The Red Trailer Mystery

filled her blue eyes, and for a moment she was blinded. Clinging desperately to the saddle with her knees and pulling in the reins with all her might and main, she got out a few weak "Whoa’s," and then she saw that Honey, several yards ahead of her, had managed to halt Peanuts in front of a rambling white frame farmhouse.
    Trixie sighed with relief. "Prince will stop when he catches up with Peanuts," she thought, bracing herself.
    Prince was, in fact, already slowing from a dead run to a more sensible gait when a large black crow suddenly swooped down from a cherry tree beside the house. With a loud, defiant "Caw!" the crow flapped its widespread wings in Prince’s startled face.
    The horse shied violently, and the next thing Trixie knew she was sprawling in the gravel driveway. The angry collie skidded to a stop beside her and stood there, growling threateningly, while the crow, from its perch in the tree, screamed insults down at her.
    "If I lie perfectly still," Trixie decided in desperation, "the collie probably won’t come any nearer, but I wouldn’t trust that crow. He’s as mad as a hornet, and he could do a nice job on my face with his beak or claws."
    And then she heard a woman’s voice calling from the farmhouse, "Laddie, Laddie! Come right here to me, you naughty dog, frightening that poor little girl. Don’t worry, child; he wouldn’t hurt a flea. His bark is worse that his bite."
    The collie, tail drooping, head lowered in shame, trotted obediently to his mistress. Trixie, keeping one eye cautiously on the bird, rolled to a sitting position.
    An enormously fat woman with bright red cheeks and snapping black eyes was hurrying as fast as her weight would allow her down the back steps. "You poor lamb," she crooned breathlessly. "I saw the whole thing from the kitchen window. It was that crow’s fault, the black pest." She shook a plump, dimpled fist up at the cherry tree. "Just wait till I get my hands on you, Jimmy. I’ll make you into a pie so fast you’ll never know what happened to you."
    Jimmy Crow shifted back and forth on his perch as though rocking with laughter. Then with a hoarse, derisive "Caw!" he swooped down on an innocent little garter snake that was wriggling through the grass under the cherry tree.
    By this time his mistress had reached Trixie’s side. "Are you all right, lamb?" she asked worriedly. "Such a tumble! You did a complete somersault in midair. It’s a wonder you didn’t break every bone in your body!"
    Trixie laughed and scrambled to her feet. "I’m all right," she said, "but your pet crow had me scared for a while."
    "My pet, indeed!" The fat woman sniffed. "It’s my husband who has adopted the loudmouthed pest, and the pest has adopted me. He knows I don’t like him, so he follows me every step I take. I tell you, it gets on my nerves, or at least it would if I were not so fat that I haven’t any nerves." She laughed loudly at her own joke and patted Trixie’s arm. "I’m Mrs. Nat Smith," she said, gasping for breath. "And you must come into the house and have some lemonade and cookies. If I do say so myself, I make the best chocolate oatmeal cookies in the county." She glanced down the road, her black eyes sparkling. "Your friend will be back as soon as she catches your horse, and then we’ll have a nice tea party in my kitchen."
    "We’d love it," Trixie said as she followed Mrs. Smith to the back steps. "But won’t it be too much trouble? I know how busy a farmer’s wife must be all the time. We have a small farm farther down the river. Just a vegetable garden and about forty chickens, but it’s an awful lot of work."
    Mrs. Smith nodded as she began a slow, ponderous ascent of the steps. "Work, work, work, from morning till night," she panted. "I tell Nat he’s too old now to keep up that pace, but you can’t stop him. And now, with the beans all ready to be picked, our hired hand fell out of a tree and broke his leg." She grunted in disgust as she heaved her bulk through the door and collapsed into a huge rocking chair beside the stove. "Wouldn’t you know that good-for-nothing boy would pick a time like this to climb one of those half-dead trees down in the orchard?"
    "Oh," Trixie asked, "does that old orchard belong to your property?"
    "Indeed it does," the woman said, "although we haven’t got an apple out of it for these past six years, and the boy knew as well as I do that it’s not safe to climb those half-dead trees." Having regained her