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shrugged. “Hoofprints. So what?”
    “So—there were hoofprints most of the way from our gate to your stables, and here are some more. Honey, it could be the same horse. We’re on the right trail!”
    Honey looked thoughtful but unconvinced. Suddenly Trixie pounced. “And here’s something to prove it!” She held up a nail. Made of wrought iron, it was thin at the point, with a wedge-shaped head. It was bent from use.
    “All that proves is that a nail came out of some horse’s shoe,” maintained Honey.
    Trixie put the nail in her pocket. “Don’t you see, Honey? That shoe was loose all the way from here to the rock where I found it. That’s why the trail is so chopped.”
    “It takes six to eight nails to hold a shoe,” Honey recalled. “Where are the others? And anyway, old Spartan could have thrown a shoe. So could Mr. Lytell’s Belle.”
    I think Spartan and Belle use larger shoes than the one I found,” Trixie argued. “All these clues add up, Honey. Whoever brought Moses rode a horse! He must have!”
    This does place a rider in the right place at the right time,” admitted Honey. “But where’s your horse and where’s your rider? And why did you say ‘he’? Usually a three-month-old baby is with his mother.”
    “He, she—somebody,” Trixie said impatiently. She was elated to see that the hoofprints marked the trail the rest of the way to Glen Road Inn, an old Dutch mansion that had been converted into a rural hotel.
    Honey looked up at the inn and fretted, “Ella might be able to see us from her window. She’ll feel hurt if we don’t stop in and say hi.” Ella Kline was a handicapped woman who lived on the third floor. She sometimes did sewing and mending for the Wheelers.
    “Let’s go up,” said Trixie at once. “She could have seen the horse.”
    “You have horse on the brain,” Honey sighed. “Oh, Honey, you know I like Ella just as much as you do,” said Trixie. “I just have—you know, other things on my mind.”
    They found Ella in her wheelchair, beside her sewing machine. Though her brown eyes sparkled with pleasure at their visit, her hands kept on working. Her lap was heaped with the inn’s linen, which she mended to earn her board
    and room. She was sorting articles from a huge clothes basket, then folding those that didn’t require mending.
    “I saw you coming,” she greeted them warmly.
    “We thought you might,” Honey said.
    While the “How are you’s” and “I’m fine’s” were being exchanged, Trixie walked to the window in front of Ella’s sewing machine.
    “Have you seen a stranger on a horse lately, Ella?” Trixie asked casually.
    Honey threw her a warning frown, but Ella looked interested.
    “How lately?” Ella asked.
    “Like last night,” Trixie said.
    “My goodness, Sergeant Molinson asked me that very same question,” Ella fluttered.
    Trixie felt a twinge of disappointment. She’d forgotten that the sergeant had mentioned following the road all the way to the inn. And she thought she’d been so brilliant, seeking out leads from Ella.
    “Why should I notice one horse?” Ella chattered on. “Seems like half the people on the Hudson own horses. Why, right over there in Chester there’s a statue marking a horse’s grave.”
    Trixie knew about Hambletonian’s red granite obelisk. She wasn’t a really “horsey” person, but she loved the small mare, Susie, and she always listened to Regan’s “horse talk.” She recalled hearing that Hambletonian had fathered one thousand three hundred thirty-five foals, among them a lot of champions. If one horse reproduced himself so many times, it was impossible to imagine what New York’s horse population must be. Scatter all those horses along all those roads she had thought about the previous night, and what did you have? A lot of horses and a lot of miles of roads, that’s what you had.
    Trixie wasn’t one to become discouraged easily, but a heavy sigh escaped her. “May I use your