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Is he a magazine editor?”
    “Nosy as I am, I don’t know the answer to that one. He wears glasses, if that helps.”
    “May we go right over and talk with him?” Trixie asked her uncle.
    “And tell him what?” Brian asked matter-of-factly. “That you want dibs on coming up with the fish he wants?”
    “We don’t really have anything to say to him, do we?” Trixie said, deflated.
    “We can do some scouting around and find out if he is from the magazine,” Jim offered helpfully.
    “I have to go to the lumberyard to order some lumber for that new room I’m going to build,” Uncle Andrew said. “Then we’ll go over to the motel for lunch. They have a restaurant there, and maybe the man who runs the motel will be able to tell us something.”
    “Like as not he won’t,” Mr. Owens said, his eyes twinkling. “He’s the closemouthed kind. Me, I’m the bigmouthed one. What can I do for you?”
    When they had bought nylon ropes, carbide lamps, short, thick candle's, a box of kitchen matches, some small waterproof bags, first aid kits, and a sharp pickax, Uncle Andrew decided that the high leather boots they had brought from home would be adequate. “If a snake gets to you with those on,” he said, “it’ll have to hold the high jump record for snakes.”
    The store smelled of kerosine, licorice candy, gingersnaps in an open barrel, and new leather boots that dangled from a line above their heads. There were only a few other people in the store, and they stood politely watching the Bob-Whites. As the bundle of purchases grew, it was too much for one weatherbeaten old woodsman. “What in thunder are they going to do with all that stuff?” he asked the storekeeper.
    “They’re going to do some cave exploring.”
    “There ain’t a cave around here big enough to carry all that stuff into,” the old man said. “And if there was, they might meet up with the devil himself. Better keep out of caves!” He waved a bony finger.
    “Say, Pop, don’t spoil my sales,” Mr. Owens said. “Maybe that’s what we’ve been needing around here —new blood that isn’t frozen by all the scare stories about this country. Maybe we’ve got us a Mammoth Cave nearby, like the one they’ve got over in Kentucky, and these kids will find it. Good luck, young ones!”
    “It’s mostly Trixie’s idea,” Jim said. “She’s pretty famous as a detective in Westchester County, New York.”
    The men burst out laughing and slapped their sides.
    “You’ll be laughing out of the other sides of your faces before Trixie and her partner, Honey Wheeler, ever leave this part of the country,” Jim said solemnly and turned his head to wink at Uncle Andrew.
    “He’s right!” Uncle Andrew said vehemently and told the astonished men how Trixie and Honey, with the help of the other Bob-Whites, had uncovered the thieves who had been stealing his sheep back in Iowa.
    “That’s the best yarn I’ve heard in a long time!” one of the men said. “Have you got any more like it, Andy?”
    Trixie just turned up her nose, took Honey’s arm, and walked out the door. “We’ll meet you at the motel,” she called back to the others.
    Jim, Brian, and Mart caught up with the girls a few minutes later. “Uncle Andrew was telling them about some of your other stunts,” Brian said. “He won’t leave till he has them believing you really are Sure-Shot Trix Belden, girl wonder of Westchester County.”
    “I just wish you and Jim and Mart and Uncle Andrew would let me have a gun and teach me how to shoot it,” Trixie answered. “I’d show you!”
    “Just let Moms hear you say that!” Mart said.
    Trixie didn’t answer him. “Do you suppose we can find out who that man at the motel is, Honey?”
    “You can, if anyone can, and now’s your chance to try. I don’t believe there are many guests at the motel. There are only three cars parked here.”
    The office was vacant when they went in. After they had waited a short time, Jim