The Mystery of the Castaway Children

wagon. “The Dodge children’s safety is the most important thing.”
    “Okay,” said Trixie, “but now how am I going to explain to Moms why I can’t do my chores this morning? She’s so busy that she won’t even have time to listen to my very good excuse.” Instantly Honey turned around. “You won’t have to bother her,” she said. “We’ll help you with your work, won’t we, Jim?”
    With three people doing the work of one, it wasn’t long before Jim was pulling into the weed-grown driveway of the Dutch barn on Old Telegraph Road. Even on a Saturday morning, the lot was full of activity. Hammers banged, machinery whined, and men shouted. Jim spotted the foreman and walked over to him, hand outstretched. “Jim Frayne, Glen Road.”
    “Oh, sure.Smitty, here. I remember you, young fellow. My men put the new roof on the Manor House stables a few months back. What can I do for you?”
    This was easier than Trixie had expected. She stepped forward to say, “We’re hunting for a small boy and a black Shetland. Have you seen them?”
    Smitty pushed his visored cap to the back of his head. “Not for several days. The kid seemed to have his hands full keeping track of that rascal. He had his mind on something back there in the woods.”
    Smitty shook his head. “I haven’t been able to get that kid out of my mind. He seemed hungry, but he wouldn’t ask for a bite of food if it killed him. It got so that the men would leave parts of sandwiches, apples, stuff like that, and tell him he’d do them a favor by eating the stuff. They told him they didn’t want bees buzzing around the scraps in their lunch pails. I thought about calling the cops and asking them if somebody was looking for a missing kid, but, well—I guess I just never got around to it.”
    “Did you give him milk?” Trixie asked. “Come to think of it, he did ask to buy goat
    milk. Naturally I told him to help himself. The goat works here, same as we do. She’s our scrub remover.”
    Smitty grinned. “You’ve heard about a goat’s strange appetite? Well, I never did put much stock in that. You know, tin cans and all. Now? Well, I don’t know. I left a T-shirt on a sawhorse, and it disappeared slicker’n a whistle. The only culprit I could see was Nancy!”
    Trixie and Honey exchanged a knowing glance, and Trixie decided against telling Smitty that his T-shirt had wrapped a baby’s bottom.

Friends of Moses White ● 12

    DID YOU EVER SEE a man with the boy?” Honey asked.
    “No, miss, he was a loner.” A carpenter called for help, and Smitty walked away, shouting, “Hope you find that kid. His pony was a friendly little devil. Wouldn’t mind having him for my kids!”
    Trixie, Honey, and Jim called their thanks to Smitty and headed into the woods across from the barn.
    “Let’s fan out,” Trixie said. “Davy’s camp must have been close to the road, or else he couldn’t have run back and forth when the pony’s foot was caught in the chain.”
    The pitiful little camp was not that hard to find. A heap of boughs, all of them small enough to break by hand, had been arranged like a big bird’s nest.
    “Poor little kids,” Honey mourned.
    “Smart little kids,” Jim corrected. “See? Food for the pony.”
    A clean spring bubbled in a tiny rock grotto and trickled away into a swale of lush green grass. A bottle had been left in the spring, propped up so that it was washed by running water. A diaper was caught in a bush nearby, and the second blue bootee was discovered in the nest.
    “Something scared them out of here,” Jim surmised thoughtfully.
    “Or someone,” Trixie said. “Come on, let’s go to Sleepyside.”
    Jim observed the familiar gleam in her eyes. “Uh-oh,” he said. “I have this feeling you’re going to hunt up those auctioneers.”
    “But the sergeant said to stay away from them,” said Honey, looking alarmed. “Besides, I thought we decided to concentrate on finding Davy, not on searching for crooks.”
    “Finding Wicky will make it easy to find Davy,” Trixie reminded her. “If we can see that auction book, that will tell us if Wicky was auctioned and who might have him. Anyway, even the sergeant said that Elmer Durham was honest. What harm could there be in just talking to the man, when we might learn something very important?”
    Jim and Honey looked doubtful. Finally Jim said, “Well, I can see you’re determined to go, and we re not about to let you walk into something alone,