The Red Trailer Mystery by Julie Campbell Page A

know how busy a farmer’s wife must be all the time. We have a small farm farther down the river. Just a vegetable garden and about forty chickens, but it’s an awful lot of work."
    Mrs. Smith nodded as she began a slow, ponderous ascent of the steps. "Work, work, work, from morning till night," she panted. "I tell Nat he’s too old now to keep up that pace, but you can’t stop him. And now, with the beans all ready to be picked, our hired hand fell out of a tree and broke his leg." She grunted in disgust as she heaved her bulk through the door and collapsed into a huge rocking chair beside the stove. "Wouldn’t you know that good-for-nothing boy would pick a time like this to climb one of those half-dead trees down in the orchard?"
    "Oh," Trixie asked, "does that old orchard belong to your property?"
    "Indeed it does," the woman said, "although we haven’t got an apple out of it for these past six years, and the boy knew as well as I do that it’s not safe to climb those half-dead trees." Having regained her breath, Mrs. Smith shuffled to the refrigerator and produced a gallon jug of lemonade. She pointed to an enormous crock on the other side of the long, sunny kitchen. "Get out some cookies, will you, my dear? That copper tray on the wall behind you will do nicely. I’m not one for platters. They just don’t hold enough. I always say if you’re going to take the time to eat at all you might as well eat all you can hold." Trixie heaped thick oatmeal cookies, dotted with chunks of chocolate, on the tray and brought it to the table while Mrs. Smith filled tall glasses with ice-cold lemonade. "These are the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted," Trixie said between munches and sips.
    Mrs. Smith beamed. "That’s what our hired hand used to say about everything I cooked. Poor boy! I’m sorry he had to go and hurt himself, and, of course, we’re paying his hospital bills and his salary as well while his leg’s in the cast, but I must say, if he had to fall out of a tree, he might have picked a time when we didn’t need help so badly. All those beans!" She folded her hands in her snowy apron and rocked back and forth in despair.
    "Why do you suppose he did such a foolish thing?" Trixie asked. "Even I have sense enough to stay out of a dying tree."
    "That’s the worst part of it," Mrs. Smith told her. "He gave as his reason that he thought he saw a tramp down in the field below the orchard. Now, what would a tramp be doing down there? A tramp can smell as well as the next person, and even a blind one could find his way to my kitchen door and ask for food. But does that idiot boy figure that out? No, he climbs a rotten tree to get a better view of the field, and that’s that!"
    A tramp, Trixie thought. Could it have been the bushy-haired man or Jeff? Aloud she asked, "Is there an abandoned barn in the field below the orchard?" Mrs. Smith glanced at her sharply. "A barn way off down there? Why would anyone build a barn so far away from all of the crops?"
    "I just thought it might have been used to store apples in when the orchard was bearing fruit," Trixie said. "And a tramp might have been living in the barn."
    Mrs. Smith rocked back and forth for a minute. "Well," she said, "if there is I never saw it, but, of course, I haven’t been able to walk that far since I began to put on weight about ten years ago, and we bought this place shortly after that." She leaned forward a little. "You’d never believe it, but once I was as slim as your honey-haired friend. This is the first time I’ve ever regretted my size. If it weren’t for that, I’d be down there picking beans with Nat right now."
    "Honey and I’ll help pick them," Trixie cried. "Now, that’s real sweet of you," Mrs. Smith said with a broad smile. "But you two young things couldn’t stand the heat in that unprotected garden. There’s not an ounce of shade except over the cucumber hills. And didn’t I tell you that the good Lord, seeing our plight,