbide lamps,” Brian said authoritatively. “I’ll show you how they work.”
    He took off his hat and lifted the lamp from the clamp. Then he unscrewed the two halves of the metal cylinder, poured water into the top half and carbide into the lower, and screwed the two halves back together. He set the valve in “on” position and waited till the water started dripping into the carbide. Acetylene gas, thus formed, escaped through the pin-sized hole in the concave metal reflector.
    While Trixie fretted at the delay, she and the other Bob-Whites followed each step Brian made, then watched expectantly as he cupped his hand over the Elector to trap some of the gas and brushed his hand against the flint built into the inside of the reflector to ignite the flame.
    Slim had lighted the stub of a miner’s candle he had brought, but he couldn’t keep back a shout of amazement when the lamps on the Bob-Whites’ hats lighted the darkness.
    The room where they stood was immense. All about them stalactites gleamed above stalagmites that rose from the floor beneath. On the walls, dozens of crystal formations came into view—draperies that flowed like velvet yet were stone, flowers that sent out delicate frondlike tentacles of limestone and sparkled in the reflected light like semiprecious jewels.
    The ground under their feet was slippery with moisture, and the air about them was chilly. A stream trickled through the center of the big room, disappeared into a rocky crevice, and emerged farther on in a path it carved, only to disappear again under a cluster of limestone mounds.
    “Haven’t you ever been in here before?” Trixie asked Slim breathlessly. “Not even once?”
    “Nope. There’s nothin’ in here you won’t find in Bascomb’s Cave I told you about or in the one at Turkey Knob. They’re all alike, and I don’t want none of ’em. If you’ve got any huntin’ to do, let’s start.”
    “Just a minute!” Trixie said. “I have an idea. This cave is on Uncle Andrew’s property. It’s a new cave. Does that make you think of anything?”
    “Nothing but the fish we’re after,” Mart said. “What are you getting at?”
    “Just this—a new cave should have a name.” Trixie unscrewed the top of her canteen, poured water into it, held it up, and, as it dripped, said, “I christen thee—”
    “Bob-White Cave!” they all chorused.
    “Exactly! Isn’t it wonderful?”
    “Bob-Cat Cave’d be a better name,” Slim said with contempt.
    The Bob-Whites ignored him and searched the cavernous room with their flashlights. Time passed swiftly as they followed the stream, inch by inch, shining their lights on each ripple.
    “Do you see anything?” Honey asked.
    “Not yet, but I’m sure this would be the kind of place to watch. Was that a flash of white?”
    The girls knelt on the rocky ground, the beams from their carbide lamps concentrating on the moving water. “Quick!” Trixie cried. “Right there under your nose. Jim! Brian! Mart! It’s here!”
    “It’s not now,” Honey said sadly. “I’m not even sure I saw it. Why didn’t you dip it right out the instant you saw it?”
    “It was there,” Trixie insisted. “There it is again, right over there on the edge of the stream!” She reached frantically with her dip net, lowered it, and brought up a grayish, emaciated cricket from the water’s edge. Its feelers were as long as its body, and the poor thing struggled weakly in the dip net.
    “That’s a fish?” Mart asked.
    “You know it isn’t,” Trixie answered. “But where there are ghost crickets, there are bound to be ghost fish.”
    “Let’s get outa here!” Slim commanded.
    Trixie looked at him, amazed.
    “I don’t hold with no kind of spirits—even fish spirits. The devil lives in caves. Anybody hereabouts will tell you that. Don’t go beyond this here room, or you’ll find that out. And them white things you see, 1 in the water and out, they’re evil. They’re even poison!”
    “Do you call five hundred dollars poison?” Mart