The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

BOB-WHITES came down for a late breakfast, a sorry sight waited for them in the area around the lodge. The chicken house was completely destroyed, and the chickens were running wild. The ruins of the cow shed still smoldered. Nothing was left of the mule shed but a pile of charred boards.
    Uncle Andrew’s face was stern. “It’s hard to believe that anyone would be so low as to deliberately set fire to someone’s home. All the men seemed certain that the fire was set.”
    “It burned in such a straight line above Mrs. Moore’s house,” Jim said. “Fires don’t burn that way unless they are set.”
    “We don’t have to hunt far to know who did it.
    Uncle Andrew, what are you going to do to Slim?” Trixie asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “Nothing?” Trixie cried. “After all the damage he did to Mrs. Moore’s home? You just have to take one look at her yard. Her flowers are all burned, her hollyhocks, daisies, four-o’clocks. They were so pretty. Why, the fire even burned the vines on her porch.”
    “Thank heavens, it didn’t get her home. I didn’t mean, Trixie, that whoever set that fire isn’t to be punished. I meant that I’m not the one to do it. Too many Ozark men take the law into their own hands. Here comes Mrs. Moore now. I hate to see this happen to her. She hasn’t had an easy life.”
    Mrs. Moore came in from the cold cellar, where she’d gone for butter, cream, and milk for their breakfast. Her face was calm, but her eyes were red-rimmed from weeping. “My chickens are scattered every which way,” she said. “I’ll never get them together again. And if I did, where would I put them? Oh, Mr. Belden, your beautiful lawn! It’s terrible.”
    “My lawn will be put in order in a short time. As for the chickens, they’ll sleep tonight in the new chicken house the boys and I will build for you today. Right, boys?”
    “Right! We’ll get started right after breakfast,” Jim answered. As soon as they had finished the hearty meal, Jim got up from the table, and Mart and Brian followed him.
    “We’ll use the lumber in the far end of the yard,” Uncle Andrew said, “the lumber I ordered in town to build that new room off the kitchen. It isn’t quite the right kind, but it’ll do. We can put a stout door on the chicken house to keep out coons and skunks and foxes. There’ll be enough material to build a shelter for Martha, too, Mrs. Moore. Don’t fret. It’ll all be done before you can say Kalamazoo.”
    Mrs. Moore put her apron to her eyes, then busied herself at the sink.
    Trixie put her arm around Mrs. Moore’s waist. “Honey and I are going out to your house now, to help Linnie clear up the damage there.”
    Mrs. Moore patted Trixie’s hand gratefully and went on washing the dishes. “You girls and Linnie go ahead and fix the house up any way she wants.”
    Before the girls left, Bill Hawkins arrived to help Uncle Andrew and the boys. “Is someone living in that old ghost cabin, Andy?” he asked.
    “I don’t know, Bill. The boys and Trixie saved an Englishman from drowning out there in the lake. Linnie and Mrs. Moore took him home in the mule wagon. They sort of thought he was living there.”
    “Was he an old man with a billowy white beard?”
    “No. Why?”
    “I wonder. When we came over here to the play-party yesterday, we saw a man with the whitest hair I ever saw on a human. And he was creeping through the woods, going toward the ghost cabin. He had a pack on his back. My kids called him Santa Claus. He sure acted queer, as though he might be....” Bill Hawkins made a gesture toward his forehead to indicate that he thought the man might have been crazy. “Say, maybe—say, Andy, I told my wife a person would have to be crazy to set fire to this lodge.”
    Uncle Andrew looked at Trixie. “This whole thing will take a lot of investigation before the blame is laid on anyone. It’s no use jumping to conclusions. Right now we have jobs to do. Trixie and Honey, you see what you can do to help Linnie. Bill and the boys and I will get busy with the sheds.”
    Mrs. Moore’s three-room home was a sturdy log cabin. A porch covered the front of the house, and there was a hallway between the living room on one side and the bedroom on the other. Back of the living room, a kitchen had been added. Mrs. Moore’s grandfather, who built the house, had taken pride in his work. He had built it of carefully selected logs, on a thick foundation of fitted rock.
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