The Mystery off Glen Road

other. “Could this be where the poacher lives?” Honey asked.
    “I guess so,” Trixie said. “But he must have been poaching for a long, long time. That cabin wasn’t built in a few days. Look how long it’s been taking the boys just to fix the roof of our clubhouse.”
    They moved over and peered through a window. The interior was neat and clean but sparsely furnished. A bunk was in one corner, and in the center of the room there were two homemade chairs and a table. Hanging from the ceiling near the two windows on the opposite side of the cabin were several thick leatherlike strips about twelve inches long.
    “Why, it’s pemmican!” Trixie suddenly cried. “I mean, jerked venison. The Indians used to make it into pemmican. It keeps for months like that and doesn’t have to be cooked.”
    “Venison!” Honey cried. “Then those strips must be what’s left of that dead deer.”
    “Maybe,” Trixie said. “But I kind of doubt it. That deer is probably still hanging.”
    With the horses trailing behind them, they went around to the back. “Why, there’s a vegetable garden,” Trixie cried excitedly. She pointed to some frost-blackened vines. “Tomatoes, pumpkin, squash, and cucumbers. That whole row of flattened tops must be carrots that haven’t been dug yet. And there’s kale, which can stay out all winter. And look. Over there are beets, turnips, and parsnips. They don’t have to be brought in until the weather gets very cold.”
    “Well, poachers aren’t gardeners,” Honey said. “At least, I don’t think they are.”
    “They could be,” Trixie argued. “Whoever lives < here is trespassing on your father’s property and killing game. That makes him a poacher.”
    “Maybe when the horses were running, they carried us clear out of the preserve,” Honey suggested.
    Trixie shook her head. “They weren’t running in a straight line. Remember? That path wound around like a corkscrew. As the crow flies, we can’t be very far from the fork in the trail. So we must be still in: your father’s preserve.”
    “But where?” Honey demanded. “And, since we’re not crows, how do you figure we are going to get back to the trail?”
    Trixie giggled. “Bobby’s compass will tell us where north is, and that’s the direction we ought to take, but since we can’t fly in a straight line, we’ll simply have to unwind ourselves.”
    Honey’s lower lip trembled. “I don’t know how you can laugh, Trixie. It’s getting darker by the minute. You know as well as I do that we’re lost, and the poacher who lives here has a gun, and he’s probably on his way home now.” She swung up on Starlight’s back. “Our only hope, Trixie, is to follow the horses’ hoofprints while there’s still light enough to see.” Honey was right, and both girls knew it. She led the way across the clearing and started slowly along the path.
    Trixie followed on Susie. After a few minutes, she asked, “Are you following the hoofprints? I don’t see any, not even Starlight’s.”
    “There aren’t any to be seen,” Honey said dismally. “The path is nothing but rocks and pine needles and dead leaves. Even an FBI man couldn’t find any kind of print on it.”
    “Well, at least it’s a path,” Trixie said, trying to sound cheerful. “If we stick to it, we’re bound to end up where we started.” But Trixie was worried, too. Only a faint yellowish-green light filtered through the evergreen branches now, and soon there would be no light at all. The path was so narrow you could hardly call it a path—not unless you were traveling on foot in broad daylight.
    After a long silence, Honey said, “I think we’d better give the horses their heads.”
    “I’m not so sure about that,” Trixie said. “Maybe we’d better get off and lead the horses. I mean, they must have broken or bruised a lot of branches when they were galloping madly along. But you can’t expect horses to know the difference between a bruised branch and one that hasn’t been touched. But we should be able to tell the difference.”
    Honey sniffed, and although Trixie couldn’t see her face, she guessed that Honey was very close to tears. “That’s what you think,” she told Trixie. “Jim and Indians can read all sorts of signs in the woods, like broken branches and all, but you and I can’t. Also, it’s soon going to be so dark we won’t be able to see our hands in front of our faces, let alone read our palms so we can find