The Happy Valley Mystery Page 10

  “Call a truce, you two,” Jim said. “We have to keep quieter around the next clump. Down, Tag... Tipi” The dogs, at his command, slunk close to the ground

  and inched along toward the big brush pile ahead.

  “Nothing stirring there, I guess,” Bob said in a whisper. “I’ll stay on this side... there... nothing, see?” Bob kicked the dense bushes and out hopped three jackrabbits!

  Two of them got away, with Tip and Tag after them like arrows. The third one, the biggest, started to straighten for a long leap, moved toward Mart’s side of the bushes, tacked, turned to Ned’s side, and tacked again, bewildered.

  “Get him!” Mart called. “There!”

  “Where?” Brian called, hooting with laughter. “Look at him now, Mart! Watch out!”

  The rabbit, desperate, threw himself forward, kicking like a mule with his powerful hind legs, and then, catching Mart off guard, sent him sprawling.

  Tip and Tag came back, fuming with frustration, ready for a real fight. Mart, too, his appetite whetted by the near catch, ran at full speed toward a huge clump of dried grass. About twenty-five feet away, the dogs crouched to the ground, then slid along on their bellies. The Bob-Whites and others stood back to watch the dogs’ strategy.

  Slowly they worked their way through the stubble to the tufts of grass, then gave a sudden leap into the middle, yelping like mad. Out jumped a big jackrabbit, right under Tip’s nose. In two bounds it was thirty feet away from the astonished dogs. It stopped, looked back tauntingly, wiggled its nose, and was off with the wind.

  Tip and Tag just sat, dejected.

  “If we only had a horse,” Honey said.

  “Do you think even a racehorse could catch a jack-rabbit?” Ned asked. “There isn’t anything that can catch one of them. We ought to have a couple of good shotguns.”

  “That’s not sportsmanlike,” Trixie said.

  “Nuts!” Mart said. “It’s good sportsmanship for one of them to kick me in the stomach and knock me down, I suppose. Come, Tag.”

  They had been working down the field at the edge of the gully. Tip and Tag, acting strangely, sniffed along the ground, following a trail toward the comer of the pasture.

  “They’re after something,” Ned said. “Quiet; let’s follow them.”

  The dogs, yipping, their tails going like windmills, scratched frantically at the ground in the far comer of the Belden acres, routing out a group of sheep that seemed to be feeding greedily on something.

  “If it’s another rabbit they’re after, count me out,” Diana said, dropping to the ground, exhausted from running and laughing. “I’m bushed.”

  “Me, too,” Barbara said.

  “Maybe the dogs have found a rabbit burrow,” Trixie wondered out loud.

  “There you go,” Mart said. “Rabbits—that is, jack-rabbits—don’t have burrows.”

  “Just happy wanderers?” Trixie asked.

  “Nope. They make nests on top of the ground for their young and—”

  “And, Mr. Encyclopedia?” Trixie asked, waiting. “And the baby jackrabbits are left there to more or less fend for themselves. They’re born with heavy fur and with their eyes open. Cottontails are born blind, naked, and helpless.”

  “But the cottontail mothers take good care of their babies for months,” Barbara said. “The jackrabbits shove their children out in the world after just a few days.”

  “I think it’s pretty smart of Mart to know all that stuff,” Diana said. “He’s always the one of the Bob-Whites who can tell us about everything.”

  “That’s right,” Brian agreed. “You don’t give him credit for storing up all that knowledge, Trixie.”

  “Oh, yes, I do,” Trixie said, smiling. “I just can’t let his ego run away with him.”

  “Oh, yes?” Mart said. “Say, what do you suppose those dogs are doing? They’re making a big fuss about something.”

  Trixie jumped up from the ground. “If it’s a nest of baby rabbits,” she said, “I’d love to have one.”

  “Mrs. Gorman wouldn’t let you take it near the house,” Barbara said, getting up from the ground and brushing off her jeans.

  “Gosh, it’s no nest of baby rabbits,” Jim said. “Listen to Tag! Have they found a snake?”

  “Could be,” Bob said. “Newborn snakes come out in the sun in the spring and warm themselves. One time Barbara and I killed four rattlesnakes in our pasture-just killed them with stones.”

  The dogs, who had been racing around a small circle of ground in the far corner, pawing and scratching, jumping into the air and pawing again, now began to run in wider circles. Tag howled like a lost soul and, tail between his legs, ran as though a thousand demons were right behind him.

  “What is it, fella?” Jim called, running toward him. “What’s bothering you?”

  “Look at the air back of you, and you’ll soon see,” Bob called. “Run for your life! They’ve dug up a bumblebee nest! Run!” He took Honeys hand and pushed his sister Barbara ahead of him. “Run!”

  “They’ve nipped Tag on the nose,” Jim said. “Come on, Trixie.”

  Trixie, who had waited to see if she could help Tag, found herself pulled along in a stumbling dead run. The dogs were far ahead, howling so loudly that they brought Mrs. Gorman out of the house.

  “It’s starting to rain,” Bob called back to the Bob-Whites. '‘That’ll slow down the bees. Boy, is it pouring down!”

  “What on earth happened?” Mrs. Gorman asked as she held the door wide to let the rabbit hunters tumble into the kitchen.

  “Tag—bee stung him on the nose—bumblebee,” Trixie gasped. “Poor old Tag!”

  “Did they sting any of you?” Mrs. Gorman asked anxiously, at the same time reaching into the cupboard for a box of soda.

  “They couldn’t catch us,” Trixie said, laughing and still out of breath. “What a nose poor old Tag has!”

  The collie lay on the floor in the comer of the big kitchen, pawing at his sore nose, which had doubled in size.

  “I’ll help you,” Trixie said, her laughter turned to pity at the poor dog’s plight. “Good old Tag! Are you making a poultice?” she asked Mrs. Gorman.

  “Here it is.” Mrs. Gorman handed Trixie a cloth soaked in warm water and soda. “You’ll have to keep it on his nose,” she said. “If you can keep it there for about ten minutes, it’ll take the sting away and the swelling will start to go down.”

  Tag moaned and licked Trixie’s hand but let her keep the poultice on his poor nose. Tip, restless, walked around and around Tag, seeming to sense something wrong.

  “There, now,” Mrs. Gorman said. “Thank goodness there was no more harm done than that. I’ve seen Hank and Ben pretty sick from beestings. Heavens, I’d better stir around and get something for you to eat. You’re probably starved.”

  Ned snapped his fingers. “Am la dumb bunny!” he said. “I forgot to say that Mom has a picnic lunch waiting for us over at our house. She told me to tell you that as soon as I came, Mrs. Gorman, and I forgot. Gee, I hope you haven’t gone and cooked a lot of things.”

  “I haven’t,” Mrs. Gorman assured him. “I’ve been so busy all morning. I had to sort of clean up the kitchen and put Midnight’s playpen away. Ben took him out to the barn and, well, with one thing and another....”

  “Good!” Ned said. “Mom has a lot of food waiting... even cherry pies.”

  “Say no more; I’m dying,” Mart said, holding his stomach.

  “I guess we’re all hungry,” Honey said. “It’s a grand idea, Ned.”

  “It sure is pouring down now I” Bob exclaimed.

  “We can crowd into my car,” Ned said. “It’ll hold all of you till we get across the road and down to our house, anyway. We’ll eat and then roll up the mg and dance. I’ve got some neat country western records.”

  “I sure can’t think of a better way to spend a rainy afternoon!” said Mart.

  “I can,” Trixie whispered to Jim.

  “So can I,” Honey, who
heard her, whispered.

  “Have a heart!” Jim answered. “Look at the rain come down!”

  “And remember, this is Friday,” Trixie hissed. “You promised.”

  “All right, all right,” Jim murmured, resigned. “What are we going to tell Ned?”

  “Leave it to me,” Trixie answered.

  “We’ll just have to eat and rim, Jim and Honey and I,” she told Ned. “We have to go to the airport and pick up our reservations for Sunday.”

  “Jeepers!” Brian said. “I forgot. I’ll go with you, Jim, and let the girls stay in out of the rain. Better yet, why can’t we just call the airport?”

  “I’m not made of sugar,” Trixie said quickly, “and neither is Honey. Anyway, we have some shopping to do in the airport shop.”

  “Important enough to go out in a cloudburst for?” Brian asked.

  “Yes,” Trixie and Honey answered together. “Okay,” Brian said. “Don’t say I didn’t offer.”

  “Don’t say I did!” Mart chimed in. “Come on, gang, let’s get to Ned’s house. Better bring your jackets. It’s still raining. Boy, am I hungry!”

  Dinner With the Schulzes • 14

  NED’S RED CAR, crowded almost beyond its capacity with nine young people, turned onto the winding road that led from Army Post Road to Seven Oaks, Ned Schulz’s home.

  The house was built of brick, a pre-Civil War home, remodeled and modernized. When the car stopped, Ned’s two German shepherd dogs, who looked almost as tall as the car itself, wagged their huge bodies to show how glad they were that their master and his friends had come.

  “They’re beauties,” Jim said, making friends immediately as Ned introduced the dogs to each one of them, laying his hand on each shoulder as he did.

  “If I didn’t do that,” Ned said, “they might try to protect me from you. I’ve had them six years. Once, when we lived in Evanston, they saved my life... in Lake Michigan.”

  Ned put his head down close to the big dogs’ heads and whispered to them, stroking their necks and tugging at their ears.

  “It makes me lonesome for Reddy,” Trixie said. “He’s my little brother Bobby’s red setter. I guess he really belongs to the whole family. Jim has a black-and-white springer called Patch. He sort of belongs to all of us, too.”

  Ned had stopped the car under an old-fashioned porte cochère. The rain still came down in buckets, but here they were sheltered for the moment and could look about. The grounds of the Schulz home were elaborate and beautifully tended. A row of evergreens lined the curved driveway, and an old ornamental iron fence enclosed what must be a lovely formal garden in the summertime. In back of the patio, they could see a large oval swimming pool, boarded over now for the winter.

  “We’ll go in here,” Ned said and opened the door from the porte cochère. “Mom is probably in the kitchen helping with the food. She does most of our cooking, and my mom can really fry chicken.”

  A long redwood table had been brought from the patio into the big old-fashioned kitchen. Down the center of the table were arranged huge platters of golden fried chicken, casseroles of scalloped potatoes, a large pot of baked beans, and two large wooden bowls of tossed salad. There were baskets of buttered buns and huge plates of cookies and the promised cherry pies—and, over all, there was a delicious country-kitchen fragrance.

  And, of course, there was Ned’s mom.

  She didn’t look much older than Ned himself. She wore a yellow sweater and a tan skirt, and she had black curly hair and a warm welcoming smile. It wasn’t until she walked toward them that the Bob-Whites noticed a decided limp.

  “Polio,” Barbara whispered to Trixie. “Isn’t she just wonderful?”

  Within a few minutes the laughing group was seated around the table, all talking at once. All of them, too, were immediately in love with Ned’s pretty mother.

  “Tell me more,” she said, “about the Bob-Whites of the Glen. The United Nations Children’s Fund has been a vital interest of mine since its beginning. Have you kept your interest in it since the antique show?”

  “Yes, we have,” Trixie answered. “We sell their stationery all around Westchester County. Really, it practically sells itself, it’s so attractive.”

  Mrs. Schulz nodded. “I use it, too.”

  “We already have orders for cards for next Christmas,” Diana said, “and we correspond with about ten young people our ages in India, Africa, and South America. Say, Barbara, don’t you belong to something

  like the Bob-Whites here in Iowa?”

  “No,” Barbara answered slowly, “but I wish we had a Bob-White club here.” Then her face brightened. “I do belong to a wonderful club... but maybe you belong to the same one, because there are branches all over the United States, even all over the world.” Mart whistled. “Jimmy, that sounds like a big order!”

  “Is it a church group?” Honey asked.

  “No,” Barbara answered. “It’s called Four-H. Now do you know about it?”

  “Yes,” Trixie said. “I’ve heard a lot about it. It’s mostly for young people from farms, isn’t it?”

  “Not exactly,” Barbara said. “Mrs. Schulz is one of the leaders. Gosh, I’m glad I’m in her group. There are twenty-two of us, an average group, I guess. I think she even sponsored a group in Evanston, didn’t you, Mrs. Schulz?”

  “Yes. However, Trixie, it really is mostly for young people in rural areas,” Mrs. Schulz said. “Maybe because cities have playgrounds and community houses and places like that. You see, we’ve always lived out in the country, and we were almost in the country in Evanston. The Four-H is under the direction of the Federal Extension Service.”

  “What do the members do?” Jim asked politely. “Everything under the sun,” Bob answered. “Clubs can have almost any kind of project. Right now, I’m working with four others—at least five members of a club have to work on each project to make it earn standard rating—on improved grain feeding for growing Jersey calves.”

  “And my group is working on Holstein calves,” Ned said.

  “Wait till the Dairy Cattle Congress at Waterloo, and you’ll soon find which breed is better,” Bob said confidently. “It’ll be Jerseys. Their milk is a lot higher in butterfat.”

  “Holsteins give a greater volume of milk,” Ned insisted. “That counts, too, remember.”

  “We have a sewing project,” Barbara interrupted. “This is the second pair of slacks I’ve made myself,” she said proudly.

  Honey went over to Barbara’s chair for a closer look. In spite of the wealth of her family, in spite of the fact that when Honey first came to the Manor House, her clothes had come from New York and Paris, Honey loved to sew.

  “Honey made all the curtains for our clubhouse back home,” Trixie said, with a proud glance at her friend.

  “She made our jackets, too, and cross-stitched our club initials on the back,” Diana said. “Turn around, Mart, and let them see it.”

  “Barbara made all the Four-H emblems her group wear on their sleeves,” Mrs. Schulz said. “Honey, your work is beautiful. I’d like to have you in my group.” She went into the other room and brought back one of the green cloverleaf patches worn by the 4-H members. In each of the four leaves there was a white letter H.

  "I remember those at the Westchester County Fair,” Brian said. “This year I’m really going to find out more about Four-H and about the club projects.”

  “What does the letter H stand for?” Mart asked. “I mean the four letters in the green cloverleaf.”

  “Head, Heart, Hands, and Health,” Mrs. Schulz said. “The first H is for Head,” Bob said, “to think, to plan, to reason.”

  “The second,” Barbara continued, “is for Heart, to be true, to be kind, to be sympathetic.”

  “The third H is for Hands,” Ned said, “to be useful, to be helpful, to be skillful.”

  “And the last,” Mrs. Schulz said, “is for Health, to enjoy life, to resist disease, to increase efficiency.”

  “
I guess we try to do all those things,” Trixie said, “but we don’t write them in detail. We have projects, too. For instance, Honey does mending for all our families and is paid five dollars a week for it.”

  “Trixie helps her mother with housework, and she’s paid five dollars for that,” Diana said.

  “And I hate housework,” Trixie said vehemently. “Di loves it. She does it, too, and takes care of her twin sisters and twin brothers. She gets paid five dollars for doing that.”

  “We do all kinds of jobs,” Brian explained. “Anything we can do to earn money.”

  “We don’t try to earn money with the things we do,” Barbara said. “We do them to learn, to better ourselves, to help others.”

  “Oh, I should have explained,” Trixie said quickly. “All the money we earn goes into a club fund, and we use it for charity.”

  “I’m sorry,” Barbara said. “Do you have a health program?”

  “We go in for all kinds of sports,” Mart said. “We’re outdoors practically all the time.”

  “I know how important health is,” Mrs. Schulz said. “It makes all the rest of our Four-H work possible. When Ned was only five years old, I was stricken with polio. Because of that, since my recovery, I have made it my own project to see that as many children as possible are immunized through oral vaccination. I’ve canvassed every inch of this county, until now every child in it, and every young adult, has had the vaccine.”

  “She’s done more than that,” Ned said. “Just last summer, right after we moved here, Dad built that pool for Mom. It has a heater in it, and all summer long Mom has it full of kids. She has a worthwhile project going three days a week, too. The Red Cross uses our pool to teach youngsters—little ones—to swim. Mom is crazy about kids, even if I am the only one she has.”

  “Jim will have to tell her, then,” Trixie said, “about his year-round school he plans to have someday when he’s through with college. It’s for orphan boys.”

  “And where Brian, when he finishes medical school,” Honey added, “is going to be the resident physician.”

  “And where I, if I have to speak for myself,” Mart said, “am going to run the farm so the school can eat.”