The Mystery of the Castaway Children

stables?”
    “Are we going to ride?” Honey asked. “What shall I wear?”
    “Just wear what you have on now.”
    “A bath towel? I just took a shower!”
    Trixie giggled. “You’re out of uniform, Detective Wheeler. Let’s wear shorts and wait to ride till it’s cooler, okay? I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
    When Trixie reached the stables, she heard Honey call, “Trix, I’m in the supply room. There’s a fan here.”
    Trixie called back, “I’m stopping at the tack room first.” She went straight to the shelf where she had thrown the horseshoe. She patted the entire length of the shelf, then patted again.
    “Honey, it’s gone,” she wailed. “The horseshoe’s gone!”
    Honey hurried down the wide alleyway. “Regan probably threw it in the scrap heap. There’s a bin behind the barn.”
    As Trixie rushed after Honey to the barn, she breathed in the familiar odors of timothy, clover, bran, oats, leather, saddle soap, and horseflesh. Everything was in order. She should have known Regan would notice that shoe.
    The scrap bin was a huge wooden box with a hinged lid held in place by a hasp. It took the girls’ combined strength to lift the lid. Trixie stared in dismay at the bits of chain, the bars of metal and tools without handles, the odds-and-ends leftovers from Regan’s world.
    “Where do we start?” Trixie asked.
    “At the top,” Honey said practically. “Help me lift this wheelbarrow frame. There’s small stuff under it.”
    “How’d you recognize a wheelbarrow frame?” Trixie asked in amazement.
    Honey grinned. “I saw the gardener take the barrow apart.”
    With the first plunge into the scrap, both girls broke fingernails and got rust smeared on skin and clothing.
    “And you’ve just had a shower,” Trixie said apologetically.
    “We have lots of soap,” Honey retorted cheerfully. “Just tell me why we re doing this.”
    If we find that shoe,” Trixie explained, “we can use it to check tracks we run across and locate that horse. Davy may be on that horse. And Regan can identify that shoe for us.”
    As if on cue, just then Regan came around the corner of the barn. Hooking both thumbs in his wide belt, he queried, “Going into the junk business?”
    The horseshoe, Regan!” Trixie cried. “Where is it?”
    For a second, Regan blanked. Then he asked, “You mean that Shetland shoe Dan found on a shelf?”
    “Shetland?” Although Trixie had guessed that the horse was smaller than Spartan, it wasn’t until her visit to the Dodges that it occurred to her that the lost shoe might have belonged to a pony. Even so, she dared not raise her hopes too high. Bobby had recently learned to ride while Regan had trained a Shetland named Mr. Pony. Mr. Pony could have lost that shoe on the bicycle trail. That was one of the few trails Bobby had been allowed to use.
    Regan didn’t have to be told that Trixie had put the shoe on the shelf. Her drooping lips and shoulders were tattlers. “Where’d you find it, Trix?”
    Trixie told him.
    The tall, red-haired groom nodded. “Molinson’s already been here looking for a transient horse. None of our horses had lost shoes. There was this extra shoe, so we gave it to him.”
    Trixie thrust her sneaker toe against the scrap bin and tried to think of a way of dealing with this discouraging development. She had counted on finding that shoe.

Wet Soap and a Tepee 8

    REGAN SAID KINDLY, “If it will make you feel better, Trix, Molinson told me you were the one who put him on the trail of the horse.”
    Trixie tried smiling but failed. “Let’s go take a bath while we think of a new plan, Honey.”
    “You going to give up, just like that?”
    Alertly Trixie turned on Regan. “Why? Do you know something else?”
    “I might.”
    “Tell us!” Trixie begged. “This case is awfully important to Honey and me. Yipes, Sergeant Molinson has actually asked us for help, and we don’t want to blow it. We simply have to find that missing boy.”
    “Boy?” Regan repeated. “Thought we were talking about a horse.”
    Honey filled Regan in on the story of Davy. “Well,” Regan mused, “after Molinson left, I got to thinking about that shoe and wondering why it was so important to find a transient horse. You know, you can tell a lot about people by the way they take care of their horses.”
    Trixie’s eyes swept the wide, peaceful scene. Clean, fly-free stables, a supply barn that allowed for the circulation of fresh air, whitewashed