The Motor Girls at Camp Surprise: or, The Cave in the Mountains

CHAPTER I – AN UNPLEASANT AWAKENING

“Look where you are steering, Cora Kimball! You nearly ran over a chicken that time.”

“Yes, and avoiding the chicken on that side, you nearly hit a child on this side. Such a dear little boy – or was it a girl? I never can tell when they’re so young.”

“Two misses are as good as two miles,” misquoted the bronzed girl at the wheel of the automobile, as she straightened the car on the long, shaded road, where the trees met in a green archway overhead, and where the golden shadows flitted in the dust like so many little chickens running to cover, away from the fat-tired wheels.

“Why are you in such a hurry, Cora?” asked Bess Robinson, as she tucked back a straying lock of brown hair. “It’s too perfect a day to do anything in a hurry – even run a car.”

“Bess doesn’t believe in doing anything in a hurry,” lazily droned her sister Belle, from the rear seat. “That’s why she’s so fat.”

“Don’t dare use that objectionable word!” stormed Bess, turning about so suddenly that she sent Cora’s elbow against the plunger of the horn, thereby producing a sudden blast.

“Oh!” exclaimed Bess. “Did we run into something again?”

“Again?” demanded Cora. “Come, I like that – not! We haven’t run into anything yet.”

“That chicken,” murmured Belle, even more lazily. “Yes?”

“Was a good fifty feet out of danger!” declared Cora indignantly.

“And what of the child?”

“That never was in danger. I didn’t see him – her or it – until we had passed. But the child – gender unknown – was playing in the dust beside the road. Queer how mothers can let them.”

“Probably the mother didn’t know a thing about it,” said Bess, who had discovered that she was the sole cause of the needless alarm in regard to the horn’s blast. “One can’t be always on the lookout.”

“Don’t start a discussion,” begged Cora, as a backward glance showed some signs of Belle’s stirring up sufficiently to refute her sister’s remarks. “It’s too hot.”

“It is when you slow down,” observed Bess. “But the breeze is perfectly fascinating when you keep the car moving, Cora.”

“Well, I don’t intend to slow down right away. Have you girls any particular desire to go to any particular place?”

“Spare us all nerve-racking particulars on a day like this,” entreated Belle, sliding down into a more comfortable position in the big, cushioned seat she occupied all alone. “It is so warm! Summer is coming with a vengeance.”

“And it makes me wish we had set the date of our departure for Camp Surprise a week or so earlier,” remarked Cora. “I wonder if we could arrange to go any sooner.”

“I could,” declared Bess. “I haven’t a thing to do.”

“Except reduce,” put in her sister tantalizingly.

“Belle Robinson! If you don’t stop those mean, insinuating remarks, I’ll – I’ll – ”

“You won’t give me any more of those chocolates you sneaked into your bag as we were coming out,” finished Belle. “I saw you, and you know what Dr. Blake told you would happen if you didn’t stop eating sweets. You’ll get so – ”

“These aren’t sweet!” interrupted Bess. “They’re the bitter kind, and they’re delicious, too. They have them so fresh at Gordon’s.”

“It’s a wonder she wouldn’t give us a chance to decide for ourselves, instead of introducing expert testimony on her own account,” laughed Cora. “Come, Bess, out with them!”

“Certainly,” agreed the plump girl, with easy grace. “I intended to share them all along, but it was so warm – ”

“Don’t say warm again!” drawled her sister. “Your nose is as shiny now as a tin teakettle.”

“Belle Robinson! It is not!”

Instantly Bess had her little mirror and vanity box in use, and a quick dab on her rather up-turned nose did away with the condition complained of, or at least alleged, by her sister.

“There, does that satisfy you?” she asked, turning about for inspection, as Cora swung the big car around a turn in the road.

“Oh, I’m easily satisfied,” Belle murmured. “What a perfectly gorgeous view!” she cried, as she looked down from a height toward a village that lay nestled in a green valley, girt around by a winding, silvery river, glimpses of which could be had now and then between the trees that lined the shores.

“Yes, it is a good view,” agreed Cora, stopping the car. “Cheerful Chelton looks even more amiable and love-like than usual to-day. It’s cooler up here, too. Now pass over those chocolates, Bess.”

“And watch her get more and more – well, I’ll say plump – before your eyes, like that fat boy Scott tells about,” laughed Belle.

“It wasn’t Scott’s fat boy. He was in Dickens,” corrected Cora. “Nicholas Nickleby, I think.”

“Pickwick Papers!” voiced Bess. “There! I know something even if I am – plump. But, girls, I have lost five pounds in the last month.”

“Not so’s you’d notice it,” murmured Belle.

“Cease! Cease and have done!” admonished Cora. “How does that new one go – two slow and one quick to the side and then – ”

“Not slow at all!” interrupted Bess. “You’ve got to follow through or you’ll slice the ball and – ”

“What in the world are you talking about?” demanded Cora, her eyes opening wide. “Slice the ball? What’s that in? The fox trot?”

“I was speaking of golf,” murmured Bess.

“She’s taken it up to – reduce,” whispered Belle.

“I thought you meant that new three-step we tried the other night,” came from Cora.

“It’s too warm even to talk about dancing,” declared Belle. “Really we must think of getting away sooner. Do you think we could get that bungalow at Camp Surprise earlier than we had planned to take it, Cora?”

“I don’t know. Mother made all the arrangements. But I can find out. Do you really think you’d like to go sooner?”

“I certainly do,” murmured plump Bess, who seemed to feel the sudden summer heat more than did Cora, or the more svelt Belle. “Oh, by the way, Cora! why do they call it Camp Surprise?”

“I meant to ask that, too,” added Belle. “It’s such an odd name.”

“And there’s an odd story connected with it,” said Cora. “I’ll have to ask mother about it. She merely mentioned it, and something else came up so I forgot to get the particulars. I’ll find out when we go back. But if you girls are really in earnest about starting our summer vacation a little earlier this year – ”

“I most certainly am in earnest,” Bess said.

“And I,” added her sister.

“Then I’ll see what we can do,” went on the girl at the wheel. “Oh dear! I wish I hadn’t eaten those chocolates!” she exclaimed, making a wry face. “I ought to have known better. Candy always makes me thirsty, and I didn’t bring the vacuum bottle.”

Belle sat up, carefully removed, with the tip of her tongue, some brown chocolate stains from the tips of her pink, well-manicured fingers and, looking up and down the road, announced:

“That dear little tea room – Ye Olde Spinning Wheel – is only about a mile farther on. Suppose we go there? I’m dying for a cup of tea with lemon in it.”

“Oh, so am I!” added Bess. “They say lemon is thinning.”

“Then you’d better have lemonade with a leaf or two of tea in it,” said Belle.

“You – you – ” spluttered Bess, drawing back her hand in which nestled a chocolate. And then her desire to throw it was overcome by her appetite for the confection.

“Ye Olde Spinning Wheel,” repeated Cora. “That sounds most enticing. We’ll go there, if only to keep you two from bickering. What’s gotten in you sisters to-day, I never saw you so on each other’s nerves.”

“It’s the weather,” returned Belle.

“Let us hope so. Well, if you’ve admired the view enough we’ll go on.”

They had come to a pause at the crest of a shaded hill, and down below them lay the village in which the three girls lived. Cheerful Chelton it had been designated, and cheerful it was.

Cora, who had not stopped the engine, slipped the clutch in after shifting the gear and the car moved down the slope, gradually cutting off the view of the town.

“What about the boys?” asked Bess, apropos of nothing in particular.

“What boys?” demanded Cora.

“Ours, of course,” and Bess looked surprised that any others should have been thought of. “I mean your brother Jack, Walter Pennington and Paul Hastings. Didn’t you say Paul was thinking of going to camp with our boys, if they took the little bungalow near ours at Camp Surprise?”

“Yes, Paul is coming,” Cora said.

“Well, can the boys get away earlier if we do? It won’t be any fun going there alone, particularly if there’s a mystery about the place.”

“I didn’t say there was any mystery about the place,” corrected Cora. “Though there may be. Besides, we’re to have a chaperon, you know. Or at least the caretaker and his wife live in Camp Surprise, and I presume she will be a chaperon.”

“But it won’t be half the fun if the boys don’t come along,” declared Belle. “They are so jolly, and – er – well, you know what I mean,” she finished a bit lamely.

“No need to explain at all,” said Cora cheerfully. “It’s perfectly all right. If I go, that means mother can close the house so much earlier. Jack won’t stay there alone, I know, so he’s likely to tag along.”

“And if Jack goes Walter will. I guess we can count of making an earlier start on our vacation than we contemplated,” said Bess. “It will be lovely.”

“Yes,” Cora assented.

“There’s the tea room,” added Belle a little later as the car came out on a long, level stretch of road. “It’s a perfect dear of a place; isn’t it?”

“A regular gazelle,” agreed Cora mockingly.

She swung her machine into the parking place provided, and a few minutes afterward the three girls were sitting at one of the wicker tables, in wicker chairs, near a window which opened on a vine-shaded porch, while electric fans hummed and droned breezily and refreshingly behind them and in front of them stood rose-tinted plates heaped high with pale yellow cream, nestled alongside of which were delicately browned macaroons.

“Oh, what a symphony of color!” murmured Cora, as the white-capped, colored waitress set the refreshments from off her mahogany-cretonne tray.

“If it tastes half as good as it looks,” murmured Bess, “I’m going to have another plate, if I have to roll twice my usual number of times before I go to bed to-night.”

“It is good,” said Belle. “It’s delicious!”

“I could just sit here and – dream,” announced Belle, as she closed her “effective” eyes, as Jack Kimball had designated them.

“Yes, it is very soothing and restful,” agreed her sister, who had been rendered sleepy by the combination of heat, a refreshing meal and the droning of the electric fans.

“I feel sleepy myself,” Cora confessed, closing her eyes.

She opened them a moment later though, for a cry from Belle brought her and Bess to a most unpleasant awakening.

“Your car, Cora!” cried the slim Robinson twin. “Some one is taking your auto!”

CHAPTER II – THE LOST TRAIL

“My car! Some one taking my car!” repeated Cora Kimball. “Who is it, Belle?” and she hurried to the window from which the tall, willowy Robinson twin was gazing toward the spot where the auto had been left.

“Two young men. I saw them get in, and – there they go! Out into the road! We must stop them!”

Belle turned to make her exit, but her dress caught on a chair, and as Cora and Bess were behind her, they, too, were delayed.

“Oh, hurry!” begged Cora.

“I can’t tear my dress,” retorted Belle.

With a pull she loosed it from a splinter of the wicker chair, and then made for the doorway, followed by the other girls.

And while they are thus on their way to intercept those who had taken Cora’s car I will devote a few minutes to acquainting my new readers with the characters and incidents that go to make the previous volumes of this series.

“The Motor Girls,” was the title of the initial book. In that we find Cora Kimball, the daughter of a wealthy widow, with her brother Jack, living in “Cheerful Chelton,” as it has been called, a village on the Chelton river, in New England, not far from the New York boundary. Cora and Jack each had an automobile, but most of the adventures took place in or about Cora’s car, in which she and her two most intimate chums, the Robinson twins – Bess and Belle – went for many a ride.

The Robinson girls were the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Perry Robinson, the former a rich railroad man, and I think I have already sufficiently indicated to you their characters. Bess was plump, and Belle tall and willowy, inclined to indolence which she imagined was graceful. Cora Kimball was a leader, and where she went the Robinson twins generally followed.

Jack Kimball, a student at Exmouth college, was almost as much a chum of Cora’s as were her girl friends, and the girls regarded Jack and his chums, Walter Pennington and Paul Hastings, as their especial retainers and vassals as the case demanded. Paul’s sister Hazel, a sweet girl – if you know what I mean – had been quite friendly with Cora and her chums, until her removal to another city. Hazel was expected for a visit to Cora soon, and, as has been mentioned, Paul contemplated going camping with the boys.

Soon after Cora secured her car the Robinson twins induced their father to purchase one. The Motor Girls, as they had come to be known, went on a tour, in the course of which many things happened. They had more adventures at Lookout Beach, and also when they went through New England.

In succession Cora and her friends paid a visit to Cedar Lake, down on the coast, and next they spent a summer on Crystal Bay. They had there a most delightful time, but perhaps not more so than that told of in the book immediately preceding this one.

That volume is named “The Motor Girls on Waters Blue.” I forgot to mention that the girls, after having served their apprenticeship, as it were, in automobiles, had acquired a fine, large motor boat. In this they had many good times, though it was not this boat that figured largely on the blue waters. When Mr. Robinson had been called to Porto Rico on business he had taken his daughters and Cora with him.

How the steamer on which Mr. Robinson sailed to another island was endangered, how the Tartar was chartered by Cora and her chums to look for the shipwrecked ones, and how Inez Ralcanto, the beautiful Spanish girl, and her father, a political refugee, were aided – all this is set down in the book preceding this present volume.

It was not until after many hardships and not a little anxiety that matters were finally straightened out, and our friends came back to Cheerful Chelton, which had never seemed so homelike or so desirable, Cora said, as after the exciting episodes in what was practically a foreign land.

A fall and winter of gaiety had brought spring and early summer, in which delightful time of the year we now find our girl friends once more.

“It is gone! My car is gone!” exclaimed Cora, as they ran out of the tea room.

“Of course it is!” declared Belle. “Didn’t I see them take it!”

“Two young men, you say?” asked her sister.

“Yes. I didn’t see their faces, but I knew they were young by the way they moved about – so lively!”

“Say!” cried Cora, imbued by a sudden idea. “Could they have been Jack and Walter?”

“Your brother?” asked Bess.

“Yes. I heard him say he was coming over in this direction in his car. He and Walter might have driven up, and, seeing my car and guessing that we were inside, may have gone off in it just for a joke.”

“It’s possible,” assented Belle. “Anything is possible for Jack and Wally. But if they came here they must have left their car near by. Turn about is fair play – let’s annex theirs.”

“Let’s find it first,” said Cora.

They hurried out to the road. A quick look up and down showed no automobile in sight – not even Cora’s.

“They must have speeded up,” murmured Belle. “Oh! why weren’t we quicker?”

“It doesn’t amount to anything if those young men were really Jack and Walter,” Cora said. “But we can’t be sure of that; can we, Belle?”

“No, I can’t. I only had a glimpse of their backs, and all backs look alike to me.”

“It can’t have been Jack,” declared Bess, “or his car would be somewhere in sight. He wouldn’t know we were in the tea room until he came up close, and then there wouldn’t have been time to run his car back.”

“You can’t tell what they would do,” said Cora. “Come on, we’ll walk as far as the turn in the road, and see what’s down there.”

“Hadn’t you better report your loss to the proprietor of the tea room?” suggested Belle. “He might send a man out to look for the machine.”

“I don’t want to make too much fuss if it was Jack and Walter,” Cora objected. “Let’s take a look ourselves first.”

The girls hurried down the road, all their drowsiness gone now. They were rather alarmed in spite of the cool way in which Cora took it.

“It’s dreadfully warm walking,” complained Bess. “I shall have to have more cream after this is over.”

“You can go back and wait for us,” suggested Cora, “if you’re too – ”

“Don’t dare say I’m too stout to keep on the trail!” cried Bess. “I’ll never give up!”

They were almost at the turn when the honking of an automobile horn warned them of the approach of a car.

“There they come back!” cried Belle, in relieved tones.

But a moment later, as a machine swung into view around the curve, the girls saw that it was not Cora’s.

“But it’s Jack and Walter!” cried the former’s sister. “Wait! Stop!” she begged. “Jack – Wally – we’re in trouble! Did you take our car?”

“Take your car?” repeated Jack, bringing his machine to a stop with a screeching of brakes. “What’s the joke?”

“It isn’t a joke at all!” declared Belle. “I saw two young men making off with Cora’s car. At first we thought it might be you and Wally.”

“Not guilty!” affirmed the latter, holding up a protesting hand.

“Where did all this happen?” Jack wanted to know.

“At the Spinning Wheel tea room. We stopped there,” his sister informed him.

“Which way did they go?” asked Walter Pennington.

“Down this way,” Belle said, explaining what she had seen, and how they had come along the road thinking to meet the perpetrators of the joke.

“Come on, Wally!” cried Jack. “We’ll get after those fellows. It may have been a joke, and, again, it may not. No use taking any chances. There have been several cars stolen around here lately. Maybe there’s a regular organized gang. Go on back to your tea and cakes, girls. We’ll round up the villains. Ha! Ha!” and he struck a theatrical attitude.

“We’ll wait at the tea room for you,” Cora said. “You can trace my car in the dust, Jack, by the tire-marks. There’s a big patch, where it was vulcanized. It’s on the right forward wheel, and it makes a mark like a big Z. Look for it.”

“I will, Sis. But there isn’t much chance. Too many cars pass along this road to let the dust-marks of any particular one stay in sight long. But we’ll do the best we can.”

Jack backed and turned his car around, and was soon off down the road in a clatter of exhausts, while the three girls went back to Ye Olde Spinning Wheel.

“Who do you suppose they could be – those two fellows?” asked Bess.

“Haven’t the least idea,” her sister assured her.

“It couldn’t have been Paul Hastings, could it?”

“Of course not!” declared Cora. “Paul isn’t given to playing such jokes. Besides, he’s in the auto business you know, and he doesn’t believe in taking chances with the cars of others. It may be a joke, as Jack says, and some of our numerous friends may have tried to scare us, or it may be – ”

“Don’t say your lovely car is really stolen!” interrupted Bess, impulsively.

“Well, I’d have to say it if it were,” declared the practical Cora. “And the sooner we find out the better, in order to get the police after the thieves.”

Wearily they trudged back to the tea room, which they had left so suddenly.

“Let’s have some more ice cream while we’re waiting,” suggested Bess.

They had nearly finished their second plates when the honking of a horn warned them of the approach of some one. Eagerly they looked out to see Jack and Walter returning.

“We lost the trail!” Jack called. “I saw the tire marks, Cora, for a little way, then they disappeared. We’ll have to notify the police. Your car’s stolen all right.”

“Oh, Jack!”

“Might as well realize it first as last, Sis! Where’s a telephone?” he asked the waitress.