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diff --git a/old/14546.txt b/old/14546.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..81a952b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14546.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5728 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp, by Alice B. +Emerson + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp + +Author: Alice B. Emerson + +Release Date: December 31, 2004 [eBook #14546] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP*** + + +E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) + + + +BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP + +Or, The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne + +by + +ALICE B. EMERSON + +Author of _Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm_, _Betty Gordon at Boarding +School_, "Ruth Fielding Series," etc. + +Illustrated + +New York +Cupples & Leon Company +Publishers + + + + + + + +Books for Girls +By ALICE B. EMERSON +12mo. Cloth. Illustrated + +BETTY GORDON SERIES + + BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM + BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON + BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL + BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL + BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP + +RUTH FIELDING SERIES + + RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL + RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL + RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP + RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT + RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH + RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND + RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM + RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES + RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES + RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE + RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE + RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE + RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS + RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT + RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND + RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST + RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTH-WEST + RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE + +Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York +1922 + + + + +[Illustration: THE WHOLE PARTY TURNED OUT GAILY. +"Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp."] + + + + +CONTENTS + + CHAPTER + + I THE ORANGE SILK OVER-BLOUSE + + II THE FRUITS OF TANTALUS + + III OFF FOR A GALLOP + + IV A SECOND IDA BELLETHORNE + + V MEASLES + + VI A DISAPPEARANCE + + VII ALL MRS. STAPLES COULD SAY + + VIII UNCLE DICK MUST BE TOLD + + IX THE LIVE WIRE OCTETTE + + X BEAUTIFUL SNOW + + XI STALLED, AND WITHOUT A DOCTOR + + XII THE TUNNEL + + XIII AN ALARM + + XIV THE MOUNTAIN HUT + + XV THE LOST GIRL + + XVI THE CAMP ON THE OVERLOOK + + XVII OFF ON SNOWSHOES + + XVIII GREAT EXCITEMENT + + XIX THE EMERGENCY + + XX BETTY'S RIDE + + XXI BETTY COMES THROUGH + + XXII ON THE BRINK OF DISCOVERY + + XXIII CAN IT BE DONE? + + XXIV TWENTY MILES OF GRADE + + XXV ON THE DECK OF THE SAN SALVADOR + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE ORANGE SILK OVER-BLOUSE + + +"This doesn't look like the street I came up through!" exclaimed Betty +Gordon. "These funny streets, with their dear old-fashioned houses, all +seem, so much alike! And if there are any names stuck up at the corners +they must hide around behind the post when I come by like squirrels in the +woods. + +"I declare, there is a queer little shop stuck right in there between two +of those refined-looking, if poverty-stricken, boarding-houses. Dear me! +how many come-down-in-the-world families have to take 'paying guests' to +help out. Not like the Peabodys, but really needy people. What is it Bobby +calls 'em? 'P.G.s'--'paying guests.' + +"I was a paying guest at Bramble Farm," ruminated Betty, still staring at +the little shop and the houses that flanked it on either side. "And I +certainly had a hard time there. Bobby says that these people in +Georgetown are the remains of Southern aristocracy that were cast up on +this beach as long ago as the Civil War. Unlike the castaways on cannibal +islands that we read about, Bobby says these castaways live off the +'P.G.s'--and that's what Joseph Peabody tried to do! He tried to live off +me. There! I knew he was a cannibal. + +"Oh! Isn't that sweet?" + +Her sudden cry had no reference to the army of boarding-house keepers in +the neighborhood, nor to any signpost that pointed the way back to the +little square where the soldiers' monument stood and where Betty was to +meet Carter, the Littells' chauffeur, and the big limousine. For she was +still staring at the window of the little shop. + +"What a lovely orange color! And that starburst pattern on the front! It's +lovely! What a surprising thing to see in a little neighborhood store like +this. I'm going to buy it if it fits me and I've money enough left in my +purse." + +Impetuous as usual, Betty Gordon marched at once to the door of the little +side-street shop. The most famous of such neighborhood shops, as described +by Hawthorne, Betty knew all about. She had studied it in her English +readings at Shadyside only the previous term. But there was no +Gingerbread Man in this shop window! + +In the middle of the display window, which was divided into four not very +large panes, was arranged on a cross of bright metal a knitted over-blouse +of the very newest burnt orange shade. The work was exquisitely done, as +Betty could see even from outside the shop, and she did hope it would fit +her. + +On pushing open the door a silvery bell--not an annoying, jangling +bell--played a very lively tune to attract the attention of a girl who sat +at the back of the shop, her head bent close above the work on which she +was engaged. Although the bell stopped quivering when Betty closed the +door, the girl did not look up from her work. + +Sharp-eyed Betty saw that the stranger was knitting, and she seemed to be +engaged upon another over-blouse like that in the window, save that the +silk in her lap was of a pretty dark blue shade. Betty saw her full, red +lips move placidly. The girl was counting over her work and she actually +was so deeply immersed in the knitting that she had not heard the bell or +realized that a possible customer had entered. + +"Ahem!" coughed Betty. + +"And that's twenty-four, and--cross--and two--and four----" The girl was +counting aloud. + +"Why," murmured Betty Gordon, her eyes dancing, "she's like Libbie +Littell when she is somnambulating--I guess that is the right word. +Anyway, when Libbie walks in her sleep she talks just like that---- + +"_Ahem!_" + +This time Betty almost shouted the announcement of her presence in the +shop and finally startled the other girl out of her abstraction. The +latter looked up, winked her eyes very fast, and began to roll up her work +in a clean towel. Betty noticed that her eyes were very blue and were +shaded by dark lashes. + +"I beg your pardon," said the shopgirl. "Have you been waiting long?" She +came forward quickly and with an air of assurance. Her look was not a +happy one, however, and Betty wondered at her sadness. "What can I show +you?" asked the shopgirl. + +She was not much older than Betty herself, but she was more self-possessed +and seemed much more experienced than even Betty, much as the latter had +traveled and varied as her adventures had been during the previous year +and a half. But now the stranger's questions brought Betty to a renewed +comprehension of what she had actually entered the shop for. + +"I'm just crazy about that blouse in the window--the orange one," she +cried. "I know you must have made it yourself, for you are knitting +another, I see, and that is going to be pretty, too. But I want this +orange one--if it doesn't cost too much." + +"The price is twelve dollars. I hope it is not too much," said the +shopgirl timidly. "I sold one for all of that before I left Liverpool." + +Betty was as much interested now in the other girl as she was in the +orange silk over-blouse. + +"Why!" she exclaimed, "you are English, aren't you? And you and your +family can't long have been over here." + +"I have been here only two months," said the girl quietly. + +There was a certain dignity in her manner that impressed Betty. She had +very dark, smoothly arranged hair and a beautiful complexion. She was +plump and strongly made, and she walked gracefully. Betty had noted that +fact when she came forward from the back of the shop. + +"But you didn't come over from England all alone?" asked the curious young +customer, neglecting the blouse for her interest in the girl who spread +out its gossamer body for approval. + +"It took only seven days from Liverpool to New York," said the other girl, +looking at Betty steadily, still with that lack of animation in her face. +"I might have come alone; but it was better for me to travel with +somebody, owing to the emigration laws of your country. I traveled as +nursemaid to a family of Americans. But I separated from them in New York +and came here." + +"Oh!" Betty exclaimed, not meaning to be impertinent. "You had friends +here in Georgetown?" + +"I thought I had a relative in Washington. I had heard so. I failed to +find her so--so I found this shop, kept by a woman who came from my +county, and she gave me a chance to wait shop," said the English girl +wearily. + +"Mrs. Staples lets me knit these blouses to help out, for she cannot pay +large wages. The trade isn't much, you see. This one, I am sure, will look +lovely on you. I hope the price is not too much?" + +"Not a bit, if it will fit me and I have that much money in my purse," +replied Betty, who for a girl of her age had a good deal of money to spend +quite as she pleased. + +She opened her bag hastily and took out her purse. The purse was made of +cut steel beads and, as Betty often said, "everything stuck to it!" +Something clung to it now as she drew it forth, but neither Betty nor the +shopgirl saw the dangling twist of tissue paper. + +"And I'll buy that other one you are knitting," Betty hurried to say as +she shook the purse and dug into it for the silver as well as the bills +she had left after her morning's shopping. "I know that pretty blue will +just look dear on a friend of mine." + +She was busy with her money, and the English girl looked on hopefully. So +neither saw the twist of tissue paper fly off the dangling fringe of beads +and land with a soft little "plump" on the floor by the counter. + +"Dear me!" breathed the shopgirl, in reply to Betty's promise, "I shall +like that. It will help a good bit--and everything so high in this +country. A dollar, as you say, goes hardly anywhere! And this one will fit +you beautifully. You can see yourself." + +"Of course it will. Do it up at once," cried the excited Betty. "Here is +the money. Twelve dollars. I was afraid I didn't have enough. And be sure +and keep that blue one for my friend. Maybe she will come for it herself, +so give me a card or something so she can find the place. Shall she ask +for you?" + +"If you please," and the English girl ran to write a card. She brought it +back with the neatly made parcel of the over-blouse and slipped it into +Betty Gordon's hand. The latter thanked her and looked swiftly at the name +the other had written. + +"Good-bye, Ida Bellethorne," she said, smiling. "What a fine name! I hope +I can sell some more blouses for you. I'll try." + +The shopgirl made a little bow and the silvery bell jangled again as Betty +opened the door. Betty looked back at the English girl, and the latter +looked after Betty. They were both interested, much interested, the one in +the other, and for reasons that neither suspected. Ida Bellethorne was not +much like the girls Betty knew. She seemed even more sedate than the +seniors at Shadyside where Betty had attended school with the Littell +girls since the term had opened in September. + +Ida Bellethorne was not, however, in any such happy condition as the girls +Betty Gordon knew. She might have told the warm-hearted customer who had +bought the over-blouse a story that would indeed have spurred Betty's +interest to an even greater degree. But the English girl was naturally of +a secretive disposition, and she was among strangers. + +She turned back into the store when Betty had gone and the door, swinging +shut, set the bell above it jingling again. A door opened at the end of +the room and a tall, aggressive woman in a long, straight, gingham frock +strode into the room. She had very black, heavy brows that met over her +nose and this, with the thick spectacles she wore, gave her a very stern +expression. + +"What's the matter with that bell, Ida?" she demanded, in a sharp voice. +"It seems to ring enough, but it doesn't ring any money into my +cash-drawer as I can see." + +"I sold my over-blouse out of the window, Mrs. Staples," said the girl. + +"Humph! What else?" + +"Er--what else? Why--why, she said she might come back for the one I am +making." + +"Humph!" ejaculated Mrs. Staples a second time. "I don't see as that will +fill my cellar with coal. Couldn't you sell her anything else out of the +shop?" + +"She didn't say she wanted anything else," said Ida timidly. + +"Oh! She didn't? You'll never make a sales-woman till you learn to sell +'em things they don't want but that the shop wants to sell. And I was +foolish enough to tell you that you could have all you could make out of +those blouses. Oh, well! I'm always being foolishly generous. Come! What's +that on the floor? Pick it up." + +Mrs. Staples was very near-sighted, yet nothing seemed to escape her +observation. She pointed to the twist of white tissue paper on the floor +which had been twitched out of Betty Gordon's bag. Ida stooped as she was +commanded and got the paper. She was about to toss it into the +waste-basket behind the counter when she realized that there was some hard +object wrapped in the paper. + +"What is it?" asked Mrs. Staples, in her quick, stern way, as she saw Ida +open the twist of paper. + +"Why, I--Oh, Mrs. Staples! look what this is, will you?" + +She held out in the palm of her hand a little, heart-shaped platinum +locket with a tiny but very beautiful diamond set in the center of its +face, and when she turned it over on the back was engraved the intertwined +letters "E.G." + +"For the land's sake!" ejaculated Mrs. Staples, coming nearer and grabbing +the locket out of Ida's hand. "Where did you get this?" + +"Why, Mrs. Staples, you saw me pick it up." + +"But how did it come there?" + +"Oh, I know!" Ida Bellethorne cried, with sudden animation. "That girl +stood right there. She opened her bag to get out her purse and she must +have flirted it out to the floor." + +"Humph!" said the storekeeper doubtfully. + +"Give it to me, Mrs. Staples, and I'll run after her," cried the English +girl anxiously. + +"Humph!" This was Mrs. Staples' stock ejaculation and expressed a variety +of emotions. Just now it expressed doubt. "And then you'd come back and +tell me how thankful she was to get it, while maybe it doesn't belong to +her at all. No," said Mrs. Staples, "let her come looking for it if she +lost it." + +"Oh!" murmured Ida Bellethorne doubtfully. + +"Perhaps she will never guess she dropped it here." + +"That's no skin off your nose," declared the vulgar shopwoman. "You've no +rights in this thing, anyway. What's found on the floor of my shop is just +as much mine as what's on the counter or in the trays behind the counter. +I know my rights. Until whoever lost this thing comes in and proves +property, it's mine." + +"Oh, Mrs. Staples!" cried her employee. "Is that the law in this country? +It doesn't seem honest." + +"Humph! It's honest enough for me. And who are you, I'd like to know, a +greenhorn fresh from the old country, trying to tell me what's honest and +what ain't? If that girl comes back----" + +"Yes, Mrs. Staples?" + +"You sell her that other blouse if you want to, or anything else out of +the shop. But you keep your mouth shut about this locket unless she asks +for it. Understand? I won't have no tattle-tales about me; and if you +don't learn when to keep your mouth open and when to keep it shut, I'll +have no use at all for you in my shop. Remember that now!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE FRUITS OF TANTALUS + + +Betty Gordon had glanced hastily at her wrist watch as she went out of the +little store. It was very near the minute appointed for her to meet Carter +at the square. And she had forgotten to ask that girl, Ida Bellethorne +(such an Englishy name!), how to find her rendezvous with the Littells' +chauffeur. + +She hesitated, tempted to run back. Had she done so she would have been in +time to see Ida pick up the little locket that Uncle Dick had given Betty +that very Christmas and which she carried in her bag because it seemed the +safest place to treasure it while she was visiting. Her trunk was at +Shadyside. + +So it is that the very strangest threads of romance are woven in this +world. And Betty Gordon had found before this that her life, at least, was +patterned in a very wonderful way. Since she had been left an orphan and +had found her only living relative, Mr. Richard Gordon, her father's +brother, such a really delightful guardian the girl had been to so many +places and her adventures had been so exciting that her head was +sometimes quite in a whirl when she tried to think of all the happenings. + +Uncle Dick's contracts with certain oil promotion companies made it +impossible as yet for him to have what Betty thought of as "a real, +sure-enough home." He traveled here, there and everywhere. Betty loved to +travel too; but Uncle Dick was forced to go to such rough and wild places +that at first he could not see how Betty, a twelve year old, gently bred +girl, could go with him. + +Therefore he had to find a home for his little ward for a few months, and +remembering that an old school friend of his was married to the owner of a +big and beautiful farm, he arranged for Betty to stay with the Peabodys at +Bramble Farm. Her adventures as a "paying guest" in the Peabody household +are fully related in the first book of the series, entitled "Betty Gordon +at Bramble Farm," and a very exciting experience it was. + +In spite, however, of the disagreeable and miserly Joseph Peabody, Betty +would not have missed her adventures at the farm for anything. In the +first place, she met Bob Henderson there, and a better boy-chum a girl +never had than Bob. Although Bob had been born and brought up in a +poorhouse, and at first knew very little about himself and his relatives, +even a girl like Betty could see that this "poorhouse rat" as he was +slurringly called by Joseph Peabody, possessed natural refinement and a +very bright mind. + +Betty and Bob became loyal friends, and when Betty, in the second volume, +called "Betty Gordon in Washington," had fairly to run away from Bramble +Farm to meet her Uncle Dick in the national capital, badly treated Bob ran +away likewise, on the track of somebody who knew about his mother's +relatives. Betty's adventures in Washington began with a most astonishing +confusion of identities through which she met the Littells--a charming +family consisting of a Mr. Littell, who was likewise an "Uncle Dick"; a +motherly Mrs. Littell, who never found young people--either boys or +girls--troublesome; three delightful sisters named Louise, Roberta, and +Esther Littell; and a Cousin Elizabeth Littell, who good-naturedly becomes +"Libbie" instead of "Betty" so as not to conflict in anybody's mind with +"Betty" Gordon. + +The fun they all had in Washington while Betty waited for the appearance +of her real Uncle Dick, especially after Bob Henderson turned up and was +likewise adopted for the time being by the Littell family, is detailed to +the full in that second story. And at last both Betty and Bob got news +from Oklahoma, where Mr. Richard Gordon was engaged, which set them +traveling westward in a great hurry--Betty to meet Uncle Dick at Flame +City and her boy chum hard on the trace of two elusive aunts of his, his +mother's sisters, who appeared to be the only relatives he had in the +world. + +Betty and Bob discovered the aunts just in time to save them from selling +their valuable but unsuspected oil holdings to sharpers, and in "Betty +Gordon in the Land of Oil" one of the most satisfactory results that Betty +saw accomplished was the selling of the old farm for Bob and his aunts for +ninety thousand dollars. + +Uncle Dick decided that Betty must go to a good school in the fall, and +they chose Shadyside because the Littells and their friends were going +there. Bob, now on a satisfactory financial plane, arranged to attend the +Salsette Military Academy which was right across the lake from the girls' +boarding school, Uncle Dick, who was now Bob's guardian, having advised +this. + +Hastening back from Oklahoma, while Uncle Dick was called to Canada to +examine a promising oil field there, Betty and Bob met the girls and boys +they previously got acquainted with in Washington and some other friends, +and Betty at least began her boarding school experience with considerable +confidence as well as delight. + +It was not all plain sailing as subsequent events prove; yet in "Betty +Gordon at Boarding School," the fourth volume of the series, Betty had +many; pleasant adventures as well as school trials. She was particularly +interested in the fortunes of Norma and Alice Guerin, who had been Betty's +friends when she was living at Bramble Farm; and it was through Betty's +good offices that great happiness came to the Guerin girls and their +parents. + +The hospitable Littells had invited their daughters' school friends (and, +to quote Bob, there was a raft of them!) to come to Fairfields for the +Christmas holidays, and at the close of the first term they bade good-bye +to Shadyside and Salsette and took the train for Washington. + +Fairfields, which was over the river in Virginia, was one of the most +delightful homes Betty Gordon had ever seen. It was closer to Georgetown +than to the nation's capital, and that is why Betty on this brisk morning +was shopping in the old-fashioned town and had come across the orange silk +over-blouse in the window of the neighborhood shop. + +It was really too bad that Betty did not run back to the shop to ask for +directions to the soldiers' monument square. She would have been just in +season to interrupt the scene between Ida Bellethorne and Mrs. Staples and +before the latter had threatened Ida with dismissal if she told Betty +about the tiny locket. When she came to find it out, this loss of Uncle +Dick's present, was going to trouble Betty Gordon very much. + +"Where in the world can that soldiers' monument be?" murmured Betty to +herself as, after hurrying on for a distance and having turned two +corners, she found herself in a neighborhood that looked stranger than +ever to her. + +Not a soul was in sight at that moment, but presently she saw a small +negro boy shuffling along, drawing a piece of chalk on the various houses +and stoops as he passed. + +"Boy, come here!" called Betty to the little fellow. + +At once the colored boy stopped the use of his piece of chalk and stared +at her with wide-open eyes. + +"I ain't done nuffin, lady, 'deed I ain't," he mumbled, and then began to +back away. + +"I only want to know where the soldiers' monument is," she returned. "Do +you know?" + +"Soldiers' monument am over that way," and the boy waved his hand to one +side, where there was a hilly street, and then hurried out of sight. + +"Oh, dear! that's not very definite," sighed Betty. + +But now she ran down the hilly street at a chance, turned a crooked corner +and came plump upon the square and the soldiers' monument. There was the +Littells' big, closed car just turning into the square from another +street. + +"What luck! Fancy!" gasped Betty, running swiftly to the place where the +big car stopped. + +"You're better than prompt, Miss Betty," said the driver of the car. "I am +glad I hadn't to wait for you, for Mister Bob told me particular to get +you home for luncheon. You'll be wanted." + +"What for? Do tell me what for, Carter!" Betty cried. "I thought Bob +Henderson was awfully mysterious this morning at breakfast. Do you know +what is in the wind, Carter?" + +"Not me, Miss Betty," said the chauffeur, and having tucked the robes +about her he shut the door and got into his own place. But before he +started the car he said through the open window: "I have to delay a +little, Miss. Must drive around by the bank and pick up Mr. Gordon. But I +will hurry home after that." + +"Oh! Uncle Dick did go to the bank here," murmured Betty, nestling back +into the cushions and robes. "I wonder if he is going to stop off at +Mountain Camp on his way back to Canada. Oh!" and she sighed more deeply, +"if we could only go up there with him----" + +The car stopped before the gray stone bank building. Uncle Dick seemed to +have been on the watch for them, he came out so promptly. Although his +hair was graying, especially about the temples, Mr. Richard Gordon was by +no means an old looking man. He lived much out of doors and spent such +physical energy only as his out-of-door life yielded, instead of living on +his reserve strength as so many office-confined men do. Betty had learned +all about that in physics. She was thoroughly an out-of-door girl herself! + +"Oh, Uncle Dick!" she cried when he stepped into the car, "are you really +and truly getting ready to go north again?" + +"Must, my dear. Have still some work to do in spite of the ice and snow in +Canada. And, as I told you, I mean to stop and see Jonathan Canary." + +"That is what I mean, Uncle Dick," she cried. "Will you go to that lovely +Mountain Camp all alo-o-one?" + +"Mercy me, child, you never saw it--and in winter! You do not know whether +it is lovely or not." + +"It must be," said Betty warmly, "You have explained it all so beautifully +to us. The lovely lake surrounded by hills, and the long toboggan slide, +and the skating, and fishing for pickerel through the ice, and--Oh, dear +me! if we can't go----" + +"If who can't go?" demanded her uncle in considerable amazement. + +"Why, me. And Bob. And Bobby Littell and Louise, and the Tucker +twins, and all the rest. We were talking about it last night. +It--would--be--won--der--ful!" + +"Well, of all the--Why, Betty!" exclaimed Mr. Gordon, "you know you must +go right back to school." + +"Yes, I know," sighed Betty. "It is like the fruits of Tantalus, isn't it? +We read about him in Greek mythology--poor fellow! He stood up to his chin +in water and over his head hung the loveliest fruits. But when he stooped +to get a drink the water receded, and when he stood on tiptoe to reach the +fruit, they receded too. It was dreadful! And Mountain Camp, where your +friend Mr. Canary lives, is just like that. Uncle Dick. For us it is the +fruits of Tantalus." + +Uncle Dick stared at her for a moment, then he burst out laughing. But +Betty Gordon remained perfectly serious until they arrived at Fairfields. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +OFF FOR A GALLOP + + +The crowd at the Littell lunch table (and it was literally a "crowd" +although the Guerin girls and some of the other over Christmas visitors +had already gone home) hailed Betty's arrival vociferously. + +"How do you stand it?" asked Uncle Dick, smiling at Mrs. Littell who +presided at one end of the table. "I should think they would drive you +distracted." + +Mrs. Littell laughed jovially and beamed at her young company. "I am only +distracted when Mr. Littell and I are here alone," she rejoined. "This is +what keeps us young." + +"You've only a shake to eat in, Betty," exclaimed Bobby Littell, who was +very dark and very gay and very much alive all of the time. "Do hurry. +We're 'most through." + +"Dear me! what can I eat in a shake?" murmured Betty, as the soup was +placed before her. "And I am hungry." + +"A milk-shake should be absorbed in a shake," observed Bob Henderson, +grinning at her from across the table. + +"I need more than that, Bob, after what I have been through this morning. +Such a job as shopping is! And oh, Bobby! I've got the loveliest thing to +show you. You'll just squeal!" + +"What is it?" cried Bobby, eager and big-eyed at once. "Do hurry your +luncheon, Betty. We've all got to change, and it's almost time." + +"Time for what?" demanded Betty, trying to eat daintily but hurriedly. + +But Mrs. Littell called them to order here. "Give Betty time to eat +properly. Whatever it is, Betty, it can't begin until you are ready." + +"I'm through, Mother," said Bobby. "May I be excused? I'll have to help +Esther, you know. You'd better forget your appetite, Betty," she whispered +as she passed the latter on her way out of the room. "Time and tide wait +for no man--or girl either." + +"What does she mean?" wondered Betty, and became a little anxious as the +others began to rise, too, and were excused. "Have we got to change? What +is it--the movies? Or a party? Of course, it isn't skating? Even if there +was a little scale of ice last night, it would never in this world bear +us," added Betty, utterly puzzled. + +Bob Henderson had slipped around to her side of the table and leaned over +her chair back to whisper in Betty's ear: + +"You've got to be ready in twenty minutes. The horses won't stand this +cold weather--not under saddle." + +"Saddle! Horses!" gasped Betty Gordon, rising right up from the table with +the soup spoon in her hand. "I--I don't believe I want any more luncheon, +Mrs. Littell. Really, I don't need any more. Will you please excuse me?" + +"Not if you run away with my spoon, Betty," laughed her hostess. "It was +the dish that ran away with the spoon, and you are not a dish, dear." + +"She'll be dished if she doesn't hurry," called Bob from the door, and +then he disappeared. + +"Sit down and finish your luncheon, Betty," advised Mrs. Littell. "I +assure you that they will not go without you. The men can walk the horses +about a little if it is necessary." + +"I haven't been in a saddle since I left the land of oil and my own dear +Clover-pony!" cried Betty later, as she ran upstairs. "I know just where +my riding habit is. Oh, dear! I hope I have as spirited a horse as dear +Clover was. Are you all ready, Bobby? And you, too, Louise--and Esther? +Goodness me! suppose Carter had broken down on the road and hadn't brought +me back in time---- + +"Libbie! For goodness' sake don't sit down in that chair. That package has +got the loveliest orange silk over-blouse in it. Wait till you see it, +Bobby." + +She fairly dragged the plump girl, Libbie, away from the proximity of the +chair in question and then began to scramble into her riding dress. The +clatter of hoofs was audible on the drive as she fixed the plain gold pin +in her smart stock. + +"Of course," Betty said with a sigh, "one can't wear a locket, with or +without a chain, when one is riding. That dear locket Uncle Dick gave me! +I suppose it is safe enough in my bag. Well, I'm ready." + +They all ran down to the veranda to see the mounts. Betty's was a +beautiful gray horse named Jim that she had seen before in the Fairfields +stables. + +"He's sort of hard-bitted, Miss," said the smiling negro who held the +bridle and that of Bobby's own pony, a beautiful bay. "But he ain't got a +bad trick and is as kind as a lamb, Miss." + +"Oh, I'm not afraid of him," declared Betty. "You ought to see my Clover. +All right, Uncle Dick, I'm up!" + +They were all mounted and cantering down the drive in a very few minutes. +Even plump little Libbie sat her steed well, for she had often ridden over +her own Vermont hills. + +"I don't know where we're going, but I'm on my way!" cried Betty, who was +delighted to be once more in the saddle. + +"We're going right across country to Bolter's stock farm," Louise told +her. "Here's where we turn off. There will be some fences. Can you jump a +fence, Betty?" + +"I can go anywhere this gray horse goes," declared Betty proudly. + +But Bob rode up beside her before they came to the first jump. "Look out +for the icy places, Betsey," he warned her. "None of these horses are +sharpened. They never have ice enough down here in Virginia to worry +about, so they say." + +Which was true enough on ordinary occasions. But the frost the night +before had been a hard one and the air was still tingling with it. In the +shady places the pools remained skimmed over. A gallop over the fields and +through the woodland paths put both the horses and riders in a glow of +excitement. + +Perhaps Betty was a little careless--at least too confident. Her gray got +the lead and sped away across some rough ground which bordered a ravine. +Bob shouted again for her to be careful, and Betty turned and waved her +hand reassuringly to him. + +It was just then that Jim slipped on the edge of the bank. Both of his +front feet slid on an icy patch and he almost came to his knees. Betty +saved herself from going over his head by a skillful lunge backward, +pulling sharply on the reins. + +But the horse did not so easily regain his foot-hold. The edge of the bank +crumbled. Betty did not utter a sound, but the girls behind her screamed +in unison. + +"Stop! Wait! She'll be killed!" + +Betty knew that Bob was coming at a thundering pace on his brown mount; +but the gray horse was on its haunches, sliding down the slope of the +ravine, snorting as it went. Betty could not stop her horse, but she clung +manfully to the reins and sat back in her saddle as though glued to it. + +Just what would happen when they reached the bottom of the slope was a +very serious question. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +A SECOND IDA BELLETHORNE + + +The ravine was forty feet deep, and although the path, down which the gray +horse slid with Betty Gordon on his back, was of sand and gravel only, +there were some boulders and thick brush at the bottom that threatened +disaster to both victims of the accident. + +Swiftly and more swiftly the frightened horse slid, and the girl had no +idea what she should do when they came, bumpy-ti-bump to the bottom. + +She heard Bob shouting something to her, but she did not immediately +comprehend what he said. Something, she thought it was, about her +stirrups. But this was no time or place to look to see if her stirrup +leathers were the proper length or if her feet were firmly fixed in the +irons, which both Bob and Uncle Dick had warned her about when first she +had begun to ride. + +Although she dared not look back, Betty knew that Bob had galloped to the +very edge of the ravine and had now flung himself from his saddle. She +heard his boots slam into the sliding gravel of the hill. He shouted +again--that cheery hail that somehow helped Betty to hold on to her fast +vanishing courage. + +"Kick your feet out of the stirrups, Betty!" + +What he meant finally seeped into Betty's clouded brain. She realized that +Bob Henderson, her chum, the boy she had learned to have such confidence +in, was coming down that bank in mighty strides, prepared to save her if +it was possible. + +The gray horse was struggling and snorting; he was likely to tumble +sideways at any moment. If he did, and Betty was caught under him---- + +But she was not caught in any such crushing pressure. It was Bob's arm +around her waist that squeezed her. She had kicked her feet loose of the +stirrups, and now Bob, throwing himself backward, tore her out of the +saddle. He fell upon his back, and Betty, struggling and laughing and +almost crying, fell on top of him. + +"All right, Betty! All right!" gasped Bob. "No need to squeal now." + +"Who's squealing?" she demanded. "Let me up, do! Are you hurt, Bob?" + +"Only the wind knocked out of me. Woof! You all right?" + +"Oh, my dear!" shrieked Bobby at the top of the bank. "Are you killed, +Betty?" + +"Only half killed," gasped Betty. "Don't worry. Spread the news. Elizabeth +Gordon, Miss Sharpe's prize Latin scholar, will yet return to Shadyside +to make glad the heart of----" + +"She's all right," broke in Tommy Tucker, having dismounted and looking +over the brink of the bank. "She's trying to be funny. Her neck isn't +broken." + +"I declare, Tommy!" cried Louise Littell admonishingly, "you sound as +though you rather thought her poor little neck ought to be dislocated." + +"Cheese!" gasped Teddy, Tommy's twin. "You got that word out of a book, +Louise--you know you did." + +"So I did; out of the dictionary. There are a lot more of them there, if +you want to know," and Louise laughed. + +"Oh!" at this point rose a yearning cry. "Oh!" I just think he is too dear +for anything!" + +"Cracky! What's broke loose now?" demanded Tommy Tucker, jerking back his +head to stare all around at the group on the brink of the high bank. + +"Who is too expensive, Libbie?" asked Bobby, glancing at her cousin with a +look of annoyance displayed in her features. + +"Robert Henderson. He is a hero!" gasped the plump girl. + +"I know that hero has torn his coat," Louise said, still gazing down into +the ravine. + +Of course Bob had played a heroic part; but the rest of those present +would have considered it almost indecent to speak of it as Libbie did. She +continued to clasp her hands and gaze soulfully into the ravine. Bob, +having made sure that Betty was all right, had gone down to the bottom of +the slope and helped the gray horse to its feet. The animal was more +frightened than hurt, although its legs were scratched some and it favored +one fore foot when Bob walked it about. + +"Dear me!" cried Betty, coming closer. "Poor old Jim! Is he hurt much, +Bob?" + +"I don't believe so," her friend replied. + +"Can we get him up the bank?" + +"I won't try that if there is any outlet to this ravine--and there must +be, of course. Say! do you hear that silly girl?" + +"Who? Libbie?" Betty began to giggle. "She is going to make a hero of you, +Bob, whether you want to be or not. And you are----" + +"Now, don't you begin," growled Bob. + +"I never saw such a modest fellow," laughed Betty, giving his free hand a +little squeeze. + +"Huh! Libbie will want to put a laurel wreath on my brow if I climb up +there. See! There is a bunch of laurels right over there--those +glossy-leaved, runty sort of trees. Not for me! I am going to lead Jim out +ahead, and you climb up, if you want to, and come along with the rest of +the bunch. Ride my horse, if you will, Betty." + +"So you'd run away from a girl!" scoffed Betty, but laughing. "You are no +hero, Bob Henderson." + +"Sure I'm not," he agreed cheerfully. "And I'd run away from a girl like +Libbie any day. I wonder how Timothy Derby stands for her. But he's almost +as mushy as a soft pumpkin!" + +With this disrespectful observation Bob started off with the gray horse +and Betty scrambled up the bank down which she had plunged so heedlessly. + +Bobby was one of those who had dismounted at the brink of the ravine, and +she held out a brown hand to Betty as the latter scrambled up the last +yard or two of the steep bank and helped her to a secure footing. + +"Are you all right, Betty dear?" she cried. + +"No. One side of me is left," laughed Betty. "Wasn't that some slide?" + +"Now, don't try to make out that you did it on purpose!" exclaimed Esther, +the youngest Littell sister. + +"It was too lovely for anything," sighed Libbie. + +"I'm glad you think so," said Betty. "Oh! you mean what Bob did. I see. Of +course he is lovely--always has been. But don't tell him so, for it +utterly spoils boys if you praise them--doesn't it Bobby?" + +"Of course it does," agreed Betty's particular chum, whose real name, +Roberta, was seldom used even by her parents. + +"I like that!" chorused the Tucker twins. "Wait till we tell Bob, Betty," +added Tommy Tucker, shaking his head. + +"If you try to slide downhill on horseback again, we'll all just let you +slide to the very bottom," said Teddy. + +"Don't fret," returned Betty gaily. "I don't intend to take another such +slide----" + +"Not even if your Uncle Dick takes you up to Mountain Camp?" asked Bobby. +"There's fine tobogganing up there, he says. Mmmm!" + +"Don't talk about it!" wailed Betty. "You know we can't go, for school +begins next week and Uncle Dick won't hear to anything breaking in on my +schooling." + +"Not even measles?" suggested Tommy Tucker solemnly. "Two of the fellows +were quarantined with it when we left Salsette," he added. + +"Oh! don't speak of such a horrid thing," gasped Libbie, who did not +consider measles in the least romantic. "You get all speckled like--like a +zebra if you have 'em." + +The twins uttered a concerted shout and almost rolled out of their saddles +into which they had again mounted after assisting the girls, Betty being +astride Bob's horse. + +"Speckled like a zebra is good!" Bobby Littell said laughingly to her +plump cousin. "I suppose you think a barber's pole is speckled, Libbie?" + +These observations attracted the deluded Libbie sufficiently from her +hero-worship, so that when Bob Henderson came up out of the ravine to join +them a mile beyond the scene of the accident, he was perfectly safe from +Libbie's romantic consideration. + +The boy and girl friends were then in a deep discussion of the chances, +pro and con, of Betty's Uncle Dick taking her with him to Mountain Camp +despite the imminent opening of the term at Shadyside. + +"Of course there is scarcely a possibility of his doing so," Betty said +finally with hopeless mien. "Mr. Canary--Uncle Dick's friend is named +Jonathan Canary, isn't that a funny name?" she interrupted herself to ask. + +"He's a bird," declared Teddy Tucker solemnly. + +"Nothing romantic sounding about that name," his brother said, with a look +at Libbie. "'Jonathan Canary'--no poetry in that." + +"He, he!" chuckled Ted wickedly. "Talking about poetry----" + +"But we weren't!" said Bobby Littell. "We were talking about going to +Mountain Camp in the Adirondacks. Think of it--in the dead of winter!" + +"Talking about poetry," steadily pursued Teddy Tucker. "You know Timothy +Derby is always gushing." + +"A 'gusher,'" interposed Betty primly, "is an oil well that comes in with +a bang." + +"Don't you mean it comes out with a bang?" teased Louise. + +"In or out, Betty and I have seen 'em gush all right," cried Bob, as they +cantered on together along a well-defined bridle-path. + +"Say! I'm telling you something," exploded Teddy Tucker, who did not +purpose to have his tale lost sight of. "Something about Timothy Derby." + +"Oh, dear me, yes!" exclaimed Bobby. "Do tell it and get it over, Ted." + +The twins both began to chuckle and Teddy had some difficulty in going on +with his story. But it seemed they had been at the Derby place the evening +before and Timothy had been "boring everybody to distraction," Ted said, +reading "Excelsior" to the family. + +"And believe me!" interjected Tommy Tucker, "that kid can elocute." + +"And he's always been at it," hurried on his twin, giggling. "Here's what +Mr. Derby says Timothy recited the first time he ever spoke a piece at a +Sunday School concert. You know; the stuff the little mites cackle." + +"How elegant are your expressions, Teddy!" remarked Louise, sighing. + +But she was amused as well as the others when Ted produced a paper on +which he had written down the verse Mr. Derby said his son had recited, +and just as Timothy had said it! + +"Listen, all of you," begged Teddy. "Now, don't laugh and spoil it all, +Tom. Listen: + + "'Lettuce denby uppan doing + Widow Hartford N E fate, + Still H E ving, still pursuing, + Learn to label Aunty Waite.'" + +Libbie's voice rose above the general laughter, and she was quite warm. +For Libbie's was a loyal soul. + +"I don't care! I don't believe it. His father is always making fun of +Timothy. He--he is cruel, I think. And, anyway, Timothy was only a little +boy then." + +"What did he want to label his Aunty Waite for?" demanded Bob. + +"You all be pretty good," called Betty, seeing that Libbie was really +getting angry. "If you aren't I'll ask Timothy and Libbie to my party at +Mountain Camp and none of the rest of you shall go." + +"Easy enough said, that, Betty," Bob rejoined. "You haven't very much +chance of going there. But, crimpy! wouldn't it be great if Uncle Dick +did take us?" + +"Remember our school duties, children," drawled Louise. "'Still H E ving, +still pursuing.' We must not cry for the moon." + +Thus, with a great deal of laughter and good-natured chatter, the +cavalcade trotted on and came finally to what Louise and Bobby said was +the entrance to Bolter's Farm. + +"All our horses were raised on this farm," explained Louise. "Daddy says +that Lewis Bolter has the finest stock of any horseman in Virginia. Much +of it is racing stock. He sells to the great stables up north. One of his +men will know what to do for your gray's scratched legs, Betty." + +For Betty had changed with Bob again and rode Jim, the horse that had slid +down into the ravine. Betty was really sorry about the scratches and felt +somehow as though she were a little to blame for the accident. She should +have been more careful in guiding the gray. + +Once at the great stables and paddocks, however, Betty's mind was relieved +on this point. Louise had an errand from her father to Mr. Bolter and went +away with Esther to interview the horse owner. Mr. Littell was a builder +and constructor and he bought many work horses of Mr. Bolter's raising, as +well as saddle stock. + +If there was anything on four feet that Betty and Bob loved, it was a +horse. In the west they had ridden almost continually; their mounts out at +Flame City had been their dearest possessions and they would have been +glad to bring them east, both Betty's Clover-pony and Bob's big white +horse, had it been wise to do so. + +At Shadyside and Salsette, however, there had been no opportunity for +horseback riding. They had found pleasure in other forms of outdoor +exercise. Now, enabled to view so many beautiful and sleek horses, Betty, +as well as Bob and the others, dismounted with delight and entered the +long stables. + +While her gray was being examined by one of the stablemen, Betty went +along a whole row of box stalls by herself, in each of which a horse was +standing quietly or moving about. More than one came to thrust a soft +muzzle over the door of the stall and with pointed ears and intelligent +gaze seemed to ask if the pretty, brown-eyed girl had something nice in +her pocket. + +"Hi, Miss!" croaked a hoarse voice behind her. "If you want to see a +bang-hup 'orse--a real topper--come down 'ere." + +Betty turned to see a little crooked man, with one shoulder much higher +than the other, who walked a good deal like a crab, sideways. He grinned +at her cheerfully in spite of his ugly body and twisted features. He +really was a dreadfully homely man, and he was not much taller than Betty +herself. He wore a grimy jockey cap, a blue blouse and stained white +trousers, and it was quite evident that he was one of the stable helpers. + +"This 'ere is the lydy for you to see, Miss," continued the little man +eagerly. "She's from old Hengland, Miss. I come with her myself and I've +knowed her since she was foaled. Mr. Bolter ain't got in 'is 'ole stable, +Miss, a mare like this one." + +He pointed to a glossy black creature in the end box. Before the animal +raised her head and looked over the gate, Betty knew that the mare from +England was one of the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen. + +"Hi, now, 'ow's that for a pretty lydy, Miss?" went on the rubber proudly. + +"Oh! See! She knows you! Look at the beauty!" gasped Betty, as the black +mare reached over the gate and gently nipped the blue sleeve of the +crooked little man. + +"Knows me? I should sye she does," he said proudly. "Why, she wouldn't +take her meals from nobody but me. I told 'em so w'en I 'eard she was sold +to Hamerica. And they found Hi was right, Miss, afore hever they got 'er +aboard the ship. They sent for me, an' Mr. Bolter gave me a good job with +'er. I goes with Ida Bellethorne wherever she goes. That's the----" + +"Ida Bellethorne?" interrupted Betty in amazement + +"Yes, Miss. That's 'er nyme. Ida Bellethorne. She comes of the true +Bellethorne stock. The last of the breed out o' the Bellethorne stables, +Miss." + +"Ida Bellethorne!" exclaimed Betty again. "Isn't that odd? A horse and a +girl of the same name!" + +But this last she did not say audibly. The cockney rubber was fondling the +mare's muzzle and he did not hear Betty's comment. The discovery of this +second Ida Bellethorne excited Betty enormously. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +MEASLES + + +Betty Gordon's active mind could not let this incident pass without +further investigation. Not alone was she interested in the beautiful black +mare and the girl in the neighborhood shop, but she wanted to know how +they came to have the same name. + +Betty was a practical girl. Bob often said it was not easy to fool Betty. +She had just as strong an imagination as any other girl of her age and +loved to weave fancies in her own mind when it was otherwise idle. But she +knew her dreams were dreams, and her imaginings unreal. + +It struck her that the name "Ida Bellethorne" was more suitable for a +horse than for a girl. Betty wondered all in a flash if the English girl +who had sold her the silk sweater in the neighborhood shop that morning +and who confessed that she had come from England practically alone had not +chosen this rather resounding name to use as an alias. Perhaps she had run +away from her friends and was hiding her identity behind the name of a +horse that she had heard of as being famous on the English turf. + +This was not a very hard thing for Betty to imagine. And, in any case, her +interest was stirred greatly by the discovery she had made. She was about +to speak to the little, crooked man regarding the name when something +occurred to draw her attention from the point of her first surprise. + +The mare, Ida Bellethorne, coughed. She coughed twice. + +"Ah-ha, my lydy!" exclaimed the rubber, shaking his head and stepping away +from the door of the stall that the mare should not muzzle his clothing. +"That's a fine sound--wot?" + +"Is it dust in her poor nose?" asked the interested Betty. + +"'Tis worse nor dust. 'Tis wot they call 'ere the 'orse distemper, Miss. +You tyke it from 'Unches Slattery, the change in climate and crossin' the +hocean ain't done Ida Bellethorne a mite of good." + +"Is that your name? 'Hunches Slattery'?" Betty asked curiously. + +"That's wot they've called me this ten year back. You see, I was a jockey +when I was a lad, and a good one, too, if Hi do say it as shouldn't. But I +got throwed in a steeplechase race. When they let me out o' the 'orspital +I was like this--'unchbacked and crooked. I been 'Unchie ever since, +Miss." + +"I am so sorry," breathed Betty Gordon softly. + +But the crooked little rubber was more interested in Ida Bellethorne's +history than he was in his own misfortune, which was an old story. + +"I was working in the Bellethorne stables when this mare was foaled. I was +always let work about her. She's a wonnerful pedigree, Miss--aw, yes, +wonnerful! And she was named for an 'igh and mighty lydy, sure enough." + +"Named for a lady?" cried Betty. "Don't you mean for a girl?" + +"Aw, not much! Such a lydy, Miss! Fine, an' tall, and wonnerful to look +at. They said she could sing like a hangel, that she could. Miss Ida +Bellethorne, she was. She ought've been a lord's daughter, she ought." + +"What became of her?" asked the puzzled Betty. + +"I don't know, Miss. I don't rightly know what became of all the family. I +kept close to the mare 'ere; the family didn't so much bother me. But +there was trouble and ruin and separation and death; and, after all," +added the rubber in a lower tone, "for all I know, there was cheating and +swindling of the fatherless and orphan, too. But me, I kept close to this +lydy 'ere," and he fondled the mare's muzzle again. + +"It's quite wonderful," admitted Betty. But what seemed wonderful to her, +the stableman did not know anything about. "I suppose the pretty mare is +worth a lot of money?" + +"Hi don't know wot Mr. Bolter would sell 'er for, if at all. But 'e paid +four thousand pun, laid down at the stables where she was kep' after the +smash of the Bellethorne family. She's got a pedigree longer than some +lord's families, and 'er track record was what brought Mr. Lewis Bolter to +Hengland when she was quietly put on the market. + +"Maybe they couldn't 'ave sold 'er to Henglish turfman," he added, +whispering softly in Betty's ear, "for maybe the title to 'er would be +clouded hand if she won another race somebody might go into court about +it." + +Betty did not understand this; and just then the mare began to cough again +and she was troubled by Ida Bellethorne's condition. + +"Is that the black mare, Slattery?" demanded a voice behind them. + +"Yes, sir," said the crooked little man respectfully, touching his cap. + +Betty turned to see a gentleman in riding boots and a short coat with a +dog-whip in his gloved hand, whom she believed at once to be Mr. Bolter. +Nor was she mistaken. + +"She's a beauty, isn't she, my dear?" the horseman said kindly. "But I do +not like that cough. I've made up my mind, Slattery. She goes to-morrow to +Cliffdale, and of course you go with her. Pack your bag to-night. I have +already telephoned for a stable-car to be on the siding in the morning." + +"Yes, sir. Wot she needs is dry hair, an' the 'igher the better," said the +crooked man, nodding. + +"They will put her on her feet again," agreed Mr. Bolter. "The balsam air +around Cliffdale is the right lung-healer for man or beast." + +He went out and Betty heard the girls calling to her. She thanked Hunchie +Slattery, patted Ida Bellethorne's nose, and ran out of the stable. + +But her head was full of the mystery of the striking name of "Ida +Bellethorne." She felt she must tell somebody, and Bobby of course, who +was her very closest chum, must be the recipient of her story as the +cavalcade started homeward. It was Bobby whom Betty wanted to have the +blue blouse just as soon as the shopgirl finished it. + +"Now, what do you think of that?" Betty demanded, after she had delivered, +almost in a breath, a rather garbled story of the strange girl and the +black mare from England. + +"Goodness, Betty, how wonderful!" exclaimed her friend. "I do so want to +see that over-blouse you bought. And you say she is making another?" + +"Is that all you've got to say about it?" demanded Betty, staring. + +"Why--er--you know, it really is none of our business, is it?" asked +Bobby, but with dancing eyes. "You know Miss Prettyman told us that the +greatest fault of character under which young ladies labor to-day is +vulgar curiosity. Oh, my! I can see her say it now," declared naughty +Bobby, shaking her head. + +"But, Bobby! Do think a bit! A girl and a horse both of the same name, and +just recently from England! I'm going to ask right out what it means." + +"Who are you going to ask--the horse?" giggled Bobby. + +"Oh, you! No, I can't ask the pretty black mare," Betty said, shaking her +head. "For she is going to be sent away for her health. She's got what +they call 'distemper.' She has to be acclimated, or something." + +"It sounds as though it might hurt," observed Bobby gravely. + +"Something ought to hurt you," said Betty laughing. "You are forever and +ever poking fun. But I am going to see Ida Bellethorne in the shop and +find out what she knows about the pretty mare." + +"Well, I'm sorry I didn't see the horse," confessed Bobby. "But I'll go +with you to see the girl. And I do want to see the blouse." + +That, Betty showed her the moment they arrived at Fairfields and could run +upstairs to the room the two girls shared while Betty visited here. The +latter unfolded the orange-silk blouse and spread it on the bed. Bobby +went into exstacies over it, as in duty bound. + +"Wait till you see the one she is making for you," Betty said. "You'll +love it!" + +"What is that you are going to love?" asked a voice outside the open door. +"Measles?" + +"Oh, Bob! Who ever heard the like?" demanded Betty. "Love measles, indeed. +Why--What makes you look so queer?" + +"Greatest thing you ever heard, girls!" cried Bob, his face very red and +his eyes shining. "I didn't really understand how much I had come to hate +books and drill these last few weeks." + +"What do you mean?" demanded Roberta Littell. "If you don't tell us at +once!" + +"Why, didn't you hear? Telegrams have come. To all our parents and +guardians. Measles! Measles! Measles!" + +He began to dance a very poor imitation of the Highland Fling in the hall. +The girls ran out and seized him, one on either side, and big as Bob was +they managed to shake him soundly. + +"Tell us what you mean!" commanded Betty. + +"Who has the measles?" cried Bobby. + +"Everybody! Or, pretty near everybody, I guess. The chaps who had it and +were quarantined when we came away from Salsette, gave it to the servants. +And it has spread to the village. And Miss Prettyman's got it and a lot of +the other folks at Shadyside. Oh, my eye!" + +"Are you fooling us, Bob?" demanded Betty. + +"Honor bright! It is just as I say. Of course, it all isn't in the +messages the two schools have sent out to 'parents and guardians.' That is +the way the messages are headed, you know. But the Shadyside _Mirror_ has +come, too, and tells all about it. Opening is postponed for a fortnight. +What do you know about that?" and Bob began his clumsy dance again. + +Betty broke away and darted down the stairs. She scarcely touched the +steps with her feet she flew so fast, and if it had not been for the +banister she surely would have come to the bottom in a heap. + +She ran out on the porch to find her Uncle Dick smoking a cigar and +reading the paper in a warm corner. Like a stone from a catapult she flung +herself into his arms. + +"Oh, Uncle Dick! Uncle Dick! Now we can go!" she cried, seizing him +tightly around the neck. + +"Goodness, child!" choked Uncle Dick, fairly throttled by her exuberance. +"What is it? Go where, Betty?" + +"To Mountain Camp! With you! All of us! No school for more than two weeks! +Oh, Uncle Dick!" Then she suddenly stopped and her glowing face lost its +color and her excitement subsided. "Dear me!" she quavered, "I 'member now +I had 'em when I was six, and they say you can't have 'em but once." + +"What can't you have but once?" + +"Measles," said Betty, sighing deeply. "I suppose after all I can go back +to Shadyside. Maybe Mrs. Eustice will expect all of us that have had 'em +to come." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A DISAPPEARANCE + + +There was an exciting conclave at Fairfields that evening. Perhaps I +should say two. For in one room given over by the good-natured Mrs. +Littell to the young folks there was a most noisy conclave while the older +members of the household held a more quiet if no less earnest conference +in the library. + +There were eight in the young folks' meeting for Mrs. Littell insisted +upon Esther's going to bed at a certain hour every evening "to get her +beauty sleep." + +"And I'll say she is sure to be a raving beauty when she grows up, if she +keeps going to bed with the chickens," giggled Bobby. + +"You know she can't go to Mountain Camp anyway," Louise said quietly, "for +her school isn't measly and it begins again day after to-morrow." + +"Poor Esther!" sighed Betty. "We must make it up to her somehow. I was +afraid she would cry at dinner this evening." + +"She's a good kid," agreed Bobby. "But are you sure, Betty, that we can +go to the mountains? Just think! Eight of us!" + +"Some contract for Mr. Gordon," observed Tommy Tucker with unusual +reflection. + +"How about it's being some contract for Mr. and Mrs. Canary?" suggested +Bob Henderson. "Maybe they will shy at such a crowd." + +"I asked Uncle Dick about that," Betty said eagerly. "He told me all about +Mr. and Mrs. Canary. He has known them for years and years. They must be +awfully nice people and they have got a great, big, rambling bungalow sort +of house, all built of logs in the rough. But inside there is a heating +plant, and electric lights, and shower baths, and everything up-to-date. +Mr. Canary is very wealthy; but his money could not keep him from getting +tuber--tuber----" + +"'Tubers,'" said Bob with gravity, "are potatoes, or something of that +kind." + +"Now, Bob! you know what I mean very well," cried Betty. "His lungs were +affected. But they have healed and he is perfectly well as long as he +stays up there in the wilderness. The air there has wonderful +cur--curative properties. There!" + +"Look! Will it cure such a bad attack of poetry?" interrupted Bobby, +drawing the attention of the others to Timothy Derby and Libbie who, with +heads close together, were absorbed in a volume of verses the boy had +brought with him from home. + +"It might help," said Bob. "It ought to be cold enough up there at +Mountain Camp to freeze romance into an icicle." + +"I hope we all go then," Teddy Tucker agreed. "Our folks have said we +could--haven't they, Tom?" + +"With suspicious alacrity," agreed his twin. "How's that for a fine +phrase, Louise? Do you know, I think mother and dad were almost shocked +when they got the telegram from Salsette and knew our vacation was to be +prolonged. The idea of Mountain Camp seems to please them." + +"Goodness! I know dear Mrs. Littell doesn't feel that way about it," cried +Betty. + +"She's got girls," said Ted dryly. "You know it is us boys who are not +appreciated in this world." + +"Yes," said Bob, "you fellows are terribly abused, I'll say. But, now! Are +we all sure of going? That's what I want to know." + +"Timothy----" began Louise; but Bob held up his hand to stop her. + +"I know from his father that Tim can go. Uncle Dick is sure to take us, +Betty, isn't he?" + +"He sent off a telegram to Mrs. Canary this evening. If she sends back +word 'Yes' we can go day after to-morrow." + +"That's all right then," said Bob, quite as eagerly. 'The thing to do then +is to plan what to take and all that. It is cold up there, but dry. Much +colder than it was at school before we came down. Furs, overcoats, boots, +mittens--not gloves, for gloves are no good when it is really cold--and +underthings that are warm and heavy. We don't want to come back with noses +and toes frozen off." + +"Humph!" said Bobby scornfully, "what kind of underwear should you advise +our getting for our noses, Bob Henderson?" + +"Aw--you know what I mean," said the boy, grinning. "Don't depend on a fur +piece around your neck and a muff to keep the rest of you warm. Us fellows +have all got Mackinaws and boots and such things. And we'll want 'em." + +And so they excitedly made their plans. At least, six of them did while +Timothy and Libbie bent their minds upon the book. One thing about those +two young romanticists, they agreed to the plans the others made and were +quite docile. + +At ten Timothy and the Tucker twins went home and the others went +cheerfully up to bed. While Betty Gordon remained at Fairfields Bobby +insisted on sharing her own room with her. They were never separated at +Shadyside, so why should they be here? + +When she was half undressed Betty suddenly went down on her knees before +the tall chiffonier and opened the lower drawer. She dug under everything +in the drawer until she came to her handbag, and drew it forth. + +"I declare!" chuckled Bobby, "I thought you were digging a new burrow like +a homeless rabbit. What did you forget?" + +"Didn't forget anything," responded Betty, smiling up at her friend. "I +remembered something." + +"Oh!" + +"My locket. Uncle Dick's present. I wanted to see that it was safe." + +"Goodness! Do you carry it in your bag?" + +"I've got a lovely chain at Shadyside, you know. I told Uncle Dick not to +buy a chain. And I don't believe Mrs. Eustice will object to a simple +little locket like mine, will she?" + +"M-m-m! I don't know," replied Bobby. "You know she is awfully opposed to +us girls wearing jewelry. And your locket is lovely. Just think! Platinum +and a real diamond. Why! what is the matter, Betty?" + +For Betty had begun scrambling in her bag worse than she had in the bureau +drawer. Everything came out--purse, tickets, gloves, handkerchief, the +tiniest little looking-glass, a letter or two, a silver thimble, two +coughdrops stuck together, a sample of ribbon which she had failed to +match, a most disreputable looking piece of lead-pencil---- + +But no twist of tissue paper with the locket in it! + +"What is the matter?" repeated Bobby, frightened by the expression of the +other girl's face. + +"I--I----Oh, Bobby! It's gone!" wailed Betty. + +"Not your locket?" + +"Yes, my locket!" sobbed Betty, and she sat down on the floor and wept. + +"Why, it can't be! Who would take it? When did you see it last? Nobody +here in the house would have stolen it, Betty." + +"It--it must have dropped out of my bag. Oh! what shall I do? I can't tell +Uncle Dick." + +"He won't punish you for losing it, will he?" + +"But think how he'll feel! And how I'll feel!" wailed Betty. "He advised +me to put it somewhere for safe keeping until I got my chain. And I +wouldn't. I--I wanted it with me." + +"You should have put it downstairs in daddy's safe," said Bobby +thoughtfully. + +"But that doesn't do me a bit of good now," sobbed Betty Gordon. + +"Don't you remember where you had it last?" asked her friend slowly. + +"In my bag, of course. And I carried my bag to town to-day. Yes! I +remember seeing the paper it was in at the bottom of my bag more than +once while I was shopping. Oh, dear! what shall I do?" + +"Then you are quite sure it was not stolen?" Bobby suggested. + +"No. I don't suppose it was. It just hopped out somehow. But where? That +is the question, Bobby. I can't answer it." + +She rose finally and finished her preparations for bed. Bobby was very +sympathetic; but there did not seem to be anything she could say that +would really relieve Betty's heart, or help in any way. The locket was +gone and no trace of how it had gone had been left in Betty's mind. + +When the light was out Bobby crept into Betty's bed and held her tightly +in her arms. + +"Don't cry, Betty dear!" the other girl whispered. "Maybe your Uncle Dick +will know how to find the locket." + +"Oh, Bobby! I can't tell him. I'm ashamed to," sighed Betty. "It looks as +though I had not cared enough about his present to be careful with it. And +I thought if I carried it about with me that there would be no chance of +my losing it. And now----" + +"Then tell Bob," suggested her chum, hugging Betty tightly. + +"Bob?" + +"Tell him all about it," said Bobby Littell. "Perhaps he will know what +to do. You can't really have lost that beautiful locket forever, Betty!" + +"Oh, I don't know! It's gone, anyway!" sobbed Betty. + +"Don't give up. That isn't like you, Betty," went on Bobby. "Maybe Bob can +help. We can ask him, at least." + +"Yes, we can do that," was Betty's not very hopeful reply. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +ALL MRS. STAPLES COULD SAY + + +The two girls sought out Bob Henderson before breakfast and told him of +the disappearance of Betty's beautiful little locket. Betty's eyes, were a +little swollen and even Bobby seemed not to have passed a very agreeable +night. Bob was quite shrewd enough to see these evidences of trouble and +he refrained from making any remark even in fun to ruffle the girls. + +"Here's a pretty mess!" exclaimed Bob, but cheerfully. "And we all going +to Mountain Camp to-morrow if Mrs. Canary telegraphs 'Yes,' Hunted +everywhere, I suppose?" + +"Yes, Bob," Betty assured him. "And there was but one place to hunt. In my +bag." + +"Sure?" + +"Pos-i-tive!" + +"Carried it loose in your bag, did you?" he asked reflectively. + +"Wrapped up in white tissue paper. You know, the box it came in got +broken." + +"I remember. Gee, Betty! that's an awfully pretty locket. You don't want +to lose it." + +"But I have lost it!" + +"For keeps, I mean," rejoined Bob, smiling encouragingly. "Come on! Let's +see the bag. Where did you carry it? When was the last time you saw the +locket in the bag and where?" + +"Oh!" Betty cried suddenly. "I remember it was in the bag when I was +shopping yesterday." + +"Shopping where? Let's hear about the last place you remember seeing it." + +Betty remembered very clearly seeing the twist of paper with the locket in +it while she was at Purcell's where she had bought some veiling. + +"Then, Betty," said Bobby, "you went to that little store afterward, you +said, where you got the over-blouse." + +"Ye--es. But I didn't notice it while I was there. I was so excited over +the blouse and so interested in Ida Bellethorne that I don't remember of +looking in my bag to see if my locket was safe." + +"'Ida Bellethorne'?" repeated Bob in surprise. "Why! that's the name of +Mr. Lewis Bolter's new mare from England. I heard Mr. Littell and Uncle +Dick talking about her." + +"And I met a girl named Ida Bellethorne. I'll tell you all about her +later, Bob," said Betty. "Just now I want to know what to do about the +locket." + +"I should say you did! And I'll tell you what," Bob said promptly. "Right +after breakfast we'll borrow the little car and I'll take you over to +Georgetown and we'll go to every place you went to yesterday, Betty, and +inquire. I'm allowed to drive in the District of Columbia, you know." + +"Will you, Bob?" cried Betty. "Do you think there is any chance of our +finding it?" + +"Why not? If it was picked up in one of the stores you went to. There are +lots more honest people in the world than there are dishonest. Come on +now, don't cry." + +"I'm not going to cry," declared Betty. "I've cried enough already. Don't +tell the others, Bob. Nor Uncle Dick. I don't want him to know if I can +help it. It looks just as though I didn't prize his present enough to take +care of it." + +Somehow, Betty felt encouraged by Bob's taking hold of the matter. The +small car was secured after breakfast and Bob and the two girls set off +for the other side of the river. It was not alone because of Bob's advice +that they stopped first at the little neighborhood shop on the hilly side +street where Betty had bought her sweater. Bobby was anxious to see her +blue sweater, and the two girls ran in as soon as the car halted before +the door. + +The little bell over it jingled pleasantly at their entrance; but it was a +tall and rather grim-looking woman who came from the back of the shop to +meet them instead of the English girl with whom Betty had dealt on her +former visit. + +"Humph!" said Mrs. Staples, for it was she, when she spied the over-blouse +under Betty's coat. "You are the young lady who was to purchase the blue +blouse when it was finished?" + +"For my friend here," said Betty, bringing Bobby forward. "I know she will +like it." + +"I hope so," said Mrs. Staples. "It is finished. Ida sat up most of the +night to finish it. Here it is," and she displayed the dark blue blouse +for the girls to see. + +"How lovely!" ejaculated Bobby eagerly. "I like it even better than I do +your orange one, Betty. It's sweet." + +"It's twelve dollars, Miss," said the shop woman promptly. "You can pay me +and take the blouse. I paid Ida for it." + +"Isn't the girl who made it here?" asked Betty anxiously. + +"No, she ain't," said Mrs. Staples in her blunt way. "She left an hour +ago." + +"Oh! Will she come back?" + +"I don't expect her. I am sure I cannot be changing help all the time. She +left me very abruptly. I did not ask her to come back." + +"Why," said Betty, wonderingly, "I thought you were her friend. Isn't she +all alone in this country?" + +"She is a girl who seems quite able to take care of herself," the grim +shopwoman said. "Or she is determined to try. I advised her to write to +her aunt----" + +"Then she has an aunt over here?" cried Betty eagerly. + +"So she thinks. An aunt for whom Ida was named. There was some family +trouble, and Ida's father and her father's sister seem to have had nothing +to do with each other for some years. The aunt is a singer--quite a noted +concert singer, it seems. Ida came to Washington expecting to find her. +She did not find the elder Ida Bellethorne----" + +"Then there are three Ida Bellethornes!" whispered Bobby in Betty's ear. + +"So she came here to help me," continued Mrs. Staples, all the time +watching Betty with a rather strange manner. "She would better have +remained with me, as I told her. But she found in the paper last night +this notice," the woman produced a torn piece of paper from the counter +and handed it to Betty, "and nothing would do but Ida must go right away +to find the place and the person mentioned here." + +The two girls in great interest bent their heads above the piece of paper. +The marked paragraph was one of several in the column and read as +follows: + + "It is stated upon good authority that the great Ida Bellethorne + will arrive at Cliffdale, New York, within a day or two, and will + remain for the winter." + +"Why, how odd," murmured Betty. "And did this make Ida go away?" + +"She has gone to Cliffdale to meet her aunt. That was her intention," said +Mrs. Staples. "Are either of you young ladies prepared to buy this blue +blouse?" + +"Oh, yes, indeed!" cried Bobby, who had taken a fancy to the blouse. "I've +got money enough. And it was nice of Miss Bellethorne to finish it for me +before she went. I wish I might thank her personally." + +"I do not expect to see Ida again," the shopwoman repeated in her most +severe manner, wrapping up the over-blouse. "Twelve dollars--thank you, +Miss. Can I show you anything else?" + +"Wait!" gasped Betty. "I want to ask you--I wanted to ask Ida Bellethorne +if she saw me drop anything here in the store yesterday?" + +"I am sorry she is not here to answer that question," said Mrs. Staples. +"I was not here when you came, Miss." + +"No, I know you weren't. But somewhere while I was shopping yesterday I +lost something out of my bag. If it dropped out here----" + +"I can assure you I picked up nothing, Miss," declared the shop woman. + +"If Ida----" + +"If Ida Bellethorne did, she is not here, unfortunately, to tell you," +said Mrs. Staples in her same manner and without a change of expression on +her hard face. + +"Oh, dear!" sighed Betty. + +"But you don't know that you dropped it here," Bobby said to encourage +her. But perhaps it encouraged Mrs. Staples more! + +"I have nothing more to say, Miss," the woman declared. "Ida not being +here----" + +"Oh, well," said Betty, trying to speak more cheerfully, "it is true I do +not remember having seen it while I was here at all. So--so we will go to +the other places. Of course, if Ida had found anything she would have told +you?" + +"I cannot be responsible for what Ida Bellethorne would do or say," +replied the shopwoman grimly. "Not having been here myself when you came, +Miss----" + +"Oh, yes! I understand," said Betty hastily. "Well, thank you for keeping +the blouse for us. Good-bye." + +She and Bobby were not greatly pleased with Mrs. Staples. But they had no +reason for distrusting her. When they had gone the shopwoman smiled a most +wintry smile. + +"Well, I am not supposed to tell people how to go about their own affairs, +I should hope," was her thought. "That chit never told me what she had +lost. It might have been a pair of shoes or a boiled lobster! Humph! Folks +would better speak plain in this world. I always do, I am sure." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +UNCLE DICK MUST BE TOLD + + +The two girls did not tell Bob Henderson all that had happened in the +little shop when they first came out. They were in too much haste to get +to the other places where it might be possible that Betty had dropped her +locket. Of all things, they did not suspect that Mrs. Staples knew the +first thing about it. + +But they did tell the boy that Ida Bellethorne had gone away. + +"Where's she gone?" asked the inquisitive Bob. "Couldn't be that she found +the locket and ran off with it?" + +"Why, you're almost horrid!" declared Betty, aggrieved. "You don't know +what a nice girl Ida is." + +"Humph!" (Could he have caught that expression from waiting outside Mrs. +Staples' shop?) "Humph! I don't believe you know how nice she is, or +otherwise. You never saw her but once." + +"But she's seen the horse," giggled Bobby. + +"What horse?" demanded Bob. + +"Mr. Lewis Bolter's black mare, Ida Bellethorne." + +"Oh!" + +"And, oh, Bob!" cried Betty, "there's another Ida Bellethorne, and this +Ida has gone away to see her. She's her aunt." + +"Who's her aunt?" grumbled Bob, who was having some difficulty just then +in driving the car and so could not give his full attention to the matter +the girls were chattering about. + +"Why, see!" cried Betty, rummaging in her bag. "Here's the piece of +newspaper with the society item, or whatever it is, in it that made Ida go +away so suddenly this morning. It's about her aunt, the great concert +singer. Ida's gone to meet her where that says," and she put the piece of +paper into Bob's hand. + +"All right," he said. "Here's Markham and Boggs' place. You said you were +in this store yesterday, Betty." + +"So I was. Come on, Bobby," cried the other girl, hopping out of the car. +"I suppose we shall have to go to the manager or the superintendent or +somebody. Dear me! if we don't find my locket I don't know what I shall +do." + +When Betty and Bobby came out of the store, much disappointed, they found +Bob grinning--as Bobby declared--"like a Cheshire cat." + +"But never mind the cat," continued Bobby. "What is the matter with that +boy? For boys will laugh at the most serious things. And this is serious, +my poor, dear Betty." + +"Indeed it is," agreed her friend, and so they crossed the walk to the +grinning Bob Henderson who had the scrap of newspaper Betty had given him +in his hand. + +"Say," he drawled, "who did you say this aunt of Ida Bellethorne is?" + +"Mrs. Staples says she is a concert singer--a prima donna," replied Betty. + +"She's a prima donna all right," chuckled Bob. "Where now? Oh! To Stone's +shoe shop? Well, what do you know about this notice in the paper?" and his +smile grew broader. + +"What do you mean, Bob?" demanded Betty, rather vexed. "You can read the +paragraph yourself. 'The great Ida Bellethorne'. That means she is a great +singer of course." + +"Yes, I see," replied Bob, giving some attention to the steering of the +car. "But there is one thing about you girls--you never read the sporting +page of the newspaper." + +"What is that?" gasped Bobby Littell. + +"This string of items you handed me is torn out of the sporting page. All +the paragraphs refer to racing matters. That particular one deals with Mr. +Bolter's black mare, Ida Bellethorne. Cliffdale is the place he was +shipping her to far her health." + +"Never!" cried Bobby. + +"Oh, Bob! Is that so?" gasped Betty. + +Bob burst into open laughter. "That's a good one on you and on your +friend, Ida," he declared. "If she has gone to meet her aunt up in New +York State she'll meet a horse instead. How's that for a joke?" + +Betty Gordon shook her head without smiling. "I don't see the joke at +all," she said. "Poor Ida! She will be sadly disappointed. And she has +lost her position here with Mrs. Staples. We could see that Mrs. Staples +was angry because she went away." + +"Why," cried Bobby, likewise sympathetic, "I think it is horrid--actually +horrid! You needn't laugh, Bob Henderson." + +"Shucks!" returned the boy. "I can't cry over it, can I? Of course it is +too bad the girl has made such a mistake. But our weeping won't help her." + +"No," confessed Bobby, "I suppose that is so." + +"And our weeping won't find my locket," sighed Betty. "Dear me! If I did +drop it in Stone's place I hope they have saved it for me." + +But the locket was not to be found in that shop, either. Nor in the two +others which Betty Gordon had visited the previous day. This indeed was a +perfectly dreadful thing! The plainer it was that the locket could not be +found, the more repentent and distracted Betty became. + +"I shall have to tell Uncle Dick--I shall have to," she wailed, when Bob +drove them away from the last place and all hope was gone glimmering. "Oh, +dear! It is dreadful." + +"Don't take on so, Betty!" Bob begged gruffly, for he could not bear to +see the girl actually cry. "I'll tell him if you are afraid to." + +"Don't you dare!" she flared out at him. "I'm not afraid. Only I dread it. +It was the nicest present he ever gave me and--and I loved it. But I did +not take proper care of it. I realize that now, when it is too late." + +Bob remained serious of aspect after that. That his mind was engaged with +the problem of Betty's lost trinket was proved by what he said on the way +back to Fairfields: + +"I suppose you spoke to all the clerks you traded with in those stores, +Betty?" + +"Why, yes. All but Ida Bellethorne, Bob." + +"And Mrs. Staples said she didn't know anything about Betty's locket," +Bobby put in. + +Of course, this was not so; but Bobby thought she was telling the exact +truth. The two girls really had not explained Betty's loss to Mrs. Staples +at all. + +"The English girl going off so suddenly, and on such a wild-goose chase, +looks kind of fishy, you know," drawled Bob. + +"She thinks she is chasing her aunt!" Bobby cried. + +"Maybe." + +"You don't even know her, Bob," declared Betty haughtily. "You can't judge +her character. I am sure she is honest." + +"Well," grumbled Bob, "being sure everybody is honest isn't going to get +you that locket back, believe me!" + +"That's horrid, too! Isn't it, Betty?" demanded Bobby. + +"It's sort of, I guess," said Betty, much troubled, "But, oh, Bob! I don't +want to think that poor girl found my locket and ran away with it. No, I +don't want to believe that. And, anyway, it doesn't help me out a mite. +I've got to tell Uncle Dick before he notices that I don't display his +pretty present any more. Oh, dear!" + +"It's a shame," groaned Bobby, holding her chum's hand tightly. + +"Guess there are worse things than measles in this world," observed Bob, +as he stopped the small car under the _porte cochere_ at Fairfields. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE LIVE WIRE OCTETTE + + +It was not an easy thing to do; but Betty Gordon did it. She confessed the +whole wretched thing to Uncle Dick and was assured of his forgiveness. But +perhaps his serious forgiveness was not the easiest thing for the girl to +bear. + +"I am sure, as you say, that you did not mean to be careless," Mr. Richard +Gordon said gently. It was hard for him to be strict with Betty; but he +knew her impulsiveness sometimes led her into a reckless path. "But mark +you, Betty: The value of that locket should have, in itself, made you +particularly careful of it." + +"I--I valued it more because you gave it to me, Uncle Dick," she sobbed. + +"And yet that did not make you particularly careful," the gentleman +reminded her. "The main trouble with you, Betty, is that you have no very +clear appreciation of the value of money." + +"Oh, Uncle Dick!" and she looked at him with trembling chin and tears +welling into her eyes. + +"And why should you?" he added, laughing more lightly and patting her +hand. "You have never been obliged to earn money. Think back to the time +you were with the Peabodys. The money my lawyer sent you for your own use +just burned holes in your pinafore pockets, didn't it?" + +"I didn't wear pinafores, Uncle Dick," Betty said soberly. "Girls don't +nowadays." + +"No, I see they don't," he rejoined, smiling broadly again. "But they did +in my day. However, in whatever pocket you put that money as you got it, +the hole was figuratively burned, wasn't it?" + +"We--ell, it went mostly for food. Mr. Peabody was such a miser! +And--and----" + +"And so when you wanted to come away from Bramble Farm you actually had to +borrow money," went on Uncle Dick. "Of course, you were fortunate enough +finally to get the lawyer's check and pay your debts. But the fact remains +that you seem unable to keep money." + +"Oh, Uncle Dick!" + +"Now," continued her guardian still soberly, "a miser like Mr. Peabody for +instance is a very unpleasant person. But a spendthrift often does even +more harm in the world than a miser. I don't want my Betty-girl to be a +spendthrift." + +"Oh, Uncle Dick!" + +"The loss of your pretty locket, my dear, has come because of that trait +in your character which ignores a proper appreciation of the value of +money and what can be bought with it. Now, I can buy you another +locket----" + +"No, no, Uncle Dick! I don't deserve it," she said with her face hidden +against his shoulder as she sat in his lap. + +"That is true, my dear. I don't really think you do deserve another--not +right at once. And, anyway, we will advertise for the locket in the +newspapers and may recover it in that way. So we will postpone the +purchase of any other piece of jewelry at present. + +"What I have in my mind, however, and have had for some time, is the +reorganization of your financial affairs," and now he smiled broadly as +she raised her head to look at him. "I think of putting you on a monthly +allowance of pocket money and asking you to keep a fairly exact account of +your expenditures. Not an account to show me. I don't want you to feel as +though you were being watched." + +"What do you mean, Uncle Dick?" + +"I want you to keep account for your own satisfaction. I want you to know +at the end of the month where your money has gone to. It is the best +training in the world for a girl, as well as a boy, to know just what she +has done with the money that has passed through her hands. And in this +case I am sure in time that it will give you a just comprehension of +money's value. + +"If we do not recover the locket, why, in time, we will look about for +another pretty trinket----" + +"No, Uncle Dick," Betty said seriously. "I loved that locket. I should +have been more careful of it. I hope it will be found and returned to me. +I do! I do! But I don't want you to give me another." + +"Why not?" he asked, yet giving her quite an understanding look. + +"I guess you know, Uncle Dick," she sighed. "I don't really deserve it. +And it wouldn't be that locket that you gave me for Christmas, you see." + +"Well, my dear----" + +"Wait, dear Uncle Dick! I want to say something more," said the girl, +hugging him tightly again. "If you give me a certain sum of money to spend +for myself every month I am going to save out of it until I have enough to +buy a locket exactly like that one I lost--If it isn't found, I mean." + +"Ah!" + +"You approve, Uncle Dick?" + +"Most assuredly. That would be following out my suggestion of learning to +take care of money in the fullest sense, my dear." + +"Then," said Betty, bouncing happily on his knee, "that is what I am going +to try to do. But I do hope my locket will be found!" + +This serious conference was broken up at this point by the arrival of the +telegram Uncle Dick had been expecting from Mountain Camp. Mrs. Jonathan +Canary had signed it herself and it was to the effect that the young +friends of Mr. Richard Gordon would be as welcome as that gentleman +himself. + +Bob immediately saddled a horse and galloped to the Derbys and the Tuckers +to carry the news. Final plans were made for departure the next morning +and in spite of a rather threatening change in the weather the party left +Fairfields on time and in high spirits for upper New York State. + +A few flakes of snow had begun fluttering down as the train pulled out of +Washington; and as it raced across the Maryland fields and through the +hills which grace that State the snow blew faster and faster and thicker +and thicker. But even in midwinter snow storms do not much obstruct +traffic so far south, and the gay party from Fairfields had no suspicion +that it was being borne into any peril or trouble. What was a little snow +which scarcely, at first, caught upon the brown fields? + +They had engaged two whole sections for the young folks and an extra place +for Uncle Dick. The latter did not interfere at all with the fun and +frolic of his charges. He was--he should have been--used by now to the +ridiculous antics of the Tucker twins and the overflowing spirits of the +rest of the octette. Bachelor as he was, Mr. Richard Gordon considered +himself pretty well acquainted with young folks of their age. + +The two sections occupied by the eight girls and boys were opposite each +other and they had that end of the car pretty much to themselves. Of +course, people sometimes had to go through the aisle--and others besides +the conductor and the porter; but after running the gauntlet of that +lively troop once the restless passenger usually tried to keep out of the +"line of fire." + +The fun the party had was good-natured sport for the most part. Their +practical jokes were aimed at each other rather than at their fellow +passengers. But it was a fact that there was very little peace for a +nervous person in that Pullman coach. + +"We're the live-wire octette, and we are going to let everybody know it," +proclaimed Tommy Tucker vociferously. "Say! there's a chap up at the other +end of the car, sprawled all over his seat--fresh kid, he is. Did you +notice him?" + +"I did," replied his twin. "I fell over his foot twice when I went for a +drink." + +"Why didn't you look where you were walking?" grinned Bob Henderson +craning his neck to see up the aisle and mark the passenger in question. + +"Huh!" grumbled Ted, "he stuck it out for me to tumble over both +times--and you know this train is joggling some." + +"Ill say so," agreed Bob. + +But Betty had jumped up to look and she said eagerly: + +"Do you mean the man with the silk handkerchief over his head? He must be +asleep, or trying to sleep." + +"I tell you he is just a fresh kid," said Tommy Tucker. "And I'm going to +fix him." + +"Now, boys, be careful what you do," advised Louise, who occasionally +considered it her duty to put on a sober, admonishing air. + +Tommy, however, started for the nearest exit to the platform of the car. +He was gone some time, and when he reappeared he carried in both hands a +great soggy snowball, bigger than the biggest grapefruit. + +"Gee, folks!" he whispered, "it's snowing, and then some! I never saw such +a snow. And the porter says it is likely to get worse the farther north we +go. Suppose we should be snowbound?" + +There was a chorus of cries--of fearful delight on the part of the girls, +at least--at this announcement. + +"Never mind," Bob Henderson said, "we have a dining car hitched to this +train, so we sha'n't starve I guess, if we are snowed up. What are you +going to do with that snow, Tommy?" + +The Tucker twin winked prodigiously. "I'm going to take it up the aisle +and show it to Mr. Gordon. He doesn't know it's snowing like this," said +the boy quite soberly. + +"Why, Tommy Tucker!" cried Betty, "of course Uncle Dick knows it is +snowing. Can't he see it through the window?" + +But when she looked herself at the window beside her she was amazed to see +that the pane was masked with wet snow and one could scarcely see through +it at all. Besides, evening was falling fast. + +"I do hope," Teddy remarked, watching his brother start up the aisle, "he +tumbles in the right place." + +"What is he going to do with that snowball?" demanded Louise. + +"I know! I know!" giggled Bobby, in sudden delight. "That man with the +silk hander chief over his head is going to get a shower." + +"He isn't a man. He's just a fresh kid," declared Ted, but he said it +somewhat anxiously now. + +"Stop him, somebody!" cried Louise. "He'll get into trouble." + +"If you ask me," drawled Bob Henderson, "I think that somebody else is +going to get into trouble. I saw that chap stick his foot out and trip +Ted before." + +"He did it unknowingly," cried Betty, under her breath. "He's asleep." + +"If he is he won't be long," whispered Bobby, clutching at Betty and +holding her into the seat. "Let Tommy Tucker be. If that fellow trips +him----" + +The next instant Tommy did trip. Without any doubt the well shod foot of +the man lolling in the seat slid into the aisle as the boy with the +snowfall approached, and Tommy pitched over it with almost a certainty of +falling headlong. Indeed, he would have gone to the floor of the car had +he not let go of the mass of snow in his hands and clutched at the seat +arms. + +"Whoo!" burst out Teddy Tucker in delight. "Now that fresh kid's got his!" + +For the soft snowball in Tommy's hands landed plump upon the +handkerchief-covered crown of the person sprawling so ungracefully in the +Pullman seat! The victim uttered a howl audible above the drumming of the +car wheels. And he leaped upright between the seats of his section, beat +the fast-melting snow off his head and face, and displayed the latter to +the young peoples' amazement as that of a very stern looking gentleman +indeed with a bald head and gray side whiskers. + +"Oh, my aunt's cat and all her kittens!" gasped Bob Henderson. "Now Tommy +has done it! See who it is, Ted?" + +Teddy Tucker was as pale as the snow his brother had brought in from +outside and which now showered about the victim of the ill-timed jest. + +"Ma--Major Pater! From Salsette! He has an artificial leg, and that's why +it was sticking out in the aisle whenever he nodded off. Oh, +Jimminy-beeswax! what's going to become of Tommy?" + + + + +CHAPTER X + +BEAUTIFUL SNOW + + +The girls had heard the boys who attended Salsette Academy mention that +martinet, Major Pater. Although his infirmity--or injury--precluded his +having anything to do with the drilling of the pupils of the academy, in +the schoolroom he was the most stern of all the instructors at Salsette. + +"Oh, poor Tommy!" gasped Betty, wringing her hands. + +"Served him right," declared Louise. "He should not have played that +trick. A lame man, too!" + +"Oh, Louise!" exclaimed her sister Bobby, "Tommy didn't know it was an +artificial limb he was stumbling over." + +"And I'm sure I didn't know it was his old peg-leg I tripped on twice," +declared Teddy Tucker in high dudgeon. "What did he want to go to sleep +for, spraddled all over the aisle?" + +He said this in a very low voice, however; and be kept well behind Bob and +the girls. As for Timothy Derby and Libbie Littell they actually never +heard a word of all this! They sat side by side in one of the sections and +read together Spenser's _Faerie Queene_--understanding, it must be +confessed, but an infinitesimal part of that poem. + +The other passengers near Major Pater, without any doubt, were vastly +amused by his condition. The melting snow cascaded off his head and +shoulders, and not a little of it went down his neck. Such a military +looking and grim-faced man, standing so stiff and upright, seemed all the +more ridiculous under these conditions. + +"H-r-r-rrp!" barked Major Pater, glaring at Tommy Tucker as though his +eyes would burn holes right through that boy's jacket. + +Tommy sprang to attention. He was in citizen's dress, as was the major; +but Tommy was sure the martinet knew him. + +"What do you mean, young man, by pouring a bucket of slush over my head +and shoulders?" demanded the angry Major. + +"Please, sir, if you'll let me wipe it off----" + +Tommy had produced his own handkerchief and made a feeble attempt to +attack the melting snow on the Major's shoulders. + +"H-r-r-rrp!" barked the Major again, and Tommy translated it as meaning +"as you were" and came once more to attention in the middle of the aisle. + +One could not really help the angry gentleman, if one was kept standing in +that ridiculous position. And the passengers near by were more amused than +before by the attitude and appearance of the two engaged in the +controversy. + +"Are you aware of what you have done?" demanded Major Pater, at last +"Humph! Tucker of the Fourth, isn't it?" + +"Ye--ye--yes, sir," gasped Tommy. Then: "One of the Tuckers, sir." + +"Oh! Ah! Can there be two such awkward Tuckers?" demanded Major Paten +"Humph! Is this your father, Tucker?" + +For by this time Uncle Dick saw what was going on and he approached, +smiling it must be confessed, but with a towel secured from the men's +lavatory. + +"I am acting in the capacity of guardian for the present, sir," said Mr. +Gordon frankly. "This is a ridiculous thing; but I do not think the boy +quite intended all that happened." + +At once he began flicking away the melted snow, and then rubbed Major +Pater's bald head dry. All the time he continued to talk to the military +academy instructor: + +"I grant you that it looks very awkward on Tucker's part. But, you see, +Mr.--er--?" + +"Ma--Major Pater!" stammered Tommy Tucker. + +"Quite so. Major, of course. Major Pater, you will realize that the boy in +coming along the aisle--Er, by the way, Tommy, what were you coming for?" + +"I was coming to you, Mr. Gordon, to show you how fast the snow was +gathering. I--I scraped that ball of it off the step. The porter opened +the door for me just a moment. I say, Mr. Gordon, it's a fierce storm!" + +Tommy came through this explanation pretty well. Uncle Dick's +understanding smile helped him a good bit. + +"Quite so," said Mr. Gordon, and looking at Major Pater again. "Of course, +I would never have known it was snowing if you had not undertaken to show +me. But you see, Major Pater, your foot was sticking out into the aisle. I +saw it. You have the misfortune to----" + +"Artificial leg, sir," growled Major Pater. + +"Quite so. Well, accidents will happen, you know. There! You are quite dry +again. I don't think you will get much sleep here until the porter makes +up the berths. Suppose we go into the smoking compartment and soothe our +minds, Major?" + +"Ah--Humph! Thank you, Mr.--er----?" + +"Mr. Gordon," explained Tommy Tucker still standing as though he had +swallowed a very stiff poker indeed. + +"Ah! Glad to meet you, Mr. Gordon." They shook hands. Then Major Pater +shot another command at Tommy: "H-r-r-rrp!" (or so it sounded) and the boy +with vast relief dropped his stiff military pose. + +The rest of the "live wire octette"--even Timothy and Libbie--were highly +delighted by the outcome of Tommy's joke. For, if there is fun in such a +practical joke as Tommy had tried to carry through, they thought there was +double fun in seeing the biter bitten! + +"Now will you be good?" crowed his brother, Ted. "See what you get for +being so fresh! Tumbling over his game leg and pitching a wilted snowball +at the Major's head. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" + +"Oh, hush!" grumbled Tommy. "You needn't say anything. He doesn't know +which of the Tucker twins it was crowned him with that snowball, and you +are just as much in his bad books as I am. Remember that." + +"Listen to him!" cried Ted, at once feeling abused. "And Major Pater is +near-sighted, too, although he scorns to wear glasses. You've got me into +a mess, too, Tommy Tucker." + +"There! There!" said Betty Gordon, soothingly. "Never mind. Uncle Dick +will smooth him down. But I do think, boys, that you need not have got +into trouble at all." + +"Huh! that's our natural state," observed Teddy. "Boys out of trouble are +like fish out of water. So my dad says. And he ought to know," he grinned. +"He has twins." + +Tommy considered, however, that he had got out of a bad box pretty easily. + +"Your Uncle Dick is fine, Betty," he observed. "Think of his getting on +the blind side of Major Pater so easy. But cracky! how that snow did +squash all over him," and he ended with a wicked giggle. + +"One of your instructors, too!" exclaimed Louise. "For shame!" + +"My!" chuckled Bobby, "what we'd like to do to Miss Prettyman at +Shadyside!" + +"I am afraid Miss Prettyman is no more beloved than Major Pater is." + +"Never mind, you girls!" interrupted Tommy, with renewed interest in the +storm and trying to peer through the window. "It's a regular blizzard. +When the porter opened the door of the vestibule for me to get that snow, +I thought he wouldn't get it shut again." + +"Suppose we get stalled?" questioned Louise, inclined to be the most +thoughtful of the party. + +"Well, suppose we do?" returned Bob. "I tell you we are all right for +food, for the dining car----" + +"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Tommy put in. "The porter let me into a +secret. The diner was dropped about thirty miles back. Broken flange of +one wheel and no time, of course, to put on a new wheel." + +"Goodness!" exclaimed Betty. "I begin to feel hungry already." + +"Of course, we'll pick up another diner?" asked Libbie, though rather +doubtfully. + +"We'll hope so!" Bobby cried. + +"If we get through to Tonawanda, yes," said Tommy Tucker. "That's what the +porter told me. But we don't get there, if we are on schedule, until eight +o'clock." + +"There! I knew I was perishing of hunger," exclaimed Betty. "It's half +past four already," she added, looking at her wrist watch. + +"Three and a half hours to dinner time?" wailed Bobby. "Oh! +That--is--tough!" + +"That is, if we make the regular time," Bob said thoughtfully. "And right +now, let me tell you, this train is just about crawling, and that's all. +Humph! The soup sure will get cold in that dining car at Tonawanda, if it +waits there to be attached to our train." + +"Oh! Oh!" cried Bobby. "Don't let's think of it. I had no idea that snow +could be so troublesome." + +"Beautiful snow!" murmured Betty. "Say, Libbie. Recite that for us, will +you? You know: the poetry about 'Beautiful Snow.' You or Timothy should +remember it." + +"Pah!" exclaimed Bobby, grumblingly. "I'll give you the proper version: + + "Beautiful snow! If it chokes up this train, + It certainly will give me a pain!" + +"Goodness me, Bobby!" retorted her cousin, Libbie, "your versifying +certainly gives me a pain." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +STALLED, AND WITHOUT A DOCTOR + + +The rapidity with which the storm had increased and the drifts had filled +the cuts through which the rails were laid was something that none of the +party bound for Mountain Camp had experienced. Unless Uncle Dick be +excepted. As Betty said, Mr. Richard Gordon had been almost everywhere and +had endured the most surprising experiences. That was something that +helped to make him such a splendid guardian. + +"Yes," he agreed, when Betty dragged him down the car aisle to the two +sections which he had wisely abandoned entirely to his young charges, "we +had considerable snow up there in the part of Canada where I have been +this fall. Before I came down for the Christmas holidays there was about +four feet of snow on the level in the woods and certain sections of the +railroad up there had been entirely abandoned for the winter. Horse sleds +and dog sleighs do all the transportation until the spring thaw." + +"Oh, do you suppose," cried Libbie, big-eyed, "that we may be snowbound at +Mountain Camp so that we cannot get back until spring?" + +"Not a chance," replied Uncle Dick, laughing heartily. "But it does look +as though we may have to lay by for a night, or perhaps a night and a day, +before we can get on to Cliffdale, which is our station." + +"In a hotel!" cried Betty. "Won't that be fun?" + +"Perhaps not so much fun. Some of these country-town hotels up here in the +woods are run in a more haphazard way than a lumber camp. And what you get +to eat will come out of a can in all probability." + +The boys groaned in unison at this, and even Betty looked woebegone. + +"I wish you wouldn't talk about eating, Uncle Dick. Do you suppose we will +catch up with that dining car?" + +"I do not think we shall. But there is an eating room at the junction we +are coming to. We can buy it out. I only hope there will be milk to be had +for the little folks. There is at least one baby aboard. It's in the next +car." + +"But we'll get to this place we're going to by morning, shan't we?" cried +Bobby, very much excited. + +"We're two hours late already I understand," said Mr. Gordon. "We have +little to fear, however I fancy if the storm does not hold up they will +not try to push past the junction until morning. We've got to sleep in the +car anyway; and if we are on short rations for a few hours it certainly +will do you boys and girls little harm. At Cliffdale----" + +"Oh, Uncle Dick!" suddenly exclaimed Betty, "that is where Mr. Bolter has +sent that beautiful black horse that he bought in England." + +"Oh, indeed? I heard of that mare. To Cliffdale? I believe there is a +stockfarm there. It is some distance from my friend Canary's camp, +however." + +"Do you suppose that girl got there?" whispered Bobby to Betty. + +"Even if she did, how disappointed she must be," Betty rejoined. "I am +awfully sorry for Ida Bellethorne." + +"I don't know," said Bobby slowly. "I've been thinking. Suppose she did +find your beautiful locket and--and appropriate it for her own use," +finished Bobby rather primly. + +"You mean steal it," said Betty promptly. "No. I don't think she did. She +didn't seem to be that sort of person. Do you know, the more I think of +her the more I consider that Mrs. Staples would be capable of doing that." + +"Oh, Betty! Finding and keeping your locket?" + +Betty nodded with her lips pursed soberly. "I didn't like that woman," she +said. + +"Neither did I," cried Bobby, easily influenced by her friend's opinion. +"I didn't like her a bit." + +"But, of course, we don't know a thing about it," sighed Betty. "I do not +suppose we should blame either of them, or anybody else. We have no +evidence. I guess, Bobby, I am the only one to blame, after all." + +"Well, don't mind, Betty dear," Bobby said comfortingly. "I believe the +locket will turn up. I told Daddy and he will telephone to the stores once +in a while and see if it has been found. And, of course, we have no +particular reason to think that you dropped it in Mrs. Staples' shop." + +"None at all," admitted Betty more cheerfully. "So I'll stop worrying +right now. But I would like to know where Ida Bellethorne is in this +blizzard." + +"Girl or horse?" chuckled Bobby. + +"Girl. I fancy that little cockney hostler, or whatever he is, will look +out carefully for the mare. But who is there to care anything about poor +Ida?" + +Gradually even Betty and Bobby were convinced that there were several +other matters to worry about that were connected with neither Ida +Bellethorne the girl nor Ida Bellethorne the horse. The belated train +finally got to the junction where there was an eating place. But another +train had passed, going south, less than an hour before and the lunch +counter had been swept almost bare. + +Uncle Dick and Major Pater were old travelers, however; and they were +first out of the train and bought up most of the food in sight. Others of +the passengers purchased sandwiches and coffee and tea to consume at once. +Uncle Dick and the military man swept the shelves of canned milk and +fruit, prepared cocoa and other similar drinks, as well as all the loaves +of bread in sight, a boiled ham complete, and several yards of +frankfurters, or, as the Fairfields folks called them, "wienies." + +"We know what Mrs. Eustice and Miss Prettyman would say to such +provender," said Louise when the party, the boys helping, returned with +the spoils of the lunch-room. "How about calories and dietetics, and all +that?" + +"We may be hungry enough before we see a regular meal in a dining-car or a +hotel to forget all about such things," Uncle Dick said seriously. "There! +We are starting already. And we're pushing straight into a blizzard that +looks to me as though it would continue all night." + +"Well, Uncle Dick," Betty said cheerfully, "we can go to bed and sleep and +forget it. It will be all over by morning of course." + +Uncle Dick made no rejoinder to this. They had a jolly lunch, getting hot +water from the porter for their drink. Bob and the Tucker twins pretty +nearly bought out the candy supply on the train, and the girls felt +assured that they were completely safe from starvation as long as the +caramels and marshmallows held out. + +By nine o'clock, with the train pushing slowly on, the head locomotive +aided by a pusher picked up at the junction, the berths were made up and +everybody in the Pullman coach had retired. + +Betty, as she lay in her upper berth with Libbie, heard the snow, or +sleet, swishing against the side and roof of the car, and the sound lulled +her to sleep. She slept like any other healthy girl and knew nothing of +the night that passed. The lights were still burning when she awoke. Not a +gleam of daylight came through the narrow ground-glass window at her head. +And two other things impressed her unfavorably: The train was standing +still and not a sound penetrated to the car from without. + +Libbie was sound asleep and Betty crept out of the berth without awakening +the plump girl. She got into her wrapper and slippers and stole along the +aisle to the ladies' room. Nobody as yet seemed to have come from the +berths. + +She could not hear the wind or snow when she got into the dressing room. +This convinced her at first that the storm was over. But she dropped one +of the narrow windows at the top to see out, and found that a wall of +hard-pack snow shrouded the window. She tried to break through this drift +with her arm wrapped in a towel. But although she stood on a stool and +thrust her arm out to her shoulder, her hand did not reach the open air! + +"My goodness me!" gasped Betty Gordon. "We're stalled! We're snowbound! +What shall we ever do if the snow doesn't melt pretty soon, or they don't +come and dig us out?" + +She washed in haste, and having brought her clothes with her, she dressed +promptly. All the time she was considering what was to be done if, as it +seemed, the train could not go on. + +Just as she opened the door of the dressing room excited voices sounded at +the end of the car. The conductor and the porter were talking loudly. The +former suddenly shouted: + +"Ladies and gentlemen! is there a doctor in this coach? We want a doctor +right away! Day coach ahead! Child taken poison and must have a doctor." + +A breathless gabble of voices assured him that there was no physician in +the coach. He had already searched the other cars. There was no doctor on +the train. + +"And we're stalled here in this cut for nobody knows how long!" groaned +the conductor. "That woman is crazy in the next car. Her two year old +child got hold of some kind of poison and swallowed some of it. The child +will die for sure!" + +Betty was terribly shocked at this speech. She wriggled past the conductor +and the troubled porter, and ran into the car ahead. At first glance she +spied the little group of mother and children that was the center of +excitement. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE TUNNEL + + +The baby was screaming, the little boy of four or five looked miserably +unhappy, and the worn and meager-looking mother was plainly frightened out +of her wits. She let the baby scream on the seat beside her while she held +the little girl in her lap. + +That youngster seemed to be the least disturbed of any of the party. She +was a pretty child, and robust. She kicked vigorously against being held +almost upside down by her mother (as though by that means the dose of +poison could be coaxed out of the child) but she did not cry. + +"The little dear!" cooed Betty, pushing through the ring of other +passengers. "What has happened to her?" + +"She'll be dead in five minutes," croaked a sour visaged woman who bent +over the back of the seat to stare at the crying baby without making an +effort to relieve the mother in any way. + +"What is the poison?" demanded Betty excitedly. + +"It--it's----I don't know what the doctor called it," wailed the poor +mother. "I had it in my handbag with other drops. Nellie here is always +playing with bottles. She will drink out of bottles, much as I can do or +say." + +Betty was sniffing--that may not be an elegant expression, but it is +exactly what she did--and looking all about on the floor. + +"Something's been spilled here," she said. "It's a funny odor. Seems to me +I remember smelling it before." + +"That's the poison," groaned the woman over the back of the seat. "Her ma +knocked it out of the young one's hand. Too bad. She's a goner!" + +This seemed to Betty very dreadful. She darted an angry glance at the +woman. "A regular Mrs. Job's comforter, she is!" thought Betty. + +But all the time she was looking about the floor of the car for the +bottle. Finally she dropped to her knees and scrambled about among the +boots of the passengers. She came up like a diver, with an object held +high in one hand. + +"Is this it?" she asked. + +"That is the bottle, Miss," sobbed the mother. "My poor little Nellie! +Isn't there a doctor, anywhere? They say milk is good for some kinds of +poison, but I haven't any milk for baby even. That is what makes him cry +so. Poor little Nellie!" + +Betty had been staring at the label on the bottle. Now she smelled hard +at the mouth of it She held the bottle before the woman's eyes. + +"Are you sure this is the bottle the child drank out of?" she demanded. + +"Yes, Miss. That is it. Poor little Nellie!" + +"Why! can't you smell?" demanded Betty. "And can't you see? There is no +skull and cross-bones on this label. And all that was in the bottle was +sweet spirits of niter. I'm sure that won't do your Nellie any lasting +harm." + +The mother was thunderstruck for a moment--and speechless. The gloomy +woman looking over the back of the seat drawled: + +"Then it wasn't poison at all?" + +"No," said Betty. "And I should think among you, you should have found it +out!" + +She was quite scornful of the near-by passengers. The mother let the +struggling little girl slip out of her lap, fortunately feet first rather +than head first, and grabbed up the screaming baby. + +"Dear me! You naughty little thing, Nellie! You are always scaring me to +death," she said scoldingly. "And if we don't come to some place where I +can buy milk pretty soon and get it warmed, this child will burst his +lungs crying." + +Betty, however, considered that the baby was much too strong and vigorous +to be in a starving state as yet. She wondered how the poor women expected +to get milk with the train stalled in the snow. She had in her pocket +some chocolate wafers and she pacified the two older children with these +and then ran back to the sleeping car. + +She was in season to head off a procession of excited Pullman passengers +in all stages of undress starting for the day coach with everything in the +line of antidote for poison that could be imagined and which they had +discovered in their traveling bags. + +"Baby's better. She wasn't poisoned at all," Betty told them. "But those +children are going to be awfully hungry before long if we have to stay +here. Do you know we're snowbound, girls?" + +This last she confided to the three Littell girls. + +"Won't they dig us out?" asked the practical Louise. + +"What a lark!" exclaimed Bobby, clapping her hands. + +"Just think! Buried in the snow! How wonderful!" murmured Libbie. + +"Cheese!" exclaimed Tommy Tucker, overhearing this. "You'll think it's +wonderful. The brakeman told me that the drivers were clogged at six +o'clock and the wheels haven't turned since. We're completely buried in +snow and it's still snowing. Head engine's an oil-burner and there is +plenty of fuel; but there isn't a chance of our being dug out for days." + +"How brutal you are," giggled Bobby, who could not be frightened by any +misadventure. "How shall we live?" + +"After we eat up the bread and ham we will draw lots and eat up each +other," Bob observed soberly. + +"But those little children can't eat each other," Betty declared with +conviction. "Come on Bobby. You're dressed. Let's see what we can do for +that poor mother and the babies." + +The two girls had to confer with Uncle Dick first of all. He had charge of +the supplies. Betty knew there was some way of mixing condensed milk with +water and heating the mixture so that it would do very well at a +pinch--the pinch of hunger!--for a nursing child. Uncle Dick supplied the +canned milk and some other food for the older children, and Betty and +Bobby carried these into the day coach where the little family had spent +such an uncomfortable night and were likely to spend a very uncomfortable +day as well. + +For there was no chance of escaping from their present predicament--all +the train crew said so--until plows and shovelers came to dig the train +out of the cut. + +Of course the conductors and the rest of the crew knew just where they +were. Behind them about three miles was a small hamlet at which the train +had not been scheduled to stop, and had not stopped. Had the train pulled +down there the situation of the crew and passengers would have been much +better. They would not have been stalled in this drifted cut. + +Cliffdale, to which Uncle Dick and his party were bound, was twenty miles +and more ahead. The roadbed was so blocked that it might be several days +before the way would be opened to Cliffdale. + +"The roads will be opened by the farmers and teams will get through the +mountains before the railroad will be dug out," Mr. Gordon told the boys. +"If we could get back to that station in the rear we might find +conveyances that would take us on to Mountain Camp. If I had a pair of +snowshoes I certainly could make it over the hills myself in a short +time." + +"You go ahead, Mr. Gordon," said Tommy Tucker, "and tell 'em we're +coming." + +"I'll have to dig out of here and get the webs on my feet first," replied +Uncle Dick, laughing. + +His speech put an idea in the head of the ingenious Tommy Tucker. While +the girls were attending to the children in the car ahead, the twins and +Bob and Timothy Derby went through the train to the very end. The +observation platform was banked with snow, and the snow was packed pretty +hard. But there were some tools at hand and the boys set to work with the +two porters and a brakeman to punch a hole through the snowbank to the +surface. + +It was great sport, although the quartette from Salsette Academy enjoyed +it more than the men did. It was fun for the boys and work for the men, +and the latter would have given it up in despair if the younger diggers +had not been so eagerly interested in the task. + +They sloped the tunnel so that it was several yards long before it reached +the surface. The snow underneath, they tramped hard; they battered their +way through by pressing a good deal of the snow into solid walls on either +side. When the roof at the end finally fell in on them, they found that it +was still snowing steadily and the wind was pouring great sheets of it +into the cut and heaping it yard upon yard over the roofs of the cars. +They could barely see the top of the smokestack of the pusher a few feet +away. + +That locomotive had been abandoned by its crew when the train was stalled. +Keeping the boiler of the head engine hot was sufficient to supply the +cars with heat and hot water. + +"Cricky!" cried Bob. "We've found the way out; but I guess even Uncle Dick +wouldn't care to start out in this storm, snowshoes or not. Fellows, we're +in a bad fix, just as sure as you live." + +"All right," said Teddy Tucker. "Let's go back and get something to eat +before somebody else gets ahead of us. I suppose those girls have given +all the milk to those kids up front, and maybe the ham sandwiches too." + +"Dear me!" sighed Timothy, "it is like being cast away on a desert island. +We are Robinson Crusoes." + +"And haven't got even a goat!" chuckled Tommy Tucker. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +AN ALARM + + +Mr. Richard Gordon was not minded to allow the young folks to portion out +the little store of food as they pleased. He and Major Pater, who had now +joined the party from Fairfields quite as a matter of course, had +considered the use of the supplies to the best advantage. There was not +much else to eat on the train, for even the crew had devoured their +lunches, and most trainmen when obliged to carry food at all are supplied +with huge tin buckets that hold at least three "square meals." + +"Though why meals should be 'square' I can't for the life of me see," +Betty observed. "Why not 'round' meals? I am sure we manage to get around +them when we eat them." + +"Quite a philosopheress, aren't you?" joked Bob. + +"These rations are not to be considered with philosophy," complained +Bobby. "They are too frugal." + +In truth, when the bread and meat and crackers and hot drink had been +portioned to those needed food most, the amount each received was nothing +to gorge upon. + +"If it stops snowing--or as soon as it does," Bob declared, "we've got to +get out and make our way back to that station the brakeman says is only +three miles away." + +"Uncle Dick won't let us try it, I am sure," sighed Betty. "How could we +wade through such deep snow?" + +"If you had helped dig that tunnel," said Teddy Tucker confidently, "you'd +know that the snow is packed so hard you wouldn't sink in very deep in +walking." + +"But of course, you girls can't go," Tommy said. "We fellows will have to +go for supplies." + +The girls did not much like this statement. Betty and Bobby at least +considered that they were quite as well able to endure the hardships of a +tramp through the snow as the boys. + +"I'd just like to see that tunnel, and see how hard it is snowing +outside," said Betty privately to her chum. + +"Let's go look," exclaimed Bobby, equally curious. + +Libbie and Timothy had their heads together over a book. Louise and the +boys were engaged socially with some of the other passengers in their +coach. So Betty and Bobby were able to slip away, with their coats and +caps, without being observed. + +There were two Pullman coaches and but one day coach besides the express +and baggage and mail cars to the train. The passengers in the day coach +were confined to that or to the smoker's end of the baggage car ahead. The +occupants of the Pullman coaches could roam through both as they pleased; +and had the weather been fine it is certain that the young folks from +Fairfields would have occupied the observation platform at the rear of the +train a good part of the daytime. + +They had been shut in by the storm the afternoon before, and now they were +doubly shut in by the snow. The doors of the vestibules between the cars +could not be opened, for the snow was banked up on both sides to the +roofs. That tunnel the boys and train hands had made from the rear +platform was the only means of egress for the passengers from the +submerged train. + +Betty and Bobby passed through the rear car and out upon the snow-banked +platform. They saw that several people must have thrust themselves through +the tunnel since the boys had made it. Probably these explorers had +wished, like the two girls, to discover for themselves just what state the +weather was in. + +"Dear me!" gasped Bobby, "dare we poke through that hole? What do you +think, Betty?" + +"The snow is hard packed, just as the boys say. I guess we can risk it," +declared the more daring Betty. "Anyway, I can go anywhere Bob Henderson +can, my dear. I will not take a back seat for any boy." + +"Hear! Hear!" chuckled Bobby. "Isn't that what they cry at political +meetings? You have made a good speech, Bettykins. Now go ahead and do it." + +"Go ahead and do what?" + +"Lead the way through that chimney. My! I believe it has stopped snowing +and the boys don't know it." + +"Come on then and make sure," Betty cried, and began to scramble up the +sloping tunnel on hands and knees. + +Both girls were warmly dressed, booted, and mittened. A little snow would +not hurt them--not even a great deal of snow. And that a great deal had +fallen and blown into this railroad cut, Betty and Bobby soon realized +when they had scrambled out through what the latter had called "the +chimney." + +Only a few big flakes drifted in the air, which was keen and biting. But +the wind had ceased--at least, it did not blow here in the cut between the +hills--and it seemed only an ordinary winter day to the two girls from the +other side of the Potomac. + +Forward they saw a thin stream of smoke rising into the air from the stack +of the front locomotive. The fires in the pusher were banked. It was not +an oil-burner, nor was it anywhere near as large a locomotive as the one +that pulled the train. + +Rearward they could scarcely mark the roadbed, so drifted over was it. +Fences and other landmarks were completely buried. The bending telegraph +poles, weighted by the pull of snow-laden wires, was all that marked the +right of way through the glen. + +"What a sight!" gasped Betty. "Oh, Bobby! did you ever see anything so +glorious?" + +"I never saw so much snow, if that is what you mean," admitted the +Virginia girl. "And I am not sure that I really approve of it." + +But Bobby laughed. She had to admit it was a great sight. It was now +mid-afternoon and all they could see of the sun was a round, hazy ball +behind the misty clouds, well down toward the western horizon which they +could see through the mouth of this cut, or valley between the hills. At +first they beheld not a moving object on the white waste. + +"It is almost solemn," pursued Betty, who possessed a keen delight in all +manifestations of nature. + +"It looks mighty solemn, I admit," agreed Bobby. "Especially when you +remember that anything to eat is three miles away and the drifts are +nobody knows how many feet deep." + +Betty laughed. She was about to say something cheerful in reply when a +sudden sound smote upon their ears--a sound that startled the two girls. +Somewhere from over the verge of the high bank of the cut on their left +hand sounded a long-drawn and perfectly blood-curdling howl! + +"For goodness' sake!" gasped Bobby, grabbing her friend by the arm. "What +sort of creature is that? Hear it?" + +"Of course I hear it," replied Betty, rather sharply. "Do you think I am +deaf?" + +Only a very deaf person could have missed hearing that mournful howl. It +drew nearer. + +"Is it a dog?" asked Bobby, almost in a whisper, as for a third time the +howl sounded. + +"A dog barks, doesn't it? That doesn't sound like a dog, Bobby," said +Betty. "I heard one out West. I do believe it is one!" + +"One what?" cried Bobby, almost shaking her in alarm and impatience. + +"A wolf. It sounds just like a wolf. Oh, Bobby! suppose there should be a +pack of wolves in these hills and that they should attack this train?" + +"Wolves!" shrieked Bobby. "_Wolves_! Then me for in-doors! I am not going +to stay here and be eaten up by wolves." + +As she turned to dive into the tunnel there was a sharper and more eager +yelp, and a shaggy animal came to the edge of the bluff to their left and, +without stopping an instant, plunged down through the drifts toward the +two girls where they stood on the hard-packed snow at the mouth of the +tunnel. + +"It is a wolf!" wailed Bobby, and immediately disappeared, head first, +down the hole in the snow drift. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE MOUNTAIN HUT + + +If Bobby had not gone first and had not stuck half way down the hole with +her feet kicking madly just at the mouth of the tunnel, without doubt +Betty Gordon would have been driven by her own fears back into the Pullman +coach. + +That shaggy beast diving from the top of the embankment, plunging, yelping +and whining, through the softer drifts of snow, frightened Betty just as +much as it had Bobby Littell. The latter had got away with a flying start, +however, and her writhing body plugged the only means of escape. So Betty +really had to face the approaching terror. + +"Oh! Oh!" cried Betty, turning from the approaching beast in despair. +"Hurry! Hurry, Bobby Littell! Do you want me to be eaten up?" + +But Bobby had somehow cramped herself in the winding passage through the +snow, and her voice was muffled as she too cried for help. + +However, Bobby's demands for assistance were much more likely to bring it +than the cries of the girl outside. The porter heard Bobby first, and +when he opened the door of the coach several men who were near heard the +girl. + +"Help! Help! A wolf is eating her!" shrieked the frightened Bobby. + +"Ma soul an' body! He must be a-chawin' her legs off!" cried the darkey +and he seized Bobby by the wrists, threw himself backward, and the girl +came out of the tunnel like an aggravating cork out of a bottle. + +"What's this?" demanded Mr. Richard Gordon, who happened to be coming back +to the end of the train to look for his niece and her chum. + +"Oh, Mr. Gordon!" sputtered Bobby, scrambling up, "it's got her! A wolf! +It's got Betty!" + +"A wolf?" repeated Uncle Dick. "I didn't know there were any wolves left +in this part of the country." + +Major Pater was with him. Mr. Gordon grabbed the latter's walking stick +and went up that tunnel a good deal quicker than Bobby had come down it. +And when he got to the surface he found his niece, laughing and crying at +once, and almost smothered by the joyful embraces of a big Newfoundland +dog! + +"A wolf indeed!" cried Mr. Gordon, but beating off the animal +good-naturedly. "He must be a friend of yours, Betty." + +"Oh, dear me, he did scare us so!" Betty rejoined, getting up out of the +drift, trying to brush off her coat, and petting the exuberant dog at the +same time. "But it is a dear--and its master must be somewhere about, +don't you think, Uncle Dick?" + +Its master was, for the next moment he appeared at the top of the bank +down which the "wolf" had wallowed. He hailed Uncle Dick and Betty with a +great, jovial shout and plunged down the slope himself. He was a young man +on snowshoes, and he proved to be a telegraph operator at that station +three miles south. + +"Wires are so clogged we can't get messages through. But we knew that +Number Forty was stalled about here. Going to be a job to dig her out. +I've got a message for the conductor," he said when he reached the top of +the drift that was heaped over the train. + +"Wasn't it a hard task to get here?" Mr. Gordon asked. + +"Not so bad. My folks live right over the ridge there, about half a mile +away. I just came from the house with the dog. Down, Nero! Behave +yourself!" + +"We are going to be hungry here pretty soon," suggested Mr. Gordon. + +"There will be a pung come up from the station with grub enough before +night. Furnished by the company. That is what I have come to see the +conductor about." + +"I tell you what," said Betty's uncle, who was nothing if not quick in +thinking. "My party were bound for Cliffdale." + +"That's not very far away. But I doubt if the train gets there this week." + +"Bad outlook for us. We are going to Mountain Camp--Mr. Canary's place." + +"I know that place," said the telegraph operator. "There is an easy road +to it from our farm through the hills. Get there quicker than you can by +the way of Cliffdale. I believe my father could drive you up there +to-morrow." + +"In a sleigh?" cried Betty delightedly. "What fun!" + +"In a pung. With four of our horses. They'd break the road all right. +Ought to start right early in the morning, though." + +"Do you suppose you could get us over to your house to-night?" asked Mr. +Gordon quickly. "There are a good many of us----" + +"How many in the party?" asked the young man. "My name's Jaroth--Fred +Jaroth." + +Mr. Gordon handed him his card and said: + +"There are four girls, four boys, and myself. Quite a party." + +"That is all right, Mr. Gordon," said Fred Jaroth cheerfully. "We often +put up thirty people in the summer. We've a great ranch of a house. And I +can help you up the bank yonder and beat you a path through the woods to +the main road. Nothing simpler. Your trunks will get to Cliffdale sometime +and you can carry your hand baggage." + +"Not many trunks, thank goodness," replied Mr. Gordon. "What do you think, +Betty? Does it sound good?" + +"Heavenly!" declared his niece. + +Just then a brakeman came up through the tunnel to find out if the wolf +had eaten both the gentleman and his niece, and the telegraph operator +went down, feet first, to find the conductor and deliver his message. + +"Then the idea of going on to Mountain Camp by sledge suits you, does it, +young lady?" asked Mr. Gordon of Betty. + +"They will all be delighted. You know they will, Uncle. What sport!" + +The suggestion of the telegraph operator did seem quite inspired. Mr. +Gordon and Betty reentered the train to impart the decision to the others, +and, as Betty had claimed, her young friends were both excited and +delighted by the prospect. + +In half an hour the party was off, Betty and her friends bundled up and +carrying their bags while Mr. Gordon followed and Fred Jaroth led the way +on his snowshoes and carrying two suitcases. He said they helped balance +him and made the track through the snow firmer. As for Nero, he cavorted +like a wild dog, and that, Bobby said, proved he was a wolf! + +Once at the top of the bank they found it rather easy following Jaroth +through the woods. And when they reached the road--or the place where the +highway would have been if the snow had not drifted over fences and +all--they met the party from the station bringing up food and other +comforts for the snowbound passengers. As the snow had really stopped +falling it was expected that the plow would be along sometime the next day +and then the train would be pulled back to the junction. + +"But if this man has a roomy sled and good horses we shall not be cheated +out of our visit to Mountain Camp," Mr. Gordon said cheerfully. + +The old farmhouse when they reached it certainly looked big enough to +accommodate them all. There was a wing thrown out on either side; but +those wings were for use only in the summer. There were beds enough and to +spare in the main part of the house. + +When they sat down to Mrs. Jaroth's supper table Bob declared that quite +evidently famine had not reached this retired spot. The platters were +heaped with fried ham and fried eggs and sausages and other staple +articles. These and the hot biscuit disappeared like snow before a hot sun +in April. + +Altogether it was a joyous evening that they spent at the Jaroth house. +Yet as Betty and Bobby cuddled up together in the bed which they shared, +Betty expressed a certain fear which had been bothering her for some time. + +"I wonder where she is, Bobby?" Betty said thoughtfully. + +"Where who is?" demanded her chum sleepily. + +"That girl. Ida Bellethorne. If she came up here on a wild goose chase +after her aunt, and found only a horse, what will become of her?" + +"I haven't the least idea," confessed Bobby. + +"Did she return before this blizzard set in, or is she still up here in +the woods? And what will become of her?" + +"Gracious!" exclaimed the sleepy Bobby, "let's go to sleep and think about +Ida Bellethorne to-morrow." + +"And I wonder if it is possible that she can know anything about my +locket," was another murmured question of Betty's. But Bobby had gone fast +asleep then and did not answer. + +Under the radiance of the big oil lamp hanging above the kitchen table, +the table itself covered with an old-fashioned red and white checked +cloth, the young folks bound for Mountain Camp ate breakfast. And such a +breakfast! + +Buckwheat cakes, each as big as the plate itself with "oodles of butter +and real maple syrup," to quote Bob. + +"We don't even get as good as this at Salsette," said Tommy Tucker grimly. +"Oh, cracky!" + +"I want to know!" gibed his twin, borrowing a phrase he had heard New +England Libbie use on one occasion. "If Major Pater could see us now!" + +Libbie and Timothy forgot to quote poetry. The fact was, as Bobby pointed +out, buckwheat cakes like those were poems in themselves. + +"And when one's mouth is full of such poems, mere printed verses lack +value." + +Romantic as she was, Libbie admitted the truth of her cousin's remark. + +A chime of bells at the door hastened the completion of the meal. The boys +might have sat there longer and, like boa-constrictors, gorged themselves +into lethargy. + +However, adventure was ahead and the sound of the sledge bells excited the +young people. They got on their coats and caps and furs and mittens and +trooped out to the "pung," as the elder Jaroth called the low, deep, +straw-filled sledge to which he had attached four strong farm horses. + +There were no seats. It would be much more comfortable sitting in the +straw, and much warmer. For although the storm had entirely passed the +cold was intense. It nipped every exposed feature, and their breath hung +like hoar-frost before them when they laughed and talked. + +During the night something had been done to break out the road. Mr. +Jaroth's horses managed to trample the drifts into something like a hubbly +path for the broad sled-runners to slip oven They went on, almost always +mounting a grade, for four hours before they came to a human habitation. + +The driver pointed his whipstock to a black speck before them and higher +up the hill which was sharply defined against the background of pure +white. + +"Bill Kedders' hut," he said to Mr. Gordon. "'Tain't likely he's there +this time o' year. Usually he and his wife go to Cliffdale to spend the +winter with their married daughter." + +"Just the same," cried Bob suddenly, "there's smoke coming out of that +chimney. Don't you see it, Uncle Dick?" + +"The boy's right!" ejaculated Jaroth, with sudden anxiety. "It can't be +that Bill and his woman were caught by this blizzard. He's as knowing +about weather signs as an old bear, Bill is. And you can bet every bear in +these woods is holed up till spring." + +He even urged the plodding horses to a faster pace. The hut, buried in the +snow to a point far above its eaves, was built against a steep hillside +at the edge of the wood, with the drifted road passing directly before its +door. When the pung drew up before it and the horses stopped with a sudden +shower of tinkling bell-notes, Mr. Jaroth shouted: + +"Hey, Bill! Hey, Bill Kedders!" + +There was no direct reply to this hail. But as they listened for a reply +there was not one of the party that did not distinguish quite clearly the +sound of weeping from inside the mountain hut. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE LOST GIRL + + +"That ain't Bill!" exclaimed Jaroth. "That's as sure as you're a foot +high. Nor yet it ain't his wife. If either one of them has cried since +they were put into short clothes I miss my guess. Huh!" + +He hesitated, standing in the snow half way between the pung and the +snow-smothered door of the hut. Sheltered as it had been by the hill and +by the woods, the hut was not masked so much by the drifted snow on its +front. They could see the upper part of the door-casing. + +"By gravy!" ejaculated Mr. Jaroth, "it don't sound human. I can't make it +out. Funny things they say happen up here in these woods. I wouldn't be a +mite surprised if that crying--or----" + +He hesitated while the boys and girls, and even Mr. Gordon, stared +amazedly at him. + +"Who do you think it is?" asked Uncle Dick finally. + +"Well, it ain't Bill," grumbled Jaroth. + +The sobbing continued. So engaged was the person weeping in the sorrow +that convulsed him, or her, that the jingling of the bells as the horses +shook their heads or the voices of those in the pung did not attract +attention. + +Jaroth stood in the snow and neither advanced nor retreated. It really did +seem as though he was afraid to approach nearer to the hut on the +mountain-side! + +"That is a girl or a woman in there," Bob declared. + +"Huh!" exclaimed Bobby sharply. "It might be a boy. Boys cry sometimes." + +"Really?" said Timothy. "But you never read of crying boys except in +humorous verses. They are not supposed to cry." + +"Well," said Betty, suddenly hopping out of the sleigh, "we'll never find +out whether it is a girl or a boy if we wait for Mr. Jaroth, it seems." + +She started for the door of the hut. Bob hopped out after her in a hurry. +And he took with him the snow-shovel Jaroth had brought along to use in +clearing the drifts away if they chanced to get stuck. + +"You'd better look out," said Jaroth, still standing undecided in the +snow. + +"For what?" asked Bob, hurrying to get before Betty. + +"That crying don't sound natural. Might he a ha'nt. Can't tell." + +"Fancy!" whispered Betty in glee. "A great big man like him afraid of a +ghost--and there isn't such a thing!" + +"Don't need to be if he is afraid of it," returned Bob in the same low +tone. "You can be afraid of any fancy if you want to. It doesn't need to +exist. I guess most fears are of things that don't really exist Come on, +now. Let me shovel this drift away." + +He set to work vigorously on the snow heap before the door. Mr. Gordon, +seeing that everything possible was being done, let the young people go +ahead without interference. In two minutes they could see the frozen +latch-string that was hanging out. Whoever was in the hut had not taken +the precaution to pull in the leather thong. + +"Go ahead, Betty," said Bob finally. "You push open the door. I'll stand +here ready to beat 'em down with the shovel if they start after you." + +"Guess you think it isn't a girl, then," chuckled Betty, as she pulled the +string and heard the bar inside click as it was drawn out of the slot. + +With the shovel Bob pushed the door inward. The cabin would have been +quite dark had it not been for a little fire crackling on the hearth. Over +this a figure stooped--huddled, it seemed, for warmth. The room was almost +bare. + +"Why, you poor thing!" Betty cried, running into the hut. "Are you here +all alone?" + +She had seen instantly that it was a girl. And evidently the stranger was +in much misery. But at Betty's cry she started up from the hearth and +whirled about in both fear and surprise. + +Her hair was disarranged, and there was a great deal of it. Her face was +swollen with weeping, and she was all but blinded by her tears. At Betty's +sympathetic tone and words she burst out crying again. Betty gathered her +right into her arms--or, as much of her as she could enfold, for the other +girl was bigger than Betty in every way. + +"You?" gasped the crying girl. "How--how did you come up here? And in all +this snow? Oh, this is a wilderness--a wilderness! How do people ever live +here, even in the summer? It is dreadful--dreadful! And I thought I should +freeze." + +"Ida Bellethorne!" gasped Betty. "Who would ever have expected to find you +here?" + +"I know I haven't any more business here than I have in the moon," said +the English girl. "I--I wish I'd never left Mrs. Staples." + +"Mrs. Staples told us you had come up this way," Betty said. + +Immediately the other girl jerked away from her, threw back her damp hair, +and stared, startled, at Betty. + +"Then you--you found out? You know----" + +"My poor girl!" interrupted Betty, quite misunderstanding Ida's look, "I +know all about your coming up here to find your aunt. And that was +foolish, for the notice you saw in the paper was about Mr. Bolter's black +mare." + +"Mr. Bolter's mare?" repeated Ida. + +"Now, tell me!" urged the excited Betty. "Didn't you come to Cliffdale to +look for your aunt?" + +"Yes. That I did. But she isn't up here at all." + +By this time Uncle Dick and the others were gathered about the door of the +hut. Jaroth, with a glance now and then at his horses, had even stepped +inside. + +"By gravy!" ejaculated the man, "this here's a pretty to-do. What you been +doing to Bill Kedders' chattels, girl?" + +"I--I burned them. I had to, to keep warm," answered Ida Bellethorne +haltingly. "I burned the table and the chairs and the boxes and then +pulled down the berths and burned them. If you hadn't come I don't know +what I should have done for a fire." + +"By gravy! Burned down the shack itself to keep you warm, I reckon!" +chuckled Jaroth. "Well, we'd better take this girl along with us, hadn't +we, Mr. Gordon? She'll set fire to the timber next, if we don't, after +she's used up the shack." + +"We most surely will take her along to Mountain Camp," declared Betty's +uncle. "But what puzzles me, is how she ever got here to this, lonely +place." + +"I was trying to find the Candace Farm," choked Ida Bellethorne. + +"I want to know!" said Jaroth. "That's the stockfarm where they pasture so +many sportin' hosses. Candace, he makes a good thing out of it. But it's +eight miles from here and not in the direction we're going, Mr. Gordon." + +"We will take her along to Mountain Camp," said Uncle Dick. "One more will +not scare Mrs. Canary, I am sure." + +Ida brought a good-sized suitcase out of the hut with her. She had +evidently tried to walk from Cliffdale to the stockfarm, carrying that +weight. The girls were buzzing over the appearance of the stranger and the +boys stared. + +"Oh, Betty!" whispered Bobby Littell, "is she Ida Bellethorne?" + +"One of them," rejoined Betty promptly. + +"Then do you suppose she has your locket?" ventured Bobby. + +To tell the truth, Betty had not once thought of that! + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE CAMP ON THE OVERLOOK + + +Mountain Camp was rightly named, for it was built on the side of one +mountain and was facing another. Between the two eminences was a lake at +least five miles long and almost as broad. The wind had blown so hard +during the blizzard that the snow had not piled upon the ice at all, +although it was heaped man-high along the edges. The pool of blue ice +stretched away from before Mountain Camp like a huge sheet of plate glass. + +The two storied, rambling house, built of rough logs on the outside, stood +on a plateau called the Overlook forty feet above the surface of the lake. +Indeed the spot did overlook the whole high valley. + +The hills sloped down from this height in easy descents to the plains. +Woods masked every topographical contour of the surrounding country. Such +woods as Betty Gordon and her friends had never seen before. + +"Virginia forests are not like this," confessed Louise Littell. "The pines +are never so tall and there is not so much hardwood. Dear me! see that +dead pine across the lake. It almost seems to touch the sky, it is so +tall." + +This talk took place the next morning when they had all rested and, like +all healthy young things, were eager for adventure. They had been welcomed +by Mr. and Mrs. Canary in a way that put the most bashful at ease. + +Even Ida Bellethorne had soon recovered from that sense of strangeness +that had at first overpowered her. The girls had been able to help her out +a little in the matter of dress. She appeared at the dinner table quite as +one of themselves. Betty would not hear of Ida's withdrawing from the +general company, and for a particular reason. + +In truth, Betty felt a little condemned. She had considered a suspicion of +Ida's honesty, and afterward she knew it could not be so! The English girl +had no appearance of a dishonest person. Betty saw that Uncle Dick was +favorably disposed toward Ida. If he did not consider her all right he +surely would not have introduced her to Mr. and Mrs. Canary as one of his +party. + +Nor did Uncle Dick allow Ida to tell her story the evening they arrived at +the camp on the Overlook. "To-morrow will do for that," he had said. + +At breakfast time there were so many plans for exciting adventure +discussed that Betty surely would have forgotten all about Ida +Bellethorne's expected explanation had it not been for the lost locket. +The possibility that Ida knew something about it had so impressed Betty +that nothing else held her interest for long. + +Every one had brought skates from Fairfields, and the great expanse of +blue ice--no ice is so blue as that of a mountain lake--was unmarked. +Naturally skating was the very first pleasure that beckoned. + +"Oh, I'm just crazy to get on skates!" cried Bobby. + +"I think I'll be glad to do some skating myself," came from Libbie, who +had been reading a book even before breakfast. + +"What do you say to a race on skates?" came from Tommy Tucker. + +"I think we had better get used to skating up here before we talk about a +race," said Bob. "This ice looks tremendously hard and slippery. You won't +be able to do much on your skates unless they are extra sharp." + +"Oh, I had 'em sharpened." + +"Don't forget to wrap up well," admonished Mrs. Canary. "Sometimes it gets +pretty cold and windy." + +"Not to say anything about its being cold already," answered Bobby. "My, +but the wind goes right through a person up here!" + +While the other seven ran off for skates and wraps, Betty nodded to Uncle +Dick and then, tucking her arm through that of Ida Bellethorne, urged her +to follow Mr. Gordon from the breakfast room to a little study, or "den," +that was possibly Mr. Canary's own. + +"Now, girls," said Uncle Dick in his quiet, pleasant way and smiling with +equal kindness upon his niece and the English girl, "let us get +comfortable and open our hearts to each other. I think you know, Ida, that +Betty and I are immensely interested in your story and we are hungry for +the details. But not altogether out of mere curiosity. We hope to give you +aid in some way to make your situation better. Understand?" + +"Oh, Mr. Gordon, I quite understand that," said the English girl seriously +and without smiling. "I never saw such friendly people as you are. And you +both strangers to me! If I were at home I couldn't find better friends, I +am sure." + +"That's fine!" declared Uncle Dick. "It is exactly the way I want you to +feel. Betty and I are interested. Now suppose you sit down and tell us all +about it." + +"Where shall I begin?" murmured the girl thoughtfully, hesitating. + +"If I were you," returned Uncle Dick, with a smile, "I would begin at the +beginning." + +"Oh, but that's so very far back!" + +"Never mind that. One of the most foolish mistakes which I see in +educational methods is to give the children lessons in modern history +without any reference to ancient history which comes to them in higher +grades. Ancient history should be gone into first. Suppose, Ida, you begin +with ancient history." + +"Before Ida Bellethorne was born, do you mean?" asked the English girl +doubtfully. + +"Which Ida Bellethorne do you mean?" asked Mr. Gordon, while Betty stared. + +"I was thinking of my beautiful black mare. The darling! She is seven +years old now, Mr. Gordon; but I think that in those seven years enough +has happened to me to make me feel three times seven years old." + +"Go ahead, Ida," said the gentleman cheerfully. "Tell it in your own way." + +Thus encouraged, the girl began, and she did tell it in her own way. But +it was not a brief way, and both Mr. Gordon and Betty asked questions and +that, too, increased the difficulty of Ida's telling her story. + +She had been the only living child of Gwynne Bellethorne, who had been a +horse breeder and sometimes a turfman in one of the lower English +counties. She had been motherless since her third birthday. Her only +living relative was her father's sister, likewise Ida Bellethorne, who had +been estranged from her brother for several years and had made her own +way on the continent and later in America on the concert stage. + +Ida, the present Ida, remembered seeing her aunt but once. She had come to +Bellethorne Park the very week the black mare was foaled. When they all +went out to see the little, awkward, kicking colt in the big box stall, +separated from its whinnying mother by a strong barred fence, the owner of +the stables had laughingly named the filly after his sister. + +"But," Ida told them, "father told Aunt Ida that the filly was to be my +property. He had, I think, suffered many losses even then. He made a bill +of sale, or something, making the filly over to me; but I was a minor, and +after father died my guardian had that bill of sale. He showed it to me +once. I don't see how Mr. Bolter could have bought my lovely mare when I +got none of the money for her." + +This was not, however, sticking to the main thread of the story. Ida knew +that although her aunt had come to the Park in amity, there was a quarrel +between her father and aunt before the haughty and beautiful concert +singer went away, never more to appear at Bellethorne, not even to attend +her brother's funeral. + +Before that sad happening the mare, Ida Bellethorne, had come to full +growth and as a three-year-old had made an astonishing record on the +English race tracks. The year Mr. Bellethorne died he had planned to ship +her to France for the Grand Prix. Her name was in the mouths of every +sportsman in England and her fame had spread to the United States. + +The death of her father had signaled the breaking up of her home and the +severing of all home ties for Ida. Like many men of his class, Mr. +Bellethorne had had no close friends. At least, no honorable friends. The +man he had chosen as the administrator of his wrecked estate and the +guardian of his unfortunate daughter, Ida felt sure had been dishonorable. + +There seemed nothing left for Ida when the estate was "settled." One day +Ida Bellethorne, the mare, had disappeared, and Ida the girl could learn +nothing about her or what had been done with her. At that she had run away +from her guardian, had made her way to Liverpool, had taken service with +an American family sailing for the United States, and so had reached New +York. + +"I found a letter addressed to Aunt Ida after my father died," explained +the girl, choking back a sob. "On the envelope in pencil father had +written to me to find Aunt Ida and give it to her. He hoped she would +forgive him and take some interest in me. I've got that letter safe in +here." She touched the belt that held her blouse down so snugly. "I hope +I'll find Aunt Ida and be able to give her the letter. I remember her as a +most beautiful, tall woman. I loved her on sight. But, I don't know----" + +"Cheer up!" exclaimed Mr. Gordon, beamingly. "We'll find her. I take it +upon myself to say that Betty and I will find her for you. Sha'n't we, +Betty?" + +"Indeed we will. If she is singing in this country of course it will be +comparatively easy to find her." + +"Do you think so?" asked Ida Bellethorne doubtfully. "I have not found it +so, and I have been searching for her for three months now. This is such a +big country! I never imagined it so big until I began to look for Aunt +Ida. It seems like looking for a needle in a haystack." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +OFF ON SNOWSHOES + + +Mr. Gordon encouraged the English girl at this point in her story by +assuring her that he would, before returning to Canada, put the matter in +the hands of his lawyers and have the search for the elder Ida Bellethorne +conducted in a more businesslike way. + +"How did you expect to find your aunt," he asked, "when you first landed +in New York?" + +"I knew of a musical journal published there which I believed kept track +of people who sang. I went to that office. The last they knew of my aunt +she was booked to sing at a concert in Washington," Ida said sadly. "The +date was the very day I called at the office. I hurried to buy a ticket to +Washington. But the distance was so great that when my train got into +Washington the concert was over and I could do nothing more until the next +day." + +"And then?" asked Uncle Dick. + +"She had gone again. All the company had gone and I could find nobody who +knew anything about her. I--I didn't have much money left," confessed the +girl. "And things do cost so much here in your country. I was frightened. +I walked about to find a cheap lodging and reached that street in +Georgetown where Mrs. Staples has her shop." + +"I see," commented Uncle Dick. + +"So I asked Mrs. Staples. She was English too, and she offered me lodgings +and a chance to serve in her shop. I took it. What else could I do?" + +"You are a plucky girl, I must say. Don't you think so. Betty?" said Uncle +Dick. + +"I think she is quite wonderful!" cried his niece. "And think of her +making those blouses so beautifully! You know, Ida, Bobby bought the blue +one of Mrs. Staples." + +"I am glad, if you like them," said the other girl, blushing faintly. "I +had hard work to persuade Mrs. Staples to pay for that one on the chance +of your coming back for it." + +"Well," interposed Uncle Dick, "tell us the rest. You thought you heard of +your Aunt Ida up here, in the mountains?" + +"Yes, Mr. Gordon," said Ida. "I read it in the paper. But the notice must +have referred to my dear little mare. I never dreamed she had been sent +over here. I never dreamed of it!" + +"No?" + +"Of course I didn't! And when I got to Cliffdale there was nobody who had +ever heard of my aunt. There are two hotels. One of them is closed at +this time of year. At the other there was no such guest." + +"Dear me! How disappointed you must have felt," murmured Betty. + +"You can't imagine! But in talking with the clerk at the hotel I got news +of my little darling." + +"Meaning the mare, of course?" suggested Uncle Dick. + +"Yes. She had arrived the night before and had been taken directly to +Candace Farm. The clerk told me how to get there. I did not feel that I +could afford to hire anybody to take me there. And I knew nobody. So I set +out to walk day before yesterday morning." + +"Before it began to snow?" asked Betty. + +"Yes, Miss Gordon." + +"Oh, please," cried Betty, "call me Betty. I'm not old enough to be Miss +Gordon. To a girl, anyway," she added. "With a strange boy it would be +different." + +The English girl consented, and then went on with her story. + +"It was cloudy but I did not know anything about such storms as you have +here. Oh, dear me, how it snowed and blew! I got to that little house and +I could open the door. If I had had to go many yards farther I would have +fallen down and been covered by the snow." + +"You poor dear!" murmured Betty, putting an arm around the other girl. + +Ida gave her a tearful smile, and Betty kissed her. And then the latter +suddenly remembered again her lost locket. She gave a little jump in her +chair. But she did not speak of it. + +Not for a moment did she believe Ida Bellethorne would be guilty of +stealing her trinket. Uncle Dick evidently did not think of that +possibility, either. Could Betty suggest such a matter when already Ida +was in so much trouble? At least, she would wait and see what came of it. +So she hugged Ida more closely and said: + +"Go on. What else?" + +"Not much else, Betty," said the English girl, wiping her eyes again and +smiling. "I just stayed there in that house until you came along and saved +me. There was nothing to burn but the furniture in the house, and I burned +it. I suppose the poor man who owns it will want to be paid. Oh, dear!" + +"I wouldn't worry about that," said Mr. Gordon, cheerfully. "You seem to +have come through a good deal. I'd take it easy now. Mrs. Canary and the +girls are glad to have you here. When we go back to town we will take you +with us and see what can be done." + +"Thank you, Mr. Gordon. You are very kind. I should like to know about my +little mare. She is a darling! How this Mr. Bolter came to get her----" + +"Oh, Ida!" cried Betty, breaking in suddenly, "do you know a little man, a +crooked little man, named Hunchie Slattery?" + +"My goodness, Betty! Of course I remember Hunchie. He worked in our +stables." + +"He is with Ida Bellethorne, your pretty mare. He takes care of her. I +talked with him at Mr. Bolter's farm in Virginia. The mare has a cough, +and she was sent up here to get well. And I heard Mr. Bolter himself tell +Hunchie Slattery that he was to go with her." + +"Dear me, Betty! if I could find Hunchie, too, I'd feel better. He might +be able to tell me how it came that my mare was taken away and sold. She +really did belong to me, Mr. Gordon. Mr. Jackwood, father's administrator +and my guardian, showed me the bill of sale making me Ida's owner. And +even if I was a minor, wouldn't that be a legal transfer paper?" + +"I am not sure of the English law, my dear. But it seems to me it would be +in this country. At any rate, that will be another thing to consult my +lawyers about. I understand Bolter paid somewhere near twenty thousand +dollars for the mare. It would be quite a fortune for you, Ida." + +"Indeed it would. And the mare is worth all of four thousand pounds, I +know. Father always said there was no better mare in all England than Ida +Bellethorne, and Aunt Ida might be proud to have such a horse named after +her." + +"We are not far from the Candace Farm and perhaps we can get over there +before we leave Mountain Camp," Mr. Gordon said kindly. "Then you can see +your horse and the man from home. I will get a statement from this jockey, +or hostler, or whatever he is, and it may aid my lawyers in their search +for the facts regarding the sale of the mare to Mr. Bolter." + +"Thank you very kindly, Mr. Gordon." + +The conference broke up and Betty ran out to join her mates on the lake. +Ida could not skate. And, anyway, she preferred to sit indoors with Mrs. +Canary. Ida had the silk for another sweater in her bag, and that very +hour she began to knit an over-blouse for Libbie, who had expressed a +desire to possess one like those Betty and Bobby had bought. + +The skating was fine, but the wind had risen again and this time it was a +warm wind. The snow grew soft on the surface, and when the party came up +the bluff for luncheon it was not easy to walk and they sank deeply into +the snow. + +"This is a weather breeder," said Mr. Canary, standing on the porch to +greet them. "I fear you young folks have come to Mountain Camp at the +beginning of the roughest part of the winter." + +"Don't apologize for your weather, Jack," laughed Uncle Dick. "If it grows +too boisterous or unpleasant outside, these young people must find their +fun indoors." + +And this is what they did for the next two days. The temperature moderated +a good deal, and then it rained. Not a hard downpour, but a drifting +"Scotch mist" that settled the snowdrifts and finally left them saturated +with water. + +Then back came the frost--sharp, snappy and robust. The air cleared like +magic. The sun shone out of a perfectly clear sky. Just to put one's head +out of the door make the blood tingle. + +Meanwhile both the girls and boys had found plenty of interesting things +to do indoors, as Uncle Dick had prophesied. Especially the boys. Under +the teaching of Uncle Dick and Mr. Canary they had learned to string +snowshoes. Mr. Canary had the frames and the thongs of which the webs are +woven. Even Timothy neglected the library to engage in this fascinating +work. + +Of course, the girls must have webs as well. Betty and Bobby were +particularly eager to learn to walk on snowshoes and, as Bob Henderson +said, they "pestered" the boys until sufficient pairs of webs were made to +enable the entire party to try walking on them when the time was ripe. + +On the third morning, just at dawn, there was a heavy snow squall for an +hour. It left about four inches of downy snow upon the hard-packed and +slippery surface of the drifts. + +"This is an ideal condition," said Mr. Gordon with enthusiasm. "My feet +itch to be off on the webs myself. After breakfast we will try them out. +Now remember the rules I have been telling you, and see how well you can +all learn to shuffle over this snow." + +Thoughtful Bob had strung an extra pair of shoes for Ida. He knew that +Betty did not want the English girl left out of their good times. And all +the crowd liked Ida. Although she was in the main a very quiet girl, as +one grew to know her she proved to possess charming qualities both of mind +and heart. + +Ida was not as warmly dressed for venturing into the open as the other +girls. But Mrs. Canary, one of the kindest souls in the world, mended this +defect. She furnished Ida with a fur coat and gloves that secured her from +frostbite. + +The whole party turned out gaily. Having been confined to the house for +almost forty-eight hours, they were as full of life as colts. But in a few +minutes the nine of them were on snowshoes and watched and instructed by +Uncle Dick were learning their first lesson in the rather ticklish art of +scuffling over the soft snow without tripping and plunging headlong into +it. + +Not that there were not many laughable accidents. The capers both boys +and girls involuntarily cut led to shouts of laughter, and sometimes to a +little pain. For the frozen crust underneath the light surface snow +offered a rather hard foundation when one fell flat. + +The necessary falls incident to learning the right trick of handling one's +self on snowshoes soon cured the first enthusiasm of several of the party. +Louise, for instance, found it too strenuous for her liking. And Timothy +got a bump on the back of his head that no phrenologist could have easily +described. + +The second day, however, Betty, Bobby and Ida, with Bob and Tommy Tucker, +were just as enthusiastic on the subject of snowshoeing as at first. While +the others swept off a part of the lake just below the Outlook, the +snowshoeing party set off on their first real hike through the woods; and +that hike led to an unexpected adventure. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +GREAT EXCITEMENT + + +Mr. Richard Gordon was, as Betty and Bob often declared, the very best +uncle that ever lived! One good thing about him they thought was that he +never "fussed." + +"He isn't always wondering what you are going to do next and telling you +not to," explained Bob to Ida Bellethorne as the party started out from +Mountain Camp. "Not like a woman, oh, no!" + +"Hush, bad boy!" cried Bobby. "What do you mean, throwing slurs at women?" + +"You know even if Mrs. Canary had seen us start off she would have given +us a dozen orders before we got out of earshot. And she's a mighty nice +woman, too. Almost as nice as your mother, Bobby," finished Bob. + +"Bob doesn't like chaperons," giggled Betty. + +"Nor me," said Tommy Tucker, sticking close to Bobby Littell as he always +did when Roberta would let him. "Uncle Dick suits me as a chaperon every +time." + +Uncle Dick had let the party troop away on their snowshoes without +advising them when to return or asking where they were going, and +presently Betty and Bob formed a sudden plan about their hike. + +From one of the men working about the camp Bob had got directions +regarding the nearest way to Candace Farm. Ida longed to go there. It was +but seven miles away in a direct line, and now, when Betty spoke of going +there, Bob said that, with the aid of his compass, he knew he could find +it without difficulty. + +"We didn't mention it to Uncle Dick, but he won't be bothered about it," +said Bob. "We've got all day. We can tell him where we have been when we +get back, which will be just the same." + +"Will it, Bob?" the girl asked doubtfully. "But of course there is nothing +really wrong in going." + +"I--should--say--not!" exploded Bob. "I'm sure it will be all right with +Uncle Dick, Betty. Remember how he let us roam and explore in Oklahoma?" + +The others in the party were not troubled by doubts in the least. They +went hurrying through the snow with shouts and laughter; and if any forest +animals were astir that day they must have been frightened by the noise +the party made scrambling along on snowshoes. Not one of them but fell at +times--and the very "twistiest" kind of falls! But nobody was hurt; +although at one point Bobby fell flat on her back at the verge of a steep +descent and there was no stopping her until she plunged into a deep drift +at the bottom. + +Tommy kicked off his snowshoes and ran down to haul her out while the +others, seeing that she was unhurt, shouted their glee. Bobby was not +often in a fix that she could not get out of by her own exertions. Being +such an energetic and independent girl, she would not often accept help of +her boy friends, especially of Tommy who hovered around her like a moth +around a candle. + +But when she had lost her snowshoes she found the soft snow so much deeper +than she expected at the bottom of that hill that she was glad indeed to +accept Tommy's aid. He dragged her out of the drift and set her upright. +Even then she found that she could not climb up again by herself to where +her friends were enjoying her discomfiture. + +"Come on!" cried Tommy, who had kicked his own snowshoes off at the top of +the slide. "Give us your hand, Bobby. We'll make it somehow." + +But they did not "make it" easily. It seemed as though they could climb +only so high and then slide back again. Under the shallow top snow the +frozen crust was like pebbled glass. Tommy could barely kick the toes of +his boots into it to make steps, and just as he had secured a footing in a +particularly slippery place, Bobby would utter a shriek and slide to the +bottom again. + +Even Betty was almost ill with laughter as this occurred over and over +again. But the Tucker twin finally proved himself to be master of the +situation. He was determined to get Bobby to the top of the hill, and he +succeeded. + +Tom Tucker was a strong lad. Stooping, he commanded the girl to put her +arms over his shoulders so that he could seize both wrists with one hand. +Then he bent forward, carrying Bobby on his back and her weight upon his +aided in breaking through the snow-crust and getting a footing. + +He plodded up the slope, a little at a time, and after a while Betty and +Bob helped them to the level brink of the hill. Tommy fell to the snow +panting, and Bobby was inclined to scold for a minute. Then she gave Tommy +one of her rare smiles and helped him up. She was not often so kind to +him. + +"You are a good child, Tommy Tucker," she proclaimed saucily, as she beat +the loose snow off his coat. "In time you may be quite nice." + +Betty and Ida Bellethorne praised him too; but Bob continued to laugh and +when the party started on again the others learned why he was so amused. + +The way to Candace Farm lay right down that slope to the bottom of which +Bobby had tumbled, and all the exertion Tommy had put forth to save her +was unnecessary. Bob led them along a lane right past the spot where +Tommy had pulled the girl out of the snowbank! + +"That's the meanest trick that was ever played on me!" declared Bobby, in +high wrath at first. Then she began to appreciate the joke and laughed +with the others. "I was going to tell the folks at home how Tommy saved me +from the peril of being buried in the snowbank; but I guess I'd better +not," she observed. "Don't blame me, Tommy. Give it to Bob." + +"Ill get square with Bob," grumbled the Tucker twin. "No fear of that." + +Bobby remained kind to him however; and as Tommy frankly admired her he +was repaid for his effort. But every time Bob looked at Tom he burst out +laughing. + +They had struck into a straight trough in the snow, with maples on either +side standing gaunt and strong, and a windrow of drifted snow where the +fences were supposed to be--a road which Bob said the man at Mountain Camp +had told him led straight to Candace Farm. + +"Wish we had brought a sled with us," Tommy said. "We could have ridden +the girls on it. Aren't you tired, Bobby?" + +"Not as tired as you are, I warrant," she said, laughing at him. "Poor +Tommy!" + +"Aw, you go fish! I could carry you a mile and not feel it. Gee! What's +this coming?" + +Far down the snow-covered road they first heard shouts, then a cloud of +snow-dust spurted into the air and hid whatever it was coming along the +way toward them. Bob immediately drew Betty and Ida to one side of the +road and Tommy urged Bobby to follow. + +Suddenly out of the cloud of flying snow appeared a horse's head and +plunging fore feet. Then another and another! They came along the road at +a plunging, blundering pace, snorting and neighing. Behind them were men, +evidently trying to stop the runaways. + +"Colts!" shouted Bob. "Yearlings. All young horses. And just about wild. +Remember that bunch we saw in Oklahoma, Betty, that was being driven to +the shipping station? They are wild as bears." + +Ida Bellethorne did not seem to be much disturbed by the possibility of +the horses doing them any harm. She stood out before her companions and +stared at the coming herd eagerly. The black mare she loved so, however, +was not in this bunch of runaways. + +The young stock swept past the watching party from Mountain Camp, their +pace rapid in spite of the hard going. They kept to the snow-covered road, +however. Behind them came half a dozen men, wind-spent already and not a +little angry. + +"Why didn't you stop 'em?" bawled one red-faced fellow. "If they spread +out in some open pasture we'll be all day gathering them." + +"Easy to stop 'em, I guess," returned Tommy. "They'd have trampled us +down." + +"Could stop a snowslide easier, I guess," Bob suggested. "But I tell you: +We'll give you a hand collecting them. How did they get away?" + +"Went over the paddock fence like a flock of sheep. Snow is so deep, you +know," said the red-faced man. "Come on, you boys, if you will. The girls +can go on to the house and Mrs. Candace will let 'em warm up. It's only a +little way." + +The "little way" proved to be a good two miles; but the three girls did +not falter. They saw the big farmhouse and the great barns and snow-filled +paddocks a long way ahead. + +"I'll be glad of that 'warm'," confessed Betty, as they turned in at the +entrance to the lane. "And maybe Mrs. Candace will give us a cup of tea." + +At that moment Bobby clutched her arm and pointed up the lane. "See there! +He'll fall! Oh, look!" + +Betty was as startled as her chum when she spied what Bobby had first +seen. A little, crooked man was crawling out above the hay door of the +main barn upon a timber that was here thrust out from the framework and to +which was attached a block and fall. The rope had evidently fouled in the +block and he was trying to detach it. + +"That's Hunchie Slattery!" gasped Betty, "What a chance he is taking!" + +For everything was sheathed in ice from the effect of the rain and frost +of the night before. That timber was as slippery as glass. + +Ida Bellethorne set off on a run for the barn; but unlike Bobby she did +not say a word. Had she thought of any way to help the crooked little man, +however, she was too late. Hunchie suddenly slipped, clutched vainly at +the rope, which gave under his weight, and he came down "on the run." + +The rope undoubtedly broke his fall. He would have been killed had he +plunged immediately to the frozen ground beneath. + +As it was, when the three girls reached him, he was unconscious and it was +plain by the attitude in which he lay that his leg was broken. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE EMERGENCY + + +"Poor Hunchie!" murmured Ida Bellethorne, "I hope it wasn't because he was +surprised to see me that he fell." + +"His surprise did not make that timber slippery with ice," said Betty, +looking up. "Oh! Here's a lady!" + +A comfortable looking woman with a shawl over her head was hurrying from +the kitchen door of the Candace farmhouse. + +"What has happened to that poor man? He's been battered and kicked about +so much, it would seem, there ain't much can happen to him that he hasn't +already suffered. + +"Ah! Poor fellow!" she added, stooping over the senseless Hunchie. "What a +deal of trouble some folks seem bound to have. And not another man on the +place!" + +She stood up again and stared at the three girls. Her broad, florid face +was all creased with trouble now, but Betty thought she must ordinarily be +a very cheerful woman indeed. + +"They've gone chasing the young stock that broke away. Dear me! what is +going to happen to this poor fellow? Bill and the rest may be gone for +hours, and there's bones broke here, that's sure." + +"Where's a doctor?" asked Bobby eagerly. + +"Eleven miles away, my dear, if he's an inch. Dr. Pevy is the only man for +a broken bone in these woods. Poor Hunchie!" + +"Can't we get him into his bed?" asked Betty. "He'll freeze here." + +"You're right," replied the woman, who afterward told them she was Mrs. +Candace. "Yes, we'll take him into the house and put him into a good bed. +Can you girls lift him?" + +They could and did. And without too much effort the three transported the +injured man, who was but a light weight, across the yard, into the house, +and to a room which Mrs. Candace showed them. He began to groan and mutter +before they managed to get him on the bed. + +There was an old woman who helped Mrs. Candace in the house, and the two +removed Hunchie's outer garments and made him as comfortable as possible +while the girls waited in much excitement in the sitting room. + +"He saw one of you girls and knows you," said Mrs. Candace, coming out of +the bedroom. "But he talks about that mare, Ida Bellethorne." + +"This is Ida Bellethorne," said Betty, pointing to the English girl. + +"I declare! I thought Hunchie was out of his head. How comes you are named +after that horse, girl?" + +Ida explained her connection with the black mare and with Hunchie. + +"You'd better go in and talk to him. Maybe it will case his pain. But that +shin bone is sticking right through the flesh of his leg. It's awful! And +he's in terrible pain. If Bill don't come back soon----" + +"Isn't there any man on the place?" asked Betty, interrupting. + +"None but them with Bill hunting the young stock." + +"And the boys--our friends--have gone with them," explained Betty. +"Somebody must get the surgeon." + +"How are we going to do it? The telephone wires are down," explained Mrs. +Candace. "And there ain't a horse properly shod for traveling on this ice. +I fear some of that young stock will break their legs." + +"We saw them skating all over the road," said Bobby. "But how gay and +excited they were!" + +"A ridin' horse would have to go at a foot pace," explained Mrs. Candace, +"unless it was sharpened. I don't know----" + +Ida had gone into the bedroom to speak with the injured man. She looked +out at this juncture and excitedly beckoned to Betty. Betty ran in to find +the crooked little man looking even more crooked and pitiful than ever +under the blankets. He was groaning and the perspiration stood on his +forehead. That he was in exceeding pain there could be no doubt. + +"He says Ida Bellethorne is sharpened," gasped Ida. + +"Oh! You mean she is fixed to travel on ice on frozen ground?" + +"I 'ad to lead 'er up 'ere from the station, Miss. Ain't I saw you before, +Miss?" said Hunchie, staring at Betty. "At Mr. Bolter's?" + +"Yes, yes!" cried Betty. "Can the mare travel on this hard snow?" + +"Yes, ma'am. I didn't draw the calks for I exercised 'er each d'y, I did. +I didn't want 'er to fall. An' now I failed myself!" + +The two girls looked at each other significantly. Ida was easily led out +of the room. Betty put the question to her. + +"That's just it, Betty," said the English girl, almost in tears. "I never +learned to ride. I never did ride. My nurse was afraid to let me learn +when I was little, and although I love horses, I only know how to drive +them. It's like a sailor never having learned to swim." + +Betty beat her hands together in excitement. "Never mind! Never mind!" she +cried. "I can ride. I can ride any horse. I am not afraid of your Ida +Bellethorne. And none of the boys or men is here. I'll go for the doctor." + +"I don't know if it is best for you to," groaned Ida. + +"Call Mrs. Candace." They were in the kitchen, and Ida ran to summon the +farm woman while Betty got into her coat. Mrs. Candace came, hurrying. + +"What is this I hear?" she demanded. "I couldn't let you ride that horse. +You will be thrown or something." + +"No I shan't, Mrs. Candace. I can ride. And Hunchie says the mare is +sharpened." + +"So she is. I had forgotten," the woman admitted thoughtfully. + +"And the poor fellow suffers so. Some lasting harm may be done if we don't +get a surgeon quickly. Where does Dr. Pevy live?" demanded Betty urgently. + +The fact that the injured hostler was really in great pain and possibly in +some danger, caused Mrs. Candace finally to agree to the girl's demand. +Betty ran out with Ida to get the mare and saddle her. Betty was not +dressed properly for such a venture as this; but she wore warm +undergarments, and stout shoes. + +The black mare was so gentle with all her spirit and fire that Betty did +not feel any fear. She and Ida led the beautiful creature out upon the +barn floor and found saddle and bridle for her. In ten minutes Betty was +astride the mare and Ida led her out of the stable. + +Mrs. Candace had already given Betty clear directions regarding the way to +Dr. Pevy's; but she now stood on the door-stone and called repetitions of +these directions after her. + +Bobby waved her fur piece and shouted encouragement too. But Ida +Bellethorne ran into the house to attend the injured Hunchie and did not +watch Betty and the black mare out of sight as the others did. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +BETTY'S RIDE + + +When Betty Gordon and her young friends had set out from Mountain Camp on +their snowshoe hike the sun shone brilliantly and every ice-covered branch +and fence-rail sparkled as though bedewed with diamond dust. Now that it +was drawing toward noon the sky was overcast again and the wind, had Betty +stopped to listen to it, might be heard mourning in the tops of the pines. + +But Ida Bellethorne, the black mare, gave Betty no opportunity of stopping +to listen to the wind mourn. No, indeed! The girl had all she could do for +the first mile or two to keep her saddle and cling to the reins. + +When first they set forth from the Candace stables the mare went gingerly +enough for a few rods. She seemed to know that the frozen crust of the old +drifts just beneath the loose snow was perilous. + +But her sharpened calks gave her a grip on the frozen snow that the wise +mare quickly understood. She lengthened her stride. She gathered speed. +And once getting her usual swift gait, with expanded nostrils and erect +ears, she skimmed over the frozen way as a swallow skims the air. Betty +had never traveled so fast in her life except in a speeding automobile. + +She could easily believe that Ida Bellethorne had broken most of the track +records of the English turf. She might make track history here in the +United States, if nothing happened to her! + +Betty was wise enough to know that, had Mr. Candace been at home, even in +this earnest need for a surgeon he would never have allowed the beautiful +and valuable mare to have been used in this way. But there was no other +horse on the place that could be trusted to travel at any gait. + +Ida Bellethorne certainly was traveling! The speed, the keen rush of the +wind past her, the need for haste and her own personal peril, all served +to give Betty a veritable thrill. + +If Ida made a misstep--if she went down in a heap--Betty was pretty sure +that she, herself, would be hurt. She retained a tight grip upon the +reins. The mare was no velvet-mouthed animal. Betty doubted if she had the +strength in her arms to pull the creature down to a walk now that she was +started. + +The instructions Mrs. Candace had given the girl pointed to a descent into +the valley for some miles, and almost by a direct road, and then around a +sharp turn and up the grade by a branch road to the village where Dr. Pevy +lived. Betty was sure she would not lose her way; the question was, could +she cling to the saddle and keep the mare on her feet until the first +exuberance of Ida's spirit was controlled? The condition of the road did +not so much matter, for once the mare found that she did not slip on the +crust she trod the way firmly and with perfect confidence. + +"She is a dear--she undoubtedly is," Betty thought. "But I feel just as +though I were being run away with by a steam engine and did not know how +to close the throttle or reverse the engine. Dear me!" + +She might well say "dear me." Uncle Dick would surely have been much +worried for her safety if he could know what she was doing. Betty by no +means appreciated in full her danger. + +Indeed, she scarcely thought of danger. Ida Bellethorne seemed as +sure-footed as a chamois. Her calks threw bits of ice-crust behind her, +and she never slipped nor slid. There was nobody on the road. There was +not even the mark of a sledge, although along the ditch were the shuffling +prints of snowshoes. Some pedestrian had gone this way in the early +morning. + +This was not the road by which Betty and her friends had been transported +by Mr. Jaroth. There was not even a hut like Bill Kedders' beside it. In +places the thick woods verged right on the track on either side and in +these tunnels it seemed to be already dusk. + +It flashed into Betty's mind that there might be savage animals in these +thick woods. Bears, and wild cats, and perhaps even the larger Canadian +lynx, might be hovering in the dark wood. It would not be pleasant to have +one of those animals spring out at one, perhaps from an overhanging limb, +as the little mare and her rider dashed beneath! + +"Just the same," the girl thought, "at the pace Ida Bellethorne is +carrying me, such wild animals couldn't jump quick enough to catch me. +Guess I needn't be afraid of them." + +There were perils in her path--most unexpected perils. Betty would never +have even dreamed of what really threatened her. For fifteen minutes Ida +Bellethorne galloped on and the girl knew she must have come a third of +the way to Dr. Pevy's office. + +The mare's first exuberance passed. Of her own volition she drew down to a +canter. Her speed still seemed almost phenominal to the girl riding her, +but Betty began to feel more secure in the saddle. + +They reached the top of a steep hill. The hedge of tall pines and +underbrush drew closer in on either side. The road was very narrow. As +the mare started down the incline it seemed as though they were going into +a long and steep chute. + +Before this Betty had noted the ice-hung telephone and telegraph wires +strung beside the road. Sheeted in the frozen rain and snow the heavy +wires had dragged many of the poles askew. Here and there a wire was +broken. + +It never entered the girl's mind that there was danger in those wires. +And, perhaps, in most of them there was not. But across this ravine into +which the road plunged, and slantingly, were strung much heavier +wires--feed cables from the Cliffdale power station over the hill. + +"Why, look at those icicles!" exclaimed Betty, with big eyes and watching +the hanging wires ahead. "If they fell they would kill a person, I do +believe!" + +She tugged with all her might at Ida Bellethorne's reins, and now, well +breathed, the mare responded to the unuttered command. She came into a +walk. Betty continued to stare at the heavily laden wires spanning the +road, the heavier power wires above the sagging series of telephone and +telegraph wires. + +In watching them so closely the girl discovered another, and even more +startling fact. One of the poles bearing up the feed wires was actually +pitched at such an angle from the top of the bank on the right hand that +Betty felt sure the wires themselves were all that held the pole from +falling. + +"There is going to be an accident here," declared the girl aloud. "I +wonder the company doesn't send out men to fix it. Although I guess they +could not prop up that pole. It has gone too far." + +Even as she spoke the mare stopped, snorting. Her instinct was more keen +than Betty's reasoning. + +With a screeching breaking and tearing of wood and wire the trembling pole +fell! Betty might, had she urged her mount, have cleared the place and +escaped. But the girl lacked that wisdom. + +The pole fell across the deep road and its two heavy cables came in +contact with the wires strung from the other poles below. Instantly the +ravine was lit by a blinding flash of blue flame--a flame that ran from +wire to wire, from pole to pole, melting the ice that clung to them, +hissing and crackling and giving off shooting spears of flame that +threatened any passer-by. + +The mare, snorting and fearful, scrambled back, swerved, and tried to +escape from the ravine; but Betty had her under good control now. She had +no spurs, but she yanked savagely at the bit and wheeled Ida Bellethorne +again to face the sputtering electric flames that barred the road. + +Only a third of the way to the doctor's and the way made impassable! What +should she do? If she turned back, Betty did not know where or how to +strike into the thick and pathless forest. Hunchie, suffering from his +injured leg, must be aided as soon as possible. Her advance must not be +stayed. + +Yet there before her the sparking, darting flames spread the width of the +ravine. Burning a black hole already in the deep drifts, the crossed wires +forbade the girl to advance another yard! + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +BETTY COMES THROUGH + + +Betty admitted that she was badly frightened. She was afraid of the +crossed wires, and would have been in any case. The spurting blue flames +she knew would savagely burn her and Ida Bellethorne if they touched them, +and the wires might give a shock that would kill either girl or horse. + +But seven miles or so beyond those sputtering flames was Dr. Pevy's +office. And Dr. Pevy was needed right away at Candace Farm. + +A picture of poor Hunchie lying white and moaning in the bed rose in +Betty's memory. She could not return and report that it was impossible for +her to reach the doctor's office. Afraid as she was of the crossed wires, +she was more afraid of showing the white feather. + +If Bob Henderson were here in her situation Betty was sure he would not +back down. And if Bob could overcome difficulties, why couldn't Betty? The +thought inspired the girl to do as Bob would do--come through. + +"I must do it!" Betty choked, holding the mare firmly headed toward the +writhing, crackling wires. "Ida! Get up! You can jump it. +You--just--must!" + +The black mare crouched and snorted. Betty would have given a good deal +for tiny spurs in the heels of her shoes or for a whip to lay along the +mare's flank. Spirited as the creature was, and well trained, too, her +fear of fire made her shrink from the leap. + +There was a width of six feet of darting flames. The electricity in the +heavy cables was melting the other wires, and from the broken end of each +wire the blue light spurted. The snow was melting all about, turning black +and yellow in streaks. Betty did not know how long this would keep up; but +every minute she delayed poor Hunchie paid for in continued suffering. + +"We must do it!" she shrieked to the horse. "You've got to--there!" + +She whipped off her velvet hat and struck Ida Bellethorne again and again. +The mare crouched, measured the distance, and leaped into the air. Well +for her and for Betty that Ida Bellethorne had a good pedigree; had come +of a long line of forebears that had been taught to jump hedges, fences, +water-holes and bogs. None of them had ever made such a perilous leap as +this! + +The mare landed in softening snow, for the scathing flames were melting +the drifts on either side. Betty had felt the rush of heat rising from +the cables and had put her hat over her face. + +Ida Bellethorne squealed. Without doubt she had been scorched somewhere. +And now secure on her feet she darted away through the ravine, running +faster than she had run while Betty had bestrode her. + +Betty could not glance back at the sputtering wires. She must keep her +gaze fixed ahead. Although at the speed the mare was now running it is +quite doubtful if the girl could have retarded her mount in any degree. +They came to the forks that Mrs. Candace had told her of, and Betty +managed to turn the frightened mare up the steeper road to the left. There +were few landmarks that the snow had not hidden; but the way to Dr. Pevy's +was so direct that one could scarcely mistake it. + +Ida Bellethorne began to cool down after a while and Betty could guide her +more easily. She had begun to talk to the pretty creature soothingly, and +leaned forward in her saddle to pat the mare's neck. + +"I don't blame you for being scared, Ida Bellethorne," crooned Betty. "I +was scared myself, and I'm scared yet. But don't mind. Just be easy. Your +pretty black apron in front is all spattered with froth, poor dear! I +wonder if this run has done your cough any harm--or any good. Anyway, you +haven't coughed since we started." + +But Betty knew that if the mare stood for a minute she must be covered and +rubbed down. She had this in her mind when she came to the blacksmith shop +and the store, directly opposite each other. Dr. Pevy's, she had been +told, was the second house beyond on the blacksmith side of the road. + +It proved to be a comfortable looking cottage with a barn at the back, and +she urged Ida Bellethorne around to the barn without stopping at the +house. The barn door was open and a man in greasy overalls was tinkering +about a small motor-car. He was a pleasant-looking man with a beard and +eyeglasses and Betty was sure he must be the doctor before he even spoke +to her. + +"Hullo!" exclaimed the amateur machanic, rising up with a wrench in one +hand and an oil can in the other. "Whew! That mare has been traveling +some. And such a beauty! You're from Bill Candace's I'm sure. Did she run +away with you? Here, let me help you." + +But Betty was out of the saddle and had led the mare in upon the floor, +although Ida Bellethorne looked somewhat askance at the partly dismantled +car. + +"Needn't be afraid of the road-bug, my beauty," said Dr. Pevy, putting out +a knowing hand to stroke the mare's neck. "She must be rubbed down and a +cloth put on her----" + +"I know," said Betty hastily. "I'll do it if you'll let me. But can you go +back with me, Doctor?" + +"To the Candace Farm?" + +"Yes, sir. A man has been seriously hurt and there was nobody else to +come." + +"Wonder you got here without having a fall," said Dr. Pevy. + +"She is sharpened. And she is a dear!" gasped Betty. "But I hope you can +start right away. Hunchie is suffering so." + +"Can't use the road-bug, that's sure," said Dr. Pevy, glancing again at +the car. "That's why I was doctoring her now while the snow is too deep. +But I still have old Standby and the sleigh. I'll start back with you in a +few minutes and we'll lead the mare. The exercise will do her good. My! +What a handsome creature she is." + +"Yes, sir. She is quite wonderful," said Betty; and while they gave Ida +Bellethorne the attention she needed Betty told the doctor all about +Hunchie and her ride through the forest. When Dr. Pevy heard about the +broken wires in the road, he went to the house and telephoned to the +Cliffdale power house to tell them where the break was. The linemen were +already searching for it. + +"That peril will be averted immediately," he said coming back with his +overalls removed, a coat over his arm and carrying his case in his other +hand. "That's it, my dear. Walk her up and down. Such a beauty!" + +He got out his light sleigh and then led Standby, a big, red-roan horse, +out on the floor to harness him. + +"These automobiles are all right when the snow doesn't fly," Dr. Pevy +remarked. "But up here in the hills we have so much snow that one has to +keep a horse anyway or else give up business during the winter. You were a +plucky girl to come so far on that mare, my dear. A Washington girl, you +say?" + +"We just came from Washington," Betty explained. "But I can't really claim +to belong there. I--I'm sort of homeless, I guess. I do just love these +mountains and this air." + +"This air," commented Dr. Pevy, "smells just now of a storm. And I think +it may drizzle again. Now, if you are ready, my dear." + +He unbuckled Ida Bellethorne's bridle rein and made it a leading rein. He +helped Betty into the sleigh and gave her the rein to hold. The mare led +easily, and merely snorted when Standby leaned into the collar and started +the sleigh. + +The roan was heavy footed, and his shoes, too, were calked. They started +off from the village at a good jog with the blanketed black mare trotting +easily behind the sleigh. + +Betty tried to mould her velvet hat into shape. It had been a hat that she +very much prized, and was copied after one Ada Nansen wore, and Ada set +the fashions at Shadyside. But that little hat would never be the same +again after being used as a goad for Ida Bellethorne. Betty sighed, and +gave up her attempt. + +When they came to the place in the ravine where the wires were down Dr. +Pevy drew up Standby. The mare snorted, recognizing the spot. But the +electrical display was over, for the power had been turned off. + +"You certainly must have had a narrow squeak here," remarked the +physician, as he looked at the fallen wires. + +"Oh, Doctor, it was awful!" breathed Betty. "I thought sure that we were +going to have the worst kind of accident." + +"The company ought really to put up a new line of poles, so many of these +are getting rotten," was the doctor's reply. "But I suppose they are hard +up for money these days, and can afford only the necessary repairs." + +The sleigh climbed the mountain after that to the Candace Farm. As they +came in sight of it Betty saw the troop of young stock being driven in +through the lane, and saw Bob and Tommy with the stock farmer and his men. +It was well she had ventured for the doctor on the black mare, or poor +Hunchie Slattery would have suffered much longer without medical +attention. + +Bobby ran out to meet them when the sleigh came into the yard. Mrs. +Candace stood at the back door explaining to the red-faced man, her +husband. It was Bob who came to take the leading rein of the black mare +from Betty's hand. + +"Cricky!" he exclaimed. "What have you been up to now, Betsey? Is this +that English mare? Isn't she a beauty! And you've been riding her?" + +"I've been flying on her," sighed Betty, "Don't talk, Bob! I never expect +to travel so fast in the saddle again unless I become a jockey. And I know +I am growing too fat for that." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +ON THE BRINK OF DISCOVERY + + +The three girls and their boy friends remained at the farm until Dr. Pevy +had set the bad fracture that Hunchie had suffered and the poor little man +had been made as comfortable as he could be made at the time. He had been +badly shaken in falling so far at the barn, and the surgeon declared he +would be confined to his bed for some weeks. + +"And oo's to take care of Ida Bellethorne, I ask you?" demanded Hunchie +faintly. "Mr. Bolter hexpects me to give hundivided hattention to 'er." + +"She shall have the best of care," said Candace, the farmer, warmly. "A +mare like her ought to be bedded down in roses. The way she took this +little girl over the drifts was a caution. She is some horse, she is! We +will give her the best of attention, Hunchie, never you fear." + +The cockney was so much troubled about his charge that he seemed to have +forgotten Ida Bellethorne, the girl. But Betty heard him say one thing to +Ida before they left. + +"You ought to be 'appy, Miss Ida, even if the mare was sold. She brought a +good price, and ev'rybody about Bellethorne Park knows as Mr. Bellethorne +give 'er to you when she was a filly. I 'ope you'll come to see us +again--me and the mare." + +"I surely will, Hunchie," said the English girl. + +But when they came out of the house and bade the family good-bye, Betty +saw that Ida was very grave. Hunchie's words seemed to have been +significant. + +It was late in the afternoon when the quintette arrived at Mountain Camp. +Mrs. Canary had expressed some anxiety about them, but Uncle Dick had +scouted any peril that might threaten the young folks. He admitted that he +had overlooked some possibilities when he heard the full account of their +adventures--and especially of his niece's adventures--at the dinner table. + +"I declare, Betty," he said with some little exasperation, "I believe if +you were locked inside a trunk with only gimlet holes to breathe through +you would manage to get into trouble." + +"I think I'd be in trouble fast enough in that case," answered Betty, +laughing. + +"I don't know," said Louise thoughtfully. "Locked up in a box, you really +couldn't get into much harm, Betty." + +"Sure she could get into trouble," declared Bobby. "Bees could crawl in +through the gimlet holes and sting her." + +"I'd like to have seen her jumping that fire on horseback," sighed Libbie. +"It must have been wonderful!" + +Mr. Gordon looked rather disturbed as he stared at his niece. + +"That's exactly what I shouldn't want to see her do," he said. "I do not +know what I am going to do if, as she gets older, she grows more +energetic," he added to Mr. and Mrs. Canary. "Betty is more than a handful +for a poor bachelor uncle, I do believe!" + +He forbade any more excursions away from the camp after that unless the +excursionists took some adult person with them. He went himself to Candace +Farm to see Hunchie Slattery; but he took only Ida Bellethorne with him. +They went on their snowshoes. During this trip Mr. Gordon won the abiding +confidence of the girl. + +Meanwhile the youthful visitors at Mountain Camp allowed no hour to be +idle. There was always something to do, and what one could not think of in +the way of fun another could. + +Mr. Canary's men had smoothed a coasting course down the hillside to the +lake not a quarter of a mile from the Overlook. There was a nest of +toboggans in one of the outhouses. Tobogganing afforded the nine young +people much sport. + +For the others insisted that Ida Bellethorne share in all their good +times. She declared she never would get Libbie's blouse done in time; but +Libbie said that she could finish it afterward and send it on to +Shadyside. Just now the main thing was to crowd as much fun as possible +into the remaining days of their vacation. + +The young folks from Fairfields were paired off very nicely; but they did +not let Ida feel that she was a "fifth wheel," and she really had a good +time. These snow-sports were so unfamiliar to her that she enjoyed them +the more keenly. + +"I do think these boys are so nice," she said to Betty as they climbed the +hill from the lakeshore, dragging the toboggan behind them by its rope. + +"Of course they're nice," said the loyal Betty. "Especially Bob Henderson. +He's just like a brother to me. If he wasn't nice to you I should scold +him--that I should, Ida." + +"I never can repay you for your kindness," sighed the English girl, quite +serious of visage. "And your uncle, too." + +Betty flashed her a penetrating look and was on the verge of speaking of +something that she, at least, considered of much importance. Then she +hesitated. Ida had never mentioned the possibility of Betty's having +dropped anything in Mrs. Staples' store. Betty shut her lips tight again +and waited. If Ida did know anything about her lost locket, Betty wanted +the English girl to speak of it first. + +They went in to dress for dinner that afternoon just before a change in +the weather. A storm had been threatening for some hours, and flakes of +snow began to drift down before they left the slide. + +"Let's dress up in our best, girls," Louise said gaily. "Put on our best +bibs and tuckers. Make it a gala occasion. Teddy, be sure and scrub behind +your ears, naughty boy!" + +"I feel as though I ought to be in rompers the way you talk," said the +Tucker twin, but he laughed. + +The boys ran off to "primp," and what the girls did to make themselves +lovely, Libbie said "was a caution!" One after the other they came into +Betty's and Bobby's room and pirouetted to show their finery. Ida had been +decked out very nicely by her friends, and her outfit did not seem shabby +in the least. + +But the English girl noted one thing about Betty, and it puzzled her. The +other girls from Shadyside School wore their pieces of jewelry while Betty +displayed not a single trinket. As the other girls were hurrying out to +join the boys and descend to the big hall, Ida held Betty back. + +"Where is it, Betty?" she asked. "Don't you wear it at all? Are you +afraid of losing it again?" + +"What do you mean?" asked Betty, her heart pounding suddenly and her eyes +growing brighter. Ida Bellethorne placed her hand upon Betty's chest, +looking at her closely as she asked the question: + +"Didn't Mrs. Staples give it to you? That beautiful locket, you know. +Aren't you allowed to wear it?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +CAN IT BE DONE? + + +"Dear me!" exclaimed Betty. "How curious you are. I am not allowed to wear +my diamond earrings that Doctor and Mrs. Guerin gave me, of course. They +are the old-fashioned kind for pierced ears, and would have to be reset, +and diamonds are too old for me anyway. But Uncle Dick lets me wear any +thing else I own----" + +"That locket," questioned Ida. "That pretty locket. It did fall out of +your bag in the shop, didn't it, Betty?" + +"My goodness!" stammered Betty, "did you find it?" + +"I picked it up," said Ida soberly. "Mrs. Staples would not let me run +after you with it. But she promised to give it to you when you came and +asked for it." + +"She did? She never----" + +Then Betty hesitated a moment. She remembered clearly just what had been +said in the little neighborhood shop when she and Bobby had called there +to get Bobby's blue over-blouse. + +"It's a fact, I never asked her for it," she said slowly. "No, I never. I +just asked her if she had found anything, and she said 'No.'" + +"She would! That would be like her!" cried Ida Bellethorne. "She is a +person who prides herself upon being exactly honest; and I guess that +means barely honest. Oh, Betty Gordon!" + +"Well, now what's the matter?" asked Betty. + +"Did--did you know you lost it in Mrs. Staples' shop?" + +"No. I didn't know where I lost it. I only thought----" + +"That I might have picked it up and said nothing about it?" demanded Ida +Bellethorne. + +"Why Ida! I would not have hurt your feelings by saying anything about it +for the world," said Betty honestly. "That was why I didn't tell you. You +see, if you really had known nothing about the locket when I asked you, +all the time you would be afraid that I suspected you. Isn't that so?" + +"You dear, good girl!" gasped Ida, dabbling her eyes with her +handkerchief. "And I didn't say anything because I thought you would think +I wanted a reward for returning it." + +"So, you see, I couldn't speak of it. But now, of course, we'll get it +away from Mrs. Staples. I think she's horrid mean!" + +Betty expressed her opinion of the shopwoman vigorously, but she put her +arms around the English girl at the same time and kissed her warmly. + +"You're a dear!" repeated Ida. + +"You're another!" cried Betty gaily. "Now come on! Maybe those boys will +eat up all the dinner, and I am so hungry!" + +One of the men arrived from Cliffdale during dinner with the mail and the +information that another cold rain was falling and freezing to everything +it touched. + +"The whole country about here will be one glare of ice in the morning," +said Mr. Canary. "You young folks will have all the sledding you care for, +I fancy. I have seen the time when, after one of these ice storms, one +might coast from here to Midway Junction on the railroad, and that's a +matter of twenty miles." + +"What a lark that would be," cried Tommy Tucker. "Some slide, eh, Bob?" + +"How about walking back?" asked the other boy promptly, grinning. + +Letters and papers were distributed. There was at least one letter for +everybody but Ida, and Betty squeezed her hand under the table in a +comforting way. + +When they all retired from the table and gathered in groups in the big +living room where the log fire roared Uncle Dick beckoned Betty to him. He +put a letter from Mrs. Eustice into the girl's hand and at one glance she +"knew the worst." + +"Oh Betty!" gasped Louise, "what's the matter?" + +For Betty had emitted a squeal of despair. She shook the paper before +their eyes. + +"Come on, Betty!" cried Bob. "Get it out--if it's a fishbone." + +"It's all over!" wailed Betty. "Measles don't last as long as we thought +they did. Shadyside opens two days from to-morrow, and we have got to be +there. That's Monday. Oh, dear, dear, dear!" + +"Say a couple more for me, Betty," growled Teddy Tucker. "I suppose +Salsette will open too. Back to Major Pater and others too murderous to +mention." + +"And the Major's got it in for you Tucker twins," Bob reminded him +wickedly. + +"That's Tom's fault," grumbled Teddy. "If he hadn't sprung that snowball +stunt--Oh, well! What's the use?" + +"Life, Ted believes," said Louise, "is just one misfortune after another. +But I do hate to leave here just as we have got nicely settled. My +goodness! what's the matter with Ida? Something's happened to her, too." + +Ida had sprung to her feet with one of the recently arrived New York +papers in her hand. Actually she was pale, and it was no wonder the +company stared at her when her cheeks were usually so ruddy. + +"What is the matter, dear?" asked Mrs. Canary. + +Betty went to the English girl at once and put an arm about her shoulders. + +"Did you see something in the paper that frightened you, Ida?" she asked. + +"It doesn't frighten me," replied the girl, with trembling lips. "See. +Read it. This time I am sure it is my aunt. See!" + +Uncle Dick joined the group about the excited girl. Her color had come +back into her cheeks now and her eyes shone. She was usually so +self-contained and quiet that Mr. Gordon now thought perhaps they had not +really appreciated how much the hope of joining her aunt meant to Ida. + +"Read it aloud, Betty," said her uncle quietly. + +"Oh! Here's her name! It must be right this time!" cried Betty; and then +she obeyed her uncle's request: + + "'The Toscanelli Opera Company, Salvatore Toscanelli manager, + which has made a very favorable impression among the music lovers + of the East and Middle West during the last few months, will sail + for Rio Janeiro on Sunday on the _San Salvador_ of the Blue Star + Line. The company has been augmented by the engagement of + several soloists, among them Madam Ida Bellethorne, the English + soprano, who has made many friends here during the past few + years.'" + +"Day after to-morrow!" exclaimed Bobby, the first to speak. "Why! maybe if +you can go to New York you will see her, Ida." + +"Day after to-morrow," repeated Ida, anxiously. "Can I get to New York by +that time? I--I have a little money----" + +"Don't worry about the money, honey," Betty broke in. "You will have to +start early in the morning, won't she, Uncle Dick?" + +"If she is to reach the steamer in time, yes," said the gentleman rather +doubtfully. + +"Oh! if I don't get there what shall I do?" cried Ida. "Rio Janeiro, why, +that is in South America! It would cost hundreds of your dollars to pay my +passage there. I must get to Aunt Ida before she sails. I must!" + +"Now, now!" put in Mrs. Canary soothingly. "Don't worry about it, child. +That will not help. We will get you to the train to-morrow----" + +"If we can," interrupted her husband softly. + +He beckoned Uncle Dick away and they went out through the hall to look at +the weather, leaving the young folks and Mrs. Canary to encourage the +English girl. + +Outside the two men did not find much in the appearance of the weather to +encourage them. It was raining softly, for there was no wind; and it was +freezing as fast as it fell. + +"And that old shack-a-bones I keep here during the winter isn't sharpened. +Ought to be, I know. But he isn't," grumbled Jonathan Canary. + +"No use to think of snowshoes if it freezes, Jack," rejoined Mr. Gordon. +"It is too far to the railroad anyway. I doubt if these children get to +school on time." + +"Telephone wires are down again. I just tried to get Cliffdale before +dinner. This is a wilderness up here, Dick." + +"I am sorry for that young English girl," mused Mr. Gordon. "She is fairly +eaten up with the idea of getting in touch with her aunt. Good reason, +too. She has told me all about it. She carries a letter from her dead +father to the woman and he begged the girl to be sure to put it into his +sister's hands. Family troubles, Jack." + +"Well, come on in. You're here without your hat. Want to get your death of +cold?" growled Mr. Canary. + +The young folks did not dream at this time that nature was doing her best +to make it impossible for Ida Bellethorne to reach New York by Sunday +morning when the steamship _San Salvador_ would leave her dock. It was, +however, the general topic of conversation during the evening. When +bed-time came they went gaily to bed, not even Betty doubting the +feasibility of their getting to the train on the morrow. + +Her uncle, however, put his head out of the door again when the others had +gone chamberward and seeing the shining, icy waste of the Overlook, +muttered with growing anxiety: + +"Can it be done?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +TWENTY MILES OF GRADE + + +Ida slept in the room with Betty and Bobby that night. Betty had confided +to her chum, as well as to Uncle Dick, the outcome of the mystery of her +locket. Because of Ida's information, Uncle Dick had assured his niece +they would recover the trinket. + +"If Mrs. Staples is not a dishonest woman, she shades that character +pretty closely. There are people like that--people who think that a found +article is their own unless absolutely claimed by the victim of the loss. +A rather prejudiced brand of honesty to say the least." + +The two Shadyside girls made much of Ida Bellethorne on this evening after +they had fore-gathered in the bedroom. Just think! her Aunt Ida might take +her to South America. Ida already had traveled by boat much farther than +even Betty had journeyed by train. + +"Although I am not at all sure how my aunt will meet me," the English girl +said. "She was very angry with my father. She wasn't fair to him. She is +impulsive and proud, and maybe she will think no better of me. But I must +give her father's letter and see what comes of it." + +The main difficulty was to get to New York in time to deliver the letter +before the _San Salvador_ sailed. When the girls awoke very early and saw +a sliver of moon shining low in the sky, they bounced up with glad if +muffled cries, believing that everything was all right. The storm had +ceased. And when they pushed up the window a little more to stick their +heads out they immediately discovered something else. + +"Goodness me!" gasped Bobby. "It's one glare of ice--everything! And so-o +cold! Ugh!" and she shivered, bundled as she was in a blanket robe. + +First Betty and then Ida had to investigate. The latter looked very +mournful. + +"The horse can never travel to-day," she groaned. "You saw how he slipped +about in the soft snow the other day when they had him out. He is not shod +properly." + +"If you only had Ida Bellethorne here!" cried Betty. + +"But she is a long way off, and in the wrong direction. Why, none of us +could walk on this ice!" + +"How about skating?" cried Bobby eagerly. + +"Mr. Canary says it is all downhill--or mostly to the railroad station," +Betty said. "I would be afraid to skate downhill." + +They dressed quickly and hastened to find Uncle Dick. He had long been up +and had evidently canvassed the situation thoroughly. His face was very +grave when he met his niece and her friends. + +"This is a bad lookout for our trip," he said. "I don't really see how any +of you will get to school on Monday, let alone Ida's reaching New York +to-morrow morning." + +"Oh, Uncle Dick, don't say that!" cried Betty. "Is it positive that we +cannot ride or walk?" + +"Walk twenty miles downhill on ice?" he exclaimed, "Does it seem +reasonable? We can neither ride nor walk; and surely we cannot swim or +fly!" + +"We could fly if we had an aeroplane. Oh, dear!" sighed Bobby. "Why didn't +we think of that? And now the telephone wires are down." + +But Betty was thoughtful. She only pinched Ida's arm and begged her to +keep up her courage--perhaps something would turn up. She disappeared then +and was absent from the house, cold as the morning was, until breakfast +time. + +The whole party had gathered then, excited and voluble. It was not only +regarding Ida's need that they chattered so eagerly. In spite of the fun +they were having at Mountain Camp, the thought that Shadyside and Salsette +might begin classes before they could get there was, after all, rather +shocking. + +"Measles is one thing," said Bob. "But being out of bounds when classes +really begin is another. The other fellows will learn some tricks that we +don't know." + +"And somebody else may be put in our room, Betty!" wailed Bobby, as her +chum now appeared. + +Betty was very rosy and full of something that was bound to spill over at +once. As soon as she had bidden Mr. and Mrs. Canary good morning she cried +to all: + +"What do you think!" + +"Just as little as possible," declared Tommy Tucker. "Thinking tires me +dreadfully." + +"Behave, Tommy!" said Louise admonishingly. + +"There's a big two-horse pung here. I found it in the barn. Like Mr. +Jaroth's. It has a deep box like his. And a tongue. It's like a +double-runner sled, Bob--you know. The front runners are independent of +the rear." + +"I know what it is, Betty," said Bob, while the others stared at her. +"I've seen that pung." + +"Your observations are correct, Miss Betty," said Mr. Canary, smiling at +the girl. "I own such a pung. But I do not own two horses to draw it. And +I am sorry to say that the horse I have got cannot stand on this ice." + +"Gee!" exclaimed Teddy, "if we got old Bobsky started down that hill he'd +never stop till he got to the bottom. How far do you say it is to the +station, Mr. Canary?" + +"It is quite twenty miles down grade. Of course there are several places +where the road is level--or was level before the snow fell. But once +started there would not be many places where you would have to get out and +push," and the gentleman laughed. + +Betty's mind was fixed upon her argument. Her face still glowed and she +scarcely tasted her breakfast. + +"I believe we can do it," she murmured. + +"What under the sun do you mean, Betty?" asked Louise. + +"I hope it is something nice we can do," said Libbie dreamily. "I looked +out the window and it is all like fairyland--isn't it, Timothy?" + +"Uh-huh!" said Timothy Derby, his mouth rather full at the moment. "It is +the most beautiful sight I ever saw. Will you please pass me another +muffin?" + +But Bob gave Betty his undivided attention. He asked: + +"What do you believe we can do, Betty?" + +"Make use of Mr. Canary's pung." + +"Cricky! What will draw it? Where is the span of noble steeds to be found? +Old Bobsky would break his neck." + +"One horse. One wonderful horse, Bob!" cried Betty clapping her hands +suddenly. "I am sure I'm right. Uncle Dick!" + +"What do you mean, Betty?" cried Bobby, shaking her. "What horse?" + +"Gravitation," announced Betty, her eyes shining. "That's his name." + +"Great goodness!" gasped Bob. "I see a light. But Betty, how'd we steer +it?" + +"The front runners are attached to the tongue. Tie ropes to the tongue and +steer it that way," Betty said, so eagerly that her words tumbled over +each other. "Can't we do it, Uncle Dick? We'll all pile into the pung, +with a lot of straw to keep us warm, and just slide down the hills to the +railroad station. What say?" + +For a while there was a good deal said by all present. Mr. and Mrs. Canary +at first scouted the reasonableness of the idea. But Mr. Gordon, being an +engineer and, as Bob said, "up to all such problems," considered Betty's +suggestion carefully. + +In the first place the need was serious. Especially for the much troubled +Ida. If she could not reach the dock on New York's water-front by eleven +o'clock the next morning, her aunt would doubtless sail on the _San +Salvador_, and then there was no knowing when the English girl would be +able to find her only living relative. + +The party had ridden over the mountain road in coming to Mountain Camp, +and Uncle Dick remembered the course pretty well. Although it was a +continual grade, as one might say, it was an easy grade. And there were +few turns in the road. + +Drifted with snow as it was, and that snow crusted, the idea of coasting +all the way to the railroad station did not seem so wild a thought. The +road was fenced for most of the way on both sides. And over those fences +the drifts rose smoothly, making almost a trough of the road. + +"When you come to think of it, Jack," Uncle Dick said to Mr. Canary, "it +is not very different from our toboggan chute yonder. Only it is longer." + +"A good bit longer," said Mr. Canary, shaking his head. + +However, it was plain that the idea interested Uncle Dick. He hastened out +to look at the pung. Bob followed him, and they were gone half an hour or +more. When they returned Bob was grinning broadly. + +"Get ready for the time of your lives, girls," he whispered to Betty and +Bobby. "The thing is going to work. You wait and see!" + +Uncle Dick called them all into the living room and told them to pack at +once and prepare for a cold ride. There was plenty of time, for the train +they had to catch did not reach the station until noon. + +"If our trip is successful--and it will be, I feel sure--it will not take +an hour to reach the station. But we shall give ourselves plenty of time. +Now off with you! I guess Mrs. Canary will be glad to see the last of us." + +But their hostess denied this. The delight of having young people at the +lonely camp in the hills quite counterbalanced the disturbance they made. +But she bustled about somewhat anxiously, aiding the girls and the boys to +make ready for departure. The Canarys, being unused to roughing it, even +if they did live in the Big Woods, were much more afraid of the +possibility of an accident arising out of this scheme Betty had conceived +than was Uncle Dick. + +A little after ten o'clock they all piled out of the bungalow with their +baggage. The two men working at the camp had filled the box of the pung +with straw and had drawn it out to the brow of the hill where the road +began. The tongue was raised at a slant, as high as it would go, and half +of it had been sawed off. Ropes were fastened from this stub of the tongue +to ringbolts on either side of the pung-box. + +"It will take two of us to steer," said Uncle Dick, "and we must work +together. Get in here, Bob, and I'll show you how it works." + +It worked easily. The girls and the baggage were piled into the pung. The +Tucker twins were each handed an iron-shod woodsman's peavey and were +shown how the speed of the pung might be retarded by dragging them in the +crust on either side. + +"You boys are the brakes," sang out Uncle Dick, almost as excited as the +young people themselves. "When we shout for 'Brakes!' it is up to you +twins to do your part." + +"We will, sir!" cried Tommy and Teddy in unison. + +"And don't hang your arms or legs over the sides," advised Uncle Dick. +"Farewell, Jack! Take care of him, Mrs. Canary. And many, many thanks for +a jolly time." + +The boys and girls chorused their gratitude to the owner of Mountain Camp +and his wife. The men behind gave the pung just the tiniest push. The +runners creaked over the ice, and the forward end pitched down the slope. +They had started. + +And what a ride that was! It is not likely that any of them will ever +forget it. Yet, as it proved, the danger was slight. They coasted the +entire down-grade to the little railroad station where Fred Jaroth was +telegraph operator with scarcely more peril than as though they had been +riding behind the Jaroth horses. + +But they were on the _qui vive_ all the time. Bobby declared her heart was +in her mouth so much that she could taste it. + +There were places when the speed threatened disaster. But when Uncle Dick +shouted for "Brakes!" the twins broke through the crust with their peaveys +and the hook broke up the thick ice and dragged back on the pung so that +the latter was brought almost to a stop. The handles of the peaveys were +braced against the end staffs of the pung, and to keep them in position +did not exceed the twins' strength. + +Once Ted's peavey was dragged from his hands; but he jumped out and +recovered it, and then, falling, slid flat on his back down the slippery +way until he overtook the slowly moving pung again amid the delighted +shouts of his chums. + +Otherwise there were no casualties, and the pung flew past the Jaroth +house a little before eleven to the great amazement of the whole family, +who ran out to watch the coasting party. + +"I don't know how Jonathan Canary will recover his pung," said Mr. Gordon +when they alighted on the level ground. "But I will leave it in Jaroth's +care, and when the winter breaks up, or before, it can be taken back to +Mountain Camp. + +"Now how do you feel, young folks? All right? No bones broken?" + +"It was delightful," they cried. But Ida added something to this. "I feel +rather--rather dazed, Mr. Gordon," she said. "But I am very thankful. And +I know whom I have most to thank." + +"Who is that; my dear?" asked Uncle Dick smiling. + +"Betty." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +ON THE DECK OF THE SAN SALVADOR + + +Mr. Richard Gordon sent several telegrams before the train arrived, and +they were all of importance. One recovered Betty's locket, for, informed +of the circumstances by this telegram, the lawyer in Washington sent his +clerk to Mrs. Staples and showed her in a very few words that she was +coasting very close to the law by keeping the little platinum and diamond +locket. + +"So," said Betty to Bobby, "if the lawyer gets it--and Uncle Dick says he +will--I can wear the locket to parties at the school." + +"If Mrs. Eustice allows it," said her chum grimly. "You know, she's down +on jewelry. Remember how she got after Ada Nansen and Ruth Gladys Royal +for wearing so much junk?" + +"My goodness!" giggled Betty, "what would she say to you if she heard you +use such an expression? Anyway, I am going to show her Uncle Dick's +present and ask her. I know the beautiful diamond earrings Doctor and Mrs. +Guerin sent me can't be worn till I grow up a bit. But my locket is just +right." + +It was a noisy crowd that boarded the train; and it continued to be a +noisy crowd to the junction where it broke up. All the young folks would +have been glad to go with Uncle Dick and Ida Bellethorne to New York; but +he sent all but Betty and Bob on to school. They would reach the Shadyside +station soon after daybreak the next morning, and Mr. Gordon had +telegraphed ahead for the school authorities to be on the look-out for +them. + +Betty and Bob, with Uncle Dick and the English girl, left the train at the +junction and boarded another for New York City in some confidence of +reaching their destination in good season. + +The train, however, was late. It seemed merely to creep along for miles +and miles. Luckily they had secured berths, and while they slept the +delayed train did most of its creeping. + +But in the morning they were dismayed to find that they were already two +hours late and that it would be impossible for the train to pick up those +two hours before reaching the Grand Central Terminal in New York City. + +"Now, hold your horses, young people!" advised Mr. Gordon. "We are not +beaten yet. The _San Salvador_ does not leave her dock until eleven at the +earliest. It may be several hours later. I have wired to Miss Bellethorne +aboard the ship and in care of the Toscanelli Opera Company as well. I do +not know the hotel at which Miss Bellethorne has been staying." + +"But, Uncle Dick!" cried Betty, who seemed to have thought of every chance +that might arise, "suppose Ida's aunt wants to take her along to Brazil? +Her passport----" + +"Can be vised at the British consulate on Whitehall Street in a very few +minutes. I have examined Ida's passport, and there is no reason why there +should be any trouble over it at all. She is a minor, you see, and if her +aunt wishes to assume responsibility for her no effort will be made to +keep her in the country, that is sure." + +"Then it all depends upon Ida's aunt," sighed Betty. + +"And our reaching the dock in time," amended Uncle Dick. "I would not wish +to interfere with Miss Bellethorne's business engagement in Rio Janeiro; +but I am anxious for her to authorize me, on behalf of her niece, to get +legal matters in train for the recovery of that beautiful mare. I believe +that she belongs--every hair and hoof of her--to our young friend here. +There has been some trickery in the case." + +"Oh, Uncle Dick!" shrieked Betty. + +"When I went to see that poor little cripple Hunchie Slattery he told me +that the very papers that were given to Mr. Bolter with the horse must +prove Ida's ownership at one time of the mare. There was some kind of a +quit-claim deed signed by her name, and that signature must be a forgery. + +"The horse could never have been sold in England, for the Bellethorne +stable was too well known there. The men who grabbed the string of horses +left when Ida's father died are well-to-do, and Mr. Bolter will be able to +get his money back, even if he has already paid the full price agreed upon +for Ida Bellethorne. + +"I am convinced," concluded Uncle Dick, "that the girl has something +coming to her. And it may even pay Miss Bellethorne to remain in the +United States instead of going to Rio Janeiro until the matter of the +black mare's ownership is settled beyond any doubt." + +When the train finally reached New York, Uncle Dick did not even delay to +try to reach the dock by telephone. He bundled his party into a taxicab +and they were transported to the dock where the _San Salvador_ lay. + +A steward seemed to be on the look-out for the party, and addressed Uncle +Dick the moment he alighted from the cab. + +"Mr. Gordon, sir? Yes, sir. Madam Bellethorne has received your wire and +is waiting for you. I have arranged for you all to be passed through the +inspection line. The steamship, sir, is delayed and will not sail until +next tide." + +"And that is a mighty good thing for us," declared Mr. Gordon to his +charges. + +His business card helped get them past the inspectors. It is not easy to +board a ship nowadays to bid good-bye to a sailing friend. But in ten +minutes or so they stood before the great singer. + +She was a tall and handsome woman. Betty at first glance saw that Ida, the +niece, would very likely grow into a very close resemblance to Madam +Bellethorne. + +The woman looked swiftly from Betty to Ida and made no mistake in her +identification of her brother's daughter. Ida was crying just a little, +but when she realized how close and kindly was her aunt's embrace she +shook the drops out of her eyes and smiled. + +"Father wanted I should find you, Aunt Ida," she said. "He wrote a letter +to you and I have it. I think it was the principal thing he thought of +during his last illness--his misunderstanding with you." + +"My fault as much as his," Madam Bellethorne said sadly. "We were both +proud and high-tempered. But no more of this now. Something in this +gentleman's long telegram to me----" + +She bowed to Mr. Gordon. He quickly stated the matter of the black mare's +ownership to the singer. + +"If you will come to the British consulate where Ida's passport must be +vised, and sign there a paper empowering me to act in your behalf, you +assuming the guardianship of Ida, I can start lawyers on the trail of this +swindle." + +Miss Bellethorne was a woman of prompt decision and of a business mind, +and immediately agreed. She likewise saw that her niece had made powerful +friends during the weeks she had been in America and she was content to +allow Mr. Gordon to do the girl this kindness. + +It was a busy time; but the delay in the sailing of the _San Salvador_ +made it possible for everything necessary to be accomplished. Uncle Dick +and Betty and Bob accompanied the Bellethornes aboard the ship again and +had luncheon with them. Ida cried when she parted with Betty; but it would +be only for the winter. When the opera company returned to New York it was +already planned that the younger Ida Bellethorne should join the friends +of her own age she had so recently made at Shadyside School. + +It was an astonishing sight for Betty and Bob to see the great ship +worried out of her dock by the fussy little tugs. It was growing dark by +that time and the great steamship was brilliantly lighted. They watched +until she was in midstream and was headed down the harbor under her own +steam. + +"There! It's over!" sighed Betty. "I feel as if a great load had been +lifted from my mind. Dear me, Bob! do you suppose we can ever again have +so much excitement crowded into a few hours?" + +As Betty was no seeress and could not see into the future she of course +did not dream that in a very few weeks, and in very different +surroundings, she would experience adventures quite as interesting as any +which had already come into her life. These will be published in the next +volume of this series, entitled: "Betty Gordon at Ocean Park; or, Gay +Doings on the Boardwalk." + +Bob shook his head at Betty's last observation. "Does seem as though we +manage to get hooked up to lots of strange folks and strange happenings. +Certain metals attract lightning, Betty, and I think you attract +adventures. What do you say, Uncle Dick?" + +Mr. Gordon only laughed. "I say that you young folks had better have +supper and a long night's rest. I shall not let you go on to school until +to-morrow. For once you will be a day late; but I will chance explaining +the circumstances to your instructors." + +They got into the taxicab again and bowled away up town. The lights came +up like rows of fireflies in the cross streets. When they struck into the +foot of Fifth Avenue at the Washington Arch the globes on that +thoroughfare were all alight. It was late enough for the traffic to have +thinned out and their driver could travel at good speed save when the red +lights flashed up on the traffic towers. + +"Isn't this wonderful?" said Betty. "Libbie is always enthusing about +pretty views and fairylike landscapes. What would she and Timothy say to +this?" + +"Something silly, I bet," grumbled Bob. "Cricky! but I'm hungry," proving +by this speech that he had a soul at this moment very little above mundane +things. + +Uncle Dick chuckled in his corner of the car, and made no comment. And +Betty said nothing further just then. The brilliant lights of the avenue +were shining full in her face, but her thoughts were far away, with Ida +Bellethorne on that ocean-going steamer bound for South America. What a +wonderful winter of adventures it had been! + +"And the best of it is, it all came out right in the end," murmured the +girl softly to herself. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP*** + + +******* This file should be named 14546.txt or 14546.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/5/4/14546 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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