The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point
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Laura Lee Hope >> The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point
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"That was pretty work, Betty," complimented Mollie, who, as an old and
experienced driver, felt capable of pronouncing judgment. "Now let's see
what this little car will do."
"Not too fast," begged Amy, as Betty slid into high gear. "Remember
we're not used to this kind of traveling, and we're apt to find
ourselves sitting in the road if you're not careful."
"Have you chosen your spot?" asked Betty, her eyes twinkling.
"Just the same, it might have been a good idea to have brought some
cushions along," said Mollie ruefully. "We might have strapped them on
and used them the way you do life savers--in case of emergency."
"My, you must be having a wonderful time," drawled Grace. "Have some
candy Mollie--it may help your courage."
"My courage doesn't need any help, thank you," snapped Mollie, adding
wickedly: "Just for that we ought to make you ride out here."
"Goodness, don't!" cried Betty, as she swung the car around a corner and
started once more toward home. "The punishment wouldn't fit the crime,
Mollie. Besides, we'll be back in a few minutes. Girls, she runs like a
dream!"
"She's a wonder," agreed Mollie. "I guess there's just about no limit to
the speed she's capable of."
"Do you want me to let her out?" queried Betty wickedly, but both Amy
and Mollie protested vehemently.
"Some other time," said Mollie, "when we're not hanging on by our
eyelids!"
A few minutes more, and they were again turning into the Nelson drive,
which, by the way, Betty took much more expertly this time. As the car
slowed, Amy and Mollie dropped off and Amy opened the door for Lady
Grace, who descended slowly.
"Well, how do you like it?" cried Betty, jumping out in her turn and
regarding her new possession with shining eyes. "Do you think she'll
do?"
"Do!" they cried, and Mollie added, patting the smooth side of the car
with admiring fingers:
"She's a wonder, Betty--as Roy would say, 'a perfect pippin.' Good-bye,"
she added suddenly, starting down the drive.
"Where are you going?" cried Betty, as they looked after her surprised.
"Home," she answered, adding with a chuckle: "I've got to finish
cleaning my old car. It's poor old nose must be terribly out of joint."
CHAPTER VI
LIFE AND DEATH
The next morning Betty awoke to the sound of the telephone ringing
imperatively in the hall. She got up, dragged the instrument from its
stand and spoke drowsily into the receiver.
"Hello--who--why, Grace, how did you happen to wake up?--Why, Grace,
what is the matter, dear?--You have heard what?--Will is wounded?--Oh,
Honey, how awful! Is it serious?--Never mind, don't try to tell me about
it now. I'll get dressed just as fast as I can and come right over--Yes,
yes, in about five minutes."
Mechanically Betty replaced the receiver on the hook and hurried back
into her room. Then swiftly she began to dress.
Will! Dear old Will was wounded! That had been about all she had been
able to gather from Grace's sobbing message--but that was enough. He was
the first of the boys to fall out there in the trenches, and who knew
but what Allen might be the next!
And here only yesterday they had been so happy, as happy as they could
be with that shadow always hanging over them. This was the day, too--the
incongruous thought struck Betty as she hastily pulled on her
clothing--the day they had set for their trip to Bluff Point. Well, of
course, it was all off now. Who wanted to go anyway?
These thoughts and many more raced through Betty's head as she put the
finishing touches to her toilet and crushed a garden hat on her pretty
soft hair. She was a very attractive picture as she ran down the stairs,
but she neither knew it nor cared.
"Why, Betty dear, what is the meaning of the hat?" her mother inquired,
smiling as her young daughter burst into the dining room. "You don't
need it to eat breakfast in, you know. Who called on the 'phone?"
"I'm not going to eat breakfast, at least not right away. But there, of
course, you don't know," answering her mother's look of surprise. "Grace
called up and, oh, Mother, poor Will has been wounded! I don't want to
c-cry," her chin quivered and she turned away for a moment to get
control of the lump in her throat.
"I know, dear," said her mother, putting an understanding arm about her,
"and so I'm not going to offer very much sympathy--just now. Were you
going over to see Grace, poor child?"
Betty squeezed her mother's hand gratefully and nodded.
"I'll be back in a little while," she said finally, getting the better
of that annoying lump. "I just want to find out all about it and give
Grace my sympathy."
And the Little Captain found poor Grace in need of all the sympathy she
could possibly give her. She was sitting in the darkest corner of the
library, all crumpled up in a big chair, her eyes red with weeping and a
damp ball of handkerchief clutched tightly in one hand.
At sight of Betty running toward her, she began to sob again, the tears
running down her face unnoticed.
"Betty, Betty, I knew you'd come," she cried, as Betty knelt beside her
and put two loving arms about her. "I'm so m-miserable I just don't want
to live at all."
"But, Honey, it isn't nearly as bad as it might be," said Betty, trying
to sooth while wanting desperately to know herself just how bad it was.
"You said he was only wounded, didn't you?"
"That's what the telegram said," Grace answered, wiping her eyes
drearily. "But how do we know but what he may be dead by this time?"
"We don't know, of course," returned Betty, recovering a little of her
optimism while she unostentatiously handed Grace a fresh handkerchief,
"but the chances are against it."
"But perhaps they said he was just wounded to l-let us down easy," cried
Grace, evidently convinced that there was no bright side to look upon.
"The Government doesn't do that; it hasn't time," argued Betty. "It
always lets you know the worst at once."
A gleam of hope came into Grace's eyes.
"Then you think there's a chance?" she queried, sitting up straight and
beginning to look a little more interested in life. "Do you think he may
get well?"
"Why, of course," said Betty, adding reasonably: "If you would tell me
just what the telegram said, I'd have more to go on."
"That's all it said--what I told you," replied Grace, relaxing wearily.
"Just said that he was wounded--nothing more. Dad is writing to
Washington to try to get more news. Of course, he has a great deal of
influence, being a lawyer with a good many friends in Washington, and he
may be able to find out something. I don't know."
"Here come Mollie and Amy," said Betty, glancing through the window. "I
guess," she added thoughtfully, "Amy probably feels pretty bad too."
"But she's not his sister," cried Grace, with a sudden flare-up of
jealousy that made Betty smile in spite of her heartache. She could not
help wondering how Grace would have taken it if it had been Roy instead
of Will who had been wounded.
But Grace's little fit of jealousy did not last long at sight of Amy's
drawn, white face and the traces of tears in her eyes. Instead, she
opened her arms to this other girl who was not Will's sister, yet loved
him too, and for a moment they cried on each others shoulders.
Meanwhile Betty and Mollie wandered over to the window and stood looking
thoughtfully out upon the lawn and not seeing any of it.
"Goodness!" said Mollie after a moment, shrugging her shoulders a little
impatiently, "of course, it's terrible to have Will wounded, and I can
imagine Grace being all cut up about it, but she--and Amy too--act as if
he were dead."
"I know," said Betty softly, then added, looking a little quizzically at
Mollie; "But you know I don't blame them so much when I try putting
myself in their place. Of course we love Will, but suppose it had been
Allen, for instance, or Frank."
Mollie started and uttered a little cry of protest.
"Oh, but that would be different," she said weakly, then catching
Betty's eye, added soberly: "I see what you mean, of course. I suppose
I would act just the same, under different circumstances."
However, having had their cry out and feeling better and much more
cheerful in consequence, Grace and Amy called to them and they crossed
the room quickly.
"We've decided," said Amy then, "that, since we can't find out any more
until Mr. Ford hears from Washington, we might as well make the best of
it."
"And we want to talk about our trip," Grace added.
"Our trip?" echoed Mollie. "Why I thought of course we would give that
up."
"I did too," explained Grace. "But when I spoke of it to Dad, he said we
were to do nothing of the kind. He said we couldn't do poor Will"--in
spite of all her resolution her voice broke on the name--"any good by
staying at home and moping, and that he would let us know as soon as he
had any authentic word from Washington. And he insists on mother's going
too."
And so it happened that a few hours later a very sober group of Outdoor
Girls started on what should have been a joyful trip, with heavy hearts
and gloomy foreboding. Even the new racer did not serve to liven the
party.
The only time they laughed was when they found Dodo and Paul, the
incorrigible twins, hidden away under some raincoats in Mollie's car.
"Oh, but we want to go 'long," Dodo protested vehemently when
discovered.
"We just got to go 'long," Paul had added.
"No, you mustn't 'got to,'" Mollie contradicted them, while the others
looked on amused. "Come, Dodo, honey, be a good girl for sister and come
down. You too, Paul. We're in an awful hurry."
"But we not goin' to come down," Dodo insisted.
"'Less," Paul added diplomatically, "we get tandies."
"Lots of tandies," Dodo supplemented.
"Here, take these," Grace offered, holding out a box of sweets which,
despite all her trouble, she had not forgotten.
"Don't give them the box--just take out a few," Mollie suggested, but
Grace insisted, while her face clouded again.
"I don't want them, anyway. I don't know why I took them. Habit, I
suppose."
However, hope and optimism did not consent to be kept long in the
background on such a day as this when the sun shone its brightest and
the birds sang their hardest and the very wind seemed to be whispering
of happier times to come.
"Well," sighed Amy at last, for she and Mrs. Ford were riding in
Mollie's car, while Grace was with Betty in the racer, "it's plain to be
seen that nature at least doesn't know that anything horrible or cruel
is happening 'over there.' I don't think I ever saw a more wonderful
day."
"Maybe it is a good omen," said Mollie, quick to seize her opportunity.
"I feel it in my bones that it won't be long before we will hear good
news of Will--and you know my prophetic bones never lie."
"I don't know anything of the sort," protested Amy, although the remark
brought a reluctant smile to her lips. "I've known those same prophetic
bones to slip up before this."
"Which reminds me," Mollie cried, apropos of nothing in particular,
"that if we don't put on more speed we'll not reach our destination
before dark. I wonder why Betty doesn't hurry," for Betty and Grace in
the speedy little racer were taking the lead.
She signaled the latter with three long and three short toots of the
horn. A moment later the racer slowed down and Betty turned around to
see what was wanted.
"You're too slow," cried Mollie. "If you don't go a little faster, we'll
have to run over you."
"Oh-ho, look who's talking!" gibed the Little Captain, adding wickedly:
"We were afraid to speed up for fear of leaving you too far behind."
"Now I know we'll have to run over you," cried Mollie fiercely. "Toot,
toot--out of my way!"
But Betty evidently had no intention of getting out of anybody's way,
for with a challenging blast of her horn she put the little car at high
and it sprang forward gleefully.
Behind her, Mollie's car, like a big cat after a mouse, gave exultant
chase, fairly eating up the road. And yet Betty maintained the distance
between them--even drew away a little.
"Goodness," cried Mollie suddenly, her eyes sparkling, "I may be
mistaken, but I think she wants a race!"
CHAPTER VII
THE RACE
Then began some fun that was novel and exciting even to the Outdoor
Girls, who thought they had tried just about every sport there was.
Mollie bent her straight little back over the steering wheel, gave her
more power and the big car fairly flew ahead, lessening perceptibly the
distance between it and the racer.
However, Betty, looking behind, seemed not in the least concerned. On
the contrary, she waved her hand joyously as she recognized Mollie had
taken her challenge. Then she too bent over the wheel with her eyes
glued to the flying ribbon of road ahead.
"Betty, Betty, stop it!" cried Grace, holding frantically to her hat and
the side of the car. "Suppose we should m-meet somebody--a wagon or a
m-machine."
"So much the worse for it," retorted Betty gayly. "You keep your eye on
Mollie, Gracie dear, and tell me whether she's gaining--that's a good
girl."
"If you think I'm going to help you break our necks--" Grace sputtered,
but Betty cut her short.
"Well, if you don't I will have to look for myself," she said, adding
maliciously: "And then we will have a smash-up!"
Grace groaned and looked behind her.
"They're gaining," she cried, and then all at once the spirit of the
thing caught her--the contest of speed was getting into her blood. "Oh,
Betty, don't let 'em," she almost screamed, above the noise of the motor
and the rushing wind. "They're not more than fifty feet behind now!"
Betty gave her a swift look, smiled to herself, and once more fixed her
dancing eyes on the road ahead.
"All right," she crowed. "Just watch me run away from them. I wouldn't
have had the heart," she added with a chuckle, "if Mollie hadn't brought
it all on herself."
"But they're still gaining," insisted Grace nervously, trying to look
behind, ahead, keep her seat, hat, and dignity all at the same time.
"Look, Betty, they're only about thirty feet behind!"
"That's near enough," Betty decided, and leaning over suddenly, did
something to the car that Grace never quite understood. Anyway, it had
the desired effect. The little racer fairly leapt forward and, like a
horse that has been given his head for the first time, took the bit
between its teeth and bolted.
Behind them Mollie looked her amazement. She was getting every bit of
speed out of her machine of which it was capable, and then, just as
victory was within sight, Betty was doing an inconceivable, unbelievable
thing--she was winning the race!
Mrs. Ford and Amy had been enjoying the race tremendously, but now they
leaned forward in surprise.
"Goodness, she's beating us," cried Amy.
"No!" snapped Mollie sarcastically. "Who would have supposed it?"
"Perhaps it is because Betty's car is so much lighter," suggested Mrs.
Ford consolingly. "We have all the luggage and wraps, too."
"Oh, that wouldn't make so much difference," denied Mollie, who was too
good a sportsman to make excuses for herself. "Betty's racer has the
speed, that's all."
"Well, they're just about out of sight now," said Amy, leaning back
resignedly. "I only hope Betty doesn't run into anything and have a
smash-up. She hasn't driven a car as much as you, Mollie."
"Oh, Betty'll take care of herself," said Mollie, though she was
slightly mollified by this tribute to her superior experience, if not
superior speed. "I guess," she added, after a moment's reflection, "I'd
better sell this old car and get a racer too."
Mrs. Ford laughed softly, the first time she had laughed or thought of
laughing since receiving the news of Will's being wounded.
"Don't go back on an old friend for its first offence, Mollie," she
chided, adding diplomatically: "A racing car is just fine for speed, but
I think your automobile is much more sociable and comfy."
"Well, I'm glad there's something nice about it," said Mollie, for she
had not yet recovered from her surprise and chagrin. "I hope," she
added, as a sudden thought struck her, "that Betty doesn't get too far
ahead. I don't know this part of the country very well and Betty has the
map."
"That will be the next thing," said Amy, with a sigh, and Mollie looked
at her sharply.
"What?" she demanded.
"Why, that we'll get lost," Amy explained. "Wasn't that what you meant?"
"Oh, I hope not," said Mrs. Ford, a little anxiously. "Perhaps we'll be
able to see them when we round this curve, Mollie."
But they rounded several curves, and still no sign of Betty's car. Then
happened what Mollie had secretly been fearing would happen. They came
to a crossroads and a sudden stop at one and the same moment.
"Now, what?" queried Amy, in the tone of resignation that never failed
to rub Mollie the wrong way. "Something the matter with the engine?"
"No, the engine's all right," snapped Mollie, adding, irritably: "But
everything else is all wrong."
"What, for instance?" queried Mrs. Ford soothingly. She knew that the
first defeat Mollie had ever experienced would be bound to rankle and
was prepared to make allowances. "If the engine is all right, why don't
we go on?"
"Which way?" queried Mollie, spreading out her arms with a hopeless
gesture. "There are two roads, one looks as good as the other, and we
haven't the slightest idea in the world which to take."
"Oh!" gasped Amy.
Mrs. Ford gave a low whistle as she saw the fix they were in.
"Then if Betty doesn't realize our predicament and come back pretty
soon, we'll either have to stay here indefinitely, or go back the way we
came, is that it?"
"Yes," nodded Mollie, adding truthfully and more than a little
anxiously: "Only I'm not quite sure I know just how we came. As I said,
this is unfamiliar country to me."
Amy groaned.
"Then we shall be lost for fair," she said. "Oh, why did Betty do such a
foolish thing?"
Mollie was about to retort when a cloud of dust in the distance and a
faint chug-chug made her swallow her words.
"What's that?" she cried. "It sounds like a motor. I wonder--"
"Yes, it is!" cried Amy, straining her eyes to see through the cloud of
dust. "It's only a little car, and it's coming at about ninety miles an
hour."
At this reference to Betty's speed, Mollie winced a little but gave a
relieved sigh nevertheless. For by this time the car was near enough to
be identified beyond doubt. It was a racer, and there was a girl at the
wheel.
A few moments later Betty herself, with a grin, hailed them.
"Hello," she cried, adding as the car slowed to a standstill: "This time
the joke's on us. We were so busy running away from you that we took the
wrong road. This one ends about two miles up in somebody's farm."
"It's lucky something stopped you," said Mollie dryly, adding as she
cocked one eye at the sun: "Well, let's be getting along. We'll have to
hurry and make up for lost time."
"Do you still want to get ahead of us?" asked Betty, as a moment later
she swung her car into the right road. "Because if you do--"
"Go on," cried Mollie, exasperated, yet beginning to laugh, for after
all Mollie was a good loser. "Some way or other I'll get even with you,
Betty Nelson. Meanwhile hustle!"
And Betty hustled, with Mollie keeping just far enough behind to avoid
the cloud of dust the little car threw up. For an hour more the motors
purred rhythmically, eating up mile after mile, until finally the girls
were compelled by ravenous and healthy appetites to stop for lunch.
They had brought two big hampers, packed full with sandwiches, fruit and
cake and also something to drink, and after the long ride in the open
the very thought of these delicacies brought, as Grace said, "the tears
of longing to their eyes."
As Mrs. Ford handed one of the baskets over the seat to Mollie in front,
Betty and Grace tumbled out of their car and came running toward them.
"Are you going to get out and eat, in romantic fashion, by the wayside?"
queried Grace, eyeing a pile of sandwiches hungrily. "Or are you going
to sit in state in the car and let us occupy the running board?"
"We'll give you one of the hampers," offered Mrs. Ford, but Mollie
gasped in dismay.
"Oh, please don't," she begged. "Don't you see--there are only two of
them to our three. And you want to give them half the lunch!"
They laughed at her, and Betty offered a solution.
"Far be it from us to rob you, Honey," she said soothingly. "We'll sit
right here on this rock--"
"Oh, goodness! who cares where we sit as long as we get something,"
groaned Grace. "Mollie, I'm dying."
"Well as long as you die out there it's all right," retorted Mollie
unfeelingly. Nevertheless, she handed the sufferer a ham sandwich and a
hard boiled egg, which the latter came as near to grabbing as her good
breeding would permit.
However, when they had finished the lunch, burned up what odds and ends
remained, and had once more started on their way, they found that the
shadow of unhappiness which the excitement of the race had almost
banished, was returning again.
In front with Betty, Grace sighed so dolefully that the Little Captain
looked at her inquiringly, an action which almost brought about a
collision with a tree by the wayside.
"Betty, what are you doing?"
"Trying to kill us," replied Betty serenely. "And if you give any more
sighs like that, I'll do it."
"I didn't know I sighed," said Grace gloomily. "But it wouldn't be any
wonder if I did. I feel as if I were made up of them--sighs, I mean."
Betty was silent a moment, then she asked suddenly:
"When does your father expect to hear from Washington?"
"Not before the end of the week, anyway. And by that time," Grace paused
to control the trembling of her lips, "nobody knows what may have
happened. For all we know Will may be--dead."
CHAPTER VIII
RED RAGS
"Well, we've been making pretty good speed for the last three hours,"
said Mollie, taking first one hand, then the other, from the steering
wheel and stretching her cramped fingers experimentally. "Now if nothing
else happens--"
The sound of an explosion cut short the rest of the sentence, and she
put on the brakes, at the same time tooting a signal to Betty. The
latter stopped her car and came running back to see what had happened.
"Tire," said Mollie laconically, forestalling the inevitable questions.
"I knew our luck had been too good to be true. Well," with the air of a
martyr accepting the inevitable, "I suppose there's nothing to do but
get busy and fix it, though, of course, this spoils our chances of
getting to Bensington to-night," Bensington being the town midway
between Deepdale and Bluff Point where they had planned to spend the
night. It was also the only town for miles around that boasted a hotel.
"Oh, I don't know," said Betty in reply to Mollie's gloomy prediction.
"It won't be the first time we've accomplished the impossible."
"But it will soon be dark."
"Goodness! it won't be dark for hours and hours," Betty laughed at her.
"And this oughtn't to take us more than half an hour at the longest.
Come on now, let's get busy."
Thus inspired, the girls "got busy," but they were tired with the long
drive and everything seemed to go wrong. Their usually skillful fingers
fumbled, the tire was "too big or too little or something," to quote
Amy, and at the end of a quarter of an hour's useless struggle their
tempers were worn to a frazzle and they were ready to cry.
"Well, I never had anything act like that before," cried Mollie
irritably. "I'd like to give the person that wrote about the 'depravity
of inanimate things' a medal. The old tire's got a mean disposition,
that's all."
"Well, it isn't the only one," Grace was beginning, when Mollie turned
and glared at her.
"If you mean me--"
"I meant all of us," Grace explained. "As long as we have been going
together, this is the first time I can remember when all of us have been
in the doleful dumps at once."
This brought a reluctant smile even to Mollie's gloomy countenance, and
Betty laughed merrily.
"Perhaps it's just as well," said the Little Captain, adding with a
chuckle: "It's the same way with onions--if everybody eats 'em, no one
can notice the unpleasantness in the other fellow."
This brought a real laugh, and Mollie said fondly:
"I always knew you were a 'philosophiker,' Betty, dear. But," she added,
vindictively kicking the tire that lay at her feet, "all the philosophy
in the world won't put this tire on for us. And we can't very well get
to Bensington on three wheels and a rim."
"No!" cried Grace, sarcastically. "Who would have guessed it?"
Mollie started to retort, but the threatened resumption of hostilities
was cut short by the sound of a motor in the distance.
"Hark!" cried Mollie, a dramatic hand raised to a listening ear. "Do I
hear the approach of an angel?"
"If you do, he has a pretty earthly means of transportation," laughed
Betty. "To me, it sounds like a machine or a motorcycle."
"How can you?" cried Mollie, still dramatically poised. "It is an angel,
I tell you, come to help us out of our predicament."
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