The Mystery on the Mississippi Page 5

  “Thanks!” Trixie told the cook shortly. She took the purse from Mrs. Aguilera and tucked it firmly under her arm. “We might both have gone into the river, my purse and I.”

  “Sit here a minute and rest,” Honey told Trixie, ' her voice shaking. “I don’t like to be this far away from everyone. Let’s at least go back to where the boys are.”

  “Yes, let’s go right now,” Trixie said. “Thanks, Mrs. Aguilera. We mustn’t keep you any longer.”

  With a brief smile, Mrs. Aguilera left them and walked quickly toward the towboat.

  “Now you’ve offended her,” Honey told Trixie. “She did save your life!”

  “I wonder,” Trixie said slowly. “For a while it seemed touch and go which was more important to her—my purse or my life.” She hastily checked the contents of her purse to be sure the papers were still safely there.

  Honey put her arm tightly around Trixie. “It was a frightfully narrow escape. Oh, Trixie, you’re not quite like yourself... not quite fair to Mrs. Aguilera!”

  “Maybe not,” Trixie admitted. “Maybe not, but it’s the way I feel!”

  When they joined the boys and Honey told them what had happened, Trixie said nothing. She listened quietly to what they had to say and told them that she would try to be more careful in the future. All the while, though, and for a long time after, she didn’t forget the odd look on Mrs. Aguilera’s face just before the accident.

  Once out of the city area, the river flowed through pleasant country. Jefferson Barracks showed up against the trees. Streets in scattered neighborhoods seemed to walk right down to the river in a friendly fashion. Boys and girls waved from the bottoms of overgrown bypaths. From the river itself came enticing smells of wet sand, dry sand, blossoming shrubs, dank marshes, and the sweet fragrance of willows. Occasionally a long-legged heron fluttered its wings, then stood watching the tow slide by.

  Soon the channel narrowed, and limestone cliffs rose in ever ascending heights from both banks. Hawks, disturbed by the noise of the diesel engines, spread their broad wings and screamed.

  “Paul told me there’s a cave somewhere along here that runs back several hundred feet underground,” Mart told the Bob-Whites. “That may be it right back in there. See that black hole? That may be the entrance. Paul said Jesse James hid there once when about twenty men were chasing him. He shot every one of them. Yes, he did—Paul told me so—and then he got away.”

  “Missouri’s full of caves,” Jim said, adding, “I sure

  never will forget that sinkhole in Bob-White Cave in the Ozarks, that one Trixie fell into. Gosh, Trixie, you were almost a goner that time.”

  Trixie leaned back against a barrel hatch and sighed dreamily. “I was almost a goner till all of you showed up to save me. Bob-Whites always show up when one of our members is in danger. That’s usually me. And you’re usually the one who leads the rescuers, Jim.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, try and keep out of trouble.” Jim’s face was serious. “I don’t like that narrow escape you just had, Trixie, way up there in front of the tow.”

  “Forget it! Say, I can imagine just the way Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn felt when they were floating down this river on their raft. Tom said, ‘The-sky looks ever so deep,’ and it does.”

  “Yeah, and when Tom said to Huck, ‘That’s a mighty lot of water out there,’ do you remember what Huck answered? Remember that, Mart?”

  “Uh-huh. He said, ‘Yes, and you’re only lookin’ at the top of it!’ Gosh, do you suppose we’ll get to go to Hannibal before we go back to New York? I’d sure hate to have to tell the kids at school that we were as near as St. Louis and didn’t go there. Boy, would I love to see Jackson’s Island!”

  “Yeah, and that fence Tom Sawyer whitewashed!” Dan said.

  “Why can’t you be satisfied with the place we are now?” Trixie asked, looking up at Mart. “You wanted a ride on the Mississippi River, and here you are.”

  “Sure, here we are, and it’s swell. But who brought up Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Trixie?”

  “I did. I hope we can go to Hannibal, but right now I’m almost perfectly happy.”

  An hour sped by, then another. The cliffs grew higher and higher, their long shadows reaching across the quick-changing channel. Once a towboat came close. Everyone—both crew members and officers—crowded to the rails to gossip. From their huddle halfway back on the tow, the Bob-Whites waved lazily and happily. They watched the other boat as it labored back of its long tow of coal barges, watched it till it disappeared from sight. The sun dropped lower in the cloudless sky. On shore, birds fluttered, seeking their nests in the rocky ledges. A cool wind came up out of the east, and a whistle’s sharp blast announced that dinner was waiting.

  Protesting that they couldn’t possibly be hungry again, the Bob-Whites ate all the fried chicken in sight. “Do you know what?” Mart asked as they left the dining room. “Paul plays the guitar. He belongs to a trio down in New Orleans. They sing folk songs.”

  “Do you suppose he’ll sing some for us?” Honey asked. “Maybe out there in front, on top of a barge in the moonlight?”

  “Will he!” Mart cried happily. “We’ve got it all fixed up. We’re going to have our own songfest. Let’s get going as soon as you’re ready. We’ll wait for you girls here.”

  At the top of the stairs that led to their cabin, the girls ran into Mr. Aguilera. When he saw them, he hastily tried to throw out his arm to cover a tray of food he held. His face reddened as he tried to push past them.

  “I do hope no one is sick,” Trixie said quickly. “Is Mrs. Aguilera very tired? That dinner she cooked was so good. Did you have to take a tray to her?”

  “She’s all right. I’m in a hurry.” Mr. Aguilera pushed rudely past them.

  “Well, what do you think was biting him?” Trixie asked Honey. “It’s no crime to carry a tray to someone.”

  “Maybe something just upset him. Trixie, did you leave this door unlocked?”

  “I don’t think so. Especially since Captain Martin warned us to be sure and lock it. Is it unlocked?”

  “It is. No harm done, though, as far as I can see. As long as we have our purses with us everywhere we go, there isn’t much we could lose.”

  “It doesn’t seem possible that there could be a thief on board. You’d think anyone who ever got a job on a wonderful boat like the Catfish Princess would never take a chance on losing that job, wouldn’t you?”

  Trixie pulled a warm sweater out of the bag and handed it to Honey.

  “Yes, and I like every person that I’ve met on board. Captain Martin did warn us, though. So lock the door and hold on to your purse, Trixie. I have mine.”

  At the foot of the stairs, they met Paul, two other deckhands, and a young girl from the Ozarks named Deena, who waited on tables. Jim, Dan, Mart, and Brian were with them.

  Searchlights from the pilothouse threw a clear white beam along the tow as the young people went far ahead, to the deck of a lead barge. There they huddled in a semicircle while Paul tuned his guitar.

  Moonlight had changed the water to liquid silver. River lights, indicating each point and bend in the river, twinkled like fireflies in the bottomland. From time to time, small fish leaped out of the water in groups, flashed white in the searchlight, and disappeared. Opaque tongues of low-moving fog drifted about.

  It’s wonderful out here, Trixie thought. The stars! The mist! We could be in another country. I love to watch Paul tuning up his guitar and to hear the beat of the diesel engines. Deena’s pretty. She reminds me of Linnie at Uncle Andrew ’s lodge in the Ozarks. I should think she’d get lonesome out here, never seeing other girls her own age. The other maids seem a lot older than Deena and aren’t as friendly.

  The whistle on a passing boat moaned mournfully. Trixie shivered. Fog... mist... that whistle.... It’s eerie, she thought.

  “Where’s your mind been?” Jim whispered. “This is the second time I’ve asked you that, and you haven’t answered. You�
�ve been miles away. Boy, can Paul coax harmony out of that guitar!” He paused. “You can’t beat this, Trixie—miles from nowhere, drifting down the river in the moonlight!”

  Trixie loved it, too, and her clear voice rose as Paul led the singing.

  “I’m a wandering towboat man

  And far away from home.

  I fell in love with a pretty little girl,

  And now I no more roam.

  “Through wind and rain and fog and snow

  And dangers that she’ll never know,

  I’ll walk the barges, tote the chains,

  And watch the shoreline creeping by,

  For I love my girl, my pretty little girl,

  And I’ll love her till I die.”

  Paul tapped his guitar and changed the tempo. “It’s a thousand times more fun to play when someone sings along. Do you know this one?” he said as he strummed a few bars.

  “Do we?” Dan said enthusiastically. They all sang:

  “Down in the churchyard,

  All covered with snow,

  My true love’s a-lying;

  Hang your head low.

  “Mourn for my true love,

  Under the snow.

  Mourn for my sweet love;

  Hang your head low.”

  When they had finished with the words, they hummed the chorus dreamily. Paul rested his guitar on his knees. “I haven’t heard harmony like that in many a day. Don’t you know any songs from your part of the country?”

  “Sure,” Mart answered. “If you think that one we just sang about the graveyard is mournful, you ought to hear some of the songs they sing back home in New York.”

  Dan laughed. “No one can beat the Dutch along the Hudson River for scaring up ghosts. You know— songs like ‘Headless Horseman.’ ”

  “For heaven’s sake, let’s not sing that one!” Trixie exclaimed. “It makes me feel creepy. How about the one about Rip van Winkle? All you need to do is to strike a few chords now and then, Paul. Let’s sing, Bob-Whites.”

  “We’ll sing you a song of the Catskills, oh,

  A song of the mountain men... oh.

  “Rip van Winkle, on a stormy night,

  Left his cruel wife and went up the height

  Of the Catskill range, where Hudson’s men

  Played ninepins merrily, but when

  They gave him a draught, he drank so deep,

  It sent him into a twenty-year sleep.

  “We’ll sing you a song of the Catskills, oh,

  A song of the mountain men... oh.

  “When Rip awakened, he yawned and said,

  ‘Twenty years?’ then rubbed his head,

  Took up his stick and called his dog,

  Set off for town in the morning fog,

  Singing:

  “ ‘Now, many a man’s been twenty years wed,

  And many a man’s been twenty years dead.

  I’ll take the second, you take the first;

  Of all man’s troubles, a wife’s the worst.’

  “We’ve sung you a song of the Catskills, oh,

  A song of a lucky man... oh.”

  As the Bob-Whites sang, they swayed back and forth and clapped in rhythm. Deena and the young

  deckhands clapped along with them.

  At intervals, a white searchlight swung over the singers, silhouetting them against the sky, then released them to darkness again. Its wandering beams startled quiet night animals and birds on shore. Once Paul pointed out the round bright eyes of a swimming deer.

  Finally the moon passed under a cloud. Damp fog crept closer. Breathless and a little weary, the young people stopped singing. Paul yawned and lifted the guitar cord from around his neck. “Let’s call it a day. Going along with me? I’m clear tuckered out.”

  Wordlessly and a little reluctantly, the Bob-Whites followed, walking the long length of the tow back to the nose of the Catfish Princess.

  “Thanks, Paul!” they shouted as the Louisiana boy, Deena, and the other deckhands went down to the crew’s quarters.

  “We’ll walk you to your door,” Jim told the girls. “Let me have the key, Trixie. I’ll open it for you.... Say, it’s already open!” He snapped on the light. “Hey, what’s going on in here? Everything’s a terrible mess. I know you girls never left it like this!”

  Stowaway ● 6

  BEWILDERED, TRIXIE and Honey stood at the door. Everything in the room had been overturned. Bureau drawers were upended, and bedclothing was torn from the bunks. Their cries brought Mrs. Aguilera running from next door. Lights clicked on to illuminate the semidarkness of the corridor. Mr. Aguilera joined his wife.

  “A thief’s been here!” Trixie cried. “Call Captain Martin!”

  As she spoke, the lights went out.

  “Who did that?” Jim demanded. “Put the lights back on again! Someone went by. Dan, was it you?”

  “No, but somebody almost jumped over my head in the dark. I heard him hit the deck below. Get him!” The boys jumped down the steps and ran across the deck, the girls close after them. “I heard a splash!” Trixie called and ran to the rail. “Right over there!” she told Captain Martin, who had hurried out from the lounge.

  “You say someone has jumped overboard?” he shouted.

  “Yes, sir! If you look right out there, you can see his head bobbing!” Trixie peered into the dark water between ship and shore.

  “I can see a dark spot. It isn’t anyone’s head. It’s a buoy. There’s deep water there.”

  The searchlight found the spot where Trixie was pointing.

  “It is someone swimming,” Trixie insisted. “That dark spot is moving. Can’t you see it?”

  “I guess Captain Martin knows a buoy when he sees one, Trixie,” Mart said quickly. “He knows every inch of the channel. Whoever dumped things upside down in your room has to be still on board. Captain Martin will take care of it if you leave it to him.”

  “Never mind, Trixie,” Captain Martin said soothingly. “I’ll probably need your help to get to the bottom of this. The maid will put your room to rights. When you’ve taken an inventory, let me know what is missing. I’ll go into it completely tomorrow, before you leave the boat at Cairo. As though I didn’t have enough trouble! A barge broke loose, and that’s why we’re running so close to shore. We have to pull in and tie it up. One more delay, and we won’t get to Cairo till next week! Everyone out on deck!” he told the hands. “We’ve a lot of work to do!”

  The Bob-Whites were up at the first tinge of dawn and ready for breakfast with Captain Martin. “I’ve checked with every member of the crew,” he told them. “I can’t find a clue to who might have gone through your things. Did you miss anything?”

  “No, but....”

  “Yes, Trixie?”

  “I honestly don’t think that anyone who belongs on this boat upset our room. Someone did jump into the water and swim to shore. We know that for sure.” The Bob-Whites agreed vigorously. “That guy practically knocked me on the head making for the stairs,” Dan said.

  “It couldn’t have been anyone on board,” Captain Martin mused. “I know every single soul on board, and they’re all here. Not since I’ve been captain of the Catfish Princess has there been a stowaway on board. Where could a man hide?”

  “I don’t know,” Trixie answered. “But a man did hide somewhere.”

  Impressed with her earnestness, Captain Martin said quietly, “It was a buoy you pointed out to me in the water... that is, if we were looking at the same thing. I made every inquiry I could along the shore, over ship-to-shore phone, and again after we tied up to fasten that barge. No one saw anything of a swimmer. I’ll admit there weren’t many people around at that time of night—just two men fishing and a couple more hanging around the levee. None of them had been in the water. It surely puzzles me.”

  Trixie looked around her to see if Mrs. Aguilera was within hearing distance. “Before we started singing, we met Mr. Aguilera carrying a tray out of their room, and I asked him
if Mrs. Aguilera was tired and he had taken it to her, and—”

  “Yes, I know, Trixie. Mrs. Aguilera thought you might remember that and mention it. She explained it to me. When she and her husband came aboard in the early morning to fill the emergency vacancy, they hadn’t had their breakfast. They took some coffee and rolls into their cabin, and they hadn’t had a chance to return the tray to the galley. So, you see, that clue’s out. However, you keep up your detective work, Trixie. The Belden-Wheeler Agency may still come up with the answer. In the meantime, I’ll turn in a report to the office in St. Louis. I’ve had thieves on board before, but they always stole something, and we tracked them down.”

  “Then you don’t intend to try to find out who the stowaway was? You can make fun of Honey and me and our agency if you want to, but we’ve tracked down some pretty mysterious people.”

  “I’m sure you have. In the first place, I don’t honestly believe that there was a stowaway on board or that anyone jumped overboard. As I told you, the water back there is awfully deep, and no one who knows the river would ever try to swim it. Some pretty ugly fish live in the depths.”

  “How big?” Mart asked, instantly alert. “Paddlefish up to two hundred pounds.”

  “Jeepers!” Trixie’s blue eyes popped.

  “You never thought the Mississippi had fish that big, did you, Trixie? Well, it does. A paddlefish looks something like a shark. Say, did you ever see a catfish... a really big catfish?”

  “How big?” Mart asked again.

  “Six feet long. Very ugly... blue black... popeyes... barbels that jut out.”

  Honey nudged closer to Trixie.

  Captain Martin smiled. “You ought to hear the Cajuns down around New Orleans tell about big fish. If you were only going there with us, I’d have Shanty Jim, on the levee there, tell you about a garfish he saw. ‘Old One-Eye’ he calls him. Jim swears that he wears a gold crown and smokes a pipe, pushes up sandbars for tows to go aground on, and swishes his tail to make currents—and even that sometimes, when he gets hungry, he picks off a deckhand for lunch!” Trixie and Honey, who had sat listening, relaxed and laughed.