The Red Trailer Mystery

trailer."
    "The eldest child in a big family," Trixie explained, "always grows up fast, because he or she has to help with the younger children. Why, when Brian was only nine, Dad taught him how to shoot, but I’ll bet he doesn’t let Bobby, who’s the baby, touch a gun until he’s fifteen." She laughed. "I was the baby in our family until Bobby was born six years ago. And was I ever spoiled!"
    "I don’t believe it," Honey objected. They cut through the clearing and peeked inside the tent, but everything was exactly as they had left it the evening before. "Your father and mother are too smart to spoil anyone," Honey continued as they began the slow climb to the shrubby mound. "You don’t know how lucky you are, Trixie, to have such wonderful parents and three brothers."
    "Cheer up," Trixie said, "you may not be an only child for long. We’ll see to it that your mother meets Jim, somehow. She couldn’t help liking him an awful lot."
    Honey looked at her with sudden suspicion. "You seem awfully optimistic this morning, Trixie. The way you’ve been talking, one would think we’d already found Jim and Joeanne, not to mention the red trailer." She sighed. "I don’t think we’re going to see anything from the top of that hill, and I’m sure we’ve lost Bud for good."
    And then they heard the sound of joyful barking, and in another minute Bud came wriggling out from the underbrush. Honey scooped him into her arms, and he licked her face happily, but he did not look at all as though he had spent a forlorn night in the woods. His coat was sleek and free of mud and burrs, and his tummy was the firm, rounded tummy of a puppy who has just bolted a large and satisfying breakfast.
    "Well, that’s that," Trixie cried and, pushing past Honey, raced to the top of the hill. At first she squinted to the east of the main highway and saw the Smith farm and the neat green rows of healthy plants in the rich brown earth of the truck garden. The abandoned orchard sloped away from the cleared land near the house. Shading her eyes with one hand, Trixie caught a glimpse of the peaked roof of the old high-ceilinged barn down in the hollow.
    "So," she thought excitedly, "you can see it from here, too." Then she turned around and stared in the opposite direction, and what she saw made her scream at the top of her lungs to Honey. The rise of ground she was standing on dropped down sharply on the west side to another hollow, and parked in a small cleared space between tall evergreens was the missing red trailer!
    "Honey, Honey," she yelled. "We’ve found it at last." And as Honey hurried to join her she added breathlessly, "At least, Bud did. See, Sally’s playing on the step. That’s where your little black puppy spent the night."
    Honey was too thrilled to do anything but stare for a minute. "You knew it all along," she got out finally in an accusing voice. "That’s why you’ve been so cheerful all morning."
    "I only guessed," Trixie told her. "If I’d been wrong, you would have died of disappointment. Come on! Let’s go make a nice neighborly call on the Darnells." Trixie was already slipping and sliding down the steep side of the hill, but Honey hung back. "They won’t be at all glad to see us," she objected. "They’ll be furious that we discovered their hiding place." Trixie tripped on a stone and sat down suddenly, clutching at the branches of a scrub pine tree to keep from skidding all the way to the bottom. But the branches slipped through her fingers and, a second later, Trixie was sprawling on her back at the foot of the hill.
    "Oh, oh," Honey cried, thinking Trixie must be hurt. And she stumbled headlong down to help her to her feet.
    Both of Trixie’s elbows were skinned, but otherwise she was all right, and she stood up, brushing the dirt from the seat of her dungarees. "That’s one way of getting someplace quickly," she began with a rueful chuckle and stopped with her mouth open as she saw Mrs. Darnell hurrying toward them under the cedar trees in {he dense woods of the hollow.
    "Oh, please go away," she sobbed when she came closer. "Please! Don’t you think you’ve caused us enough trouble already?"
    Tongue-tied, Trixie only stared at her, but Honey said quickly, "We haven’t meant to cause you any trouble, Mrs. Darnell. We only wanted—"
    The woman covered her tired face with her thin, work-worn hands and burst into tears. "So you know our name now," she groaned. "Darney said you’d never give up until