The Motor Girls at Lookout Beach: or, In Quest of the Runaways
TextCHAPTER VI – CORA’S QUEER PLIGHT
Springing to the back of one of the big field horses, Farmer Stevens responded to the frantic summons of the auto horn, and started with the pair up the hill to the assistance of Cora, and the righting of her car, that almost swung between the narrow ledge of land, and the great gulf of mountainous space that lay just beneath the banked up highway.
“Oh, I am so afraid that Cora is hurt,” wailed Belle. “We can’t see her, and she must have been tossed over into the tonneau of the car.”
“She was on the right hand forward seat,” gasped Bess, as both girls ran along to the spot where the Whirlwind was ditched, “but she may have sprung out to avoid being thrown down the gully.”
Although Bess was but a short distance behind Cora when the latter’s car met with the mishap, it now seemed a long space of roadway that lay between them. Of course Bess had to bring her car to a safe place, at the side of the thoroughfare, and Belle had to help some, so that it had taken a minute or two to do this, before they could run to Cora. In the meantime Mr. Stevens came along with his horses, and Hope, signalled by the tooting of the horn of the Flyaway, had called two of his hired men from the fields, so that the ditched auto and the danger to its driver met with ready assistance.
“Oh, if Cora should be – ” Then Belle checked herself. She had an unfortunate habit of predicting trouble.
Mr. Stevens left his horses by the rail fence through which the Whirlwind had passed without hesitation, and Bess was beside him just as he reached the big car.
“Oh, where is she!” wailed the girl, unable longer to restrain her fears.
There was the car, partly overturned but seemingly not damaged. Neither within nor without was there a sign of Cora!
“She must have been thrown down the embankment,” said the man anxiously. “She surely is not with the machine.”
Bess now joined Belle and ran to the edge of the cliff. Almost afraid to look, they peered over the brink.
“Where can she be?” breathed Belle, her hands clasped nervously.
“Cora! Cora, dear!” called Bess. “Where are you?”
“Here!” came what seemed to be a very faint reply.
“Where?” shouted the girls, now making their way down, step by step, over the perilous cliffs.
Farmer Stevens knew every inch of that hill. He often had to rescue from its uncertainties either a sheep or a young cow. He also knew that precisely where the machine was ditched, the hill shelved to a perfectly straight bank, so that instead of an incline the wall of earth actually seemed to run under the surface.
“If she went over there,” he told himself, “she never stopped until – she landed.”
“Oh, Cora!” called the girls again, “can’t you tell us where you are?”
“Look out there, young ladies,” cautioned Mr. Stevens, “or you may go down – double quick!”
Hope was scaling the rocks like a wild creature. The two hired men were almost jumping from cliff to cliff making straight for the clump of hemlock trees at the very edge of the stream, that, in its quiet way, defied the great hill above it.
“Here she is!” called Hope. “Here in the – bed of hemlock!”
To Bess and Belle, not acquainted with the peculiarities of the flat-branched evergreen, finding Cora in “a bed of hemlock” was rather a startling discovery, but to Hope – what nest could have been safer! Cora had fallen over the cliff into the soft branches of a tree that jutted out from the shelving earth.
“Are you hurt?” asked the girl from the farm, looking up into the branch of the big green tree.
“I don’t know – I don’t think so, but I feel queer. I must get down,” Cora managed to say.
By this time the others had reached the spot. Bess and Belle were almost hysterical lest Cora should lose her hold and again fall to a more dangerous landing. But the hired men stationed themselves under the tree, and, with their strong arms netted beneath the giant evergreen, they waited for Mr. Stevens to give an order.
“All ready?” asked Mr. Stevens.
“Yes, sir,” replied the men.
“Young lady, can you get free of the branches?” he called to Cora.
“I am directly over a great hole,” she answered timidly, “and I am afraid I cannot hold on another minute.”
“Then drop,” said the farmer. “We will catch you. Don’t be afraid. You can’t escape the arms of Sam and Frank!”
“Oh, if she should go to the bottom,” wailed Belle, covering her face with her trembling hands and uttering sighs and sobs. Bess was more courageous, but equally frightened.
Sam and Frank stood like human statues. Clasped hand to wrist, their sunburned arms looked strong and secure.
Presently there was a fluttering in the leaves – a slide through the branches and Cora dropped – down on the human net of arms, safe, and seemingly sound, but too weak to recover herself at once from the strange position.
Gently as could a woman, these farm hands lowered their burden to the soft bed of moss at their feet. Belle and Bess leaned over the quiet form, while Hope hurried to the stream below for some water, which she quickly brought in the strong cup improvised from her stiffened sunbonnet.
“This is spring water,” she said. “Swallow a few mouthsfull.”
Cora opened her lips and sipped from the strange cup. Then she turned and tried to rise, growing stronger each instant, and determined to “pull herself together.”
“Wasn’t it silly?” she asked, finally.
“Wasn’t it awful! Are you much hurt?” inquired Belle, fanning Cora with her motor hood.
“Not a bit – that I can tell,” she answered. “That natural – hammock – was a miracle.”
She attempted to rise, but fell back rather suddenly.
“I’ve got a twist somewhere,” she said. “I think my shoulder is sprained.”
Without waiting to be asked to do so Frank, the younger of the farm hands, put his arm about Cora’s waist, and brought her to her feet.
“Oh, thank you,” she stammered rather shyly. “I am sure you have helped me wonderfully. I don’t know how to thank you – all.”
“You can stand, eh?” asked Mr. Stevens, satisfaction showing in his voice, and ruddy face.
“I suppose you feel – that I should have taken your offer for the horses?” she remarked with confusion.
“Well, there is always a first time,” he replied, “but since you are no worse off you must not complain. Guess the boys had better lift you to the road. Then we will see if you can run your car.”
Again, in that straightforward way, peculiar to those who know when they’re right and then go ahead, the “boys” simply picked Cora up, she putting her arms over their shoulders, and while the three other girls wended their way over the cliff, Cora was carried safely back to the spot where still lay the helpless Whirlwind.
CHAPTER VII – THE CLUE AT THE SPRING HOUSE
Just how Cora did manage to run her car into Chelton, with a stiffened wrist and a twisted shoulder, she was not able to explain afterward to the anxious ones at home. Belle rode with her, and was sufficiently familiar with the machine to take a hand at the wheel now and then, but it was Cora who drove the Whirlwind, in spite of that.
It was now two days since the eventful afternoon at the strawberry patch, and the girls were ready again to make the trip to Squaton, in quest of the crate of berries promised to Mrs. Robinson.
Jack argued that his sister was not strong enough to run her car with ease, so he insisted on going along. Then, when his friends, Ed Foster and Walter Pennington, heard of this they declared it was a trick of Jack’s to “do them out of a run with the motor girls,” and they promptly arranged to go along also.
Ed rode with Walter, in the latter’s runabout, and the twins were, of course, together in the Flyaway, while Cora was beside Jack in the Whirlwind, for, although the girls were speedily turning into the years that would make them young ladies, they still maintained the decorum of riding “girls with girls” and “boys with boys,” except on very rare occasions.
As they rode along, an old stone house, set far back from the highway, attracted Jack’s attention.
“Let’s stop here,” he suggested, “and look over the place. I’ll bet it has an open fire place with a crane and fixings, for cooking.”
Word was passed to those in the other cars, and all were glad to stop, for the afternoon was delightful, and the ride to Squaton rather short.
As no path marked the grass that led to the old house it was evident that no one had lately occupied it. The boys ran on ahead to make sure that no ghosts or other “demons” might be lurking within the moldy place, while Cora, Bess and Belle stopped to pick some particularly pretty forget-me-nots, from near the spring that trickled along through the neglected place.
Just back of the house, over the spring, the boys discovered the inevitable house for cooling milk, and here they delayed to drink from their pocket cups.
“What’s in the other side?” asked Walter, peering through the broken boards into a second room or shed, for the shack was divided into two parts.
“More spring, I suppose,” replied Jack, taking his third drink from the small cup.
Walter and Ed had finished drinking just as the girls came up, and Jack attended to their various degrees of thirst for pure spring water.
“What a quaint old place,” remarked Belle. “What’s in the other little house?”
“We are just about to find out,” said Jack. “The other fellows couldn’t wait, and are in there now.”
Hurrying out, they all entered, through the battered door, into the “other side.”
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Ed. “What does this mean?”
“I also declare, ‘what does this mean?’” added Jack, picking up from a queer sort of wooden platform in the place, the unmistakable blue bonnet of a child or young girl.
“And this!” exclaimed Cora, picking up a hat. “This is – Nellie’s hat! Nellie from the strawberry patch!”
“They have run away!” gasped Bess, without further investigation, “and here are the remains of their lunch!” The fragments of a very meager meal – some crusts of dry bread – and an empty strawberry box, told the story. “Surely this had been the lunch of the runaways.”
“They must have slept here,” went on Cora. “Poor little dears! What a shame! How frightened they must have been to sleep in such a place.”
“When you young ladies get through with the allegory, I hope you will give us the libretto,” interrupted Jack. “Who may be the fair maids who have slept in this shack, and eaten the bread of freedom?”
“Why, the girls from the strawberry patch, of course,” said Bess, as if that explained everything.
“Why ‘of course,’” said Jack mockingly.
“Certainly, of course,” put in Ed, in the same tone of voice.
“And, to be sure, of course,” went on Walter, provokingly.
“Why, we didn’t tell you, did we?” spoke Cora finally. Then she did tell as much as she thought it wise to divulge about Nellie and Rose.
This information “caused a stir,” (as Jack put it) among the boys. Instantly they began up-turning stones, pulling down boards, and doing all sorts of foolish things searching for the runaways. But no other evidences were unearthed of the stay of the two girls in the spring house.
“I hope they hear us,” called Jack, finally, raising his voice almost to a shout. “I must find Rose,” he called. “Rose is all the world to me! My own little garden flower without a thorn – ”
Walter interrupted with: “I must see Nellie home! Nellie! Nellie! Pretty little Nellie!”
“Do be quiet,” begged Cora, “you will arouse the ghosts in the old house.”
“Let’s,” suggested Walter. “Haven’t seen a ghost in an age, and a ghost would be just pie for us in this place.”
“Please don’t,” almost sobbed Belle. “I am really awfully creepy in here.”
Seeing that she was actually nervous, the girls went outside, but the boys were not yet satisfied with their investigations.
“What on earth is this rig-a-my-gig for?” asked Walter, indicating the big sloping circular platform which occupied nearly all the space in the shack. It was on a pivot and could be turned around.
“Why, that’s – let me see, that’s – ” but Jack couldn’t just say what it was.
“I know,” exclaimed Ed, suddenly. “That’s a treadmill.”
“A thread mill?” asked Walter.
“No, a treadmill – a mill that was treaded. They used to make butter in olden times by having a sheep or a dog travel around on that sort of wheel, which was geared to a churn.”
“See page one hundred and eight Encyclopedia Fosteria,” put in Jack, with a good natured slap on Ed’s broad shoulders. “When you don’t see what you want – ask Ed,” he finished.
Feeling that they had actually solved the mystery of the circular platform, the boys spent some time in examining the strange machine. Meanwhile the girls were peering in the broken windows of the old house, for Bess insisted that Nellie and Rose might have fallen ill after their long tramp from the strawberry patch, and that they might actually be lying within the tottering mass of mortar, beams and stones. But, of course, the fears of Bess were soon proved unfounded, and, at the urgent order of Cora, the party started again on the road to Squaton to get that “much delayed” crate of berries for Mrs. Perry Robinson.
“Keep a lookout along the road for the girls,” Cora directed, as they started off. “We might spy them resting under a tree.”
“You will never spy them,” insisted Jack. “I am going to find Rose – my Rose, and Walter has his heart set on Nellie —the Nellie. So you girls may go to sleep, if you wish, for all the good your looking will do.”
Only a joke – but many a jest begets a truth!
So the motor girls thought, in their long search for the unfortunate runaways.
CHAPTER VIII – A STARTLING DISCOVERY
All was confusion at the strawberry patch. The two orphan girls, Rose and Nellie Catron, had disappeared the night before, it was said, and not until shortly before the arrival of our friends in the automobiles, was another loss discovered – that of a pair of very valuable diamond earrings, the property of Miss Hanna Schenk, otherwise known among the pickers as “Mrs. Blazes.”
So it was that the Chelton young folks, as Jack said, “struck a hornet’s nest,” for Mrs. Ramsy, somehow, seemed to be of the opinion that Cora could tell, if she would, something about the runaways.
“What could give you that idea, Mrs. Ramsy?” demanded Cora indignantly. “I only saw your nieces while I was here the other day, and I am sure I would have advised them to stay where they were, had they ever mentioned to me their intentions of leaving.”
“That’s all very well, young lady,” growled the woman, “but I noticed how them girls edged up to you, and your friends, and I warn you, if I find that you have helped them off I’ll have the law on you.”
At this the young men came up to the shed where the unpleasant conversation was in progress. Jack, of course, was indignant, and, not only did he oblige Cora to leave the place at once, but, while doing so, he expressed his opinion directly to Mrs. Ramsy as to his personal measure of her character.
The whole affair was rather awkward, and the Robinson girls were obliged to leave the patch once more without their crate of berries.
Just outside the wire fence, and when the girls were about to step into the cars, they were hailed by Andy – the small boy whom Cora had so favored by buying the damaged crate of berries.
“Wait a minute, miss,” he called. “I’ve got something fer you,” and, so saying, he stepped up to the Whirlwind and, very cautiously, handed Cora a slip of paper. She took it and read these scrawled lines:
“Miss: We are going away, but we think we will see you again some day. You will find your crate of berries under the tree where Andy will show you. They belonged to us and we paid for them.
Rose Catron and Nellie Catron.”
Cora looked down at Andy for a further explanation.
“They had to go away, miss,” he said; “they couldn’t stand it another minute. I will show you where the berries are.”
“But how did the girls get the berries? They had no money,” argued Cora.
“No, but their Aunt Delia took from them a ring that belonged to their own mother, and they took the crate to get even,” declared Andy, his voice and manner showing his high regard for the “getting even” part.
Cora told the girls and boys about the matter, and they decided to go after the berries. Consequently Cora insisted that Andy ride in her car to the old willow tree, somewhat down the road, and as each tenth of a mile was marked in red on the speedometer dial the little fellow’s face threatened more and more to catch fire from the auburn curls that fell in joyous affright about his temples.
Jack thought he had never known what it was to really enjoy a ride before, and he whispered to Cora that he very much wished he might take Andy home “for a paper weight, or a watch charm.”
“Right over there,” directed Andy, after about a mile’s ride, “under the big willow.”
Turning the car in that direction, Jack drove across a shallow ditch, and was soon under the tree, while the other machines waited on the safer roadway.
Andy scrambled out, and Jack, leaving the wheel, went after him, followed by Cora.
“Here,” said the boy, pulling aside a thick clump of berry vines. “Here’s the crate.”
Sure enough, there was the new crate, filled with berries, safe and untouched.
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Cora. “I really did not expect to find them.”
“Very thoughtful of my Rose-bud,” declared Jack, lifting the lid of the box. “What’s this?” he went on, picking up a small object. “Something else for Cora, I wonder?”
At that moment, fortunately, Andy was occupied with a particularly attractive branch of red raspberries, and he did not see Jack lift out the article. Cora, so quick to apprehend any possible danger for others, was beside Jack instantly.
“Hush!” she whispered. “Don’t tell the rest! It is an empty jewel box – earrings have been in it!”
“You don’t mean to say that the – girls have gone off with the old lady’s earrings!” exclaimed Jack. “And left the empty box in this crate to get you into trouble!”
“Indeed I do not mean to say anything of the kind,” hastily answered Cora. “I have always found that the most suspicious circumstance may turn out to be the most innocent matter, and, in this case, I have not the slightest doubt that we will find my rule to work true. In the meantime,” she continued, slipping the little case within her blouse, “I will take care of the – evidence.”
It was not without a rather nervous fluttering of her usually reliable nerves, that Cora finally did secrete the jewel box, and in spite of her firm declaration to Jack, she could not just convince herself that it was altogether right for whoever had put the empty earring case in the crate, to have done so without making some sort of explanation.
For a moment she thought of asking little Andy if he could tell her anything of the strange affair, then she quickly concluded to await developments.
“Jack,” she said, “we will take the crate of berries in our car. We have more room than the others, and perhaps Andy would like a ride in town with us. He can take a trolley car back.”
This pleased the youngster immensely, and so, when the famous crate of berries was at last loaded on the Whirlwind, and the word had been given to the others, the party started off on a merry run towards Chelton. On the way Cora had a chance to find out from the boy that the girls, Rose and Nellie, had walked away from their aunt’s place after nightfall. Also that he, and some other boys, had helped them carry their things, which, as far as the willow tree, included the crate of berries. Cora also learned that the girls had started out “to see the world,” and this last piece of information did not add to her peace of mind concerning the two orphans, who knew so little of this world, and its consequent dangers.
Jack was greatly taken with Andy, and promised to pick him up for a ride every time the Whirlwind came out Squaton way.
“Maybe you could get me a job,” said the little fellow, glancing up with unstinted admiration at Cora’s handsome brother.
“Believe I could,” replied Jack. “Let me see, what is your specialty – what can you do?”
“I am a caddy,” replied Andy proudly. “They say I’m just as quick as any of them to trace a ball.”
“Well now, that’s fine!” declared Jack. “We play golf out Chelton way. Suppose you just take a trolley ride in next Saturday, and we will see what we can do. Here is your car-fare. Be sure not to lose it, for trolley fellows are no respecters of persons.”
Meanwhile Bess and Belle were racing with Walter and Ed, and the afternoon was to them a time of that sort of enjoyment that comes unbidden, unplanned, and therefor proof against disappointment. Of course Cora was not by any means miserable, for no companion was to her more her chum than was Jack; then little Andy lent his novel personality to her surroundings, but still the thought that two young girls, Rose and Nellie, had deliberately run away, that they were practically accused of having taken a pair of diamond earrings valued at two hundred and fifty dollars, and that the case in which these stones seemed to have formerly reposed was actually found by Cora in the berry crate – was it any wonder that she did not laugh as lightly as did Bess Robinson? Or that she refused Ed Foster’s pressing invitation to go into Snow’s for an ice cream drink?
At the drug store Jack stopped the Whirlwind to allow little Andy to board a trolley car back to Squaton, but, as he left, Cora warned him to be very careful what he said about the runaways.
“Oh, don’t you never fear, miss,” he answered, crowding his negatives to make one good big “no.” “Rose and Nellie are my friends, and I know how to stick by ’em.”