The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

rain tomorrow. Linnie and I will bid you good night.” Upstairs, Mart called in to Trixie, “Who did leave the things for Mrs. Moore?”
    “A ghost,” answered Trixie.
    “What did you say?”
    “I said ‘a ghost.’ ”
    “Have you gone batty?”
    “I’m not real sure. I heard the ghost with my own ears. Jacob saw him, or acted as though he did. Mrs. Moore is sure she heard her husband Matthew’s spirit singing, ‘Sorrow... sweet sorrow.’ You heard all those ghost stories the people were telling tonight. They believe them. If I stay here long enough, I’ll believe them, too. Right now all I can think of is that out there in that cave, we do have a ghost—a ghost that really isn’t a ghost, yet it is. Oh, what am I saying, Mart? I’m so sleepy I can’t think straight. We have to be up early in the morning to go back to that cave— Mart! What was that noise? Jim! Brian! Is that Linnie screaming?... It is! And Mrs. Moore’s calling us. I smell smoke!”
     

Fire in the Night ● 10
     
    IN THE YARD, pandemonium had replaced the peace of a short while before. The sharp, acrid smell of burning brush and wood filled the air. Smoke billowed from the level below, obscuring Mrs. Moore’s cabin.
    “My chickens!” she cried, wringing her hands. “They’re shut up in the chicken house! The fire’s making right for them. Jim! Brian! Trixie! Help save my chickens!”
    The boys leaped over the ledge that separated the lodge grounds from the place where Mrs. Moore’s collection of little buildings stood. They rushed to the chicken house and released the door catch, which had been firmly fixed against marauding skunks and foxes. Then, squawking and with feathers flying, the chickens scurried out and disappeared in all directions.
    Linnie hurried to the cow shed and led resisting, protesting brown Martha to higher ground at the lodge. The mules, never tied in their shed, were milling around the back lawn of the lodge, where Honey caught and tethered them.
    Baleful little tongues of fire traced a definite path along the dividing line between lodge and cabin, eloquent evidence that the fire had been set—that it was meant to destroy the lodge. The wind that changed as the guests left sent the flames hungrily creeping in the opposite direction, to threaten, instead, Mrs. Moore’s quarters.
    Everyone rushed around frantically, beating out flames, carrying water, trying to save the cabin home. Trixie dragged the lawn hose through the kitchen to the hydrant where spring water came down from above.
    “That’s the girl!” Uncle Andrew called when she brought the gushing hose. “We must stop the fire before it reaches the underbrush on that slope. If it ever gets started up there, heaven help the whole pine woods and our neighbors’ cabins.”
    The shouts and cries and the smell of smoke had brought the last of the departing guests hurrying back on the crooked trail to the lodge. Now these men and boys joined the fire fighters, while the girls, obeying Trixie’s uncle, took the children inside the lodge.
    “We’d better build a backfire over there forty or fifty feet this side of the underbrush,” Bill Hawkins cried. “That’s our best chance. Bring some shovels, boys. Start here!”
    Jim, Brian, and Mart, working with all the mountain men and boys, labored frantically, digging the backfire ditch and twisting sedge grass to kindle the opposing flames.
    Frightened by the smoke and heat of the burning brush, little animals ran out across the level ground —small ground-nesting birds, chipmunks, skunks, a fat coon, and even a red fox. Jacob, who’d been racing about barking and getting in the way, took after the wild things and raced them up the hill toward the road.
    Huge clouds scurried across the sky, and flashes of lightning crinkled around the horizon. The moon disappeared. The wind that had whipped up the flames subsided. But the rain did not come.
    Mrs. Moore’s chicken house burned like straw. The cow shed collapsed in a smoldering heap. But the fire fighters’ quick, hard work saved the little home.
    Now, if the backfire failed, the men well knew that most of their own homes would be lost in the flaming pines.
    “Oh, why doesn’t it rain?” Mrs. Moore moaned. The other women, trying to comfort her, watched the sky with anxious eyes. Thunder rumbled. Zigzag lightning illuminated the grim faces of the men who worked doggedly on. With tragic persistence, the fire, smothered in one place,