The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

demanded.
    Slim’s head went up. “Five hundred dollars?”
    Mart, who’d been quickly shushed by four indignant Bob-Whites, just sputtered. “Forget it! Maybe they are poison, at that. We’d better leave ’em alone, huh, Trixie?” Mart walked over to the far wall and pretended deep interest in the formations.
    “So that’s it,” Slim said half aloud. “Shucks, though, you was just talkin’ big. Braggin’.”
    “When you know my brother better, Slim, you’ll find out he spends a lot of his time doing just that— I bragging.” Trixie dipped her head to throw the light from her head lamp on the low edge along the stream.   “Do you see those pinpoints of light?” she asked. “Is that some little animal, Slim? See it peeking around the edge of that shelf?”
    “It’s a pack rat,” Slim said. “Like as not its nest is on that shelf.”
    “I don’t like rats,” Honey said, shivering. “Those big old water rats near the Hudson at home are really dangerous!”
    “Pack rats aren’t the same thing at all,” Brian explained. “They’re as clean as squirrels and just as thrifty. They bring in their store of winter food and stow it away just inside the cave entrance. They’re shy, afraid of humans. If you look down here on the floor, you’ll see the tracks of their feet in wet clay. I read someplace that people trapped in caves have followed the tracks of pack rats to safety outside.”
    “Do you study things like that in biology?” Honey asked, always impressed by Brian’s knowledge.
    “Not exactly,” Brian told her, “but I’ve been thinking that a person could do a lot of medical research in a place like this—molds, you know, and blind fish and crickets. It has lots of possibilities.”
    For the next two hours, the Bob-Whites continued their search, hardly aware of the passing of time.
    “How’s about leavin’ here?” Slim suddenly asked. “It must be gettin’ toward five o’clock.”
    “It can’t be!” Trixie said, aghast. “We haven’t been here half an hour. I’m going on into one of those passages, the one where the stream leaves this room.”
    Mart held his wristwatch up to the light of his carbide lamp. “Not today you won’t,” he said. “It’s not only five o’clock—it’s already ten minutes past.”
    “Your watch is wrong!” Trixie said positively.
    “It’s right, Trixie,” Honey said and held out her own wristwatch to show Trixie.
    “Where could three hours have gone?” Trixie asked.
    “This is the most fascinating place in the whole world. Can’t we stay just another half hour?”
    “Nope!” Slim answered.
    “Jim? Brian?” Trixie pleaded.
    “I said nope!” Slim snapped.
    “Jim, is that Simon Legree our boss?” Trixie, incensed, inquired.
    “When we’re exploring caves, I guess he is,” Jim said. “But take it a little easier, will you, fella?” he asked Slim. “I don’t care for your tone of voice.”
    “Take it or leave it,” Slim replied. “Everybody out, right now!”
    Out of the cave, Slim swaggered. He led the way down to the boat and, when they had all settled in, rowed briskly toward shore. Once there, he went first to Mr. Glendenning’s boat, still beached on the shore, peered inside, and examined the bundle lashed to the seat; then he nimbly scrambled up the path, ahead of the Bob-Whites.
    When they reached the lodge, Slim had already untied his mule and was riding off.
    “Be here real early in the morning!” Trixie called after him. “We want to get back to the cave and have enough time to explore things.... Now, I don’t know whether he heard me or not,” she added impatiently.
    “He’ll show up,” Mart said blithely. “It butters his bread. He sure had a peeve of some kind today, didn’t he?”
    “He has a perpetual peeve,” Jim said. “If he keeps putting that chip on his shoulder all the time, one of us will have to knock it off.”
    “Not me,” Mart said. “I wouldn’t want to get in the way of one of his wallops.”
    “He’s probably nine-tenths big talk,” Jim said. “I believe he really thinks the devil lives in caves.”
    “I don’t. I think he’s cruel. I think he wanted to scare Honey and me. He seems to have a special hate for me.”
    “It’s because you’re a girl, Trixie, and you know a few things he doesn’t. Who cares what he’s like?” Mart held the lodge door open. “After all, he’s just an indispensable adjunct to our ichthyological quest.”
    “Is that