The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

flared up in another. Newly turned earth and backfire, which caught and was fanned to mounting flames, all seemed futile.
    Now the underbrush beyond the backfire kindled and flared. Slowly the flames crept toward the ledge, where resinous pines rose against the sky. In the glow, a man’s figure was silhouetted against the skyline. He appeared and reappeared, carrying buckets, pouring water. As the wave of flame advanced, the hose fell short by twenty feet, and the arc of water from it could not bridge the gap. With stolid tenacity, the men and boys worked on, relaying buckets of water, beating out the creeping fire, encouraging the growing fierceness of the backfire till they realized that it threatened finally to be as destructive as the danger it was supposed to avert.
    Trixie, who had flattened her face against the living room windowpane, watching, could stand it no longer. In spite of her uncle’s injunction to stay inside and mind the little ones, she turned them over to Honey and went outside to work side by side with Linnie and the men and boys.
    It clearly was a losing battle. The scrub pines on the slope were almost a solid wall of fire. One by one, the fire fighters fell back—exhausted, defeated.
    Then, as the first pine on the skyline flamed to a torch, the sky opened and the rain came. It came in sheets of water, quenching the holocaust as quickly and completely as snubbing a cigarette in an ashtray.
    The men sprawled on the lodge lawn and let the rain drench them—too tired to move or talk.
    Trixie, Mrs. Moore, Linnie, and the neighbor women slowly walked to the house to prepare food and coffee. Honey had made pallets of quilts for the children, and they slept on the living room floor.
    For a while, the women and girls did not talk. Instead they cut bread, made sandwiches, opened cans of fruit, brought out cream and sugar, and heaped the kitchen table with food.
    Slowly the men filed in, washed their sooty faces at the sink, then reached for sandwiches and cups of steaming coffee.
    “That fire was set,” one man said.
    “For a purpose,” another one added.
    “I don’t know who your enemy is, do you, Andy?” a third asked. “Do any of these young ’uns know?” Trixie started to answer, but her Uncle Andrew gently stopped her. “If we do, we’ll name no names until there is proof,” he said. “When there is proof, there will be speedy punishment. Of that I’m sure.”
    “We ain’t had a hangin’ in this part of the mountains for many a day,” one of the neighbors said, “but the devil that set that fire deserves to swing. When you decide to name names, Andy, there’s those among us that knows how to take care of the scoundrel that threatened your home and ours. Now we’ll get our kids and womenfolk together and get on.”
    “You won’t go without my thanks,” Mrs. Moore said warmly.
    “And mine, too,” Uncle Andrew said as he shook hands all around.
    “We were fighting for the same thing, Andy,” the men assured him. “And we appreciate the play-party you all gave us tonight. If it hadn’t been for that, we’d never been on hand.”
    “With no one here to help fight the fire, it would have been too late when the rain finally came,” Mrs. Moore said, shuddering. “It seems now as though the Lord sent rain just for us, doesn’t it? The sky’s clear, and look at that moon! I hope the creek’s not up so’s you can’t cross it.”
    “We’ll manage,” Bill Hawkins replied. “When you start rebuilding the sheds, let me know, Andy.”
    “That’ll be tomorrow,” Uncle Andrew replied.
    “I’ll be here, in the late morning.”
    It was nearly four o’clock in the morning when Mrs. Moore and the others finished washing the dishes and setting things to rights. The smell of damp burned wood filled the air, reminding them constantly of the averted tragedy.
    By common understanding, no one discussed the origin of the fire. “We’d better all get to bed now,” Uncle Andrew said. “There’ll be work to do tomorrow to clean things up, and there’ll be things to talk over.” When the Bob-Whites went upstairs, Trixie couldn’t settle down to sleep. She heard the boys tossing and turning in the next room. Honey, exhausted, slept restlessly, mumbling and moaning.
    Trixie could hear her Uncle Andrew pacing back and forth, back and forth, downstairs. In Mrs. Moore’s scorched cabin, a light burned.
    Then Trixie slept.
     

Operation Fix-Up • 11
     
    WHEN THE