Research Holp

Notes for #11 The Mystery at Bob-White Cave © 1963, 2005
Page # Quote
5
  • Uncle Andrew's fishing lodge deep in Ozark Mountains.
  • Mart, fifteen, just eleven months older than his sister.
  • Trixie: "I'd never seen a mule before, and then to ride the last few miles in a mule wagon driven by a girl my own age!"
6 Mart: "Help Honey hem the curtains for the windows here in the lodge. You chose the material and had it sent out from New York." Trixie: "We'll feel plenty silly if we have nothing to contribute to the station wagon to take crippled children to the Sleepyside School."
7 Linnie Moore, the daughter of Uncle Andrew's housekeeper at his fishing lodge.
8 Trixie: "Mart's not even a year older, but Brian's almost seventeen. Diana's fourteen, the same age as Honey and me."
10 They were used to Trixie's bursts of enthusiasm, and they always paid attention to her. Life with her might be exasperating at times, but it was never dull.
11 Trixie: "This magazine is prepared to pay a reward of five hundred dollars for live specimens of Ozark cave fish in three stages of evolution, fully-eyed, partly-eyed, and eyeless."
12
  • Brian, a biology major at high school, and intending to be a doctor, was instantly intrigued.
  • Trixie: "Isn't that Lake Wamatosa right down there below us? And doesn't it say that a representative of the magazine will be in White Hole Springs within a week or so?"
13 Brian was the conservative, dependable Belden.
14 Uncle Andrew's lodge was built of logs. A great rough-stone fireplace dominated one end of the big living-room. The chairs and divans were of peeled hickory, and made by the mountain people. Woven rag rugs covered the floors. Clear spring water had been brought from a spring high above the lodge in back and flowed by force of gravity through pipes to the kitchen and to a shower room.
15
  • Uncle Andrew's bedroom was on the first floor in back, and stairs led from the living-room to two large dormitories on the second floor, equipped with comfortable bunk beds. Hanging oil lamps provided mellow light for reading.
  • The Ghost River emptied into Lake Wamatosa.
  • Mrs. Moore's cabin. She had known no other home. Her grandparents had built the two-room log house when they migrated from Kentucky years before. After Linnie was born, Mrs. Moore and here husband Matthew had added a third room.
  • Ten years before, when Linnie was only four, Matthew Moore had gone on a fishing and hunting expedition. He never came back.
16 Uncle Andrew: " The mayor of Wagon Trail, a little town south of Springfield, sent Mrs. Moore her husband's knapsack. With it he sent a letter saying the body had been found at the foot of a cliff."
19 Linnie: "I've never been farther away than White Hole Springs."
21 Linnie: "Don't step over your fishing line. It's a bad sin."
22 Jim whistled for Jacob, Linnie's black and tan coonhound.
25
  • Brian, the serious member of the Bob-Whites and its acknowledged leader.
  • Trixie kept close to Jim. Honey cringed under the sheltering arm Brian put around her.
27 Luckily they never went anyplace without their flashlights, a lesson they had learned from experience in the Catskill woods.
28 Honey was shaking with fright. She had promised to be a partner in the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency but she wasn't nearly as fearless as Trixie, and she didn't pretend to be.
36
  • Honey: "I'm not too sure I want to be a detective; not the kind that has wild cats jumping after her. I'd rather be the kind that would sit in an office and try and figure out who the mysterious person was who shot the wild cat."
  • Honey: "I wish sometime we could just have fun when we go places. Mart said he wishes the same thing."
38 Mart was rewarded with a swift kick from Shem, while the other mule, Japheth, looked at him with a wild eye.
39 Brian: "They're one-man mules, or one girl mules."
44 Mrs. Moore: "Mrs. Massey, Jake Massey's second wife, and mean to his children. One day a hard blow knocked her flat on the ground. She heard a voice say, 'Be good to those children!' She even showed the red mark the ghost's hand made on her face. There's an old cabin not far from here on the trail to White Hole Springs. The people who once lived there murdered a stranger who stopped for a night's lodging. They stole the few dollars he had buried his body. He came back every night to haunt them. No one will go near that cabin."
47 Uncle Andrew: "I know just the person. Slim Sanderson. He was born and raised around here, I believe. He's probably around eighteen."
54
  • Uncle Andrew: "That's Bill Hawkins' place."
  • One of the girls: "We haven't seen another girl since school was out."
  • Uncle Andrew: "Another time, Minnie, we'll stop."
56 Linnie: "He's Mr. Owens, the man who owns the store." Uncle Andrew: "Sam's not only the proprietor of the store, but he's postmaster, sheriff, part-time schoolteacher, and even does some doctoring."
57 Uncle Andrew: "I have to go to the lumberyard to choose some lumber for that new room I'm going to build. Then we'll go over to the motel for lunch. They have a restaurant there."
59 Brian: "Uncle Andrew won't leave till he has them believing you really are Sure-Shot Trix Belden, girl wonder of Westchester County."
63
  • Uncle Andrew: "He's (Slim) some sort of a relative of Mrs. Moore's I believe. She said he's a regular woods colt; he's been running around wild since he could walk."
  • Brian: "Trixie's intuition has been an asset to our club many a time."
  • Several times Brian and Jim asked Linnie to stop the mules while they looked at limestone and clay strata. They wanted to do some exploring for minerals.
64 Trixie: "You won't get a reward for that (minerals)." This remark struck me as quite mercenary.
66 Trixie: "I think first impressions are best."
68 Uncle Andrew: "Missouri is the 'show me' state, you know."
70 Uncle Andrew: "Linnie and her mother are quite a singing team."
74 Jim pulled his harmonica out of his pocket.
75 Linnie found a little crippled bird on the back porch. Mrs. Moore: "Matthew always brought anything hurt home to me to look after."
81
  • A gray-haired man was struggling in the water.
  • Jim swam like a water rat.
82 Trixie drew back her doubled fist and brought it sharply under the elderly man's chin. The stunned man relaxed his hold.
86 "My name is Glendenning. My home is in London. I have a variety of interests. I suppose you would call me an archaeologist or geologist. I've a wife and daughter back in England who may think I'm of some value."
87 Glendenning: "You're (Trixie) no bigger than my daughter Gwen, but you pack a better punch!" Oh? This implies that Gwen has punched him too!
91
  • The room where they stood was immense. All about them stalactites gleamed above stalactites that rose knobbily from the floor beneath.
  • Trixie: "I have an idea. This cave is on Uncle Andrew's property. It's a new cave.
92 Trixie: "A new cave should have a name. I christen thee …" "Bob-White Cave!" they all chorused.
94 Honey: "I don't like rats. Those big old water rats near the Hudson are dangerous."
98 Mrs. Moore: "He's (Slim) related to a cousin of my husband's. Here in the mountains it seems everyone is kinfolk to everyone else."
104 Uncle Andrew: "Don't you trust him (Slim)?" Brian: "Yes, I guess so. Trixie doesn't though, and she has a sort of second sense about people."
105 At the far end (of the cave) the floor rose in a series of ledges ending in a flat wall. The wall was an odd shade of brown. Brian: "Bats. Thousands of them. They're asleep."
112 The passage, only about fifty feet long, led to a room smaller than the one they left. The ceiling was domed. The dome had the appearance of an upside-down pothole worn by some long ago stream that had rushed with terrific force down through the cavern. Trixie, usually sensitive to beauty, was so engrossed with her search for the fish that she didn't see the rock formations.
117 Mrs. Moore: "We just let it be known around that we'd have a play party tonight. The news goes from place to place and we never really know who will be here."
120
  • Linnie: "The women Mama's age always sit along the wall and watch while we play games and dance. The men will play Pitch Up here in the corner."
  • Before long the whole character of the living room had changed. It looked just like an old-time western dance hall.
121 Man with concertina: "First thing we'll dance the hall." Jim led Trixie to the center of the circle which formed.
123
  • Mart, who'd only lately learned to dance, whirled out on the floor with Linnie.
  • The blind man borrowed the fiddler's fiddle. He sang ballads that found their way to the Ozark hills when English-born settlers came from the southern states; French songs that were inherited from gentlemen voyageurs who explored the long rivers in far-gone days.
125 Trixie: "But there aren't any ghosts, Mrs. Moore." Mrs. Moore: "Don't say you don't believe in spirits, either. Honey told me about your Rip Van Winkle." Trixie: "But that's just a legend. No one really believes that it happened."
129 Trixie: "You heard all those ghost stores the people were telling tonight. They believe them. If I stay here long enough I'll believe them too."
132 Mrs. Moore's chicken house burned like straw. The cowshed collapsed in a smoldering heap. Mercifully, the firefighters saved the little home.
134 "That fire was set." "For a purpose."
135 "We ain't had a hangin' in this part of the mountains for many a day, but the devil that set that fire deserves to swing."
137 Jim: "It burned in such a level line above Mrs. Moore's house. Fires don't burn that way unless they are set."
138 Uncle Andrew: "Too many Ozark men take the law into their own hands."
139 Bill Hawkins: "We saw a man with the most white hair I ever saw on a human."
140
  • Bill Hawkins: "My kids called him Santa Claus."
  • Mrs. Moore's three-room home was a sturdy log cabin. A porch covered the front of the house and there was an areaway between the living-room on one side and the bedroom on the other. Back of the kitchen a cold cellar was built into the hillside.
142 Bill Hawkins: "He's (Slim) one of a big family, and his father and older brothers don't amount to a hill of beans. They're downright ornery. He always was a queer one, but I didn't think he was downright bad."
145 Linnie: "Maybe you'd like to see my marriage quilts and other things Mama and I made. It takes so long to make quilts. Every girl in the mountains has one (hope chest)."
146 Linnie: "I want to show you my dream. It's a catalog from the School of the Ozarks over at Point Lookout. It's where I'm going to high school next year. I just need my eighth-grade diploma from Turkey Hollow School."
148 Linnie: "Now they have a junior college too. I want to be a teacher."
152 Linnie: "Trixie, I'm so glad you haven't gone. I knew at dinnertime you'd try to go to that old cabin." Mart: "I had the same idea."
153 Trixie: Isn't this neat? I'd just about given up the idea of trying to find that cabin after dark.
157
  • Jim: "It's a man! A man with a huge growth of snow-white beard. His hair looks like Einstein's or that prime minister of Israel." Mart: "Ben Gurion."
  • Honey: "We're half-murdered and you quote Latin."
161 Jim: "That's one thing I won't help you (Trixie) to do, break into someone's house, and no other Bob-White will either."
167 Honey: "I didn't know I was such a bossy person." Trixie: "You aren't Honey! We're as grateful as can be. I always get so excited about things that I can never remember anything I should do.
170 Honey: "It's the blackest black in this cave that I ever saw in my life."
175 Slim: "Whose cave? This cave belongs to anyone who wants to explore it. It's state property."
188 Trixie: "Just down the slope in back we saw Mr. Glendenning digging away at the rocks with his pickax. He had a magnifying glass and he kept examining the things he knocked off the cliff."
190 Brian: "We're going to have to go back home Friday. That's just three days from now." Trixie: (reads aloud) Your father just brought in the mail and there was a letter from your Aunt Helen in Philadelphia. Uncle Mart has to go to the hospital for observation, and she wonders if I could come and stay with her. Of course, I telephoned and told her I'd go.
194
  • Bill Hawkins: "If you have to go into town, Andy, I'll go over to the cave with the Bob-Whites."
  • Jim: "Would you mind terribly if Brian and I went up on the cliffs over the cave and looked for rock specimens? The time's short and we just might come up with some rocks that would be valuable."
196 Trixie stood up to investigate and saw, across the stream, a deep grotto in the wall.
197 Suddenly she stopped. A wide sinkhole yawned at her feet. They saw an amazing spectacle. Beneath the rim, the well widened like the inside of an inverted water jar, its sides a series of narrow ledges, descending about thirty feet and ending in a shimmer of water.
198 Honey: "I'll go and get Mr. Hawkins. Don't you dare to go down there!" Trixie: "I'd dare a lot more than that for five hundred dollars to put toward that station wagon.
200 Honey just stood and watched, wringing her hands.
201 The floor was swarming with small, flat, white worms, the food the man from the magazine said was best for the fish.
202 A yellowish lizard-like creature crept, its blob of a head too big for its body, and its legs too weak, almost, to hold its weight.
204 The trickle of water that had dripped over the brim as she started down became a cascade. her body hung like a pendulum as she swung from side to side.
205 With a great sigh, Trixie opened her eyes and looked into Jim's anxious green eyes. I'm safe.
206 Jim carried Trixie outside.
207 Brian: "There was Mart, practically purple, holding onto the rope, and a waterfall as big as Niagara pouring over the edge of a big hole.
208 Mart: "One experience like that will last me!"
210 Mrs. Moore: "Look at Honey's face!" Honey: "What's wrong with my face?" Mrs. Moore: "Only that it has fright printed all over it. I don't have a daughter your age without being able to read a girl's face."
211 Uncle Andrew: "My own brother's child nearly drowned. These children are as dear to me as they could possibly be if they were my own. How could you, Bill!"
212 Bill Hawkins: "I don't blame you a bit, Andy. It'll be longer till I forgive myself." Trixie: "The Bob-Whites rallied to help. They always do. Nothing can happen to one of us when the others are near … nothing!" Uncle Andrew: "I don't expect more than one miracle to happen in a few days' time. I've been blessed with two. I don't intend to try the mercy of the Almighty too far."
215 Uncle Andrew: "Somebody told Sam they thought they saw Slim getting on a boxcar. He may have been afraid of a necktie party."
216 Uncle Andrew: "It wasn't gasoline. It just smelled like it. it was carbon tetrachloride and he (Glendenning) used it to clean the rock specimens. He said that Slim told him he knew where the ghost fish specimens could be found, and he'd show him for a price. Mr. Glendenning didn't see anything wrong with that. He paid Slim a good price for it, and took it to the cabin in the bait bucket it was in." The specimens are in a bucket, thus implying somebody has found them and he doesn't see anything wrong with taking them??? Thief is too nice a word.
219 Trixie: "Have we ever in our lives started a project and not finished it? No."
223 Uncle Andrew: "You're irrepressible, Trixie." Mart: "I have another word for it."
224 Uncle Andrew watched intently while Jim and Brian crossed the beams above the hole and adjusted the rope ladder securely.
226 Trixie: "It's Slim! Hurry! He's killing a man! Jim!"
232 At her voice (Mrs. Moore) the mans blue eyes opened wide. "Annie!"
233 Mart: "I'll be a monkey's brother-in-law's aunt's sister."
234
  • Honey: "I always told you horses and dogs know a lot more than people think they do."
  • Mr. Moore: "One day I ran into a bad man. He grabbed my knapsack when he found I hadn't any money." Mrs. Moore: "It must have been his body they found."
237 Mr. Moore: "She can put a poultice on my head and mix a sassafras tonic. " Mrs. Moore: "There's a doctor now — young Seth Manning."
238 Mr. Moore: "Slim knew I had the ginseng. He tried to steal it."
243 Trixie: "We'll just have to leave all the spelunking equipment here." Uncle Andrew: "Do that! Then you'll be back next summer." Brian: "Jim and I have some sample were going to send to the American Museum of Natural History." Uncle Andrew: "It wouldn't be too bad a place for your school for boys."
244 Sam Owens: "I had to take Slim to the jail in Laurel."
246 Jim: "That's the spirit! That's one of the things I like about you (Trixie)."
248 Mr. Glendenning: "I tell you it is," holding the magnifying glass close to the tank. Editor: "The Troglichthys rosae! They have come up with something more rare. It will bring a reward at least as great as that we offered for the fish."
251 Jim: "Nice things always happen wherever the Bob-Whites are."