The Mystery of the Missing Heiress (5 page)

The handsome old roan really did dance, awkwardly and a little shakily but unmistakably in time to the music. He didn’t even seem to mind when the Bob-Whites took up the rhythm and clapped out the beat. He just danced faster.

Regan pushed his cap back on his head. “Now I’ve seen everything. Say, this gives me an idea. We can dress Spartan up and use him for the clown at the horse show—” He broke off at sight of Dan’s frowning face.

Dan jumped off the old horse, backed him up, and turned him around to face the group. “Spartan’s no down!” he said in a resentful tone. “He’s smarter than any other horse around here. Just because he’s old and maybe not a Thoroughbred—”

“Oh, come off it,” Regan told his nephew. “Nobody’s running down your horse. There’s Arabian blood in him, too, Dan, even if it is tired blood after twenty-five years. He has more Arabian blood than any of these other horses, except Susie.”

Dan perked up, but he still thrust out his lip.

He’s no clown, anyway.”

“What’s wrong with being the down?” Mart asked.

“Yeah,” Brian added. “The clown horse is always the hit of the whole show. Any well-trained horse can go through all the paces: walking, trotting, galloping, cantering, even jumping. It takes a real star to clown.”

“Brian s right,” Honey said. “But Spartan doesn’t have to be a clown to do his dance. He would look cute, though, dressed up....”

“With a tutu around his tummy,” Trixie added excitedly, “and a wreath of flowers on his head.”

“Spartan s no
girl
horse, Trixie,” Dan said and kicked the gravel in disgust. “I’d rather he’d be the clown than that. He does kinda like the limelight, and if you think it would add to the show....”

“It’ll
make
the show.” Regan s face lit up. “Will you do it, Dan?”

Dan nodded. “If Spartan will.”

“Then let’s get on with the jumping,” Regan said. “Trixie, bring Susie in from the pasture and saddle her. Jupiter’s the only horse I kept in the stable this morning. Jim will have to let him run for a while before he saddles him. He’s too high-spirited right now.”

Humming “The Blue Danube,” Dan tied Spartan in one of the stalls and went out to the pasture to help Regan set up the jumps.

The other Bob-Whites scattered. Diana intended only to watch the practice, because Sunny was not a jumper. There were only three other palominos in the county, and all they would do in the show would be to march and look beautiful.

Trixie climbed over the pasture fence and snapped her fingers to call Susie. The little black mare cantered over to take the carrot Trixie held out to her. When she had crunched it juicily, she sniffed at the pocket where it had been hidden and bumped Trixie lovingly with her nose, wanting more.

Something deep within Trixie stirred as she ran her hand lovingly down Susie’s neck and put her face close to the little mare’s cheek.

She had always longed for a horse of her very own, and Susie was the nearest thing to it. She told Susie secrets she didn’t even tell Honey.

As she led the mare into the stable to saddle her, Trixie talked to Susie about Spartan’s dancing and the upcoming show and the need for practice.

The little mare nodded her head up and down, as though she understood every word. Trixie was sure she did, and would have gone on to tell her about the marsh and Betje Maasden, except that suddenly they were inside the stable. Here the other Bob-Whites were laughing, talking, and saddling their horses.

Trixie took the tack from the peg in the room where it hung just so. Regan was strict about this— stirrups on the leathers, girth thrown over the saddle, bridle on the hook right under the saddle peg. No Bob-White would have thought of putting gear back any other way.

Absentmindedly Trixie saddled Susie, walked her a little, tightened the girth, mounted, then, along with Honey, trotted through the pasture gate.

“You’re having one of your faraway days,” Honey said. “Im just as interested in that strip of land and its owner as you are—more so, maybe, because it’s my brother Jim’s aunt. Right now, though, we’d better concentrate on our jumping. We owe something to Regan for the way he looks after us and our horses, you know—to say nothing of his babysitting Bobby when we need some privacy.” Trixie grasped Susie’s reins more tightly and smiled at Honey. “You’re right. You always are. I wish I didn’t have such a one-track mind. But this will take so much time. Maybe I should ask Regan to let me help with some of the paper work for the show instead of jumping.”

Honey sat up straight on Lady, and Trixie; slowed, startled by the look on Honey’s face.

“Trixie Belden, just try putting your one-track mind on practicing. Sometimes you make me furious. Sometimes I think I don’t even want to be a detective!”

“Don’t say that!” Trixie said, stunned. “It’s our life work. Jumping isn’t.”

“Try to act as though it is, at least today,” Honey begged. “The show means so much to Regan.”

“I know that, and I do want to do my best. But if we ride in the Turf Show, it’ll mean daily practice for the next six weeks. I won’t have a chance to do anything else. I
have
to do my work at the hospital. I
have
to help Moms. What I want to do more than anything in the world is to try to solve mysteries. We’re just at the beginning of a good one now—Betje Maasden and that man at the marsh.”

“Oh, Trixie, they haven’t anything to do with one another,” Honey said, laughing. “Anyway, the Turf Show won’t require daily practice. Regan said once a week, if we practice hard. And I’ll help you with the housework and Bobby too.”

All morning, out in the pasture, Trixie watched Jupiter sail proudly over the bars and watched Brian on Starlight and Mart on Strawberry take their turns.

It looked so easy, even for Honey on Lady. But, somehow, even though Trixie brought Susie right up to the bar at a romping gallop, the little horse turned her head and just walked around it.

“I’ll never be able to jump,” Trixie told Regan, almost in tears.

“That’s right,” he agreed. “You never will and Susie never will, unless you keep your mind on what you are doing. Susie can take those jumps without half trying. The trouble is with you. Try it again. This time put your heart into it. If you throw your heart and your mind into the effort, you and the horse will jump together.”

“We’ll try it, Regan,” Trixie said, ashamed. “This time I think we’re going to make it.”

When her turn came, Trixie circled the jumps several times, talking to Susie, petting her, and encouraging her. Then, confidently, she headed for the first hurdle, rose lightly over Susie’s withers, and gave the takeoff signal.

Up they soared—and over!

A cry went up from the other Bob-Whites, who had watched, without comment, Trixie’s many attempts and failures.

“Susie never touched the bar with her hooves!” Trixie called triumphantly. “May I try it again, Regan, even if it’s out of turn?”

“Go ahead,” Regan said. “Good girl! Keep at it while the going’s good!”

When she slowed at the end of four jumps, Trixie turned Susie and cantered up to where Regan was standing.

“That was real show riding,” he told her. “Nothing to it, is there, Trixie?”

Trixie slid out of her saddle and put her head close to Susie’s. “When I’m riding Susie, there isn’t!” Back in the stable, Trixie rubbed, currycombed, and brushed Susie till the small mare nickered her gratitude for being made so comfortable.

Trixie gave her a final pat. “As soon as you cool off a little, I’ll feed you and give you fresh water.” Jupiter, still restive, even after the strenuous morning, had to be crosstied before Jim could approach him with the currycomb. He had been superb. There wasn’t a horse to match him in all of Westchester County. Nevertheless, Trixie gave him a wide berth as she walked around the stable to join Honey.

The two girls sat side by side, soaping and rubbing leather and shining chrome till it sparkled. Then all the Bob-Whites hung up their tack exactly right, for Regan was watching out of the corner of his eye.

“It seems to me,” Dan said as he measured out the horses’ feed for his uncle, “that you don’t need to talk about jumping
quite
so loud around Spartan. Horses have feelings. Suppose you’d been a prize pitcher for the Mets, and then you got to be as old as thirty, maybe, and had to listen to a lot of guff about a new record for strikeouts. How would you feel?”

“Do you mean Spartan used to be a jumper?” Mart asked.

“I’ll say he was. Ask my uncle.”

“Was he, Regan?”

“The best. Look at those legs. Look at that chest and shoulders! He jumped in the circus. He was one of the Cossack horses, too. He grew old in the business. Mr. Wheeler bought him for Dan to use for light work in helping Mr. Maypenny.”

“He has a good life now,” Dan said as he untied Spartan and backed him out of the stall. “But he’s like an elephant. He remembers way back when. Look at that gleam in his eye!”

Spartan seemed to know he was being discussed. He perked up his head, wriggled his big body, and pawed the ground.

Dan laughed and led him out to where Diana was waiting with Sunny. “See you later!” he called as they rode off.

“What a day!’’ Regan went about straightening this, hanging up that, running his hand down each horse s withers to see if they were cool enough to be watered. “Great jumping you did today!”

The Bob-Whites glowed.

“Even me?” Trixie asked.

“Yep, Miss Fidget, even you,” Regan said, “at last.”

Juliana Is Alive! • 5

EVERY MORNING Trixie was the first person to reach the postbox on Glen Road after the postman had passed. Every morning she came back looking woebegone.

“You seem to think Holland isn’t any farther away than White Plains,” Mart told her. “Give the transcontinental mail a chance. Maybe there isn’t any such address now as Sixteen Seestrasse in The Hague. Time marches on, you know.”

“I thought about that, smarty, and addressed the letter to occupant or neighbor. Oh, Mart, why do you always have to keep finding fault with me?”

“Me? Finding fault with you? That’s a laugh. Did you hear that, Moms? Who’s always telling me, ‘Mart, feed the chickens; Mart, bring in the ripe tomatoes; Mart, do this; Mart, do that,’ hmmm? I ask you, who?”

“Maybe I ask you to do all those things, but you never do them, does he, Moms?”

“Is that so? Where did those eggs over there in that basket come from? Where did those tomatoes come from?”

“I brought them in, not you. Moms is going to make catsup. I have the water boiling to loosen the skins so I can peel them for her. What are you going to do?”

Mrs. Belden reached for a box of spice high on a kitchen shelf and measured some into the kettle on the stove. “Mart is going to pick some green peppers and onions and bring them to me,” she said. “But first, both of you are going to stop complaining about one another. I have more work to do today than seven women. Why does all the garden stuff ripen at once? Trixie, where is Bobby? He was bouncing a ball in here not more than three minutes ago.”

“Here I am, Moms!” Bobby called as he burst through the door. “And I’ve got Trixie’s letter with a funny stamp on it. Here, Trixie.” He thrust it into her hand. “What does it say?”

“Give me time to open it,” Trixie said, slitting the envelope. “Down, Reddy! It isn’t for you.”

Bobby put his arm around the dog’s neck to quiet him. “He wants to know what it says, the same as us. What
does
it say, Trixie?”

“Jeepers! It’s a long one. Here, Moms, you take it and read it out loud. I’m too excited. Brian!” she called through the door to her elder brother who was clipping the grass. “Come and hear the letter from Holland! There, now, Moms. Begin.”

“You’d think it was a letter from the President of the United States,” Mrs. Belden said, laughing. She turned the flame low under the boiling kettle. “Here goes. It’s headed ‘The Hague,
eighteen
Seestrasse.’ ”

“A neighbor did get it; see, Mart?” Trixie gloated.

“All right.All right. Just let Moms read it,” Mart countered.

Brian waited, clippers in hand. “I sure second the motion, Trixie.”

Trixie just glared at both boys and settled herself to listen.

“ ‘Dear Miss Belden:’ ”

She only got that far when Bobby collapsed, giggling.

“What is the matter with you?” Trixie asked impatiently.

“Miss
Belden.
Miss
Belden. Only teachers are Miss.’ Trixie s not a ‘Miss.’ ” A giggle caught in his throat, and he spluttered, choking.

“I'll try again,” Mrs. Belden said. This time she skipped the “Miss Belden.” She knew Bobby.

“Your letter came as a surprise to me but a welcome one. After all these years, there is now word from the family of my friend Betje Maasden.

I had not known there was any relative of Betje’s still living. We had heard that her sister married again and died in some eastern city in your country.