The Red Trailer Mystery

once. And now let’s decide where we want to have lunch. There’s a picnic ground beside a lake not far from here. Wouldn’t you girls like to take a swim and cool off before we eat?"
    Honey, in spite of her worries about Buddy, enthusiastically agreed to this plan. At the next intersection, Miss Trask drove off to the right and up a wooded hill to the public picnic grounds. She parked beside a rustic table flanked by two weather-beaten benches and pointed to a nearby outdoor oven.
    "I’ll roast potatoes while you’re swimming," she said. "Then you can broil those hamburgers I bought at the hot-dog stand and toast marshmallows for dessert."
    "Wonderful," Honey cried, cheering up at the thought.
    But Trixie wasn’t listening. She was staring across the lake, shading her blue eyes from the sun, "Do you see what I see?" she said in a low voice to Honey. "Isn’t that a red trailer parked over there under the trees? Doesn’t it look like the Robin to you?"
    Honey squinted in the direction in which Trixie was pointing. "Why, yes," she said after a moment. "I’m sure it’s the Robin! Oh, Trixie, maybe they discovered Buddy was following them and picked him up. Let’s go right over and ask them."
    Miss Trask had disappeared into the woods to gather kindling, so the girls called out, "We’ll be right back," and started along the path that wound around the lake.
    As they hurried toward the other shore, Trixie told Honey about the mysterious conversation she had overheard the night before.
    "And then," she finished, "there was the awful sound of a man crying, Honey. Do you think they could have kidnapped somebody?"
    "It certainly sounds like it," Honey said and then stopped. "Look who’s in wading. Isn’t that Sally?"
    The little girl saw them before Trixie could reply and immediately began to wave and splash her way across the lake in their direction.
    "For a little girl who’s not supposed to speak to strangers," Trixie said with a giggle, "she certainly is friendly."
    "I wish she’d stay closer to shore," Honey said nervously. "Lakes have a way of dropping off suddenly from a two-foot depth to—" She ended in a stifled scream as the child’s head suddenly disappeared under the water, as though her body had been sucked down by a deep-sea monster.
    Trixie stood rooted to the spot with horror. Sally would certainly drown if they took the time to run around the lake to the shallow water where she had been wading. The child’s head bobbed up and down again as the thin little arms helplessly flailed the water.
    Trixie started for the lake. There was only one thing to do. They must try to swim across and save the child before it was too late.
    But Honey, several yards in front of Trixie, had already kicked off her moccasins and was tearing off her shirt as she ran through the water. Then, hitting the deep part of the lake, she began to swim with clean, fast strokes toward the little girl, holding the collar of her shirt in her mouth.
    Trixie, knowing that Honey was a much better swimmer than she was, watched anxiously as she hurriedly circled the lake. When Honey got near enough to those pathetic, flailing arms, she seized the collar of her shirt with one hand and threw the tail of it to Sally.
    Sally grabbed and hung on. "Lie on your back and float," Honey ordered, and the little girl obeyed. It had all happened so quickly that she had not had time to become badly frightened, so it was an easy matter for Honey to tow her into shallow water.
    Trixie waded out to meet them and, waist deep, gathered the little girl into her arms. Sally’s face was puckered up, as though she were going to cry, but, instead, she began to laugh. "Daddy taught me how to float," she said proudly. "But I sort of forgot how until she"— she pointed to Honey—"threw me her shirt. I can swim, too," she went on, wriggling away from Trixie and dog-paddling the rest of the way to shore, just as though she hadn’t been on the verge of drowning a minute before. "But," the little girl admitted as she climbed up the bank again, "I don’t like to swim in deep water."
    Trixie looked at Honey and laughed. "So that’s all the thanks you get."
    Honey, in her wet bra and shorts, leaned over to twist the water out of her hair. Then she slipped into her shirt, laughing. "It feels fine to be cold for a change, but I think we’d all better go home and put on dry clothes. Do you feel all right, Sally?"
    But Sally had already started to trot along the