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  “Do you think I could help?” Brian asked.

  “He’s going to be a doctor,” Honey explained.

  “No, thanks. I don’t think you can do a thing,” Mr. Gorman said.

  “He helped at home when our calf was born,” Trixie said quickly. “And at Honey’s house, too, when one of their mares foaled. I can help, too,” she added, “because I helped Brian both times. I’m a nurse’s aide at the hospital.”

  “Trixie Belden, you can’t—” Diana said, amazed.

  “Oh, yes, I can!” Trixie insisted and got up from the table. “Come on, Brian. Mr. Gorman, please let Ben go for the veterinarian, and we’ll help you.”

  Mr. Gorman threw up his hands in resignation. “I can’t lose,” he said. “Go ahead, Ben. Come on, kids.”

  Mrs, Gorman thrust a quickly made sandwich into her husband’s hand, and he went out, munching it.

  When they got to the barn, they found that the ewe had made a nest for herself in some hay in the comer of the big stall room. She looked up at them with her gentle eyes and bleated softly. Close beside her lay two little newborn lambs, one of them rather yellow and the other coal black.

  “There, there... quiet now,” Mr. Gorman said and put his hand on the ewe’s head. “You just went ahead and took care of things yourself, didn’t you? We have to work fast,” he said quickly to Brian and Trixie. “If she doesn’t claim them right away, she won’t ever do it. There, there now,” he said softly.

  “Help me, Brian—help to get them started feeding.” He took the yellowish lamb and guided its mouth to the mother. She turned and sniffed the homely little thing, all ears and head. Then she uttered a sound she hadn’t made for a year... a low rumble in her throat, without opening her mouth. The little lamb, tasting its mother’s warm milk, bleated happily and snuggled close, feeding.

  “She’s taken that one all right,” Mr. Gorman said with relief. “Now, Trixie, the little black one.”

  Trixie took the black lamb, all wrinkles and loose skin, and handed it to Mr. Gorman.

  The poor baby bleated pitifully. The mother listened, sniffed it, and, as it tried to feed, bunted it cruelly.

  “You bad mother!” Trixie said.

  “It’s natural with a twin,” Mr. Gorman said. “Let’s try her again.”

  “Let me,” Brian said. He dipped his finger in a few drops of warm milk from the little white lamb’s busy mouth, then rubbed it over the small black face.

  The mother sniffed again, then bunted it away, angrily and finally. Clearly, she wanted nothing to do with it.

  “It’s just no use,” Mr. Gorman said. “We’re stuck with an orphan lamb. Let’s get up to the house in a hurry and take care of it. It can’t five long this way. It has to be fed as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll take care of things here,” Brian said, “and see that the mother is comfortable. She should have something to eat, too, shouldn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Gorman said, “thanks for thinking of it. Take some of that hot water we brought in the bucket, Brian, and mix with it some of that feed there. Make a sort of warm mash. Sheep love warm mash. Just leave it in that pan there beside her. She’ll eat it when the lamb stops feeding.”

  “We haven’t had a black lamb born in several years,” Mr. Gorman told Trixie on the way to the house. “Some people think they’re bad luck. I don’t. The only trouble is, so many of the mothers won’t claim a black one.”

  “I’d a thousand times rather have a black lamb than that yellowish thing,” Trixie said.

  “The mother wouldn’t,” Mr. Gorman said. “That’s the color all white lambs are when they’re born. They quickly turn white. Here we are, Trixie. Take this baby, please, while I open the door.”

  Mrs. Gorman and the other Bob-Whites waited for Mr. Gorman, Trixie, and Brian in the warm kitchen. When Mrs. Gorman saw the lamb in Trixie’s arms, she hurried to warm some milk. “Oh, no,” she said, “not another orphan! Did the ewe die, Hank?”

  Mr. Gorman shook his head, smiled, and held up two fingers. “Twins,” he said. “Everything all right except... well, she wouldn’t own the black one. Guess you’re in for a season of bottles and nipples, Mary.”

  Hastily Mrs. Gorman turned on the oven. “Keep holding the lamb while I fill the bottle,” she told Trixie.

  “Now, then, put the lamb in the oven,” she said, opening the oven door.

  “It’s too hot,” Trixie said. “The lamb will be burned!”

  “It can’t be too hot,” Mrs. Gorman said. “Quick, Trixie, please.”

  Reluctantly Trixie surrendered the orphan to the hot oven and left the door open, as Mrs. Gorman instructed her.

  Mrs. Gorman held the lamb’s small head, then watched the baby relax in the warmth of the oven, stop struggling, and, with a big sigh, start feeding from the bottle, its tiny corkscrew tail jerking in happiness.

  Ben came in and with him Brian. “Brian told me it’s all over, and everything’s all right,” he said to Mr. Gorman. “It’s a good thing. The veterinarian wasn’t at home.”

  “Everything’s done, thanks to Brian and Trixie,” Mr. Gorman said. “But we’ll have an orphan to feed all summer. Five times a day, then three times a day,” he explained to the Bob-Whites, “and so on, all summer long.”

  “Lambing season’s early this year,” Ben said. “It had started in Ames when I was there. Say, if you think that little white lamb is ugly, Trixie, you should see one of the Rambouillet lambs... all skin, big ears, and wobbly legs.”

  “They’re all darling, anyway,” Honey said. “Listen to the way it’s going after that bottle!”

  “Ben usually has the job of taking care of the orphans,” Mrs. Gorman said. “He’s a sort of substitute mother... at least the lambs think so. They follow him around everyplace.”

  “I don’t encourage it,” Ben said and turned bright red.

  “No, but you have every bit as good a time as the lambs do,” Mrs. Gorman said. “Ben jumps and plays with them,” she told the Bob-Whites. “If Trixie keeps on feeding this one, it’ll run after her, too. How’d you like to be a lamb’s mother, Trixie?”

  “If they were born about a week old, I wouldn’t mind at all,” Trixie said. “But not one of those little yellow things... ugh!”

  “She won’t have to bother about being the black one’s mother,” Ben said. “That big ewe you bought from Mr. Schulz last year is ready to drop her lamb most anytime. If she does tomorrow, maybe we can get her to mother the black one, too.”

  “I doubt it,” Mr. Gorman said. “We’d better not count on it. There isn’t much we can do. If the black lamb’s own mother wouldn’t claim it, there isn’t much chance the other ewe will.”

  “Not unless her own lamb is born dead,” Ben said. “It happened last year.”

  “I hope it doesn’t happen this year,” Mrs. Gorman said. “It’s a busy time of year,” she said to the Bob-Whites. “I guess any time of year on a farm is a busy time. But I like the spring most of all. Birds nesting, lambs underfoot everywhere—they’re the most playful and lovable little animals in the world—wild flowers popping out,” she went on, “Johnny-jump-ups down by the creek, purple violets, Dutchman’s-breeches, carpets of spring beauties, purple iris in the gully....”

  “Later on,” Mr. Gorman said, “purple vervain and then black-eyed Susans and wild roses....”

  “Iowa is a beautiful place,” Mrs. Gorman said contentedly, almost to herself.

  “We have pretty wild flowers at home, too,” Trixie said.

  “I’m sure you have,” Mrs. Gorman said. “It’s a beautiful country we live in. Even the desert blooms.” Mart, remembering the Christmas the Bob-Whites spent at a dude ranch in Arizona, nodded vigorously. “Jeepers,” he said, “the desert at night! You can’t beat it. Not even out here at Happy Valley Farm, where the stars are so bright.”

  “You can reach up and pick them out of the sky in Arizona,” Diana said, “or you think you can.”

  Jim smiled, remember
ing. “The little calves out there —the ranch was full of them—are some of the cutest little things in the whole world.”

  “All locoed,” Ben laughed. “They can’t stand up.”

  “I guess,” Mr. Gorman said, “the good Lord intended people to love the young of any animal—even man’s, and he’s the orneriest of all animals—because there never was a young one born of bird or beast that you didn’t first laugh at and then give ’em your heart.

  “Let the dogs in, please,” he told Brian, when he heard them scratching at the door. “Tip and Tag take advantage of us,” he added. “They know were crazy about them, don’t they, Mary?” He pulled gently at the dogs’ ears as the big, awkward things tried to climb up in his lap.

  “We’re softies, I guess,” Mrs. Gorman said. “But these young ones are, too,” she added. “Look at them. Every one has a kitten in his lap. Every one but Jim, and see what he drew!”

  Tag, after vainly trying to crowd himself into the same chair with Jim, finally managed to pull his big bulk up onto Jim’s lap and rest his right front leg around Jim’s shoulder.

  Trixie, watching, sighed happily. She was tired. It had been a hard day—a long day. Tomorrow would be even harder. Tomorrow she meant, somehow, to repay Uncle Andrew for this fabulous week. She intended to go with Jim into Walnut Woods and, if she were lucky, come up with an answer to the problem of the missing sheep. There wasn’t much time left.

  The Great Rabbit Hut • 13

  WHAT ARE WE going to call the orphan?” Diana asked as they crowded into the big kitchen after a brisk run on the horses.

  “Hercules, I’d suggest,” Mart said. “Look at the size of him, will you! He must have grown double during the night.”

  The black lamb, in a child’s playpen in the comer of the kitchen, frisked with the kittens, pawing at them with his nimble feet.

  “Midnight would be a good name, I think,” Honey said. “Every time I’d get to sleep, I’d hear Trixie’s alarm clock buzz and hear her going down the stairs to warn some milk.”

  “Midnight’s a perfect name,” Trixie said and blew a kiss to her little pet.

  “Every two hours Trixie came downstairs to feed him,” Mrs. Gorman said. “Just as faithful as could be. First I tried to stop her, but then I was so tired, I just left it all to her.”

  “He nearly knocked the bottle out of my hand, he was so hungry. I hope Mr. Gorman will have some luck getting Midnight adopted,” Trixie said. “Or has the new lamb been born?”

  “It was born early this morning,” Mrs. Gorman said, “and it didn’t live. Hank tried his best to pass Midnight off in its place, but it didn’t work. You see,” she went on, “if we work fast enough, sometimes we can put the skin of the stillborn lamb over the head and shoulders of the orphan and fool the ewe long enough for her to let it feed—then she’ll adopt it. It’s wonderful when it works.”

  “That’s probably where Aesop got his idea for the wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Mart said. Everyone hooted at him, but he went on, “You can be pretty sure it wasn’t Iowa farmers or the professors in the agricultural department at Iowa State University who invented the practice. There were sheep in the hills of Egypt and Jerusalem thousands of years ago.”

  “Don’t get so worked up about it,” Brian said. “Say, Mrs. Gorman, that creek out in the field is almost even with its banks. I couldn’t get Black Giant to go near it. Horses are like babies about water.”

  “Ben said the river is up, too,” Mrs. Gorman said, “and it’s clouding over. Maybe we’ll have some rain.”

  “We’d better get over to Walnut Woods right away,” Trixie whispered to Jim. “Honey wants to go, too. And do you know something? I heard Mr. Gorman tell Mrs. Gorman before breakfast that he was going in and talk to Sheriff Brown today about that light in the woods. He said he was getting sick and tired of the way the police were stalling.”

  Jim whistled. “That’s the first time Mr. Gorman has admitted that there might be something to a hideout in the woods, isn’t it? We better get going now, Trixie— What’s that Mrs. Gorman is saying?”

  “Oh, no!” Trixie groaned. “Oh, no!”

  “So I thought,” Mrs. Gorman finished, “that you haven’t planned to do anything in particular today, and as long as Ben and Hank thought it would be a good idea, I told Ned and the others to come along rabbit hunting with you. There they are now.”

  Ned Schulz and the Hubbell twins, Barbara and Bob, from Army Post Road, drove into the farmyard in Ned’s new red hardtop.

  Mart, Diana, Brian, and Honey ran out to welcome them, while the dogs barked and snapped at the whitewall tires. The kittens, startled by all the noise, arched their backs indignantly.

  “Oh, dam, dam, dam!” Trixie said to Jim. “Do you think we can duck out of it?”

  “Not a chance,” Jim said. “Didn’t you hear what Mrs.

  Gorman just said? Rabbit hunting! I wouldn’t pass that up for thief hunting in a whole month of Sundays.”

  “Jim Frayne, you said you’d go with me today,” Trixie reminded him.

  “I will, too. Calm down, Trix. We have the whole day ahead of us. Heck, Trixie, I don’t get a chance to go rabbit hunting every day. Ben said the rabbits around here are as big as kangaroos.”

  “I don’t care if they’re as big as elephants,” Trixie said mournfully. “I’d never take a shot at one of them, anyway. I’d just as soon shoot the Easter bunny.”

  “Wait till you see,” Ned said as he heard Trixie’s last remark. “We never hit one. They’re too quick. Most of the fun is hunting them out. Say, Jim, I brought another BB gun for you. BB shot wouldn’t dent a jack-rabbit’s skin, even if we did hit one,” he added as the other girls added their protests to Trixie’s.

  “Come on with us,” Brian begged. “We can have a lot of fun running races with the rabbits, at least. You’ve been wanting to get out in the fields of the farm. This is your chance.”

  “We won’t stay long,” Jim whispered to Trixie. “I’ll keep my promise.”

  “And we’ll leave the BB guns here, if you don’t like the idea,” Ned told Trixie. “It’s just as much fun without them.”

  So the girls put on their jeans and boots and heavy sweaters, tied scarves around their heads, and went with Barbara Hubbell and the boys.

  “If you lost about half your kitchen garden every year to those thieving rabbits, you wouldn’t feel so squeamish about shooting them,” Mrs. Gorman called to the girls as they left.

  “Take the dogs!” Ben called from the barn. Tip and Tag joined the group, barking excitedly, heads up and tails wagging.

  Bob and Barbara Hubbell had sat near the Bob-Whites at the barbecue. Barbara was about Trixie’s size, with coal black curls. Her twin was as tall as Brian. Trixie liked them both.

  “They play guitars and sing,” Ned told the Bob-Whites. “Maybe we can get them to perform for us when we get back.”

  Heavens, I hope not, Trixie thought. I'll never get to Walnut Woods.

  Then, before she knew what was happening, she was having so much fun she forgot all about the sheep thieves.

  The air was sharp with the chill of coming rain, just sharp enough to release pent-up energy. Dancing and shouting, singing at the top of their voices, the Bob-Whites, the twins, and Ned raced up the pasture slope. In the clumps of bushes that dotted the field and in the light woods that edged the land, Ben had told them, they might startle some jackrabbits.

  The sheep were grazing in the far meadow, but when they heard the shouting, they retired to the outer edge by the fence.

  “Guess it’s just as well,” Ned said when he saw them scattering. “Ben warned us not to frighten them. Hey— that bunch of brush over there—here, Tag! Here, Tip!”

  The collies, seasoned rabbit chasers, didn’t have to be told what to do. They crouched low, dragging themselves cautiously along as they approached the ring of brush.

  “Get over there, Jim,” Bob Hubbell called. “Over there on the side. I’ll beat the bru
sh on this side with this stick. When he hops out, you grab him. Hey, Tag! Stop that!”

  At the first stirring of the brush, Tag’s ears went back. He barked. A rabbit—a big one—jumped out, close enough for Jim to touch his whiskers. But before Tag could make a move, the jackrabbit bunched his back legs, bounded high into the air, stretched himself full length to soar, and came down about eighteen feet away. He was off, flopping across the grass like an old hat in a high wind, three jumps ahead of the yipping dogs.

  The dogs had sense enough to abandon the chase, and they came back, panting, to look for the next victim.

  “Jeepers, I almost had that one by the leg; did you see me?” Jim called, his face glowing.

  Trixie picked herself up, laughing, from where Tag had knocked her down when he saw the rabbit. “You didn’t have a chance, Jim,” she said. “Did you see the size of that jackrabbit?”

  “Jackrabbits,” Mart announced m a professorial tone, “are two feet long when full-grown and weigh six to eight pounds.”

  “That one’s ears alone were a foot long!” Trixie insisted.

  “Keep to the truth,” Brian warned. “I think jackrabbits belong to the rat family.”

  “That is a fallacy,” Mart said. “They used to be called rodents.”

  “I like the little cottontails best,” Diana said as she brushed herself off after her dash after the rabbit. “Are jackrabbits just grown-up cottontails?”

  “Oh, Di!” Mart said disgustedly. “Are rats grownup mice? I’m a Scout,” he went on proudly. “And Jim and Brian should know about rabbits, too, if they’ve studied their manuals. A jackrabbit is entirely different from Peter Rabbit. The western kind is called Lepustownsendii.”

  “I suppose the Lepus part comes from the big jumps they make,” Diana said. “I wish I could remember things the way you do, Mart.”

  Mart made a deep bow to her. “My public!” he said. “I wish Trixie would take advantage of my superior brain and learn a few things from me.”

  “I want to choose the things I want to learn,” Trixie said, “and not have them spouted at me all the time.”