The Motor Girls in the Mountains: or, The Gypsy Girl's Secret

CHAPTER XV
CONSTERNATION

It may have been the drowsy charm of the day, the soothing murmur of the brook, or the satisfying quality of the lunch, or perhaps a combination of the three, that made the little party under the trees so content to sit still or lie still for a considerable time after Cora left them.

“This is dolce far niente for fair,” murmured Jack lazily.

“I’d agree with you,” drawled Paul, “if I only knew what you meant. Talk United States.”

“Why, it means something like ‘the happiness of doing nothing,’ I believe,” explained Jack.

“It seems to make a hit with you,” remarked Belle.

“It does,” admitted Jack brazenly.

“I declare, you boys are like so many stuffed anacondas stretched out there,” observed Bess.

“We’re members of the Amalgamated Order of the Sons of Rest,” said Walter.

“Come along, Belle,” said Bess, rising. “If we stay here much longer we’ll grow to be as lazy as they are. Let’s go and find Cora. She’s the only real live wire in the whole party.”

“You do yourselves an injustice,” Jack called after them.

The girls went off in the direction that Cora had taken, keeping a sharp lookout as they went along.

“It’s queer that she hasn’t come back of her own accord by this time,” remarked Belle.

“She’s probably gathering flowers,” replied Bess. “There are so many beautiful varieties around here.” But Belle grew more uneasy every second.

“I’m going to call her,” she said, and gave the familiar yodel on which Cora herself had relied in vain.

But no answer came back, and the girls looked at each other with unrest in their eyes.

“Do you think she’s teasing us by pretending not to hear?” asked Belle.

“No,” replied her sister, “that wouldn’t be like Cora. She knows how that would worry us.”

“Let’s try both together,” suggested Belle, and they gave out a call in unison.

Again there was no response, and thoroughly frightened now, the girls ran back to their companions.

“Oh, Jack,” exclaimed Belle, “we can’t find Cora!”

“What!” cried the boys, leaping to their feet.

“It’s true,” confirmed Bess. “We’ve called her again and again, and we can’t get any answer.”

Jack grew pale beneath his coat of tan.

“It can’t be!” he cried. “You didn’t call loud enough. Cora, oh, Cora!” he shouted at the top of his voice.

Paul and Walter joined in with stentorian yells, but their united efforts had no result.

“There’s got to be some quick work here, fellows!” cried Jack, a cold perspiration breaking out all over him. “You girls stay right here,” he commanded. “Don’t stir from this spot. We three fellows will spread out in a semicircle, and beat up the woods in the general direction that Cora started out in. We’ll spread out as widely as we can, but we mustn’t get so far apart that we can’t hear each other shout. We’ll keep calling out all the time, so as to keep in touch with each other. If at the end of half an hour we haven’t found any trace of her, we’ll know that she isn’t in this section and we’ll hurry back to the girls here. Then we’ll raise a hue and cry and get the whole district out searching for her. Come along now and keep your voices going. And keep your eyes open, too. She may have met with an accident. Work, fellows! Work like mad!”

The others needed no urging, for they were wild with fear for Cora’s safety.

For the next half-hour they yelled until they were hoarse, and covered as much territory as they could. They peered into every bush and thicket. Not one of them but thought of the ugly monster they had seen in the road that morning. Suppose one of this tribe had attacked the girl who was so dear to all of them? Suppose at that very moment she were lying somewhere helpless and dying?

They looked everywhere in an agony of apprehension, but Cora’s wandering feet and her fall down the mountainside had already carried her far beyond sound or sight.

At the appointed time they rejoined the girls.

“No use,” announced Jack, in a voice that he tried to keep firm, despite the working of his features. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You stay here, Paul, until further notice. If Cora comes back, you have an easy trail from here to the mill. There’s a telephone there, and of course you’d call up Kill Kare at once with the good news. Walter and I will go back with Bess and Belle to the mill. Then Walter can drive the girls to Kill Kare in one of the cars, leave them with Aunt Betty, and bring Joel back with him to the mill. I’ll get all the men that I can at the mill to join in the search. Those lumberjacks know the woods thoroughly. Then, too, I’ll telephone to all the neighboring towns and camps and call for volunteers. We’ll comb these woods all day and all night until we find her.”

He and Walter hurried off with the girls, leaving Paul behind. They reached the sawmill in record time, and leaving Jack there to explain the situation and carry out the plans agreed upon, Walter drove the girls home.

It had been thought at first that it would be well to leave Aunt Betty in ignorance of the affair, in order to spare her misery. But on second thought this idea had been dismissed. It would not be fair to her, in a matter of such moment, to treat her as a child, even with the best of motives. Besides it was morally certain that the girls would not be able to conceal their grief from her, no matter how hard they tried.

She was waiting for them as they drove up and greeted them with her usual kindly smile.

“Where are the others?” she inquired. “And what on earth is the matter with you two girls?” she added in quick alarm as she saw their eyes red and swollen with weeping.

“Don’t be alarmed, Aunt Betty,” said Walter, as lightly as he could. “The girls are a little worried because Cora strayed off a little way into the woods and we haven’t found her. But she can’t have gone very far, and we’ll find her and have her back to Kill Kare in a jiffy. Jack and Paul are looking for her now, and I’m going back to help them.”

Aunt Betty gave a frightened exclamation and put her hand to her heart.

“Cora lost!” she ejaculated. “And in those awful woods! Oh, why did you let her get away from you? The poor darling girl!”

“We boys ought to be kicked from here to Jericho for letting her out of our sight,” said Walter in savage self-reproach. “But the mischief’s done now, and we’ve got to remedy it as best we can. You take care of the girls, Aunt Betty, while I go and hunt up Joel. I’m going to take him back with me.”

He hurried away, leaving the three to condole with each other. He was lucky enough to find Joel in the barn, and hastily explained the state of affairs.

The big backwoodsman was thoroughly alarmed. Better than any one else at Kill Kare, he knew the dangers that threatened any tyro that ventured into that wilderness. There had been cases within his own knowledge where hapless wanderers had perished, even while the woods were alive with searching parties.

He put his hunting knife in his belt, grasped his rifle and hurried back with Walter to the sawmill.

Meanwhile, Jack told his story to the foreman, and received his instant sympathy and promise to help. He called for volunteers, and a number of the men who were working in the mill responded promptly. Some of them had already started out when Walter arrived, and others quickly followed.

Baxter too was stirred by the story and came out of his shell of reticence. He volunteered to take charge of the telephoning, leaving Jack to go out with the searching parties.

“I know personally the authorities in the nearest towns,” he said, “and they’ll be glad to oblige me in this. You’re too excited and on edge to stay here, and I don’t wonder. You go ahead and look for your sister and leave this to me. Before long I’ll have a dozen parties out on the trail.”

Jack gladly availed himself of the offer, and, in company with Walter and Joel, hurried with feverish haste up the hillside and plunged into the woods.

CHAPTER XVI
HELP FROM THE SKY

It was full day when Cora awoke.

For a moment she looked around her, dazed. Then, as she realized where she was, she sprang from the rope mattress to the floor. All the events of the previous day rushed over her mind like a flood.

She was greatly rested and refreshed, although her muscles ached from contact with the rude mattress on which she had slept.

A sickening sense of her position sought to take possession of her, but she resolutely thrust it back. She would not begin this new day by being a coward.

She looked at her watch, but in the excitement of the day before she had forgotten to wind it, and it had stopped. She set it at a guess, and held it up to her ear a moment before she returned it to its place. Its lively ticking seemed to say: “Cheer up! cheer up! cheer up!”

She threw open the door and stepped outside. The sun had risen and was flooding the wilderness with glory. The cool morning air was delicious with the odor of the pines. She drank it in in great draughts, and it put new life and hope into her.

There was no sign of a stream anywhere near, and her ablutions had to be scanty. She found a little pool of water in a slight depression, and was able to wash her face and hands. She did not dare to drink of the standing water, but its external use refreshed her. Then she thought of breakfast.

It seemed a grim joke to call it that, when her whole food supply consisted of a soup cube and a chocolate tablet. But she hunted around in the vicinity of the cabin, and found some blackberry bushes that were fairly well laden. She picked the berries with great care, for she knew how fond snakes were of such localities, and she had a lively memory of the encounter with the rattlesnake the day before.

The berries and the chocolate tablet furnished her morning meal. It was not a substantial or satisfying one, and it required considerable self-control not to supplement it with the remaining soup cube. But after looking at it longingly, she put it back in her pocket. A time might come when it would be worth a king’s ransom to her.

And now that she had eaten, Cora bent all her thoughts on the problem of escape.

What ought she to do? Ought she to leave the cabin that had proved an ark of safety and try once more to find her way through the trackless woods? Suppose night came on again, and she still found herself not only in the woods but far from the cabin.

Or would it be wiser to stay right where she was until her friends should find her? She knew perfectly well how desperately they were hunting for her. Her heart ached as she realized the agony they were suffering. She could see the wild distress on the features of Jack and the other boys, the tear-stained faces of Bess and Belle. She knew that by this time they would have raised a hue and cry that would set scores of people searching for her. Would they not have as good a chance of finding her where she was as anywhere else in the woods? In fact, would not some of the lumberjacks know of this lonely cabin in the forest, and think perhaps that she had sought refuge there?

To stay where she was meant inaction, the hardest thing in the world for her just then. She would have nothing to do but to think, and she would eat her heart out with anxiety.

On the other hand, she faced the perils of the woods if she left the shelter of the cabin. Bears and panthers roamed the forest in the daytime as well as at night. Lynxes and wildcats, too, though less dangerous, were not to be despised, and there was the ever-present danger of snakes.

While she was pondering the best plan to pursue, she heard the humming of a motor.

She jumped to her feet in wild delight. Could that be the motor of a car with people searching for her? It must be. What else could it be?

But the next instant she realized, with a sinking of the heart, that no car could possibly penetrate those tangled woods.

Still the strident buzz persisted. It was a motor. She was too familiar with the sound to be mistaken.

She sprang to her feet, and as she did so a branch caught in the veil that was wound round her hat. She reached up to disentangle it, and her eyes rested on a tiny spot in the sky that was not a cloud, and that was momentarily growing larger.

Then she understood.

The motor was that of an aeroplane!

She ran to a more open spot where she could get a better view.

The aircraft was flying at a height of perhaps a thousand feet, and was moving at a high rate of speed. Nearer and nearer it came from out of the west, while Cora watched it with fascinated eyes.

Here was something that spoke of the great world that she seemed to have left behind. It was a link that brought her once more, if only for a moment, in contact with civilization.

And up there on a precarious perch, a mere atom in the blue immensity of the sky, was the aviator. How Cora envied him! No forest held him in its iron clutch. He was free as the bird whom he resembled in his flight. He could choose what path he would. He was free while she was a prisoner. Perhaps he was flying now straight toward friends and home and love. His roving eyes could perhaps at that moment see Camp Kill Kare, which she perhaps might never see again.

She dashed the tears from her eyes and looked again.

Now the aviator was flying lower. And his speed had perceptibly lessened. What did it mean? Was he seeking a more favorable current of air? Was he in doubt as to his course?

Louder and louder grew the buzz of the motor, and lower and lower came the plane. Like a giant bird, it was now describing great circles, and with every one its distance from the earth was lessened.

Cora’s heart seemed as though it would leap out of her body. There was no doubt now of the aviator’s intention. He was looking for a place to descend!

But where? If he came down anywhere near where she was standing, he would be caught in the trees. But somewhere there must be an open spot that his keen eyes had descried, and it was there that he intended to make a landing.

Cora ran in the direction indicated by the plane.

She had gone perhaps two hundred yards, when she came to a large plateau which bore marks of having been swept at some time by a fire. So fierce had been the conflagration that trees and undergrowth alike had been burned to ashes in the holocaust. Even the stumps had crumbled into ashes, and there were several places in the wide expanse where a skillful aviator could make a landing without danger of injuring his machine.

As Cora came out into the open she saw that the choice had already been made. There was one long, graceful swoop, and then the giant flyer settled on the ground with scarcely a jar, ran for fifty feet or so on its wheels and stopped.

The aviator climbed out, rather painfully, as though cramped from long sitting. He rubbed his legs and flung his arms about vigorously as though to restore the circulation. Then he took some tools from a box under the seat and began to make some repairs in the motor.

His back was toward Cora, and the latter was running across the field to him when she suddenly stopped.

Who knew what this man might be? She was alone in this wilderness. Could she trust him?

But her hesitation was only momentary. Most men were chivalrous.

The aviator was on his knees as she approached. He heard her coming and sprang to his feet, very visibly startled.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” panted Cora, with an attempt to smile. “I saw you come down here and I ran over as fast as I could. I had to see you, because I’m lost out here in the woods, and I was sure you would help me.”

He was of medium height. The garments in which he was wrapped to protect him from the intense cold of the upper air made it impossible to tell whether his form was large or slender.

“You poor child!” exclaimed the stranger in great surprise and sympathy. “Don’t be afraid to tell me all about it,” he said. “Look!”

He took off his hat, and Cora’s startled eyes saw two large braids of hair coiled tightly about his head.

The aviator was a woman!

The next moment she had her arms about Cora, and the latter was sobbing as though her heart would break.

“There, there, my dear,” said the newcomer, patting Cora’s disheveled hair, “go ahead and cry all you want to. It will do you good, and I know just how you feel. But you’re all right now.”

The revulsion from despair to joy had been so great that it was some minutes before Cora recovered her self-control.

“Oh,” she exclaimed at last, as she smiled radiantly through her tears, “I’m so happy that I can hardly bear it! Surely God has sent you to me.”

“I believe so,” smiled the other, who herself was a mere girl, not much older than Cora herself. “But now go ahead and tell me just how you came to be lost.”

She listened with the greatest sympathy and interest while Cora narrated all that had happened to her since the day before.

Then in her turn she explained that she was making a cross-country flight from Chicago to New York. She was bent on beating the best record ever made for the distance by either man or woman, and was in a fair way to do it.

“My engine began working badly a little while ago,” she explained. “The ignition was balky and I thought I’d better come down and fix it before it got worse.”

Cora looked at her with admiration, and expressed it warmly.

“I don’t see how you dare to take such risks,” she said. “It must take a tremendous amount of courage.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the other modestly. “But there’s a lot of satisfaction in beating the men at their own game,” she added mischievously.

“We women all owe you a lot for doing it,” laughed Cora happily. “It does the men good to have some of the conceit taken out of them. But just the same I startled you when I appeared so suddenly at your side,” she added, with a spark of mischief in her eyes.

“Yes,” admitted the other. “I didn’t know that I was within miles of anybody at all you see.”

“I’m sorry,” murmured Cora, but the sportive look remained on her face.

“Well, now, I’ll just put the finishing touch on the engine and then I’ll be ready,” said the aviatrix, who had introduced herself as Ruth Moore. “And you shall go with me.”

“Me! With you?” gasped Cora.

“Yes. Why not? My machine has an extra seat. And you want to get out of this wilderness.”

Miss Moore set to work, Cora assisting her, and the aircraft was soon ready to continue its flight.

“I never thought I’d be taking my first ride in an aircraft under such conditions,” remarked Cora as her companion strapped her in.

“You’re sure you won’t be afraid?” asked Miss Moore, looking at her searchingly.

“I’m so happy at getting away from these awful woods that I’m not afraid of anything,” replied Cora. “Then, too, I’m used to motor cars and motor boats, and that ought to help me in keeping my nerve. You needn’t be afraid. I won’t make any fuss.”

“You’re a girl after my own heart,” laughed Miss Moore, as she adjusted herself in her seat. “Sit perfectly still now and leave everything to me.”

She touched a lever and the aeroplane ran along a few yards and then soared skyward.

CHAPTER XVII
A JOYFUL REUNION

Cora gasped as the aircraft mounted into the sky and she saw the earth falling away from her. It was the newest and greatest thrill in her experience.

Her first sensation was that of detachment. She seemed to be floating in a sea of ether. Everything was impalpable, intangible. It seemed to be her astral body that was moving through space. All that was material seemed to have been thrown aside like a cast-off garment.

Her next impression was that of silence. All earthly noises had been stilled. The song of birds, the rustling of leaves that had made the forest vocal had died away. It seemed as though the world had been suddenly stricken dumb. The only sound was that of the motor with its monotonous hum.

“Like it?” called out Miss Moore, looking at her with a smile.

“Do I?” replied Cora. “It’s just heavenly!”

The aviatrix gazed at her with approval. She had found a kindred spirit.

“You’re a thoroughbred,” she said. “Many girls would be frightened to death. They’d be begging me to descend.”

“No danger of my doing that,” laughed Cora. “I could go on like this forever, if I were not so anxious to get back to my friends.”

They were flying now at a height of five hundred feet, and the air, despite the August sun, was cold. Miss Moore had given Cora a coat and a pair of gloves from her kit, however, so that she was fairly well protected.

“What a glorious view!” exclaimed Cora ecstatically, as the vast panorama of field and forest unrolled itself as far as the eye could see. “Oh, how I envy you!”

Miss Moore smiled.

“It is beautiful,” she assented. “But I’m kept so busy with listening to my engine and shaping my course that I don’t have as much time to enjoy it as I would like to. That’s one of the advantages of being a passenger. But look around now, and see if you can recognize your camp. I’ll make a landing as near to it as I can.”

Cora looked eagerly about.

“There’s the sawmill!” she exclaimed. “And there’s the road that leads from there to Kill Kare,” she added. “All you have to do is to follow that road south for a few miles, and we’ll come to the house. And there’s a big cleared space around it that will make a splendid landing place for the aeroplane.”

Miss Moore turned in the indicated direction, and followed the road that Cora had pointed out.

“I can never thank you enough for rescuing me as you have,” said Cora, her voice broken with emotion.

“It’s made me almost as happy as it has you,” returned Miss Moore. “It will be one of the pleasantest memories of my life.”

“But it’s delayed you on your trip, hasn’t it?”

“Suppose it has?” replied Miss Moore. “Do you suppose I would have hesitated on that account to bring you home? But set your mind at rest on that score. I was an hour or more ahead of my schedule anyway. You see,” she added gaily, “we girls can give the men a handicap and yet beat them out.”

Cora laughed gleefully.

“Of course we can!” she exclaimed. “But oh, Miss Moore, there’s dear old Kill Kare now! See, over there among the trees.”

“I see it,” was the reply, as Miss Moore’s practised eye looked out for the landing place.

She touched a lever and began to descend in a sweeping curve.

When Jack and Walter, together with Joel, reached the picnic ground, they found that Paul had not been idle. He had been searching for Cora in ever widening circles during every moment of their absence, but a glance at his disconsolate face showed that he had learned nothing.

Some of the workers from the mill had already scattered in the woods, going in different directions. Other volunteers came straggling in until the number had reached a score. Joel, because of his knowledge of the woods, was put in general charge of the search.

Anticipating that Cora might not be found before dark closed in, torches were prepared in large numbers and distributed among the men. It was arranged that the place where they now were should be the general rendezvous, at which all the searching parties would report, and to which Cora should be brought as soon as found.

Most of the men had either rifles or revolvers, and a copious supply of ammunition was furnished by the foreman of the mill. Joel had brought from the barn a number of skyrockets that had been left over from the previous Fourth of July celebration, and it was arranged that one of these should be set off every hour through the night. By following the course of this and marking the direction from which it came, the searching parties could keep the location of the camp in mind. It was hoped also that Cora might see them and thereby be guided in the right direction.

Paul had driven back to Kill Kare, and had secured unlimited food and coffee for the refreshment of the searchers, in case the hunt was prolonged.

All through the waning afternoon the search continued. And with the coming of night it doubled in intensity. Fresh parties took the place of exhausted ones that came straggling back. The woods were alive with torches.

It seemed certain that, with so many hunters, success ought to have been almost certain. But Joel knew that twenty times that number might search in that vast wilderness without running across the one they sought. At best it was a gamble, with the odds against them.

Morning came and found the boys fairly dropping with fatigue and torn with grief and disappointment. Jack was almost out of his mind with reflecting on his sister’s plight.

“We’ll drive back to Kill Kare and telegraph for bloodhounds,” he said. “Joel says that there are a couple he knows of at the county seat. If they’re sent on the early train to the nearest town they ought to get here by noon. We’ll put them to work at once, and see what they can do.”

They left Joel in charge of the search, and drove back gloomily to Camp Kill Kare.

There was plenty of “care” there that morning. Neither Aunt Betty nor the girls had been able to sleep. The thought of Cora out in the wilderness all through that long night had driven them fairly frantic.

And their hearts sank still further when the boys came back to report their failure.

“We ought to telegraph to your mother at once,” declared Aunt Betty, wringing her hands.

“It would almost kill mother to get a telegram like that,” said Jack moodily. “It wouldn’t do any good, and in the meantime Cora may be found. We’ll wait, anyway, until after we’ve tried the bloodhounds.”

They ate briefly and scantily of breakfast, for none of them had any heart for food. Then they went outside to make ready for their trip to the rendezvous.

The boys were piling into the car when Belle gave a sudden exclamation and pointed upward.

“There’s an aeroplane!” she cried.

They followed her gaze and saw the aircraft coming toward them at a rapid rate.

As they looked, they saw that it was beginning to slacken speed and at the same time was coming closer to earth.

“Looks as though it were going to land somewhere about here,” remarked Jack. “Perhaps it’s having trouble.”

As it drew closer they could see that there were two people in it.

“And one of them’s a woman!” cried Walter, as he noted the fluttering of a skirt.

“She’s waving at us!” exclaimed Belle excitedly. Then her voice rose to a scream.

“It’s Cora! It’s Cora!”

“Cora!” shrieked Bess.

“Cora!” echoed Aunt Betty.

As for the boys, they gave one look and tumbled out of the automobile, yelling, shouting, thumping each other on the back. The girls sobbed and laughed, and hugged Aunt Betty and each other. None of them had the least idea of what they were doing or saying, and none of them cared. They were fairly mad with joy.

They ran out under the plane as it circled around looking for its landing. And when it settled down as gracefully as a swan and finally stopped, there was a wild rush for it, and the next second Cora was unstrapped, dragged from her seat and was being devoured with hugs and kisses.

It was all incoherent and frantic and broken, as great revulsions of feeling have a way of being. It was impossible to find words adequate to their delight, and it is safe to say that at that moment there was no happier group of people than that which wept and laughed on the lawn at Camp Kill Kare.

The aviatrix sat looking on through all this tumult with a happy smile.

As soon as Cora could extricate herself from the arms that clung about her as though they never intended to let her go, she turned to her deliverer.

“You see what you have done for me,” she laughed through her tears.

“They certainly seem glad to see you,” was the response.

They all crowded around and showered her rescuer with thanks, as Cora introduced them. They were astounded to find that it was to a woman that Cora owed her safety. Most of them had heard her name in connection with flying exploits, and they were earnest in their compliments and congratulations.

When a few minutes later Miss Moore resumed her flight, every eye remained fixed on the plane until at last it melted into space. Then they resumed their rejoicings over the wanderer who had been so strangely brought back from the wilderness.