The End of the Trail by Franklin W. Dixon

Author:Franklin W. Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

9 Hay Ride

Joe spun around. To his relief, he saw that it was his brother, Frank, standing behind him. He had come to find Frank and rescue him, but Frank had found him instead.

“Boy, you scared me!” Frank cried.

“I scared you?” Joe gasped. “How would you like to have somebody sneak up behind you like that?”

“Been there, done that,” Frank said.

“So how did you end up down here?” Joe asked. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“I’ve got a quite a lot to tell you,” Frank said.

“You’d better,” Joe said. “I think you were right when you said that there were some strange things going on in this town.”

“Yep,” Frank said. “And I know what some of those things are.” Frank relit the oil lamp, which he was still holding. “I want to take you on a quick tour of this place.”

“What kind of tour?” Joe asked. “Is this a museum or something?”

“Sort of,” Frank said. “A museum of criminal activities from the past.”

“Wow,” Joe said. “Sounds like my kind of museum.”

Frank led Joe to where he had uncovered the slot machines and gaming tables. “Get a load of this stuff.”

Joe’s eyes widened. “This looks like something out of Las Vegas. But what’s it all doing here? Casinos are illegal in this area. And, as far as I know, they always have been.”

Frank told Joe what he had learned from the book upstairs and what he had figured out on his own.

“Ha!” Joe laughed. “I never believed that Bill McSavage was a farmer. And he practically killed Chet with that horse—deliberately, I’m pretty sure.”

“I think there are people in this town that want all of us dead,” Frank said.

Joe looked stunned. “But why?”

“I think there’s some kind of illegal operation still going on around here. And they think we know something about it,” Frank explained.

“But what do we know about...” Joe’s eyes began to gleam. “That money we saw those guys drop yesterday!”

“Exactly,” Frank said. “We weren’t supposed to see that. And that’s why they don’t want us leaving town. We might tell somebody about it, somebody who’ll figure out where that money came from.”

“But who is ‘they’?” Joe asked. “Who wants us dead?”

“Well, I’m guessing that Bill McSavage does, for starters,” Frank said.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “And the Brookburn brothers, too.”

“Who are the Brookburn brothers?” Frank asked.

“The guys who were carrying the money,” Joe said. “I had a kind of nasty encounter with them a few minutes ago. They seem to be Bill’s farmhands—and maybe his partners in crime, too.”

“I think Bill’s manservant is part of it,” Frank said. “Wait till you get a load of that guy.”

“Manservant?” Joe asked. “I thought manservants just existed in old novels.”

There was a creaking noise from above. Somebody had slid open the trapdoor that Frank had fallen through, and light was filtering down into the cellar. A pair of arms shoved a ladder through the hole.

“They exist for real,” Frank said. “And here’s the gentleman now.”

“We’d better move,” Joe whispered. “Fast.”

“Who are you talking to?” the butler bellowed from above.

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