The Mystery of the Galloping Ghost

confused.
    “You
set a bucket of water on top of the cabinet,” Bill said. “Then you get me to
open the door and I get drenched. My own kids used to play that prank.”
    “I’ll
open the door if you want,” Trixie assured him.
    Bill
decided to play along. “Okay,” he said. “You show me.”
    When
Trixie opened the door, Bill joined the ranks of the befuddled. “What the—” He
looked from Trixie to Honey and back again, alert for the faintest glimmer of a
grin. Seeing none, he turned and looked back over his shoulder. “Is Regan a
joker?” he asked softly. Trixie and Honey both shook their heads.
    “Didn’t
think so,” Bill admitted. “ Neither’s Pat.” His face clouded only for a moment. Then he said cheerfully,
“Well, things don’t just disappear. If we go about our business, whoever did
this will get disappointed and put the stuff back. I know how to handle
pranksters.” Bill gave the girls a broad wink.
    “I
wonder why,” Trixie said with a grin.
    Bill
reached into a corner of the tack room and grabbed a pitchfork. He held it out
to Trixie and said, “How serious are you about working?”
    “Pretty
serious, I guess,” Trixie said reluctantly, taking the fork from him. Cleaning
stalls was her least favorite task.
    “Somehow
it figures that the pitchforks wouldn’t disappear,” Honey joked as Bill handed
her one.
    Bill
and Gus led all the horses out into the corral, and Trixie and Honey went to
work. Trixie had already noticed that Regan and Pat, along with two of the
horses, were gone. A nice long trail
ride is just what Pat needs this morning, Trixie thought. If he’s smart, he’ll confide in Regan along
the way. Regan is an understanding guy.
    Trixie
dug the pitchfork into the dirty straw in the first stall, eager for the
calming effect that hard work always had on her. When the stall was empty, she
went to the pile of clean straw in a corner of the stable. Ordinarily, she’d
clean out all the stalls before refilling any of them. Today, however, she wanted
to see some progress.
    As
she drove the pitchfork into the pile, she was startled to feel it hit
something that wasn’t hay. She knelt and moved the hay from around the tines.
“It’s a brush!” she exclaimed. She tossed it into the lane behind her and started
digging through the hay with her hands.
    “Did
you say something?” Honey asked, following the sound of Trixie’s voice. “What
are you doing?”
    Trixie
held up a currycomb. “Look!” she said excitedly. “All the grooming stuff is
buried in this haystack!”
    Honey
joined in the search, and soon the girls had found all the brushes and combs
they remembered seeing in the cabinet, as well as two bottles of liniment.
    “Who
could have done this?” Honey asked.
    “It
must have been Bill. You know what a joker he is,” Trixie said.
    “He
acted as though we were
playing a trick on him,” Honey said.
    “That’s
all part of the joke,” Trixie said. “We can still get the last laugh. Let’s put
the stuff back in the cabinet and pretend we don’t know anything about it.”
    The
girls had returned the tools and almost finished cleaning out the stalls when
they heard Bill Murrow enter the stable.
    “I’m
telling you, Gus,” Bill was saying, “I don’t know where the tools went. The
last time I saw them, they were right here in—” He broke off in mid-sentence.
    Trixie
stifled a giggle, imagining Bill’s expression as he’d thrown open the cabinet
door and seen a full array of brushes and combs.
    Bill’s
face soon appeared over the edge of the stall. He was waggling a brush under Trixie’s
nose. “Very funny,” he said, sounding as if he meant it. “You did it wrong,
though. You should have replaced the stuff before you had to clean out the
stalls.”
    “We
wouldn’t have had to clean them if you hadn’t hidden the tools,” Trixie
countered.
    Bill
frowned. “You mean you really didn’t hide the tools in the first place?”
    “No!”
Trixie and Honey said together.
    Bill
looked first at one, then the other. He waved their earnest looks away with one
hand. “Oh, go on—you did, too. Pretty funny. I’ll have
to start keeping an eye on you two!”
    “He
doesn’t believe us,” Honey said as Bill left. She sounded hurt.
    “Of
course, he does,” Trixie told her. “He’s just milking the joke for all it’s
worth. Anyway, now we can groom the horses. That’s a definite step up from
this!” She jabbed the pitchfork into some dirty