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+Project Gutenberg's The Motor Maids Across the Continent, by Katherine Stokes
+
+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: The Motor Maids Across the Continent
+
+Author: Katherine Stokes
+
+Release Date: September 15, 2011 [EBook #37433]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOTOR MAIDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Sometimes they were on the edge of such dizzy heights
+that Miss Campbell held her breath.]
+
+
+
+
+                            THE MOTOR MAIDS
+                               ACROSS THE
+                               CONTINENT
+
+                                   BY
+
+                            KATHERINE STOKES
+
+       AUTHOR OF “THE MOTOR MAIDS’ SCHOOL DAYS,” “THE MOTOR MAIDS
+                        BY PALM AND PINE,” ETC.
+
+                                NEW YORK
+                            HURST & COMPANY
+                               PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+                            Copyright, 1911,
+                                   BY
+                            HURST & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+             CHAPTER                                      PAGE
+                  I. Westward Ho!                            5
+                 II. Peter                                  22
+                III. In Search of a Dinner                  33
+                 IV. The Three Wishes                       48
+                  V. An Incident of the Road                67
+                 VI. Under the Stars                        81
+                VII. Barney M’Gee                           92
+               VIII. Cutting the Bonds                     106
+                 IX. The Girl from the Golden West         117
+                  X. Steptoe Lodge                         130
+                 XI. The Hawkes Family                     146
+                XII. Into the Wilderness                   156
+               XIII. Hot Air Sue                           168
+                XIV. On the Road Again                     177
+                 XV. In the Robbers’ Nest                  190
+                XVI. In the Rockies                        206
+               XVII. Salt Lake City                        218
+              XVIII. David and Goliath                     229
+                XIX. A Day of Surprises                    242
+                 XX. The Elopement                         258
+                XXI. A Meeting in the Desert               270
+               XXII. A Bit of Old Italy                    280
+              XXIII. A Change of Heart                     292
+               XXIV. San Francisco at Last                 301
+
+
+
+
+THE MOTOR MAIDS ACROSS THE CONTINENT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.—WESTWARD HO!
+
+
+“At my age, too,” began Miss Helen Campbell, leaning back in her seat
+and folding her hands with an expression of resignation.
+
+“At your age, what, dear cousin?” demanded Wilhelmina Campbell,
+superintending the strapping on at the back of the car of five extra
+large suit cases and other paraphernalia for a long trip. “Why should
+not things happen at your age as well as at ours? But at your age,
+what?”
+
+“At my age to turn emigrant,” exclaimed the little lady. “At my age to
+become a gypsy vagabond. Oh, dear, oh, dear! What would grandpapa have
+said?”
+
+“He would have been delighted, I am certain, Cousin Helen,” answered her
+young relative, “since he was a soldier and a jolly old gentleman, too,
+papa has always said.”
+
+“But such an up to date gypsy-vagabond-emigrant, Miss Campbell,” pursued
+Elinor Butler, “one who rides in a motor car and wears a silk traveling
+coat and a sky-blue chiffon veil.”
+
+“And has four ladies-in-waiting,” continued Nancy Brown.
+
+“And hotels all along the route to sleep in instead of tents,” finished
+Mary Price.
+
+“Very true, my dears. I admit all you say; but now at the last moment,
+when we are about to start on this amazing journey, I cannot help
+thinking it is a wild adventure. But I shall be over it in a moment, I
+daresay. Have the machine cranked-up, Billie. Do I use the correct word?
+and let us be off before my courage fails me altogether.”
+
+With a happy laugh, Billie jumped into her seat behind the wheel. The
+other girls were already in their accustomed places. One of the
+attendants from the hotel gave the crank a dexterous twist; there was a
+throbbing sound of machinery in action, and off shot the Comet like a
+spirited horse, eager to be on the road.
+
+Miss Campbell’s spirits rose with the sun, for it was still very early
+when the Motor Maids started on their famous journey across the
+continent from Chicago to San Francisco. And all the world seemed to be
+in league to make the start a happy one. It was a glorious morning
+toward the last of May, the air just frosty enough to make the blood
+tingle and bring color to the cheeks. Up to the very day before, an icy
+gale had blown across the windy city of the plains, but through the
+night it had gradually tempered into a springtime breeze. The red car
+sped through the sunshine with all the vigor of machinery in perfect
+order, and the polished plate glass of the wind guard reflected the four
+happy faces of the Motor Maids off on a lark, which, when all is said
+and done, and the last page of this volume filled, will have carried
+them through many an adventure along the way.
+
+Through Chicago they whirled, past fine homes where sleepy maids and
+butlers were just opening windows and blinds to let in the morning
+light; through business streets already humming with life, and at last
+out through the suburbs on a broad level road, due west, they took their
+course.
+
+Billie knew it all like a book because she had been stopping in Chicago
+for a week and every day they had taken a spin in the Comet along some
+fifty miles of the route. Moreover, for a month past, she had been
+studying maps and guide-books until her mind reflected now only a great
+bird’s-eye view of the United States through the center of which was
+drawn a red line; the road the Comet was to take when it bore them to
+the Pacific Ocean.
+
+There was nothing now, however, in these flat, monotonous wheat fields
+to promote any particular interest. But there was much to talk about.
+
+“Was it only last week that we were four school girls at West Haven High
+School slaving over examinations?” cried Elinor Butler.
+
+“Only a little week ago,” exclaimed Mary joyfully, “and now, behold us,
+free as birds on the wing.”
+
+There was a flush of happiness on her usually pale face. It had been a
+long, hard spring for her, and she was glad after examinations were
+over, to hurry away with her friends without waiting for the final
+exercises.
+
+“School! School!” said Nancy Brown, her face dimpling with happiness.
+“Don’t mention the hateful word. I am as full of mathematics and history
+and physics and Latin as a black cake is of plums.”
+
+“Plums!” echoed Billie. “I’m stuffed with another variety of fruit. It’s
+dates.”
+
+They laughed at the word dates; for, remembering dates, aside from
+mathematics, was the _bête noir_ of Billie’s school days and the teacher
+of history was very unpopular because she made the pupils of her classes
+learn six dates a day.
+
+“But the class is even with Miss Hawkes now,” put in Nancy. “She isn’t
+to come back next year, and we gave her a present besides.”
+
+“Why did you give her a present?” asked Miss Campbell, suddenly becoming
+curious.
+
+“Well, you see, at the end of school we reckoned we had learned about
+800 dates, not that we could remember 100 or even 50. It was Elinor who
+thought of it and because she has more nerve than any one else in the
+class——”
+
+“Indeed I have not,” protested Elinor.
+
+“Because she was never afraid even of the terrifying Miss Hawkes, she
+was chosen to make the speech and give Miss Hawkes a present from the
+class.”
+
+Miss Campbell smiled. She was never tired of listening to their
+school-girl talk.
+
+“What did you say and what was the present, my dear?”
+
+“I said,” replied Elinor, “that, representing the class, I wanted to
+thank her for the splendid mental training she had given us last winter,
+and we wished to show our appreciation by giving her a little
+remembrance.”
+
+“‘Remembrance’ was a good word, Elinor,” cried Billie.
+
+“If she hadn’t been so pleased and made that speech of thanks, it
+wouldn’t have mattered so much,” put in Mary. “But I was ashamed when
+she untied the ribbons on the box——”
+
+“And what was in it, child?” demanded Miss Campbell.
+
+“Dates,” cried Billie, “dozens of dates packed in as tightly as dates
+can be packed, just as she had been packing them into our brains for
+nine months.”
+
+“Oh! oh!” exclaimed Miss Campbell, trying to be shocked and laughing in
+spite of herself. “The poor soul! How embarrassed she must have felt.
+Was she very angry?”
+
+“We couldn’t tell whether she was angry or hurt,” answered Elinor. “She
+drew herself up stiffer and straighter than usual if possible, and
+marched out of the room without a word.”
+
+“And left us feeling very foolish indeed, cousin,” went on Billie. “But
+that isn’t all. Because I was the one who never could remember a date
+from one day to the next, I suppose she suspected me of having been the
+ring-leader and this morning when we stopped at the desk of the hotel
+for mail, the clerk handed me this letter. It was forwarded from West
+Haven.”
+
+Billie drew an envelope from the pocket of her motor coat and gave it to
+the others.
+
+“Read it,” she said. “I didn’t mention it before because I was so much
+interested in getting away and I had really forgotten it until the
+subject came up. I suppose Miss Hawkes is just a little queer in her
+upper story.”
+
+The letter read:
+
+  “I understand you are going West in your automobile. If, on your
+  journey, you should by chance hear the name of ‘Hawkes,’ do not
+  treat it as lightly as you did in West Haven. Somewhere in the West
+  that name is powerful.
+
+                                                        “Anna Hawkes.”
+
+“How absurd!” exclaimed Elinor. “She is queer. I am certain of it.”
+
+“Anyhow,” pursued Billie, “I am ashamed of what we did now. I suppose it
+must have hurt her awfully.”
+
+“Not more than she hurt us when she scolded us for forgetting those
+awful dates,” said Nancy relentlessly.
+
+“Oh, well,” put in Miss Campbell, “she is just an angry old spinster who
+got obsessed with dates and then had a rude awakening. I don’t think it
+was exactly respectful to have given the lady a box of dried dates. But
+she brought it on herself, as you say. Tear up the letter and forget all
+about it. I have no doubt she is a perfectly harmless old person.”
+
+Miss Campbell always had a secret contempt for other spinsters.
+
+“But she isn’t old, you know, cousin. She’s just out of college.”
+
+“Oh, indeed. I imagined she was a crusty old maid.”
+
+“Perhaps she has reference to the powerful family of chicken hawks,”
+observed Nancy.
+
+“Or the illustrious fish-hawk family, only they are mostly centered
+around New Haven,” added Mary.
+
+“How about the tomahawk family?” suggested Billie.
+
+How, indeed? But there was no answer to this strangely pertinent
+question because of a timely incident which now occurred.
+
+With the picture still in their minds of a great fish hawk skimming
+through the air, as they had often seen him do at home, there now came a
+sound of whirring far above them.
+
+Nancy leaned out of the automobile and looked up.
+
+“Oh! oh!” she exclaimed in great excitement “Oh, stop—look! What is
+it?”
+
+Billie stopped the car and they jumped out into the road, craning their
+necks as they scanned the heavens.
+
+Flying westward, but still some distance away, came what resembled at
+first a gigantic bird with wings outspread, soaring even as the fish
+hawk soars, as he skims through the air.
+
+“It’s an aeroplane,” whispered Billie, almost speechless with
+excitement.
+
+They seemed to be alone in the great flat world of green fields. To the
+right and left of them stretched level fields now cultivated and
+yielding great crops of corn and wheat. Less than a hundred years ago
+what would those travelers in lumbering wagons across the prairies have
+thought if they had seen such a bird flying overhead?
+
+On sailed the flying machine, like a huge dragon fly above them. In the
+clear atmosphere which is peculiar to this prairie region they could
+plainly see a human being riding it. Then, the birdman, as if he were
+not already high enough to see the whole world stretched out beneath
+him, began slowly to rise in the blue ether like a skylark at dawn. Up,
+up he went, until he was merely a black speck in the heavens.
+
+Miss Campbell sat flat down at the side of the road.
+
+“I can’t endure it,” she cried. “Suppose he should never come back.”
+
+“What goes up must come down,” observed Mary in a low voice much too
+excited to speak naturally.
+
+Immediately fulfilling her prophetic remark, the flying machine sailed
+back into view. It was some distance beyond them now, but even so far
+they could hear the clicking noise which was all the more accentuated
+because no other sound followed. The motor had ceased to whir. They saw
+the aeroplanist fumble frantically with the machinery, then suddenly,
+with a twist of its body that was almost swifter than the eye, the
+flying machine turned its nose earthward and shot straight down.
+
+“Is that the way he lands?” demanded Miss Campbell.
+
+“No, no,” answered Billie excitedly as she hastened to crank the
+machine. “Get in quickly—everybody! Something must be broken. He may be
+hurt.”
+
+Another moment they were tearing down the road toward the field where
+they had seen the flying machine drop.
+
+“There he is,” cried Nancy, already on the step of the Comet as Billie
+drew up at the side of the road.
+
+Now, unfortunately, a wire fence separated the field from the road to
+prevent idle wandering people from trampling down the young wheat. It
+was no easy matter to crawl through the interstices of barbed wire, and
+Billie, in her haste, tore a great gaping hole in her automobile coat.
+
+But she pulled off the wrap with the recklessness of a young person who
+has something far more interesting on hand than pongee coats, and flung
+it in the road where it was rescued by Miss Campbell.
+
+In the middle of the field lay the flying machine, looking very much
+like an enormous kite at close range. But where was the human being who
+so lately had been mounting high into the air?
+
+A man’s foot sticking out from the midst of the debris revealed him at
+last lying huddled up under the machine.
+
+It was no simple matter to untangle him from the ruins, and it took all
+their strength and courage, too, with that face so white and still
+turned upward, but, by the grace of Providence, which watches over the
+lives of some rash beings, the young man was not even hurt. He was only
+stunned, and presently Miss Campbell, who had managed somehow to crawl
+through the fence, brought him back to life with her smelling salts.
+
+“If I can only keep from sneezing,” he began, opening his eyes and
+blinking them in amazement when he beheld the faces of five ladies
+leaning over him in states of more or less extreme excitement.
+
+The aeroplanist was really almost a boy and rather small. He had reddish
+brown hair and reddish brown eyes to match. His features were regular.
+His mouth firm and well modeled, and he had a square, determined-looking
+jaw.
+
+“Oh,” he exclaimed. “Then it wasn’t a dream. I did sneeze.”
+
+The girls privately thought his mind was wandering.
+
+“You tumbled down out of the sky,” said Nancy.
+
+“Are you better now?” asked Miss Campbell, applying her smelling salts
+to his nose.
+
+“I’m all right,” he answered, bewildered, and began slowly to pull
+himself together and get up. He staggered a little as he rose and stood
+looking ruefully down at the demolished aeroplane. They noticed that he
+was not dressed like a messenger from Mars, as they had seen
+aeroplanists attired in pictures. He wore brown clothes and a brown tie
+the same shade as his hair, and a brown cap with a vizor which had
+fallen on the ground.
+
+“It is very kind of you ladies to come to my rescue,” he said as his
+senses returned. “I was getting on famously with the thing when I
+sneezed. I felt it coming on, but it couldn’t be stopped, and I lost
+control and shot down like a piece of lead. Aeroplanists will have to
+stop sneezing until something more reliable in the way of a flying
+machine is invented.”
+
+“What are you going to do with this?” asked Billie, pointing to the
+demolished machine.
+
+“Nothing,” he answered. “It’s all in, as far as I can see.”
+
+“Oh, then may we have a souvenir?” demanded Nancy.
+
+“Help yourself,” he said, smiling faintly and pressing his hand to his
+head, which was still buzzing with the shock of the fall.
+
+“You poor boy,” exclaimed Miss Campbell, “come right along and let us
+take you somewhere. You are suffering of course, and these foolish girls
+are thinking of souvenirs.”
+
+While the others assisted him across the field, Nancy lingered beside
+the flying machine and presently selected a piece of the machinery; you
+would probably be no wiser if I told you what piece it was, and
+certainly Nancy herself was as ignorant of its purpose as a cat of a
+sewing machine. She chose it because it was detached from the rest and
+after she had climbed gingerly through the wire fence she stored it away
+in an inner chamber of the automobile and promptly forgot all about it.
+
+But long afterward she was to congratulate herself on obeying first
+impulses, which are usually the safest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.—PETER.
+
+
+They put the young man on the back seat between Miss Campbell and
+Elinor, while Mary climbed in front and shared Nancy’s seat beside
+Chauffeur Billie.
+
+“Where do you want to go?” asked that responsible young woman, waiting
+to start the car and addressing the aeroplanist over her shoulder.
+
+“I’m on my way West.”
+
+“So are we,” interrupted Billie.
+
+“If you put me down at any convenient place along the way, I’ll be very
+much obliged. I’m going all the way to San Francisco.”
+
+“But so are we,” cried the girls in one voice. “We’re going across the
+continent.”
+
+The young man smiled for the second time, a charming smile which
+radiated his entire face and seemed to kindle two warm fires in his
+steady brown eyes.
+
+“In this?” he asked.
+
+“Why not?” Elinor was saying, somewhat on her mettle, when a motor cycle
+shot past them, stopped abruptly and a man jumped off and waited beside
+the road, signalling to them to stop the car.
+
+“Pardon me, but may I ask if you saw an aeroplane fly past a little
+while ago?”
+
+Before Billie, generally the spokesman, could reply, the young stranger
+broke in:
+
+“We saw one, but it is out of sight now.”
+
+“Ah? Then it didn’t fall. I thought I saw it drop. It looked very much
+as if he had lost control, but I was too far away to tell.”
+
+The man waited, but the four girls and Miss Campbell remained discreetly
+silent, and the wrecked aeroplanist leaned out and looked up skyward, as
+if he were searching the heavens for the lost airship.
+
+“Although aeroplanes are not very apt to fly about in great numbers,”
+went on the man sarcastically, “I see you are not very observant when
+they are about. I bid you good-day,” and touching his cap with his hand
+like a salute, he leaped on his motor cycle and sped down the road in a
+cloud of dust.
+
+“Dear me,” exclaimed Miss Campbell, “what a crusty individual! But why
+not have told him?”
+
+“Because he happens to be my rival,” answered the young man. “You see, a
+prize has been offered for the one who flies across the continent from
+San Francisco to Chicago in the shortest time. Most of the aeroplanists
+think the prize is too small for the risk, and so far only a few have
+entered. This fellow, Duval, doesn’t want any rivals, and he has done
+everything he could to disqualify me for the race. He didn’t recognize
+me, because he’s only seen me in leather clothes with goggles and a cap
+on. You see, I decided at the last moment this morning to fly westward
+as far as I could. I suppose I am a good deal like the Irishman who was
+challenged to drink a pail of beer, and went into another room and drank
+one first to see if he could.”
+
+“But now you have no aeroplane,” observed Nancy sadly.
+
+“I have two. The other one was shipped to San Francisco. Duval has a
+great many reasons for keeping an eye on me. He wants to find out what
+kind of machine I’m going to use. I have kept that a profound secret,
+and he wants to know how good I am at flying. You see, no one has ever
+heard of me. I have never been to any public meets. I have only
+practised—at—at our place.”
+
+“But,” interrupted Miss Campbell, “do you think you will be able to do
+this tremendous thing? Remember what you must cross? Not only the Rocky
+Mountains but the desert.”
+
+“It’s just as easy to fly over a desert as over a prairie,” answered the
+young man. “Not long ago a man flew from Italy over the Alps. If I
+hadn’t sneezed this morning, I might have been sailing across the
+Illinois boundary this afternoon and been well on my way into Iowa.”
+
+Miss Campbell and the girls regarded him curiously. He appeared
+exceedingly self-confident and very sensible, but that sneezing business
+seemed a little thin.
+
+“Do you mean to say,” cried Billie incredulously, “that you expect to
+fly across the country without sneezing.”
+
+“I hope so,” he replied. “It’s a dangerous thing to sneeze in any flying
+machine, although the one I intend to use is of much finer make than
+that thing which just broke down.”
+
+Suddenly Nancy began to laugh.
+
+“I believe you are guying us,” she said.
+
+The young man flushed.
+
+“It would be a nice return for your kindness.”
+
+“Don’t be offended,” put in Elinor. “She’s only teasing, herself.”
+
+It was now getting on toward noon. The crisp morning air had sharpened
+their appetites and it was agreed to stop at the next village for lunch.
+In half an hour they had whirled into the main street of a
+prosperous-looking middle-west town.
+
+The motor guide book directed them to Snyder’s and they presently pulled
+up in front of a large frame building painted white with green shutters.
+On the front piazza sat a number of men in armchairs, their feet on the
+railing, smoking and reading the morning papers.
+
+Before they had time to get out, the aeroplanist said to Miss Campbell:
+
+“I am deeply obliged to you for your kindness. My name is Peter Van
+Vechten. May I have the honor of asking your names?”
+
+There was quite an old-world courtesy about this Peter Van Vechten that
+appealed to the little lady, and she promptly introduced her girls and
+herself.
+
+Just at this moment a small racing car could be seen coming toward them
+at a terrific speed. People and vehicles scattered at its approach, but
+just before it reached the Comet it stopped short and a man jumped out
+and ran to them.
+
+“All right, Jackson,” said Peter Van Vechten. “I suppose you got wind
+that the aeroplane was wrecked and had a fright.”
+
+“I did, sir, indeed. But a farmer had watched through his glasses and he
+saw you get into a motor. Thank heavens, you’re safe, sir.”
+
+“Through the kindness of these ladies,” said Peter. “Is the luggage all
+here?”
+
+“It is, sir.”
+
+“Then, with your permission, Miss Campbell, I will say good-by. Thank
+you again. Perhaps we may meet on the plains.”
+
+“What month is the race?” asked Billie.
+
+“In July. It starts the Fourth of July.”
+
+“Good-by and good luck to you,” they cried, as the departing aeroplanist
+leaped into the motor car beside the chauffeur, and in another moment
+they were out of sight.
+
+For awhile things seemed rather dull to Miss Campbell and the Motor
+Maids, such a romantic halo encircles the head of him who flies through
+the air, and this ingratiating Peter Van Vechten, with his reddish hair
+and his keen brown eyes, also his polished manners, left a very deep
+impression on them all.
+
+The luncheon was poor. It was early dinner, really, with cabbage and
+boiled mutton and very stiff-looking mashed potatoes, watery canned peas
+and leathery pie for dessert. They were glad to get back to the Comet
+again and glad to be on the road.
+
+Already they seemed to have been traveling an endless time. But the
+first day of a long journey always affects people in this way. For some
+inexplicable reason they were a little homesick. The monotony of this
+level country oppressed them, endless green fields, which had once been
+vast prairie lands, covered with waving grass and a multitude of wild
+flowers.
+
+Late that afternoon, when they stopped for gasoline at a garage in a
+thriving little village, a group of men stood about the door talking.
+
+“Escaped in a flying machine?” said one.
+
+“It’s an up to date way to fly from justice,” put in another.
+
+“Yes, sir; I seen the paper myself at the hotel. He was a first-class
+crook, and he left Chicago this morning early in one of the flying
+machines at the park, where they have been giving exhibitions. They
+telegraphed it all over the country when it was found out. I reckon he’s
+the smartest crook in the world. The paper says ‘he eluded his captors
+just as they were about to apprehend him; dashed through the hotel door
+and jumped in a taxi. At the park he showed a forged letter signed Peter
+Van Vechten, one of the aeroplanists, permitting him the use of one of
+the aeroplanes for practice before the exhibition, and in five minutes
+he was gone like a bird on the wing. It was only a little while later
+that the guardians at the parks found out their mistake. Whether he is
+still flying over the country or has lighted in some safe place, no one
+knows. So far there is no trace of him whatever.’”
+
+Strange were the sensations of the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell as they
+listened to this remarkable tale.
+
+The tank was filled, and Billie, after asking for the right road,
+started the machine. It was a silent and rather sad company.
+
+They had traveled more than a hundred miles that day because it had been
+their object to leave the Middle West behind them as soon as possible,
+for the more romantic regions beyond.
+
+At last Miss Campbell burst out:
+
+“I don’t believe it. That nice brown-eyed boy!”
+
+“Neither do we,” echoed the others. “It’s impossible.”
+
+This somewhat relieved their feelings, and when they reached the town
+where they had planned to spend the night they were talking cheerfully.
+
+While they were freshening up for supper half an hour later, Miss
+Campbell felt in her black silk reticule for her purse, Billie having
+paid all bills that day with the ready change with which she had
+provided herself.
+
+“My dears,” gasped the poor little lady, “where is it?”
+
+“What, Cousin Helen,” cried Billie, frightened at the expressions of
+doubt and agitation which chased themselves across her relative’s face.
+
+“My purse, child! My silver-mounted Morocco purse. I thought I had it in
+my reticule, but where is it?”
+
+They emptied the reticule. They looked in their own handbags and even
+went to the garage and searched the Comet. But Miss Campbell’s purse
+containing fifty dollars was gone.
+
+“At any rate, Billie,” whispered Nancy that night when they had
+stretched themselves wearily on the hardish bed in the hotel, “at any
+rate, he had the nicest, kindest brown eyes I ever saw.”
+
+“Even now,” answered Billie, “there may be some mistake.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.—IN SEARCH OF A DINNER.
+
+
+“This is assuredly a land of peace and plenty,” observed Miss Campbell,
+somewhat sleepily, as she leaned back in the seat and half closed her
+eyes.
+
+“Meaning ‘too much of a muchness,’ Cousin Helen,” teased Billie. “Are
+you beginning to yearn already for something to happen?”
+
+“My dear, how can you suggest such things?” cried her relative opening
+her blue eyes wide in an innocent protest of such an accusation. “An
+aged spinster like me craving excitement! What an idea!”
+
+“But Iowa is not thrilling,” admitted Elinor. “These endless cornfields
+are like a sea without ship and what could be duller than a sail-less
+ocean?”
+
+“But there are farm houses,” put in Mary.
+
+“Just stupid wooden buildings,” answered Elinor scornfully.
+
+The truth is our five tourists still felt the inevitable homesickness
+which rarely fails to come during the first few days of a long journey
+before one is settled into the groove of traveling. The hard beds and
+uninteresting food of the small hotels of the Middle West had not helped
+to dispel their vision of West Haven seated on its bluff looking out
+across the bay. Its hilly streets and comfortable old houses mellowing
+each year into a softer, deeper gray came back to them now with a pang.
+Nancy yearned infinitely to be sitting at that moment before the
+driftwood fire in their sitting room while her father smoked an old
+black pipe and blinked at the crackling flames and her mother hummed
+softly to herself over her mending basket. Even Americus, her teasing
+brother, would have gladdened her eyes just then.
+
+Mary was thinking of her pretty mother standing at the door of the Tea
+Cup Inn in a trim gray chambray dress with its white muslin fichu.
+Elinor was too proud to admit even in the secret chambers of her mind
+the voice from home which kept calling to her across the spaces. As for
+Miss Helen Campbell she could not efface from her mind a dainty little
+vignette of herself seated at her own breakfast table; on her head was
+her favorite lace breakfast cap trimmed with knots of blue ribbon and
+separating her from her beloved Billie across the table was the steaming
+silver coffee urn. This enticing picture persisted in passing before her
+mental vision, perhaps because breakfast that morning had been
+unspeakable.
+
+Billie also was silent. She was trying to explain to herself why this
+wave of homesickness had come over them. Was it the flatness and
+monotony of highly cultivated farm lands which they ought to admire and
+be proud of seeing since this vast territory had once been the home of
+the buffalo and the prairie dog?
+
+“I know what’s the matter with us,” she cried suddenly, breaking the
+long silence which had fallen on the company.
+
+“There’s nothing in the world the matter with me, child,” interrupted
+Miss Campbell guiltily.
+
+“I’m sure there is, dearest cousin. You know you can’t hide anything
+from your most intimate relative. We are all of us in the dumps and have
+been for more than a day. We are desperately homesick! Aren’t we now, as
+man to man?”
+
+“Yes,” admitted the others in a gloomy chorus.
+
+“On this the third day of our voyage, while we are still in shallow
+water, as papa would say, there is not one of us who would not be glad
+to turn back again to the next railroad station, ship the Comet home by
+freight and take the first train to West Haven. Isn’t it the truth?”
+
+This frank declaration was greeted in silence.
+
+“Oh, it’s not quite as bad as that, dear,” said Miss Campbell at last.
+
+“But almost,” added Nancy.
+
+“Think of what we’ve got before us. Think of the splendid great
+West—think of the broad plains——”
+
+“Plains,” interrupted Elinor in a tone of weariness.
+
+“Yes, plains,” went on Billie, summoning all the eloquence she could
+command, “not like this, but marvelous great stretches of country filled
+with beautiful color; think of the ranches we wanted so much to see——”
+
+“And the cowboys,” suggested Nancy.
+
+“Yes, and the Indians, and the forests and—and the Rocky Mountains, and
+last of all, California!”
+
+Billie paused for breath.
+
+“Well, I’m thinking of them,” observed Miss Campbell.
+
+“And doesn’t the prospect please you, Cousin Helen?”
+
+Billie had slowed down the car and now turned to look at her cousin’s
+face.
+
+“Don’t you think it will be thrilling, exciting, wonderful to have the
+Comet take us across all of this interesting country?”
+
+The corners of Miss Campbell’s lips drooped and she gave a pathetic
+smile.
+
+“It would, dearest Billie, I am sure it would appear to me in all its
+true glory if I wasn’t so—so very hungry.”
+
+Hungry! Here was a solution of this great depression. They were all of
+them famished with hunger. Not a decent meal had they eaten for two
+days. It was hunger gnawing at their vitals that had plunged them into
+the very depths of homesickness.
+
+In the automobile was a complete outfit for cooking, a little alcohol
+stove and various dainty little utensils made of aluminum, all a rather
+costly present from their old friend, Mr. Ignatius Donahue, which he had
+sent, on being informed of the great journey of the Motor Maids across
+the continent.
+
+“Have a piece of chocolate and a graham cracker, Miss Campbell?” Mary
+was asking in a tone of sympathy.
+
+“Heavens, no, child,” replied the little lady as near to being cross as
+she had ever been in her life. “Don’t offer me such rubbish, as a
+substitute for good beefsteak and coffee that’s really coffee?”
+
+“Let’s set up housekeeping,” cried Billie, “and start in ten minutes by
+stopping at the next farm house for supplies!”
+
+“Why not?” echoed her disciple, Nancy. “We’ve got the alcohol stove with
+two burners and Elinor’s tea basket and some china besides.”
+
+“That’s a very sensible idea,” said Miss Campbell, her spirits rising at
+the suggestion. “I feel, if I could get something tasteful to eat, I
+might be able to support existence across the plains and the mountains
+and through the forests, but just at present, I—well, I assure you, I
+am quite empty.”
+
+“We have some things, remember,” put in Mary. “Mr. Donahue’s box had
+bacon in it and lots of jam and potted cheese——”
+
+“I think some fresh eggs would be acceptable,” observed Miss Campbell.
+
+Billie turned the Comet in at a patent gate which could be operated from
+the vehicle. Giving a rope which dangled from the horizontal pole a jerk
+the gate swung back on its groove. They rolled onto a macadamized
+driveway leading up to the farm buildings.
+
+“One farm’s as good as another,” announced Billie, as she gave the rope
+on the other side of the gate a vigorous pull. But something had got
+twisted and it refused to return to its natural position. Billie and
+Nancy jumped out and tried to push the gate, but their united efforts
+were unavailing. They swung on the rope together, when suddenly, snap,
+it broke and they both tumbled backward in a laughing heap. They were
+still giggling and brushing the dust from their clothes when a strange
+looking vehicle came into the avenue and stopped beside them. It seemed
+to be composed chiefly of a seat, two rubber tired wheels and a shaft
+with no place particularly to rest the feet. Hitched to this peculiar
+conveyance was a beautiful high-stepping thoroughbred horse, and on the
+rather precarious seat very near to the horse’s tail sat a sunburned
+young farmer dressed in a brown corduroy suit and leather leggings. He
+had a ruddy face, humorous blue eyes and close-cropped hair.
+
+“Anything I can do for you, ladies?” he asked, holding the prancing
+horse with a tight rein.
+
+“I—I’m afraid we have broken your gate,” answered Billie. “We are
+sorry, but you see we aren’t used to gates like this, and I think it
+went back too suddenly.”
+
+The young man smiled good naturedly.
+
+“It’s only slipped its trolley,” he said. “If one of you could hold
+Pocohontas for me, I’ll fix it in a second.”
+
+Billie stood at Pocohontas’ head, rather proud of the office, such a
+beautiful mare was this thoroughbred with her quivering nostrils and
+arched neck, while the farmer lifted the gate into its groove.
+
+“You are driving up to the house?” he asked politely.
+
+“Yes,” replied Miss Campbell. “We wondered if we could make a few
+purchases there?”
+
+“Of horses or cattle?”
+
+“Oh, dear me, no,” she answered, her pink cheeks deepening to a rosier
+hue. “Only food. Fresh eggs and cream and fresh butter, and perhaps a
+young chicken, if you have any tender ones, and fresh bread, too.”
+
+Her appetite was growing as she recounted her desires in the way of
+food.
+
+The young man smiled most delightfully.
+
+“We have all those things, I believe,” he replied, “for use at the
+house. Do you live near here?”
+
+“No, no. We live some thousand and more miles away from here. We are
+taking a motor trip across the continent, but since we left Chicago,
+we—we have suffered a little from hunger——”
+
+Miss Campbell’s voice was slightly tremulous.
+
+There was a pause, and then the four girls burst out laughing. The young
+farmer joined in heartily.
+
+“In fact, sir,” went on Miss Campbell, smiling sweetly on the young man,
+“we are _very_ hungry.”
+
+“That is really too bad,” he exclaimed, making an effort to compose his
+face. “These country hotels are dreadful, I know from experience. If you
+had only visited private houses, I am sure you would have been well fed.
+But, if you will just go up to the house, I will follow and we’ll see
+what can be done in the way of provisions.”
+
+It was evident that Pocohontas did not care for the Comet. She curvetted
+and circled around and stood on her hind legs in a most alarming manner.
+Suddenly, with a wild neigh, she made for the open field at one side of
+the road. Her driver, taken by surprise, was thrown backward. It was an
+easy fall on soft turf, and no harm would have been done if his foot had
+not got caught in a loop on the reins and, to their horror, they saw him
+dragged after the sulky, in danger of being killed at any moment.
+
+Giving the motor car a sharp turn, Billie put on all speed and followed
+the runaway. In another instant they had covered the width of the field,
+some distance above Pocohontas’ mad course. With a bound, Billie leaped
+to the ground, and as the mare came tearing up, the young girl jumped at
+her bridle, caught it with one hand, was dragged a few feet, then seized
+it with the other, and held on with all her might. Pocohontas was a
+small horse, and not difficult to curb, once her reins were in a good
+grip. She stopped, reared back, and then stood perfectly still,
+quivering all over in a state of palsied excitement.
+
+Miss Campbell had shrieked and covered her face with her hands to shut
+out the dreadful sight of Billie being trampled to death. But Billie had
+a cool head and a brave heart, and such excellent qualities make a
+wonderful combination. The other girls jumped out of the car and
+hastened to the farmer, while across the fields farm hands came running
+from every direction.
+
+The young man had only lost consciousness for a moment, and when his
+foot was disentangled from that diabolical loop, he was able to stagger
+to his feet.
+
+“Are you much hurt, Mr. Moore,” demanded two of the men supporting him
+on either side, while two others relieved Billie of the excitable
+Pocohontas.
+
+“Only a sprain,” he answered. “This brave young lady has saved my life.”
+
+“I’m afraid our motor car caused all the trouble,” exclaimed Billie. She
+never said “my motor car.” Her friends often noticed this. But she had
+been brought up by a very genuine and fine man, and was as modest and
+simple as her father himself.
+
+“You had better get into the car and let us take you home,” said Miss
+Campbell who had recovered from her fright.
+
+For the second time since they left Chicago, they now found themselves
+giving a lift to a strange young man. In another five minutes the Comet
+drew up at the front door of a big frame farmhouse painted white, with
+green shutters. Everything about it was exceedingly neat, although there
+was a certain emptiness in the prospect, perhaps because there were no
+flower beds in the yard and also no curtains at any of the windows which
+stared down at them like so many eyeless sockets. However, they were
+rather surprised when the front door was opened by a Japanese butler in
+a white linen suit. A second Japanese servant followed and they assisted
+their master out of the motor car.
+
+“Ladies,” said Mr. Moore, his face twitching with the pain of his
+sprained leg, “may I ask you into my home. It will be a great pleasure
+and honor, I am sure. My name is Daniel Moore. I am a lonely bachelor
+farmer, and I shall take it as a particular compliment if you will join
+me at lunch.”
+
+“But I am afraid you are in great pain, Mr. Moore,” protested Miss
+Campbell.
+
+“Not in the least, I assure you, madam. My leg is only a little twisted.
+I shall be walking on it in an hour. You just now confessed that you
+were hungry. So am I. Takamini, luncheon for six.”
+
+Miss Campbell, at the mention of lunch, stepped nimbly down from the car
+and followed him into the house with the girls.
+
+Would it not have been exceedingly foolish to have declined an
+invitation for a good square meal? And they hoped it would be good and
+square.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.—THE THREE WISHES.
+
+
+“It’s a queer thing,” declared Nancy, when Takamini had shown them into
+two neat bare-looking bedrooms upstairs, “it’s really a very strange
+thing indeed.”
+
+“What?” demanded her friends.
+
+“That our wish has come true, just as if we had rubbed Aladdin’s lamp.
+We wished for a dinner and we got it.”
+
+“We haven’t got it yet,” said Elinor sceptically.
+
+But Nancy was a very superstitious young person, who put infinite faith
+in the Rule of Three.
+
+“We shall have it in an hour. That’s what Takamini told us just now. And
+if two wishes come true, three will, so I’m going to make another.”
+
+“But what is the second wish, Nancy-Bell?” they asked.
+
+“Didn’t we all of us wish not to be homesick?”
+
+“We didn’t say so.”
+
+“Well, anyway, we thought so. And thinking is the same as speaking. That
+wish has come true because the homesickness has all gone, hasn’t it?”
+
+They were obliged to admit that it had. The adventure had dispelled
+their doleful vapors.
+
+“We should all unite on the third wish, then,” said Mary, “seeing that
+the other wishes were common to everybody.”
+
+“What shall it be, then?” demanded Nancy. “Quick, before the luck gets
+by.”
+
+“Foolish child,” said Miss Campbell, “I believe that little head of
+yours is cramful of nonsense.”
+
+“You are a doubter, Miss Campbell,” objected Nancy. “We shall have to
+banish you from the magic circle if you feel that way. You cast a dark
+shadow over the spell.”
+
+“Oh, no, dear, don’t make me an outsider, I beg of you. I promise not to
+scoff.”
+
+The truth is, Miss Campbell was slightly superstitious herself.
+
+“But what is to be the wish?” they asked.
+
+“Something we all of us want.”
+
+It is difficult to make one wish common to five separate and distinct
+individualities.
+
+“I might wish to get my fifty dollars back,” observed Miss Campbell,
+“only I don’t look for miracles.”
+
+“We might wish for a safe journey to San Francisco,” laughed Billie;
+“but that would cover too much ground for one wish.”
+
+“Suppose we wish to see Peter Van Vechten again soon,” suggested Nancy.
+
+Not one of the five ladies who would not have been pleased, secretly of
+course, to meet once more that strange adventurer of the skies, in spite
+of the grave suspicion which rested upon him.
+
+“You might ask him for your purse, Cousin Helen,” suggested Billie.
+
+“I shall always believe there was some mistake,” answered her cousin.
+
+“Anyhow, let’s take the chances and wish for another meeting,” said
+Elinor, “then Miss Campbell can say, ‘Mr. Van Vechten, kindly restore my
+property.’ Only she won’t, because she hates to hurt other people’s
+feelings.”
+
+“Very well, then, all at once,” cried Nancy, forcing them into a close
+circle. “Now join hands and close your eyes and make the silent wish.
+Concentrate two minutes.”
+
+“Nancy, dear, I think you have been studying dream books,” exclaimed
+Miss Campbell, amused at this ridiculous mummery.
+
+Nevertheless, at precisely two minutes to one o’clock by the timepiece
+on the mantel, five pairs of hands joined together and five identical
+and simultaneous wishes went forth into space. Five little thought
+messengers linked together by a single wish, went out together into the
+vast universe. Then they separated and each took a different direction
+in search of that mysterious birdman, whose eyes at least were clear and
+brown and honest. And the first little winged thought who found Peter
+Van Vechten was to summon his aerial brothers from the ether. Promptly
+they would join hands and dancing in a circle about his head, as each
+passed an ear would whisper the message.
+
+When the clock struck one the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell unlocked
+hands, and smiling quite gravely, considering it was all a joke,
+proceeded with their toilet for the luncheon of glorious anticipation.
+
+That Mr. Daniel Moore’s establishment was guiltless of any woman’s touch
+was plainly evident. There was not a sign of femininity about it. It was
+as bare as a barracks and as plain as an old shoe. But the beds were
+soft and comfortable, as Miss Campbell could testify, for she took a nap
+on one of them in the interval which must be spent before lunch was
+announced.
+
+After the girls had fluffed up their front hair or smoothed it out
+according to custom, and had brushed every fleck of dust from their neat
+traveling skirts, and washed the stains of the journey from their fresh
+young faces, they began to look about the rooms, to peer from the
+windows and peep into the hall, while they talked in whispers.
+
+On a shelf in one of the rooms were some books, the one human touch they
+noticed. Mary, always a bookworm, began dipping her inquisitive little
+nose into these immediately. She had opened a volume of Kipling’s poems
+and was reading aloud in a sing-song voice:
+
+  “On the road to Mandalay,
+  Where the flying fishes play——”
+
+when something fell from between the pages into her lap. It was a
+souvenir postcard, which had, apparently, been serving as a book-mark.
+Without meaning to pry, Mary picked it up and turned it over to look at
+the picture on the other side, which proved to be a photograph of a
+lovely girl holding a Boston bull terrier on a leash. She was tall and
+slender, and seemed to sway toward them from the picture like a young
+tree in the wind. It had evidently been quite breezy when the picture
+was taken, for one hand grasped her broad-brimmed felt hat, while the
+other held the dog leash. She was smiling, too, and there was a gay
+light in her eyes which seemed to challenge the whole world to make her
+sad.
+
+Mary had not meant to read the message written across the picture, but
+is it ever possible to examine a picture on a postcard without taking in
+the words at the bottom? Besides, it was a harmless message:
+
+  “A snapshot smile from Evelyn.
+
+  Salt Lake City, Utah.”
+
+Now, Salt Lake City was a place of intense interest to the Motor Maids.
+They regarded it as a traveler in the Orient might look upon one of
+those mysterious Eastern cities where women went veiled and faces peeped
+at one from behind obscure gratings.
+
+“Do you suppose this pretty girl is a Mormon?” exclaimed Mary,
+exhibiting the photograph.
+
+“She is much too pretty to be a Mormon,” said Nancy decisively.
+
+“Can’t Mormons be handsome?” asked Billie, looking at the postcard over
+Nancy’s shoulder.
+
+“They are just like other people, goosie,” put in Elinor, nevertheless
+looking at the picture with extreme interest.
+
+“I always imagined the men were tall and thin with lantern jaws and long
+white beards, and the women were small and plain with straight hair
+twisted into scraggy little knots behind.”
+
+They were still laughing over Nancy’s vague idea of the citizens of Salt
+Lake City when the Japanese servant gave them a start by appearing at
+the door as noiselessly as one who walked on air.
+
+“Luncheon is served,” he announced rapidly in a funny high voice.
+
+It was almost impossible to conceal from him their eagerness to be at
+table. Nancy secretly hoped there would be fried chicken, but she didn’t
+care really if only there were no canned vegetables in bird-seed dishes.
+They all wondered if their host would be able to appear despite his
+maimed leg.
+
+But he was there to meet them, waiting in the living room of the
+farmhouse, which was fitted up quite comfortably with big easy chairs,
+an immense writing table, and many books on shelves lining the walls.
+Mr. Moore’s wholesome, manly face showed not a trace of the pain he had
+endured an hour ago, and when he led the way to the dining room, it was
+with only a slight limp.
+
+“But I thought you had a bad sprain, Mr. Moore,” said Miss Campbell,
+“and here I find you walking as well as any of us.”
+
+“It’s all gone,” he answered. “I—” he hesitated a moment. “I——”
+
+But the fragrance of the viands about to be set before them drove all
+other thoughts from their minds.
+
+It was all a curious adventure, indeed. Here was an entire stranger
+dispensing hospitality to them most graciously, and here were they, even
+that fastidious and dainty little lady, eating with appetites of
+starving people.
+
+There was no fried chicken, but there were beefsteak and mushrooms and
+new potatoes and asparagus, a very fine expensive salad made of
+grapefruit, and as a last perfect touch, strawberries and cream.
+
+The motor party had planned to leave Mr. Moore’s place half an hour
+after lunch and start on their travels again, but while they feasted
+black clouds had been piling themselves into a formidable storm and now
+came flashes of lightning and the rumble of thunder. The house grew so
+dark that Takamini lit some candles and placed them on the table.
+
+Then came the rain, pouring in torrents.
+
+Miss Campbell looked uncomfortable.
+
+“I am afraid, Mr. Moore, you have undertaken more than you expected,”
+she said.
+
+But Mr. Moore was quite equal to this call upon his hospitality. “I hope
+it will be one of our three-day storms,” he said smiling cordially. “The
+roads would be far too muddy for motoring then, and I should have the
+pleasure of entertaining you longer.”
+
+“Oh, we couldn’t let you do that, Mr. Moore. You are too kind. We must
+go to the next town and stop at the hotel.”
+
+“I assure you, Miss Campbell, you are like messengers from heaven. You
+came in the nick of time to keep me from being plunged into such a state
+of gloom I might never have come out of it.”
+
+“But you don’t look gloomy,” protested Nancy.
+
+“I know,” he replied. “People of my complexion never get the credit for
+being melancholy. But occasionally, you know, we are subject to spasms
+due chiefly to loneliness, I think.”
+
+They had drifted back into the sitting room now and the rain was beating
+on the windows in torrents. It was chilly, and they were glad to see
+Takamini light a wood fire in the open brick fire-place. Miss Campbell,
+seated in a big leather chair in the chimney corner, dozed off in the
+warmth of the firelight, her head drooping to one side like a tired
+little bird’s.
+
+The four girls gathered around the table, while Mr. Moore taking a large
+atlas from a shelf, opened at the map of the United States and spread it
+on the table.
+
+“Now,” he said, “tell me about the trip. Are you the captain of the
+expedition, Miss Billie?”
+
+“Yes,” replied the others in unison.
+
+“Cousin Helen is the general,” said Billie, “and we are just her staff.
+I am chief guide because I know how to run the motor, but everybody has
+a place. We could never give these parties if one of us dropped out.”
+
+“Well, it’s a jolly party,” said their host. “You are five very brave
+ladies, I think. I only know one other as brave.”
+
+“Does she live in Salt Lake City?” asked Nancy innocently.
+
+The other girls looked annoyed and Nancy herself was sorry after she had
+made this impulsive speech. But Daniel Moore was not at all annoyed. He
+was only a little surprised.
+
+“Why, yes,” he answered, “you guessed right the very first time. How did
+it happen?”
+
+“Well,” began Nancy and paused, greatly embarrassed, “I just guessed,”
+which was a perfectly true statement.
+
+“You are a very good guesser, then, Miss Nancy. Perhaps you would like
+to see a picture of the young lady who is as brave as you are.”
+
+“Do show it to us,” they exclaimed with enthusiasm.
+
+Mr. Moore opened a table drawer and produced a large photograph of the
+same beautiful girl whose face they had seen hardly an hour before
+smiling at them from the postcard.
+
+“How pretty she is!” ejaculated Nancy.
+
+“Isn’t she?” he answered quite frankly.
+
+“And is she a Mormon?” demanded Mary.
+
+“She isn’t; but her father is,” he answered, a frown wrinkling his brow.
+“Her father is the most confounded old Mormon that ever grew up in the
+faith. He thinks that all non-Mormons are just kittle-kattle.”
+
+“And is that the reason—” began Nancy, while her friends trembled for
+fear of what the inquisitive child would ask next.
+
+“The reason I was so blue?” he asked gently. “It certainly was. You
+guessed right again. If you had six guesses, I believe you would get six
+secrets from me, Miss Nancy,” he laughed.
+
+“Then you are not a Mormon?” asked Billie.
+
+“Most assuredly not. I was born in Kentucky, educated at Harvard and
+settled on this farm my uncle left me three years ago. But before that I
+spent some time in Salt Lake City.”
+
+“What a shame!” exclaimed Mary.
+
+“What’s a shame?” he asked.
+
+Mary blushed and stammered.
+
+“That you—that she—I mean, that the father——”
+
+“It is a shame,” he interrupted, evidently enjoying his confession to
+the four earnest young girls immensely. “And the worst of it is that I
+can’t even write to her and as for seeing her, I might as well try and
+see the Empress of China. I can’t get a letter to her because all her
+mail is opened by that old dragon of a father.”
+
+“And can’t Evelyn write to you?” asked Nancy, her eyes as big as
+saucers.
+
+Daniel Moore began laughing joyfully.
+
+“I’ve caught you,” he cried, his handsome face lit up with merriment.
+Nancy could have bit her tongue for having thoughtlessly mentioned the
+girl’s name. The other girls could not help joining in the laughter.
+Miss Campbell waked up a moment, smiled sleepily at the group and closed
+her eyes again. The thunder of the rain on the roof and the whistle of
+the wind as it blew around the corner of the house muffled their voices
+into far-away sounds.
+
+“Confess, now, Miss Nancy. You know this young lady.”
+
+“Only by sight.”
+
+He looked at her puzzled.
+
+“You’ve met her somewhere perhaps?”
+
+“Only her snapshot smile.”
+
+“Oh, ho!” he cried. “You’ve been reading Kipling.”
+
+Nancy bowed her head.
+
+“We couldn’t help reading the message at the same time we saw the
+postcard. We know it was impolite.”
+
+“I only wish it had been more of a message,” said Daniel Moore. “It was
+the last one I have ever had from her.”
+
+“Why don’t you go and find her?” suggested gallant Billie.
+
+“I have been,” he answered. “I’ve almost camped out in front of her
+house. I’ve done about everything I could do without breaking down the
+door and abducting her. If I could only get one more message to her,
+somehow——”
+
+“Why couldn’t we take it?” asked Billie. “We’re going to Salt Lake
+City.”
+
+Daniel Moore rested his chin on his hand and sat thinking.
+
+“Why, you could,” he said at last. “You could do that thing for me and I
+would be everlastingly in your debt. It could be done in this way
+without any risk for any one concerned. You could write her a note as if
+you were an old school friend and ask her to meet you.”
+
+“But she wouldn’t know who I was,” protested Billie.
+
+“No; I’m thinking of that, too. But she would recognise this line: ‘Have
+you forgotten that jolly day at Fontainebleau?’”
+
+“Oh,” said Billie.
+
+“Then you could give her the note from me and that would be all you had
+to do.”
+
+At this moment the master of the house was called away by one of the
+servants, and the girls began discussing in low voices the romantic
+errand which was to cast a glamour of even greater interest around Salt
+Lake City. As they leaned over the maps chatting together there was a
+blinding flash of lightning and a terrific clap of thunder. Miss
+Campbell, frightened from her nap, hurried to them. They waited a moment
+in silence. Presently far down the avenue they heard the whirr of a
+motor car. There was something ominous and terrifying in the sound.
+Another moment, it had stopped in front of the house. The hall door was
+flung open; there was the noise of hurrying footsteps; then the
+living-room door was opened and in the dim light there stood before
+them, just for the fraction of a second, Peter Van Vechten. There was a
+wild look in his eyes which searched their faces without recognition.
+The door closed as suddenly as it had opened, and he was gone.
+
+“The third wish came true,” whispered Nancy as they pressed together in
+frightened wonder.
+
+Presently there was a noise of footsteps and low voices in the hall. All
+the household must have been gathered there speaking in muffled tones.
+Tramp, tramp, tramp down the hall went the footsteps. A door closed
+somewhere and all was as still as death. Then came the sound of the
+motor again, gradually dying out as it flew down the avenue.
+
+Had anything happened, they wondered. They were frightened and uneasy.
+The house seemed to be filled with a mysterious silence.
+
+Their host did not come back to them that afternoon, but retiring to
+their rooms they put on their prettiest frocks to do honor to his
+dinner, where he joined them at seven o’clock, looking a little pale and
+worried, they thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.—AN INCIDENT OF THE ROAD.
+
+
+“Sevenoaks” was the name of Mr. Moore’s great farm, which covered acres
+and acres of fertile plain; called so because of seven great oak trees
+which shaded the circular drive girdling the front lawn. They were fine
+old trees, and much care had been taken to preserve them in order to
+preserve the significance of the name.
+
+“If I were Evelyn,” Nancy was thinking, as she stood next morning on the
+piazza scanning the storm-washed landscape now fast drying under the
+heat of the sun, “I should think it would be rather nice to be mistress
+of this beautiful place.”
+
+But Evelyn’s name had not been mentioned again, and the name of the
+aviator also had never been introduced. The girls had waited, hoping
+there might be some explanation, but there was none, and they did not
+care to be accused of another act of curiosity.
+
+What he could have been doing in that house, where he came from out of
+the storm and whither he went, they could not even guess. It was like a
+dream, a sudden vision flashed before them in the lightning and then
+gone.
+
+They had been driven over the farm that morning by the master himself;
+had seen, with the other fine horses, Pocohontas pawing the ground with
+her small forefoot, while a groom rubbed her smooth, satin coat with a
+piece of chamois. And now the Comet stood under the center tree of the
+seven oaks, waiting to carry them on their journey.
+
+One Japanese servant was strapping on the suit cases in the back while
+the other was storing a hamper of lunch and a box of provisions in the
+motor.
+
+While Billie was waiting for the others to settle themselves in the
+motor, Daniel Moore handed her a letter.
+
+“The name and address are on it,” he said; “but promise me one thing:
+Don’t deliver it if you feel any fear or hesitation. All I can say is,
+that if you do, you will probably be making two people happy forever,
+because I can’t seem to get at her in any other way, and I have a
+conviction they have made her believe I have given her up. If you should
+ever need me,” he added, “telegraph me to this address.”
+
+Then, with a last hand-shake and nods and smiles of farewell and waving
+of handkerchiefs, the red motor car shot down the avenue and they were
+off.
+
+The handsome, kindly face of the owner of Sevenoaks with his genial
+blue-gray eyes and his pleasant smile seemed to float after them like a
+good genie along the way.
+
+They lunched on the roadside that day under a big mulberry tree. A
+spring rippled near-by on purpose for Elinor’s tea and they sat on
+cushions on the ground, picnic fashion. It was great fun, and there was
+much to talk about. Billie drew out the letter and showed it to the
+girls. “Miss Evelyn Stone, No. 6 —— Street, Salt Lake City, Utah.”
+
+Before delivering the letter the girls realized that they must obtain
+Miss Campbell’s consent, and they had been putting their heads together
+to devise a scheme by which their sprightly little chaperone should be
+won over to the cause of the lovers.
+
+“Cousin Helen,” began Billie, “did you notice anything peculiar about
+Mr. Moore?”
+
+“Peculiar? No. I thought he was one of the most normal, well set-up,
+well-bred young men I had ever met.”
+
+“So did we,” echoed the girls. “We liked him so much.”
+
+“But didn’t you notice how sad he was, cousin.”
+
+“On the contrary, I thought he seemed very gay.”
+
+“He told us he was sad, at any rate. His heart is almost breaking.”
+
+“Tut, tut!” said Miss Campbell, “he has much too good a circulation for
+such nonsense.”
+
+“But he’s in love, Miss Campbell,” cried Elinor.
+
+“Deeply, hopelessly in love,” added Mary.
+
+“With a beautiful girl,” went on Billie.
+
+“Who has a cruel father——”
+
+“Who is a Mormon——”
+
+“And won’t let her marry any one but Mormons——”
+
+“Mormons,” cried Miss Campbell. “She can have only one at a time,
+child——”
+
+“And Mr. Moore is not a Mormon. He’s a Kentuckian,” finished Nancy.
+
+“Dear, dear,” ejaculated Miss Campbell. “So that’s the way the ground
+lies, is it? Poor fellow! Poor unhappy soul. I’m sure I feel very sorry
+for him indeed!”
+
+“He is unhappy, dearest cousin, and he can’t reach her without breaking
+down the door,” went on Billie. “Her father reads all her mail and Mr.
+Moore simply can’t get at her.”
+
+“Has the girl no mother to take her side? I don’t wish to preach
+disobedience, but why doesn’t she run away? She might look the wide
+world over and never find a nicer husband than that fine young man.”
+
+“That’s what he can’t understand,” said Billie. “His letters have all
+been returned and he thinks they have told her something about him.”
+
+“He says if he could only get one more message to her——”
+
+“Just a line——”
+
+“Just a word——”
+
+“And we——”
+
+“And we’ve got the word,” finished Billie in great excitement,
+flourishing the letter. “We are not to deliver it if we feel that it
+would be dangerous, but if we can manage to slip it to her it will make
+two people very happy.”
+
+“But how can it be done? It sounds like a very risky adventure to me.”
+
+The girls exchanged sly glances while Billie related the plan. Many a
+time had they won Miss Campbell over to their schemes by touching her
+romantic heart.
+
+“It’s quite simple, you see, Cousin Helen. The mention of Fontainebleau
+will explain everything to Evelyn. You see, they met in Paris, and spent
+one beautiful day together at Fontainebleau.”
+
+There was a long pause while Miss Campbell considered the situation.
+
+“I don’t think any harm would be done,” she said at last. “He has been
+very kind to us, and if we could help him along a little, bring two
+loving souls together——”
+
+She paused and looked into the eager, interested faces of the four young
+girls. Could she refuse to help two lovers?
+
+“I’ve always heard those Mormons were a very revengeful race of people;
+but we’ll take the risk, dear children. I don’t see that there will be
+much danger in it for us. Billie can write a perfectly non-committal
+note saying that she is in Salt Lake City for a few days, and would like
+to see Miss Evelyn, and it would do no harm, I’m sure, to add, ‘Have you
+forgotten the beautiful time at Fontainebleau?’”
+
+“Yes, yes; that is exactly the thing to say,” cried the others, and they
+began to count the days and weeks before they could reach Salt Lake City
+beyond the great wall of the Rocky Mountains.
+
+They were still chatting in close conversation when a voice behind them
+startled them. A deep, sonorous voice that had an ominous ring like
+distant thunder, and yet the words spoken were commonplace enough:
+
+“Ladies, do you wish to buy any shoestrings, jewelry, handkerchiefs,
+pins and combs?”
+
+They looked up quickly.
+
+A peddler had approached and was now about to open his pack. From his
+coarse dark skin and black hair, long enough to show underneath his
+slouch hat, they judged he was at least half-Indian, and he stood over
+them, a silent, statuesque figure, his narrow eyes becoming slits of
+blackness as he regarded them.
+
+“I am very sorry,” said Miss Campbell politely,
+
+“I’m afraid we don’t need any of those things. We are already well
+provided.”
+
+This courteous lady was always apologetic when she couldn’t accommodate
+persons of a wandering character.
+
+“Maybe the lady would like something better than shoestrings,” continued
+the man, slipping his pack to the ground and opening a lower secret
+compartment from which he drew a long, narrow box.
+
+Spreading a square of dark green cotton material on the ground, the
+halfbreed emptied out a double handful of beautiful opals.
+
+“These opals I found in Mexico,” he said, letting the stones drip
+through his fingers like glorified drops of milk. “They are very perfect
+ones. This one would make you a beautiful ring, madam. And this young
+lady would look well in a necklace of opals. I will sell them to you for
+half their value.”
+
+The girls looked at the stones with grave interest, but nobody wanted an
+unset opal, and at the beginning of this long journey they had no
+intention of buying jewels.
+
+“I am exceedingly sorry, my good man,” said Miss Campbell, “but we do
+not wish to buy anything, especially opals, because they are unlucky
+stones.”
+
+“Only for those, lady, who are not born in October. Now, I should say
+that this young lady was born in that month,” he added, pointing to
+Billie.
+
+“I was,” said Billie, somewhat startled, “but how could you tell?”
+
+“Lady, those who sleep under the stars are sometimes gifted in that way.
+Since you were born in October, you should have an opal.
+
+  “‘October’s child will not be blest
+  Who wears no opal on her breast.’”
+
+“But I have one,” protested Billie, “only I left it at home.”
+
+“Then you will not buy one of these stones!” exclaimed the halfbreed
+darkly.
+
+“No,” replied Miss Campbell, gently but firmly, “we wish nothing
+whatever. I think we must be going now, girls,” she added, rising.
+
+The man began to put away his wares sulkily while the girls gathered
+their belongings together and started for the automobile.
+
+When he had fastened the pack to his back he walked over to the Comet in
+which they were already seated, while Billie cranked up the machine.
+
+“Yesterday afternoon, in front of the place called Sevenoaks, a man in
+an automobile was struck by lightning and killed,” he said. “Only a
+little while before his master had refused to buy from me. And I cursed
+them for their meanness. I was poor and they had money, but they refused
+to buy. And now I curse you. I curse you and your country and your
+parents and your grandparents. I curse the machine which carries you.
+May your way be hard and full of dangers. May the lightning play about
+you and the thunder smite you. May you be lost in the mountains and
+starve in the desert and sleep without a roof over your heads. Curses be
+upon you and yours.”
+
+Having delivered himself of his burden of hatred, he strode down the
+road, a very figure of vengeance and enmity.
+
+“Great heavens! the dreadful creature,” exclaimed Miss Campbell,
+cowering in her seat fearfully.
+
+“Don’t notice him, Cousin Helen,” said Billie over her shoulder. She had
+started the car and they were speeding along at a rapid rate. “He is
+insane, of course, and I’m glad we got rid of him so easily.”
+
+“Dear, dear, I hope we won’t meet any more persons like that. He seems
+to be just a vessel of bitterness, as poor dear grandmamma used to say.”
+
+They rode along silently for some time in the bright sunshine without
+speaking. At last Elinor and Billie burst out simultaneously, as if they
+had both been pursuing the identical train of thought and at the same
+moment had reached an exciting conclusion.
+
+“The man struck by lightning,” they cried.
+
+“Must have been Peter Van Vechten’s chauffeur,” went on Elinor.
+
+“And that was why Peter Van Vechten rushed into the house yesterday in
+the storm,” pursued Billie.
+
+“Then the poor chauffeur must have been in the house with us all night,”
+said Mary, shuddering.
+
+“And that was why Mr. Moore was gone so long, and then wouldn’t tell us
+what was the matter. He was afraid it would frighten us,” added Elinor.
+
+“It’s very strange, but I believe you are right,” observed Miss
+Campbell, shivering at the thought that there had been death and
+destruction about her while she slept all unconscious in the big leather
+chair by the fire.
+
+That night they crossed the border line and slept in comfortable beds in
+a fine hotel in Omaha, Nebraska.
+
+“Billie,” said Nancy, with the covers drawn well about her head, so as
+to shut out the memory of that revengeful individual who had cursed them
+in such round terms, “Billie.”
+
+“Yes,” replied her friend sleepily.
+
+“Did that peddler’s face remind you of anyone?”
+
+“I can’t say it did,” she answered, almost slipping off into the region
+of dreams.
+
+“Not Miss Hawkes, who was so fond of dates?” asked Nancy.
+
+“There was a faint likeness,” answered Billie, making an effort to pull
+herself out of the deep pit into which she was fast sinking, and falling
+back again helplessly, like a prisoner shackled with too many chains to
+escape.
+
+“Do you suppose she could have had Indian blood?” asked Nancy.
+
+But there was no reply. Billie was sleeping deeply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.—UNDER THE STARS.
+
+
+All day long the Comet had been plodding faithfully, and although he did
+not know it, and his five mistresses did not know it, it was really
+uphill work. Very gradual uphill work, only at the rate of ten feet a
+mile as they went westward, but the Comet was tired.
+
+For the last fifteen miles Billie had noticed a complaining, whining
+little sound in his interior mechanism, but she urged him on with the
+mercilessness of one who drives machines, for they must reach a certain
+small village that night, which the map purported to be still ten miles
+distant.
+
+About them, as far as the human eye could see, and many, many miles
+farther still where the human eye could not reach, rolled an infinite
+stretch of prairie. Like a misty, blue sea it spread before them. Here
+and there were groups of cattle grazing, and far back along the road
+they could see a black speck which they took to be a human being.
+
+The five travelers were no longer homesick, and they were not tired. The
+peace of the plains had entered into their souls, and when the Comet
+suddenly gave an exhausted croak and stopped short, they exchanged
+good-natured smiles as if it were the commonest thing in the world for
+five lonely ladies from the East to be stranded on a Western plateau.
+
+“There’s a screw loose somewhere,” said Billie calmly, jumping out and
+looking critically at the outer workings of the car. “Ladies, I must ask
+you to descend while I take a look at the Comet’s organs. His heart
+beats are not regular and his liver seems to be very torpid. The truth
+is, I think his condition is run down.”
+
+“I should think it would be,” observed Miss Campbell, stepping nimbly to
+the ground. “Since eight this morning he’s been running it down.”
+
+[Illustration: “There’s a screw loose somewhere,” said Billie.]
+
+Billie, and Mary, who had been her pupil on the trip and was fast
+learning all that Billie could teach her, donned their “puncture coats,”
+as they called them. These were two long, brown linen dusters, the
+sleeves of which were secured at the wrists with rubber. They buttoned
+up from top to toe, and every vestige of dress underneath was protected.
+
+Billie now became chief mechanician and Mary was her assistant. Together
+they opened up the front of the car and spreading a linen cover on the
+ground, Billie crawled under and fell to work.
+
+You may think that Billie was unusually wise in her generation, but she
+had had a long training as a chauffeur and could pass muster with the
+best of them. However, she was not wise enough that evening to diagnose
+the Comet’s trouble. The two girls poked their inquisitive noses into
+every part of the machinery. They screwed and unscrewed and performed
+miracles of investigation in the Comet’s interior, but he persisted in
+the stand he had taken of suddenly becoming an invalid.
+
+“I believe it’s the steering gear,” said Mary.
+
+“No, child, listen to your grandmother talk. It’s this screw here that’s
+worn out.”
+
+While they tinkered and worked, evening set in. There was a chill in the
+air, as there is always on these western plateaus after sunset. First
+one pale star and then another glimmered in the depths of the sky. And
+all the while the black speck on the road was drawing nearer.
+
+At last the peace of the plains which had entered their souls became
+somewhat disturbed.
+
+“This won’t do,” suddenly exclaimed Miss Campbell, breaking the long
+silence that had settled upon them. “This will never do in the world.
+Billie, child, can’t you fix that thing? It’s getting dark. We mustn’t
+be left in this lonely place all night. Hurry up, children. Do screw up
+something or other and let us be getting on.”
+
+“I only wish we could,” exclaimed Billie ruefully. “I thought there was
+nothing about this machine I did not know, but I can’t find the
+trouble.”
+
+“Besides,” pursued Mary, defending her captain, “it’s so dark we can’t
+see what we are doing.”
+
+“What’s to be done?” cried Miss Campbell, spreading out her hands with a
+gesture of helplessness.
+
+The girls looked at each other. What was to be done? In their infinite
+respect for Billie’s powers as a chauffeur, they had never conceived of
+a danger like this.
+
+“We could make a tent for Cousin Helen of one of the rugs and use
+cushions for a mattress, and the rest of us could roll up in our steamer
+blankets and sleep on the ground,” suggested Billie with a certain
+thrill of anticipation in her voice. Deep in her secret soul she could
+not help enjoying this little adventure.
+
+“Then, in the morning,” pursued Nancy, who was likewise a silent partner
+in this guilty pleasure, “we can go to the nearest farmhouse or ranch
+and ask for help.”
+
+“But—” objected Miss Campbell and Elinor in one voice, and then paused
+for want of a better suggestion.
+
+In the ocean of shadows, somewhere an immense distance away, one little
+light twinkled and blinked at them tantalizingly.
+
+“Nancy and I might go over and ask for help where that light is,” began
+Billie.
+
+“Never! never!” cried her cousin. “Oh! my child, what are you thinking
+of? Could you imagine for a moment I would let you and Nancy go
+wandering off into the wilderness? Better die together than apart.”
+
+“But we won’t die at all, dearest cousin,” Billie assured her. “We’ll
+all live to tell what a wonderful night we spent together under the
+stars.”
+
+“I think we’d better build a fire and get supper,” put in Mary.
+
+This was an agreeable suggestion and settled the discussion without more
+words. In this high, dry climate appetites were too big to mention in
+polite society, and each one yearned for the comfort of her evening
+meal.
+
+In another twenty minutes Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids had gone
+into camp. At the side of the road was a group of scraggy pine trees,
+and under these they pitched the blanket tent. While Billie and Nancy,
+armed with a hatchet, went in search of firewood, the other girls
+unpacked the alcohol stove and the tea basket and Mr. Moore’s box of
+provisions. In a little while the two foragers returned with their arms
+loaded with firewood. Their cheeks were glowing with exercise and there
+was a sparkling freshness in their happy laughter.
+
+“We’ve turned wood choppers,” cried Nancy. “We found a dead pine tree,
+and lo and behold, we’ve converted it into logs.”
+
+Together they built a fire on a most scientific plan and presently the
+fragrance of broiled ham filled them with pleasurable but subdued
+anticipation.
+
+“Scramble the eggs now, Mary,” ordered Elinor as she brewed the tea.
+
+“I think my girls are very capable,” observed Miss Campbell, watching
+the proceedings with much pride from her cushion seat near the fire. “If
+we live through this night we shall have much to tell about.”
+
+“Just imagine you’re a gypsy, Cousin Helen,” called Billie, as she
+spread a lunch cloth on the ground. “And nothing ever happens to
+gypsies, although they live this way all the time.”
+
+Nancy set the table with the jam pot in the middle for decoration, and
+presently they sat down like a company of hungry boys eager to be
+helped.
+
+“Oh, how good things taste,” exclaimed Elinor. “I’m not a bit afraid out
+here in the dark. My only sensations are hunger and sleep.”
+
+“Wasn’t it lucky we brought our steamer rugs?” cried Nancy.
+
+“Wasn’t it lucky we came?” said Mary, going her one better.
+
+“Aren’t we glad we’re living?” added Billie.
+
+Miss Campbell tried to pinch herself awake. Was it possible that she,
+Helen Eustace Campbell, spinster, accustomed to every luxury in life,
+was about to lie down on the ground and sleep in a far Western, lonely,
+unprotected spot? She thought it was highly possible, and her heavy
+eyelids and unconquerable drowsiness urged her to hasten the business of
+getting ready for the night.
+
+The four girls put on their polo coats and after building a big fire
+they rolled themselves into their steamer rugs and presently were
+sleeping as deeply and soundly as they had ever slept in their lives.
+
+And now the moon rose and shed its radiance on them. The fire died down
+and the night grew deeper and stiller. A chill crept into the air and
+they snuggled closer under their blankets and slept and slept and
+dreamed.
+
+Billie dreamed that the black speck she had seen on the road in the
+distance evolved itself into a man. He was riding a pony. She was sure
+of it, because in her dream she heard the sound of horse’s hoofs as they
+came nearer. Then the sounds stopped and all was silent again, a long,
+long silence. She remembered sitting up to see if the horseman had
+passed, but the invisible chains of sleep bound her closely and back she
+sank into slumber. But always in her dream she felt that some one was
+near. Had a light been flashed across their faces or was it the rays of
+the moon which hung in the center of the heavens like a great lantern,
+illuminating the landscape for miles around?
+
+At last, after slipping into the immeasurable distances of time and
+space, which only a dream can compass, there came the sound of a motor.
+For a moment it was quite near, and then gradually it died away and the
+night was all serene again.
+
+As the dawn crept up, Miss Campbell waked. But she waited, not wishing
+to disturb her sleeping companions. She lay with her back to the road,
+her face turned toward the limitless prairies which were now suffused
+with a rosy light. Then, trailing clouds of glory after him, the sun
+burst into view over the edge of the world. Never before had Miss
+Campbell seen a sunrise.
+
+“Girls, girls!” she cried, “you must wake up and see this marvellous
+sight.”
+
+They jumped up and stood in a silent, wondering row as the plains were
+flooded with light.
+
+Suddenly Billie turned her face toward the road.
+
+Throwing her hands over her head with a gesture of despair, she began to
+weep bitterly.
+
+“Oh! oh!” she cried, “the Comet, my beloved Comet! He has been stolen!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.—BARNEY M’GEE.
+
+
+It was almost as much of a shock to Miss Campbell and the others to see
+Billie so unstrung as to find the Comet stolen.
+
+The young girl’s feeling for her car was of a very real character, and
+if the Comet had been a favorite animal or a human being even, she could
+not have been more distressed.
+
+“Billie, my darling, you must not give way so,” cried her cousin,
+putting her arms gently around Billie’s neck. “We shall find the Comet,
+I’m sure.”
+
+“I never dreamed anyone would take him,” sobbed Billie. “I thought he
+would be quite safe in this lonely place. It was stupid of me to have
+left him unprotected like that all night long.”
+
+Her friends, who had been subdued and silent in the presence of her
+grief could hardly refrain from smiling at the notion of Billie’s
+sitting up all night to protect the automobile from kidnappers. Billie,
+her normal, cheerful self, was the most sensible person in the world;
+but Billie, the prey of tears and doubts, was just as unreasonable as
+any other weeping, unhappy girl.
+
+While she had her cry out on Miss Helen’s shoulder with her devoted
+Nancy hanging over her, Mary and Elinor began to look about them.
+
+“The robber must have been a chauffeur, Elinor,” said Mary, “and a very
+good one, too, because he not only knew how to run the Comet but to
+repair it.”
+
+“What are we going to do?” asked Elinor irrelevantly.
+
+The two girls stood thinking. The robber had not taken their suitcases
+which they had been obliged to unstrap and open the night before; nor
+had he touched their camping outfit. Only the motor had been filched
+from them while they slept.
+
+“I think the first thing to do is to make ourselves comfortable,” Mary
+remarked as her eyes fell on the alcohol stove. “Then we’ll get
+breakfast and Billie will be more cheerful. Perhaps someone will come
+along by then.”
+
+As soon as Billie noticed her friends arranging their tumbled hair and
+washing their faces from the bottle of drinking water they always
+carried with them, she stopped crying at once.
+
+“I’m awfully ashamed,” she exclaimed, as embarrassed as a boy caught in
+the act of shedding tears. “I’m afraid I’ve been a fearful cry-baby, as
+if weeping could do any good. Here, let’s wash them off and get busy,”
+she added, trying to smile while she poured some of the water over her
+pocket handkerchief and bathed her red eyes.
+
+“Don’t you care, Billie,” cried Nancy. “I was glad to see you a little
+human like the rest of us. And it was a dreadful blow.”
+
+Mary, with her unfailing desire to make everybody comfortable under the
+most trying circumstances, began presently to prepare coffee over the
+alcohol stove, and the fragrance of the bean did seem to comfort them
+somewhat in their trying position. When the most optimistic person in a
+party becomes the prey of wretchedness, the others usually pretend a
+cheerfulness they by no means feel. But now that Billie had regained her
+composure, Miss Campbell’s spirits began to sink.
+
+She made a pitiful little toilet with a teacupful of drinking water and
+her eau de cologne. She arranged her snow white hair in its usual
+three-finger puffs, pinned on her lace jabot with great care and then
+surveyed the far-stretching country with an uneasy glance.
+
+“If one robber is around another is sure to be,” she began. “Oh, dear,
+oh, dear! if we had only never started on this madman’s journey. Your
+father was a foolish fellow ever to have consented, Billie. What are we
+but five weak helpless women lost in the wilderness?”
+
+“No, we are not,” protested Billie. “Indeed we are not any of those
+things, Cousin Helen. I was for a moment when I found we had lost the
+Comet, but I know we shall get the Comet back and everything will be all
+right, I don’t yet know how, but I certainly don’t intend to give up
+hope at this stage of the game.”
+
+“First breakfast,” said Mary, spreading out the lunch cloth and
+supplying each person with an orange, a soft boiled egg and a cup of
+coffee. “First a little nourishment and then see how much more hopeful
+you’ll all feel.”
+
+It was hardly what might be called a cheerful meal and it was quickly
+dispatched especially by Billie in whose mind a plan was already
+formulating.
+
+“Nancy,” she said to her friend who had followed her to the edge of the
+grove and was standing silently beside her, “where are your field
+glasses?”
+
+The glasses were promptly produced from Nancy’s suitcase.
+
+“Do you think,” Billie continued, “that I could climb one of those pine
+trees? I believe if I could get to one of the upper branches, I could
+see for miles around the country. I might even see the Comet.”
+
+“You know Miss Campbell would never consent, Billie,” Nancy objected,
+“even if you could shin up that slippery pine tree.”
+
+“Just you engage Cousin Helen in conversation for five minutes and I’ll
+engage to do the rest. It’s really a matter of costume, anyhow.”
+
+So saying, Billie calmly slipped off her corduroy skirt and coat,
+revealing herself in pongee bloomers and a pongee blouse. Then she
+kicked off her russet leather pumps and hung the long strap of the field
+glasses over her shoulder.
+
+The tree she had chosen to climb was the tallest one in the group, and,
+as is the case with pine trees, it had not put forth any substantial
+limbs until more than half-way up. But the trunk was scarred and
+corrugated with the marks of former limbs that had died, and Billie used
+these as footholds as she shinned up the tree.
+
+Nancy had not attempted to engage Miss Campbell in conversation. She
+stood rooted to the spot, fascinated while Billie worked her way up and
+finally swung herself into a fork where the big stone pine divided and
+became as two trees. Then, choosing the next largest branch, she climbed
+on as nimbly as a sailor in the rigging of a ship. Nancy admired her
+friend’s graceful and agile figure, and occasionally through the
+foliage, she caught glimpses of Billie’s earnest face. Her gray eyes
+were filled with the fire of her resolution, and her mouth, in which
+sweetness and determination were blended, was closed tightly. Not a lock
+of her fine light brown hair had been disturbed by the climb and the two
+side rolls were as smooth and glossy as silk.
+
+All this while Miss Campbell and the others had been busy storing away
+the breakfast dishes which could not under any circumstances be washed.
+It was various degrees between seven and half-past by the several
+watches in the party and the sun had mounted the Eastern heavens and was
+shedding its glory over the great plain.
+
+“Someone must surely be coming this way soon——” Miss Campbell was
+saying when a jolly voice singing an Irish song broke in on the silence.
+
+  “I had a sister Helen, she was younger than I am,
+  She had so many sweethearts, she had to deny ’em;
+  But as for meself, I haven’t so many,
+  And the Lord only knows, I’d be thankful for any.”
+
+A man on horseback immediately hove into sight around a bend in the
+road. He was long and lean and brown with eyes as mildly blue as the
+summer sky above them. The thin lips of his large mouth had a nervously
+humorous twitch at the corners, and his yellow hair, much longer than
+men wear their hair in the East, could be seen underneath his sombrero.
+He wore a blue flannel shirt with a bright scarlet tie, velveteen
+trousers and long cowhide boots which extended beyond the knees. He was,
+in fact, a cowboy. The girls were certain of it although he did not wear
+the fantastic sheepskin trousers they had seen in pictures. But he had
+every other mark of the cowboy, the lean Texas horse, the high-built
+saddle, much decorated, and the jingling spurs on his high-heeled boots.
+
+Giving the belated motorists one grand, sweeping, comprehensive glance,
+he was about to amble on politely, since it was none of his business to
+show interest in things that did not concern him, when Miss Campbell
+rushed dramatically into the road and stretched out her arms with
+gestures of distress.
+
+“Oh, I beg of you, sir, don’t leave us,” she cried. Billie in the garb
+of Peter Pan watching from the tree tops could not restrain her smiles;
+and Nancy from behind the same tree giggled audibly.
+
+“Excuse me, ma’am, I didn’t know you were in any trouble,” said the
+cowboy reining in his horse and lifting off his sombrero. “I’m Barney
+McGee, at your service, ma’am. What can I do for you?”
+
+[Illustration: “I’m Barney McGee, at your service, ma’am.”]
+
+“Our motor car broke down here last night and it was too dark to repair
+it. We were obliged to stay here all night. And while we slept, a robber
+stole it. We are simply stranded on the road. What can we do?”
+
+Barney McGee gave a long, melodious whistle.
+
+“Lifted your motor, ma’am! That was a d——, excuse me, a devilish low
+scoundrelly trick. If I could get to a telephone, we would round him up
+before he gets to Wyoming.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. McGee, if you would only help us, we would owe you a debt of
+gratitude all our lives.”
+
+“You say the motor was out of fix, ma’am?” he asked. “Then it may have
+broken down, again. I’ll just climb up and take a look at the
+countryside. What color was the car?”
+
+“Red.”
+
+To Nancy’s consternation, Barney McGee stood up on his saddle and
+grasping a limb, drew himself up into the very tree in which Billie was
+now making herself as scarce as possible.
+
+It was an absurd situation and the two young girls hardly knew whether
+to keep silent or to speak. Billie kept saying to herself:
+
+“I’m sure I look just as I do when I wear my gymnasium suit, but, oh,
+dear, I wish he hadn’t chosen this tree.”
+
+As the cowboy swung up the next limb, Billie leaned around and looked
+straight down into his face. She was about to say:
+
+“You needn’t come any further. I can see the country perfectly,” when
+words failed her and she burst out laughing.
+
+Barney McGee smiled gravely back.
+
+“Excuse me, I am afraid I’ve intruded,” he said, observing the silk
+bloomers with an expression of guarded amusement.
+
+“I suppose he thought I was a Suffragette,” Billie laughingly told her
+friends afterwards.
+
+“Billie, my dear child, what are you doing?” cried Miss Campbell, who
+now for the first time saw the strange bird roosting in the tree above
+them, and the good lady groaned aloud as her eye took in her young
+relative’s costume.
+
+“Wilhelmina,” she exclaimed in a shocked voice, “what will Mr. McGee
+think of you—in—in those things?”
+
+“Don’t scold her, ma’am,” called down the cowboy, “it’s an illigent
+climbing costume.”
+
+“I have some glasses, Mr. McGee,” said Billie calmly. “I haven’t been
+able to manage them yet and keep my balance. Perhaps you can do better
+than I can.”
+
+Barney McGee, as nimble as a mountain goat, as he pulled himself above
+Billie, his spurs jingling musically, now took the glasses and scanned
+the surrounding country.
+
+While he looked, Billie scrambled down as fast as she could and in two
+seconds had slipped back on her skirt and buckled her patent leather
+belt.
+
+The Motor Maids and Miss Helen felt not unlike a shipwrecked party with
+a sailor aloft in the lookout searching for a sail in that vast ocean of
+prairie.
+
+“Hip, hip, hurray!” cried Barney McGee, so suddenly, that he gave Miss
+Helen a start of surprise. “I’ve found it, ma’am. I’ve found the red
+motor and it’s coming this way. Sure as me name is Barney, it is. It’s
+driven by one person and it’s goin’ fast.”
+
+“Coming this way?” they cried in unison.
+
+“It’s about three miles to the southwest and at the rate it’s goin’ it
+ought to be here in no time.”
+
+“Is it on this road?” cried Billie.
+
+“It is, Miss, and it’ll pass by here unless it shoots out over the
+prairie, which it won’t.”
+
+“It is very strange,” said Miss Campbell. “I should think the thief
+would take another direction.”
+
+“Perhaps he’s doubling on his tracks,” suggested Mary.
+
+Barney had a long pistol in his belt and this he now took from its case,
+and examined critically while the girls looked on fearfully.
+
+“You’re not going to shoot him, I hope?” asked Billie.
+
+“It may not be necessary, Miss.”
+
+“No, no. Don’t do that under any circumstances,” put in Miss Campbell.
+
+Barney gave a humorous, good-natured grin.
+
+“I’ll defend the ladies,” he said.
+
+The suspense of waiting was almost more than they could endure. Miss
+Campbell proposed that they pile all the suitcases one on top of the
+other and take their stand behind them, like an improvised fort.
+
+Billie suggested that they lay them across the road so that the car
+would be obliged to stop. As for Barney, he leapt on his Texas horse and
+took his stand like a sentinel in the middle of the road, pistol cocked.
+
+But the Comet appeared before the girls could do anything. They saw it a
+long way off like a red speck on the road and as it came nearer, their
+wonder grew in proportion. On the chauffeur’s seat sat Peter Van
+Vechten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.—CUTTING THE BONDS.
+
+
+Peter Van Vechten was driving the car but he made no attempt to stop it.
+In fact, he seemed not to recognize their faces as he came toward them,
+and it was evident that Barney McGee unless he wanted to be run over
+would have to make haste to get out of the road, for the motor car was
+taking a very uncertain and rickety course on the highway.
+
+Another half minute and they found themselves standing helplessly in the
+road, the automobile fifty yards away.
+
+Barney, flourishing his pistol and digging his spurs into his horse was
+after it like a flash.
+
+“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” they screamed. “We know him.”
+
+But it was too late. There was the report of a pistol and the sound of
+the motor ceased almost instantly.
+
+Rushing down the road, Billie in the lead, they found the car at a
+standstill, Peter Van Vechten lying out on the ground with Barney
+leaning over him.
+
+“You’ve killed him,” cried Miss Campbell.
+
+“No, no, ma’am. It was the tire I punctured, and not the thief. He
+fainted of his own accord.”
+
+“But there is something the matter. He is injured,” exclaimed Mary.
+“Look at the bruise on his forehead.”
+
+“Poor boy! Poor Peter,” said Miss Campbell, and immediately they all set
+to work to restore the aviator.
+
+“Better take him back to the camp, ma’am,” suggested Barney, “and if
+you’ve got a bit of rope handy, we can bind him before he comes to.”
+
+“Bind him?” they repeated.
+
+“Why certainly, ladies, didn’t he rob you of your car? Automobile
+thieves in this country ain’t tolerated any more than horse thieves.”
+
+It was difficult to keep reminding themselves that this nice young man
+was a thief. But visions of Miss Helen’s fifty dollars persisted in
+floating before them, and it occurred to them furthermore that he might
+be one of the most daring criminals in the country, since he had made
+good his escape from Chicago in an aeroplane.
+
+“Lift him in the car, then,” ordered Miss Campbell in a resigned tone of
+voice. “But it’s hard to believe.”
+
+“Caught with the goods, ma’am,” the cowboy assured her. “Caught
+red-handed with the goods on him.”
+
+They took him back to the encampment in the maimed Comet, Barney
+following on his horse, and presently they had him securely bound, feet
+and hands, with stout pieces of cord.
+
+“It seems a shame to bring the poor fellow back to life as a prisoner,”
+observed Miss Campbell, as she applied her bottle of smelling salts to
+Peter’s nose.
+
+All this time Billie had remained silent. She was not so forgiving of
+Peter’s sins as the others. In fact, she marveled at their moderation.
+
+“I’m sure I don’t see why he should go scot free any more than any other
+thief,” she said. “This is the second time he has robbed us, first of
+fifty dollars and then of the Comet——”
+
+Barney McGee looked up at this and Peter himself opened his eyes and
+regarded them all steadily with what Mary described to herself as “a
+long brown look.”
+
+“You’re caught, you see, young feller,” said Barney, smiling amiably.
+“You shouldn’t have doubled on your tracks. Sometimes that trick works,
+but not in this country of wise men.”
+
+Peter looked into the lean brown face of the cowboy and smiled so
+delightfully, that immediately his captors felt the magnetism of his
+glance and stirred uncomfortably.
+
+“What do you take me for, a thief?” he asked.
+
+“What else are you, young man?” asked Barney. “Didn’t you steal upon
+five helpless and unprotected ladies in the night and take their
+automobile. And this ain’t the first time you’ve robbed them, either.”
+
+Peter made a sudden effort to rise and fell back helplessly, finding
+himself bound hand and foot.
+
+Then a look of recognition came into his eyes.
+
+“It’s Miss Campbell and the young ladies,” he exclaimed. “So it _was_
+your automobile. I had no time to examine it, but I remembered the color
+was red.”
+
+“If you are feeling quite yourself, now, young feller,” interrupted
+Barney, “I think we’ll be taking you along to the next village where we
+can leave you to be dealt with according to the law in these parts.”
+
+“I suppose you won’t believe me, Miss Campbell,” began Peter in a rather
+weak voice, “but I give you my word of honor I’m not a thief. The real
+thief has my own car.”
+
+“But who is the real thief?”
+
+“I don’t know. I never saw him. I was sound asleep when some one gave me
+a stunning blow on the forehead. I don’t know whether I was unconscious
+hours or minutes. It seemed only minutes, only an instant, really when I
+was able to crawl out of my blankets and start up this red motor car. My
+one idea was to catch the thief, but the car was in bad shape, that was
+why he took mine, I suppose, and my head was so dizzy I hardly knew what
+I was doing.”
+
+“That’s a queer tale, young man,” said the cowboy. “The only thing
+you’ve got to prove it’s true is the lump on your forehead.”
+
+But Peter felt too ill to argue the subject. Miss Campbell was moved
+with pity by his condition.
+
+“You are almost a boy,” she said. “I want to be charitable, but I do
+think you should be punished for having caused so much uneasiness of
+mind. Will you give me your word to reform——?”
+
+“No,” interrupted Peter fiercely; “no, I’ll not give my word to you or
+anyone else. It’s absurd.”
+
+“Do you think we don’t know who you are?” here put in Billie, whose
+anger had flamed up at the sight of his defiance and the memory of her
+beloved Comet snatched away in the night. “Do you think we haven’t heard
+how you escaped from Chicago with the police at your very heels? We
+might have thought there was some mistake even then, if Cousin Helen’s
+pocket book hadn’t disappeared along with you after we had taken you
+into the automobile. Fifty dollars it had in it. And now you come in the
+night and steal the Comet, and when you are caught you lay the blame on
+another man’s shoulders.”
+
+Peter Van Vechten looked calmly into the faces of his accusers. Then
+suddenly he began to laugh.
+
+“I have had bad luck this trip,” he said. He appeared to be talking to
+himself. “Nothing but disasters all the way.” He lay back and closed his
+eyes.
+
+“There’s a cold blooded criminal for you,” said Barney McGee. “He’s the
+kind the East produces and sends out West to be finished off. A pretty
+finishing school you’ll find here, too, me boy.”
+
+Peter laughed again.
+
+Just then a drove of cattle passed, and at intervals vehicles and motor
+cars followed; also men on horseback and some walking.
+
+“This is County Court Day,” observed Barney. “They’re all goin’ to the
+next town. Shall we turn the thief over to some of them or take him
+ourselves? One of you ladies will have to appear against him later.”
+
+Miss Campbell looked uncomfortable.
+
+“Dear, dear,” she exclaimed. “That means we shall have to go to court
+and give testimony and all that sort of thing. It may delay us ever so
+long.”
+
+“No it won’t,” called the implacable Billie, who was now hard at work
+repairing the Comet. “We can just turn him over as an escaped convict.”
+
+Peter looked at her with an expression of weary amusement, but said
+nothing. She did not trust herself to return his glance just then, but
+after that, every time she caught the cool brown look of his eye, like
+two clear pools in a forest, she felt a strange disturbance.
+
+Miss Helen Campbell was of two minds and both minds were aggrieved.
+Nancy was all on Billie’s side. Elinor was still undecided. She was
+trying to be perfectly just, but it did seem to her that Peter Van
+Vechten, as he called himself, was in a very unfortunate predicament.
+
+As for little Mary, her eyes had become two wells of pity and she was
+afraid to speak lest she betray her sympathy for the young man.
+
+All morning Billie and Mary worked over the Comet. The thief, whether
+Peter or another, had repaired the machine enough for it to run with a
+good deal of rattling and rumbling, but the girls were not satisfied and
+they worked as hard over it as two young mechanics. The company lunched
+early from the contents of the hamper, and the prisoner’s hands were
+unbound in order that he might feed himself. Then he was bound again.
+
+At noon the sun’s rays were exceedingly warm. Miss Campbell, with Nancy
+and Elinor, withdrew under a distant tree, with steamer rugs, and soon
+were sleeping soundly.
+
+“How long before you’ve finished, Miss?” asked Barney of Billie. He had
+been their faithful guard all morning.
+
+“In half an hour at the very least,” she had replied, and leaping on his
+small, swift horse, he cantered away, calling out:
+
+“I’ll be back against the time you’ve finished.”
+
+Billie was out under the car, absorbed in her work. The whole world
+seemed to be asleep in the stillness of noon. Mary looked about her
+fearfully. Then, with sudden resolution, she took a little silver
+penknife from her pocket and tiptoeing over to where the prisoner lay,
+bound and shackled, she quickly cut the twine.
+
+“Don’t say anything,” she whispered to the astonished youth. “I don’t
+believe a word about your being a thief, and some day they will find out
+that they were mistaken, too. Once I was accused like that, and I know
+how you must feel. Hurry up, now, and go to the East, because Barney is
+riding the other way. Perhaps a wagon will pick you up.”
+
+Peter Van Vechten seized her hand warmly in his.
+
+“You’re a little brick,” he whispered.
+
+“Take the cords with you,” she answered. “Then they won’t know.”
+
+Another moment and he had made off down the road, and Mary went quietly
+back to her work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.—THE GIRL FROM THE GOLDEN WEST.
+
+
+“It’s like being in a play, Elinor,” whispered Mary, who was sitting
+next to her at the long dinner table in the dining room of the little
+hotel. “They are all here, cowboys and curious looking people. And there
+were two Indians at the door a moment ago. The cowboys are like Barney
+McGee. They have good, rough manners.”
+
+The Motor Maids felt as if they had known that ingratiating young man a
+long time now. Twice he had bobbed up unexpectedly on their journey, and
+finally made them promise to visit the ranch where he lived in Southern
+Wyoming, if only for a half a day.
+
+The room they were in was low-ceiled with wooden walls and bare board
+floors. At one side was a large yellow oak sideboard where stood rows of
+glass tumblers in which folded fringed napkins with red borders had been
+stuck, like so many bouquets. The table was filled with guests and two
+shabby looking young waitresses handed the dishes with a kind of
+careless abandon which seemed to be in keeping with the place.
+
+Many of the people were to take the stage next morning to a ranch which
+was conducted as a sanitarium. There were several trained nurses who had
+brought their patients along, and Billie turned her eyes away from one
+young man whose pale face and sunken chest made her ashamed of her own
+glowing health and sunburned cheeks.
+
+Not even in Europe had Billie seen such an interesting and varied
+collection of people in one dining room as she now saw in this remote
+and obscure little western inn. There was a group of young Englishmen
+who had bought a great cattle ranch and were on their way to inspect it.
+There was a party of men traveling West by motor car. Two of them were
+famous millionaires, she heard it whispered. But most interesting of
+all, and the one on whom the Motor Maids cast many covert and curious
+glances, was a beautiful young woman who seemed to be traveling alone.
+
+It so happened that she was placed next to Miss Campbell, who had
+gathered her charges under her wing at one end of the table, as an
+anxious little hen gathers her chicks, but by leaning over, they were
+able to see the strange girl’s lovely face; her hazel eyes and red gold
+hair half hidden under a broad brimmed riding hat. She wore a khaki
+riding suit with divided skirts, and knotted about her neck was a
+beautiful burnt orange silk scarf that seemed to tone in with the yellow
+of her eyes and hair.
+
+They wondered where her party was. Evidently she did not belong to any
+one at the table for she spoke to no person and scarcely lifted her eyes
+from her plate.
+
+“Perhaps her mother is ill and she has had to come down alone,” thought
+Elinor, who had conventional ideas rooted so deeply in her soul that
+nothing could stir them.
+
+“May I ask you for the butter?” Miss Campbell had said in her most
+polite and perfect manner, and that had started the conversational ball
+a-rolling.
+
+“With pleasure,” answered the strange girl promptly, “although I am
+afraid you’ll be disappointed with the bread. It’s quite soggy.”
+
+“Perhaps you will allow me to offer you some of our zwieback,” put in
+Miss Campbell, stretching forth her hand for the box. “We have it sent
+to us from time to time, because we simply cannot eat the bread out
+here.”
+
+“You are traveling West?” asked the girl.
+
+Then Miss Campbell, always ready and willing to make friends, explained
+and introduced the Motor Maids.
+
+There was something extremely appealing about the beautiful face of the
+stranger, and when presently she saw that she was attracting the notice
+of other people at the table, she blushed and pulled her hat well down
+over her face, and drew nearer to Miss Campbell’s side. The girls liked
+her from the first. Then there was the mystery about her which added to
+her charm—the mystery of whom she was and where she was going. She had
+asked questions, but had volunteered nothing about herself.
+
+After dinner they strolled into the hall of the hotel, which served as a
+sort of lobby, where they hoped to find letters awaiting them from the
+evening mail. The girl followed them timidly.
+
+“I hope I’m not in the way or presuming too much,” she said to Miss
+Campbell, as they proceeded into the hotel parlor to wait for the mail
+stage.
+
+“Not at all, my dear,” answered the kind soul. “If it is any pleasure to
+you, I’m sure it is a great pleasure to us. Are you alone?”
+
+“Yes,” hesitated the girl.
+
+“You are taking a riding trip?” Miss Campbell looked at the riding suit.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Alone?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Don’t you think it just a little bit of a risk, my dear?”
+
+“It’s not a pleasure trip. I—I’m looking for a place to live.”
+
+“Oh, then you have no people?”
+
+The girl hung her head. The Motor Maids were quite breathless with
+interest.
+
+“My dear child,” continued Miss Campbell, kindly, taking the young
+girl’s hand, “it’s none of my business, but I am an old woman, and I
+feel I must give advice to a beautiful young girl. Let me beg of you to
+think a long time before you do anything rash. Girls leave home thinking
+life will be easy and it so often turns out to be very, very hard.”
+
+“But I’ve been very unhappy,” whispered the girl choking. “You can’t
+understand—you can’t know——”
+
+Two tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, the sight of
+which was beyond the endurance of the Motor Maids. They gathered around
+her in a solicitous little group. They took her hands and pressed
+against her and patted her on the shoulder. And Miss Campbell kept
+saying:
+
+“There, there, my dear, you mustn’t cry. I am afraid I hurt you.”
+
+While the girl was choking back her tears and at the same time
+endeavoring to tell them in a broken voice that things at home had been
+unbearable, Billie and Elinor, who were facing the entrance, saw a very
+tall, black figure darken the doorway. Only for a moment he stood there,
+a great square shouldered, ungainly man who gave the impression of
+having been carved out of a block of wood, from the straight folds of
+his black Prince Albert coat to his square cut iron gray beard, which
+had once been black. The only live thing about him appeared to be his
+fiery dark eyes, which now took them all in with one sweeping,
+comprehensive glance.
+
+The two girls almost shuddered and felt a certain relief when he
+promptly withdrew from the door.
+
+“Won’t you come to our rooms and tell us all about it, dear?” Miss
+Campbell was saying. “Perhaps we can help you and at least I can take
+you under my protection while we are here.”
+
+“You are under arrest, Miss. Don’t make no noise and I won’t make none,”
+said a sharp shrill whispering voice behind them, and a long skinny hand
+was thrust into their midst, grasping the runaway by her arm.
+
+“Let me go! How dare you?” she exclaimed, a flood of color rushing into
+her cheeks.
+
+“Now, don’t make no scene,” said a shabby, unkempt looking individual.
+“You know who wants you as well as I do. He’s there in the hall, and you
+know mighty well he’s not goin’ to let you go this time.”
+
+“Oh, save me! save me!” whispered the girl, hiding her face on Miss
+Campbell’s shoulder.
+
+The little lady drew herself up to her full height of five feet two
+inches and glared at the man.
+
+“This young lady has placed herself under my protection, sir, and I
+refuse to have her annoyed. Will you please leave the room?”
+
+The man was so overcome by Miss Campbell’s grand air that he fell back a
+step in astonishment.
+
+“Lady,” he said, after a pause, “you won’t make nothin’ by interferin’
+in this here case. This young lady stole a horse out of her father’s
+stable and run away from home, an’ if you don’t believe it, you can ask
+him——”
+
+“It was my own horse,” said the girl stamping her foot.
+
+“Evelyn!” the voice which spoke was so deep and resonant it might have
+come up from some subterranean cavern. It made them all start, and when
+the name was repeated again, Miss Campbell fairly shivered at the sound.
+
+“Evelyn!”
+
+“Yes, father,” answered the girl faintly.
+
+“Come at once.”
+
+White as a sheet, with her hands clasped together as if to give herself
+courage, Evelyn turned to the great wooden tower of a man.
+
+“I don’t want to, father. I prefer to stay here with—with my friends.”
+
+The man took out a gold watch as big as a turnip and looked at it.
+
+“I will give you three minutes to obey,” he said.
+
+The girls had a feeling Evelyn was going to her doom, and this was her
+last farewell. She threw her arms around Miss Campbell’s neck and kissed
+her; then she kissed each of the Motor Maids. She might have been a
+devoted daughter and loving sister saying good-by for a long time.
+
+“Good-by! Good-by!” she whispered, trying to stifle her sobs.
+
+Curious people were beginning to drift into the parlor.
+
+The next moment there was the sound of an automobile outside and Evelyn
+was whisked off in the darkness.
+
+“Dear, dear, dear,” ejaculated Miss Campbell “I am so upset! That
+exquisite young girl and that terrible giant creature of a father!”
+
+“Her name was Evelyn, too. Wasn’t it queer?” observed Nancy.
+
+“Evelyn, Evelyn,” they repeated.
+
+“Evelyn Stone. Mr. Daniel Moore’s Evelyn Stone.”
+
+In an instant they were all talking at once. It was Evelyn Stone. They
+recognized her now from the picture, although there was only really a
+faint resemblance. What picture could do justice to such coloring? The
+auburn hair, the golden brown eyes and the blush that crept in and out
+of her face with her changing emotions. But it was she, they were sure
+of it. She had the same smile—the “snapshot smile.”
+
+“If we had only recognized her sooner,” cried Billie. “We might have
+delivered the letter. We might have saved her from that great dragon of
+a father. We might have done dozens of things.”
+
+They were deep in their thought when the stage drove up to the door with
+a great flourish and a man hastily dragged in several bags of mail.
+
+Everybody gathered around the desk to wait for letters, and when the
+motor party had each received a package of mail, the first for many
+days, they hurried to their rooms to read the last news from home. Miss
+Campbell had half a dozen letters to engross her attention, and it was
+not until she had read the last word of every one that she opened a
+package covered with postmarks, showing it had been forwarded from place
+to place and had followed them over most of their route.
+
+“My goodness gracious me,” she cried out in a loud astonished voice as
+she drew out the contents of the packet.
+
+The girls dropped their letters and ran into her room.
+
+“What is it?” they demanded breathlessly.
+
+“My morocco pocket book with the fifty dollars, the one I lost——”
+
+Miss Campbell could say no more. She was quite overcome and on the verge
+of tears. She handed a note to Billie to read aloud.
+
+  Dear Madam: (it ran)
+
+  I picked this pocketbook up in my field, though how it happened to
+  be near a broken box kite I cannot tell you. I am sending it to the
+  address on the visiting card and would be glad if you would notify
+  me that you have received it.
+
+                                                          Yours truly,
+                                                         James Erdman,
+                               Dealer in Vegetables, Poultry and Eggs.
+
+“He is a very honest man,” exclaimed Miss Helen at last, when Billie had
+finished reading the note.
+
+“And Peter Van Vechten——?” began Mary.
+
+They all looked at each other silently.
+
+“How glad I am he escaped,” cried Miss Campbell. “Never, never will I
+accuse anyone on circumstantial evidence again.”
+
+“I am the one to apologize to him,” said Billie. “I insulted him.”
+
+“All of us did, I think,” put in Elinor.
+
+“We called him a thief,” added Nancy sadly.
+
+“I was the one who cut the cords,” at last Mary volunteered in a small
+voice.
+
+How they pummeled her and laughed.
+
+“And never told, you sly minx!” they cried.
+
+But Billie meant some day to apologize openly to Peter Van Vechten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.—STEPTOE LODGE.
+
+
+  “King Borria Bungalee Boo,
+  Was a man-eating African swell,
+  His sigh was a hullaballoo,
+  His whisper a horrible yell—A
+  horrible, horrible yell!
+
+  “Four subjects and all of them male
+  To Borria doubled the knee,
+  They were once on a far larger scale,
+  But he’d eaten the balance, you see—Scale
+  and balance is punning, you see!
+
+“Scale and balance is punning, you see!” roared the chorus.
+
+Miss Campbell and the girls exchanged rather amazed glances.
+
+They had drawn up in front of a long low rancho. It was quite dark, but
+from an inside court they could hear the tinkle of a banjo accompanying
+a deep baritone voice, with many other deep voices joining in the
+chorus. The singing went on:
+
+  “There was haughty Pish-Tush-Pooh-Bah,
+  There was lumbering Doodle-Dum-Dey,
+  Despairing Alack-a-Dey-Ah
+  And good little Tootle-Tum-Teh!
+  Exemplary Tootle-Tum-Teh,”
+
+rang the chorus.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“My dear, I don’t think we’d better try it,” said Miss Campbell. “It
+sounds very rough. I feel quite uneasy—it’s very much of an adventure
+at any rate.”
+
+The truth is the five ladies had done an exceedingly reckless thing.
+Barney McGee had invited them to come and see a real ranch, and they had
+accepted his invitation. At first Miss Campbell had declined. It was
+rather too much to expect him to entertain five guests. Besides, how
+could he when he was not owner of the ranch. He was part owner, he said.
+But if they preferred they could stop at Steptoe Lodge just as they
+could at an inn—engage rooms, that is. His cousin, Brek Steptoe and his
+wife often had boarders—people who came for their health.
+
+Nebraska was filled with Easterners who were trying to gain health in
+the West, and the good State not only often gave them health but wealth
+too—fine strong bodies and work that paid.
+
+Therefore the motorists had taken down detailed directions from Barney
+McGee, but they had not arrived at Steptoe Lodge as soon as they had
+expected. An exploded tire had caused a long delay. No doubt Mrs.
+Steptoe had given them up for the day now, for it was long after dark
+when they finally found themselves at the rancho.
+
+A light streamed out from a door suddenly opened, and the voices in the
+court yard grew louder as the song progressed.
+
+  “There is musical Doh-Reh-Mi-Fah,
+  There is the nightingale Doh-Reh-Mi-Fah.”
+
+“Does Mr. McGee live here?” asked Billie timidly of a tall athletic
+looking young man who had opened the door. He was dressed in buckskin
+with high boots, a blue flannel shirt and a silk handkerchief knotted
+around his neck. The girls thought him quite the most picturesque person
+they had seen since they left home. Even in the darkness they could see
+the deep flush of embarrassment mount to his face.
+
+“There is a Mr. McGee who lives here—yes,” he answered, choking with
+bashfulness.
+
+“Will you ask him to come out at once, please,” said Miss Campbell, with
+a growing uneasiness that there might be some mistake.
+
+But her fears were immediately allayed, for Barney himself came running
+around the side of the rancho.
+
+“Ladies, I hope you’ll excuse me for not bein’ on the spot as soon as
+you arrived. I waited for you some hours on the door step. Tell the
+fellers to shut up, Jim, and stop starin’ there like a wooden injun.
+Call Rosina. Tell her the ladies have arrived.”
+
+The place suddenly became as still as the grave, and by the time the
+Motor Maids and Miss Helen had alighted and been conducted into a
+cemented courtyard around which the house was built, after the Spanish
+style, there was not a person to be seen except Jim, who followed
+obediently with some of the luggage.
+
+Rosina Steptoe, who had married Barney’s cousin, Brek Steptoe, now
+hurried into the room. She was a wiry little woman with a dark swarthy
+face, beady black eyes, black hair and a rather sweet expression which
+saved her from being really very ugly. The girls thought at first she
+might have some Spanish blood. Her manners were gracious and she shook
+hands with them cordially when Barney made the introductions.
+
+“Will you come right in to supper?” she said, without asking them to go
+to their rooms. “We want to get through early because Barney is giving a
+dance for you to-night, and the people will be coming before we finish
+if we don’t hurry.”
+
+“Dear, dear,” ejaculated Miss Campbell under her breath.
+
+They had not counted on being entertained by the cowboy, and began to
+wonder what they had been drawn into.
+
+Feeling very dusty and a little tired from their trip across the plains,
+they followed Mrs. Steptoe into one of the rooms opening on the court.
+It was a very large apartment with little furniture in it except a long
+table and the inevitable oak sideboard which always gave Billie the
+horrors. They afterwards learned that it was the pride of Mrs. Steptoe’s
+heart, and had been bought in the East at a great sacrifice.
+
+Four men were waiting at the table: Barney McGee, Brek Steptoe, who was
+a handsome, middle aged man with a weather-beaten face; Tony Blackstone,
+whom the girls discovered presently was English. It was he who had done
+the singing they found; also he had good manners and was not at all
+bashful, but very quiet. Jim made the fourth man.
+
+As they sat down at table, a Chinaman thrust his head in the door and
+then disappeared. Mrs. Steptoe herself waited on them and the food was
+really much better than they had expected.
+
+Nancy was seated next to Jim, who, when she was not looking, devoured
+her with his eyes, and when she turned to him, dropped his lids and
+flushed crimson as if he had been caught in a felony.
+
+“We didn’t know there was to be a party,” she said to him innocently.
+“You see we aren’t traveling with much baggage. I’m afraid we can’t
+dress up properly.”
+
+“Clothes don’t matter out here, Miss——” he began.
+
+“Nancy,” she finished.
+
+“Miss Nancy,” he repeated, and then said it over to himself as if the
+name pleased him mightily.
+
+“People don’t come to see the clothes. It’s the dancing they want to see
+and—and——”
+
+“And what?” she demanded.
+
+“And the gir—the ladies. You see we don’t have many of them out here
+and they are all married.”
+
+“Every girl is a belle in this part of the country, I suppose,” observed
+Nancy. “Even the ugly ones.”
+
+Jim assented, regarding Nancy’s charming face as if he had never seen a
+girl before in all his life.
+
+“And as for the pretty ones, Miss——”
+
+“Nancy.”
+
+“Miss Nancy, they are fairly worshipped.”
+
+“Are there any pretty ones?” she asked.
+
+“There weren’t until you came,” replied Jim almost in a whisper, and
+then dropped his knife on the floor. He stooped for so long to find it
+that Nancy thought he must have had a sudden attack of vertigo. She was
+sure of it when he finally lifted his crimson face.
+
+“I think I have one pretty dress,” she said irrelevantly, looking into
+Jim’s eyes with just a ghost of a smile. “I think it would be nice to
+dress up a little. Don’t you?”
+
+“I’m afraid I can’t,” muttered Jim. Then, once more, plucking up
+courage, he asked: “Can I have the first dance?”
+
+In the meantime, Mr. Steptoe was explaining many things to Miss Campbell
+regarding the rounding up of cattle and life on the plains.
+
+“There are no more real cowboys,” he said, “except in the Buffalo Bill
+Show. They are passing out. Barney here is about as good a
+representative of the class as there is.”
+
+“And Tony,” suggested Barney.
+
+“Tony is a good imitation but he’s not the real thing because he wasn’t
+born to it. Was you Tony?”
+
+The man named Blackstone frowned.
+
+“Birth has nothing to do with it,” he answered, and quickly changed the
+subject.
+
+“He’s the younger son of an English lord,” whispered Steptoe, “but he
+don’t like to have it mentioned.”
+
+It was rather surprising on the whole to see how polite these rough men
+were. Following Tony’s example, they stood up when the ladies filed out
+of the room, led by Rosina Steptoe.
+
+Bedrooms in the Steptoe rancho were not luxurious apartments by any
+means. There were no bathrooms and only small ewers of water supplied
+the wants of the guests.
+
+“I feel as if I had the yellow jaundice,” exclaimed Nancy, as she
+critically examined her features in a small wooden framed mirror back of
+the washstand. There was no dressing table.
+
+“To the naked eye you appear to be perfectly healthy and normal,”
+replied Billie, “but I suppose Miss Nancy-Bell, you are taking notice
+with a view to dressing up, and for my part, I think we should go down
+just as we are. It’s a cowboy dance.”
+
+There was a continuous argument about clothes between Nancy and Billie
+which Miss Campbell invariably had to settle. On this occasion Miss
+Campbell was for appearing as spectators at the dance and not as active
+guests. She had not counted on being entertained at the Lodge, and she
+was unable to conceal her misgivings.
+
+“I think it would be very rude not to dress up,” cried Nancy hotly.
+“Mrs. Steptoe is going to wear a pink cotton crêpe. She told me she was,
+and they are all looking forward to seeing us in—well—something
+different than this.”
+
+The other girls laughed teasingly.
+
+“Anything to show off that new frock of yours, Nancy,” cried Billie.
+“Cowboys and Indians will do if you can’t find a better audience.”
+
+Nancy was offended. She flushed hotly and her eyes filled with tears.
+She had very sensitive feelings somewhere hidden under her gay careless
+manner.
+
+“Bless its heart! Are its feelings hurt?” exclaimed Billie, putting her
+arms around her friend’s neck and kissing her warmly. “I wouldn’t have
+gone fer to hurt its feelings for anything in the world. It shall wear
+its little folderols if it chooses, shan’t it, Cousin, and put on all
+its ribbons and laces.”
+
+“Silly old tease,” said Nancy, laughing through her tears. “You’re just
+as anxious as anybody to dress up only you’re too proud to admit it
+because you’re afraid people will think you are vain.”
+
+“Go along with you, you foolish children, and get into your clothes,”
+here interrupted Miss Campbell. “If Nancy wants to appear in a party
+frock, I think it won’t do any harm to these poor isolated ranchmen.”
+
+It so happened, therefore, that the girls, in another twenty minutes,
+for the first time since they had left Sevenoaks, the home of their
+friend, Daniel Moore, attired themselves in their prettiest gowns. Only
+simple muslin frocks, but with plenty of hand embroidery and lace
+insertions to make them fine, and ribbon bows to set them off.
+
+Nancy, beguiling creature that she was, tied a pink satin ribbon around
+her curly hair, and the picture she made when she entered the dining
+room in her white dress with her floating ribbons and dainty little
+black patent leather pumps, was a sight Jim was not to forget in a
+hurry.
+
+Elinor might have been a young princess who had condescended to step out
+of the back door of her palace and mingle with her low subjects for a
+brief space. She held her head with its coronet braids slightly higher
+than usual in the strange company which now began to congregate.
+
+She wore a straight white dress all fine tucks and embroidery without a
+sign of lace or ribbon to mar the effect of very elegant simplicity.
+Billie had tied around the smooth rolls of her light brown hair a blue
+velvet band to match the embroidery on her marquisette dress. She was a
+glowing picturesque figure, her face flushed with interest and
+enthusiasm. Mary, who always falls to the last in our descriptions,
+perhaps because she is so small and unassuming, wore a soft white mulle
+frock with a pale blue Roman sash knotted around her waist, a relic of
+her mother’s own girlhood.
+
+You may imagine, I am sure, what a sensation our dainty young girls and
+Miss Campbell, in a beautiful gray silk, made on the rough company now
+assembled. There were subdued murmurs of surprise and admiration. The
+few plain weather-beaten looking women who had driven miles across the
+plains for a glimpse of the Motor Maids, looked down hastily at their
+own pitiful attempts at finery, and ranchmen and cowboys craned their
+necks for a glimpse of the fair vision which had been vouchsafed them.
+
+On a table at the far end of the room sat the two musicians, Mexicans.
+Each with a guitar and a fiddle. The kerosene lamps, hung against
+reflectors on the wall, cast a yellow glow on the scene so new to the
+travelers. Five chairs had been arranged in a row at the other end of
+the room as places of honor for the Eastern guests, who might have been
+five new prima donnas at the opera for the intense interest they
+excited.
+
+The music now set up a whining jig tune. There was an embarrassed
+shuffling of feet for a moment, and clearing of throats. Presently two
+cowboys started to dancing the old fashioned polka together, and in a
+jiffy the whole company was whirling about the room madly. The five
+Easterners looked on for a while quite gravely. In the joy of the dance
+they had been quite forgotten.
+
+Not quite forgotten, for Jim now appeared, handsome as a picture, with a
+new red silk handkerchief knotted around his neck, his black hair as
+smooth and slick as brush and water could make it.
+
+“Are you willing to try it?” he asked, bowing before Nancy, who little
+knew what struggles between bashfulness and courage now rent his soul.
+
+“I was wondering where you were,” she said smiling sweetly as she
+floated away with him like a soap bubble on a summer breeze.
+
+Tony Blackstone then asked Elinor to dance, and she had condescended,
+comforting herself with the secret knowledge that he was the son of an
+English lord. Barney McGee had led forth Mary. And Mrs. Steptoe, having
+introduced her brother, whose name Billie had failed to catch, that
+young woman had permitted herself to be circled around once. But her
+partner did not please her for some reason and she preferred to sit with
+Miss Helen and watch the dancers.
+
+“Are you tired so soon?” he asked.
+
+“No,” she answered, always truthful under the most trying circumstances,
+“but I don’t care to dance.”
+
+The man flashed an angry glance at her and for the first time she looked
+in his face. Where had she seen those dark scowling eyes before?
+
+“I didn’t catch your name,” she said. “I would like to introduce you to
+my cousin.”
+
+“Hawkes,” he answered in an almost threatening tone of voice.
+
+“Why, you are—” but she never finished the sentence for the man named
+Hawkes had abruptly turned away.
+
+“Strange,” said Billie to herself, reflecting inwardly on the passing
+likenesses one sees everywhere. “But, no, it is impossible, for this man
+is very well dressed, better than any man in the room, I think, and
+besides he’s Rosina Steptoe’s brother.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.—THE HAWKES FAMILY.
+
+
+Breathless and flushed with exercise the other girls now dropped into
+their seats. The hot, crowded room, the dust raised by the shuffling of
+many feet on the floor and the strange company rather bewildered them.
+Only Nancy had really enjoyed the experience, because Jim was an
+excellent dancer; and he had guided her carefully through the mazes of
+the jigging two-step.
+
+But there was to be further entertainment before they might be allowed
+to stroll out under the stars and breathe in the fresh air. A Mexican
+cowboy with a broad crimson sash around his waist, a border of
+bright-colored fringe edging the side of his trousers and jingling spurs
+on his high-heeled boots, danced a wild fandango to a Spanish tune with
+a throbbing accompaniment on the guitar, which seemed to grow faster and
+faster as he struck his heels on the floor.
+
+Then the music stopped and two Indians appeared. One of them squatted on
+the floor and began beating monotonously on a small kind of a drum or
+tom-tom. The other Indian in full regalia began dancing slowly in a
+circle, stooping low as if he were hiding from his prey which he would
+presently pounce upon and destroy utterly. He was a barbaric and
+war-like figure and the girls unconsciously shrunk back as he danced by
+them. Gradually the dance grew wilder and the steps quicker. The Indian
+gave a strange bird-like cry, and for the fraction of a moment paused in
+front of Billie. With another cry that had a familiar sound he flashed a
+black glance of hatred into her face and was gone.
+
+Again Billie thought she recognized a likeness. She turned her
+bewildered eyes downward, her face flushing with embarrassment. There in
+her lap was a long, grayish feather.
+
+“What’s this for?” she demanded, turning to Barney McGee.
+
+“I reckon it’s a complimentary souvenir for you, Miss Billie,” replied
+the ranchman. “It’s one of Hawkeseye’s jokes, a quill from a hawk’s
+wing.”
+
+“Hawkeseye,” repeated Billie.
+
+“Oh, yes, we call him that for fun. His name is Buckthorne Hawkes. He
+ain’t all Injun, you know. He’s really the Missus’ brother, but he can
+certainly fix himself up to look as much like a full-blooded Indian buck
+as if he had just come from the reservation.”
+
+“Was he ever a peddler?” Billie asked.
+
+Barney laughed.
+
+“He’s a graduate of Carlyle University,” he answered. “He’s come out
+West to teach school.”
+
+In the meantime, Elinor had been led by Tony Blackstone into the
+courtyard, where they sat down on a bench. Overhead the stars gleamed
+with incredible brilliancy, partly because the stars from a Western
+plain seem infinitely larger and grander than they do anywhere else, and
+partly because they gazed at them from the depths of a small dark
+courtyard.
+
+“Perhaps Miss Campbell would not like to have me leave the—the
+ballroom,” said Elinor, not knowing how to designate the dining room in
+its present use.
+
+“It’s only a step away,” said Tony Blackstone, “and we can’t talk in
+there very well. You remind me of—of an English girl I once knew, and
+it would be just common charity to talk to me a little.”
+
+“Are you homesick, then?” asked Elinor.
+
+“Sometimes. If anything happens to remind me of—of my other home.”
+
+“Then you are not happy here?” the young girl demanded quickly, as if
+this were a confirmation of her suspicions.
+
+“There are times when I am happy,” he said. “When I am riding at night
+across the plains on a horse that goes like the wind. It is wonderful
+then, especially when the moon is full. I can almost forget that I have
+an identity at such times.”
+
+There was a long pause. Elinor hardly knew what to say, and she watched
+the young man gravely. That he was deeply moved by the memories her own
+face had conjured up she could plainly see. His lips twitched
+convulsively and he clenched his hands as if he were trying to choke the
+thoughts that would rise in his mind. Why had he come away from home and
+lost himself in this distant place?
+
+They sat thus for some time watching the stars silently. A sympathy had
+sprung up between them and they seemed to have known each other for a
+long time.
+
+“What was her name?” she asked at last in a low voice.
+
+“Elinor,” he burst out. “Elinor, the same as yours,” and he turned his
+face away.
+
+Perhaps he was crying. Elinor never knew, although it seemed strange for
+a big splendid cowboy to shed tears.
+
+“I’m so sorry for you,” she said kindly, and laid her hand on his arm, a
+great piece of condescension for her. “Touch-me-not” was a nick-name
+given her long ago by her friends.
+
+“Oh, Elinor, Elinor,” he exclaimed, taking her hand in his, “if you
+could only understand what the sight of your face and the sound of your
+voice mean to me! If you could only know what I have lost by my folly,
+my wretched, miserable folly!”
+
+“Aren’t you ever going back?” she asked, and she did not withdraw her
+hand.
+
+“It’s too late now,” he said. “She hates me—they all hate me!”
+
+“Are you sure?” she persisted.
+
+“Perfectly certain.”
+
+“Elinor, dear, I think you had better come back, now,” called Miss
+Campbell, who never let her girls out of her sight for long.
+
+“Is Blackstone your real name?” Elinor asked as they paused before the
+door of the dancing room.
+
+“My real name,” he replied, “is Algernon Blackstone de Willoughby
+Winston.”
+
+Elinor repeated the names after him and buried them deep in her mind.
+
+A Virginia reel was forming and Mrs. Steptoe has asked as an especial
+favor if the young ladies would not dance. Nancy had given her hand to
+Jim for the dance. It was the third time she had bestowed this honor
+upon him, and with unconcealed joy he stood at the top of the line ready
+to lead off. Billie was dancing with Barney McGee. Mary had accepted
+Brek Steptoe as a partner and Elinor, with Algernon Blackstone de
+Willoughby Winston now joined the line.
+
+There were only three or four other women including Mrs. Steptoe, and
+for the rest, cowboys and ranchmen danced together with perfect good
+nature.
+
+How strange it seemed to Miss Campbell, her four girls dancing among
+these queer people. No wonder the other dancers forgot the figures of
+the reel while they drank in the picture of their fresh young faces. It
+was to them as if a garden of roses had suddenly sprung up in the
+desert.
+
+“Down the center,” called the musician. “Now, right and left all
+around.”
+
+The fiddle whined. The guitar thrummed passionately. Miss Campbell’s
+head was in a whirl.
+
+“Ought we to have taken the risk of this visit?” she kept saying. “When
+one is traveling one must have experiences,” her thoughts continued.
+“Besides, what harm can come of it? They are rough, kindly people, and
+have taken so much trouble to give us this entertainment. But I really
+don’t care for all this noise and dust. I hope I shall never go to
+another one.”
+
+The little lady leaned her head wearily against the wall and closed her
+eyes. An arm slipped around her waist. It was Elinor, who having danced
+her turn had quietly joined her. Her partner had disappeared in the
+courtyard.
+
+The two women exchanged meaning glances. The noisy dance, the jingling
+spurs of the cowboys as the dancers came down the middle, and an
+occasional loud laugh did not appeal to Elinor either.
+
+“We must excuse ourselves, dear,” Miss Campbell was saying, when
+suddenly the courtyard resounded with a loud cry.
+
+“You insufferable, black-livered hound,” came the voice of Algernon
+Blackstone de Willoughby Winston, “if I catch you sneaking around here
+again with your knives, I’ll throw you out to the coyotes.”
+
+The dance continued, and only one dancer dropped out. Either they had
+not heard the disturbance, or else such disturbances were too common to
+notice. It was, consequently, Rosina Steptoe alone, with face aflame and
+eyes snapping like two little wells of fire, who signed to her partner
+and approached the doorway. She was too angry to notice how near Miss
+Campbell and Elinor were sitting to the open door.
+
+“Tony, how dare you speak to my brother like that,” she hissed into the
+court. “I told you before I wouldn’t have it.”
+
+“Nonsense, Rosina, your brother deserves a good thrashing for his
+tricks. I just caught his arm as he was about to throw this dagger into
+the room.”
+
+“It was only a little joke, Rosy,” whined her brother.
+
+“Joke be hanged,” broke in the Englishman, “how dare you attempt to
+frighten these ladies by such a joke. Try it again and I’ll keep my
+word.”
+
+“Don’t you be so interferin’ with the Hawkes family,” cried Rosina
+shrilly.
+
+Miss Campbell rose. The dance was just reaching a climax with its final
+right and left all round. She beckoned to the girls.
+
+“If you don’t mind, Mrs. Steptoe, I think we’ll say good-night. We’ve
+had a long day. The entertainment has been most delightful.”
+
+Rosina became humble under the gaze of the elegant little woman.
+
+“I will show you to your rooms,” she said meekly.
+
+They bade the company a general good night, and it was not long before
+they had locked themselves into their bedrooms, and following Miss
+Campbell’s instructions, had pushed the heaviest piece of furniture in
+the room against each door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.—INTO THE WILDERNESS.
+
+
+Steptoe Lodge in the morning was very different from Steptoe Lodge at
+night. The dark courtyard, full of shifting shadows, was now a clean and
+open space bright with new light.
+
+Miss Campbell alone of the motor party had not slept well because she
+had been afraid to open her windows. She had cautioned the girls against
+opening their’s, but Billie had flatly rebelled.
+
+“I cannot sleep in a vacuum, Cousin Helen, and if anyone were tall
+enough to crawl in the window, we could among us make enough noise to
+raise the roof off the house.”
+
+But the night had been peaceful and the cheerfulness of the June morning
+with the sweet scents of the innumerable wild flowers which starred the
+plains, dispelled Miss Campbell’s fears.
+
+Someone was singing in the courtyard, a song which Elinor knew and
+loved.
+
+  “Hark, hark, the lark from Heaven’s gate sings,
+  And Phoebus ’gins arise,
+  His steeds to water at those springs
+  On chaliced flowers that lies;
+  And winking Mary-buds begin to ope their golden eyes:
+  With everything that pretty is, my lady sweet, arise,
+  Arise, arise.”
+
+“It’s Mr. Wins——,” she broke off, “Mr. Blackstone, I mean.”
+
+“Isn’t it strange that he should be here among these rough uneducated
+people,” observed Mary, thoughtfully. “Did he tell you anything about
+himself last night, Elinor?”
+
+But Elinor kept her own counsel. She was not one to tell the secrets of
+others even to her own particular, intimate friends and she knew that
+what Algernon Blackstone de Willoughby Winston had confided to her the
+night before, he had meant for her ears alone.
+
+A tap on the door, however, interrupted her guarded reply.
+
+It was Barney McGee. Would any of the young ladies like a gallop on the
+plains before breakfast?
+
+“I would, I would,” cried Billie, instantly in a state of joyous
+anticipation.
+
+“Now, Billie, dear,” interrupted her cousin, “I am desperately afraid to
+have you ride one of those wild untamed horses. Remember those animals
+we saw in Buffalo Bill’s Show. They were Western horses, all of them,
+and they jumped around like so many contortionists.”
+
+“We’ll give her the tamest beast in the stable, ma’am,” Barney assured
+her.
+
+“Not one of those frightful bronco creatures, Barney, I hope?”
+
+“No, no, ma’am, a gentle little Texas horse that goes like the wind and
+never balks or kicks——”
+
+“How fast a wind, Barney? A cyclone?”
+
+Barney laughed.
+
+“He’s a first rate little horse, ma’am and any lady could ride him—who
+knows how to stick on,” he added in a lower voice.
+
+But Barney knew he could trust Billie on a Texas pony, having seen her
+take a canter on his own lean animal.
+
+“I haven’t any habit,” announced Billie.
+
+“Rosina keeps this one for the ladies who stop here,” said Barney,
+disclosing a khaki divided skirt which had been in a bundle under his
+arm.
+
+Ten minutes later, Billie was waiting at the long low shed which
+answered for a stable, while Barney led forth a small gray horse called
+Jocko. Two little impish devils peeped from the depths of Jocko’s eyes,
+but he flicked his tail lazily and lowered his head in a deceivingly
+humble manner.
+
+Rosina was to ride with them. Miss Campbell would on no account permit
+Billie to ride unchaperoned on the plains, even with the trustworthy
+Barney as a companion.
+
+The mistress of the rancho presently emerged from the stable, leading a
+small sorrel horse. She also wore divided skirts, and with one bound
+leapt into the saddle, a feat Billie had not expected from her awkward,
+rather dumpy appearance. But it was very evident Rosina enjoyed the
+sport. With a curious cry, not unlike that given by her brother,
+Blackthorn Hawkes, the night before, when he danced the Indian war
+dance, she flew over the plains, followed by Barney and Billie.
+
+Never had Billie enjoyed anything so much as that wild morning ride. The
+air was cool and crisp. The sky intensely blue, and everywhere, as far
+as the eye could see, were the rolling purple prairies, dotted with wild
+flowers.
+
+She forgot Miss Campbell, forgot her three friends, indeed her mind was
+filled only with the joy of the moment.
+
+Perhaps an Arabian horse on the desert might outstrip him, but indeed
+Jocko’s feet seemed hardly to touch the earth as he skimmed along.
+
+Soon he was ahead of the others. Billie looked back over her shoulder
+and saw Barney making wild gesticulations as the distance between them
+widened. But Jocko’s mouth was as hard as steel, and when the young girl
+began presently to draw him in, she made no more impression on him than
+the wind along the waste.
+
+“Whoa, Jocko,” she cried. “Stop, stop, you little beast.”
+
+On went Jocko, swifter than the wind, swifter than anything Billie had
+ever imagined. Leaning far over, like a jockey, she pressed her knees
+into his sides and held to his mane for dear life.
+
+“Perhaps he will tire out,” she thought. “In the meantime, the best I
+can do is to stick on.”
+
+Only once, did she give an upside-down, backward glance through the
+crook in her elbow, but her companions were nowhere in sight. Just how
+long Billie gripped the pony’s neck in this manner and kept her seat,
+she hardly knew. It might have been five minutes and it might have been
+thirty. She felt as a shooting star must feel as it flashes through the
+universe; a secret, blind exhilaration and an immense vacancy of space
+which seemed to surround her, and withal an overpowering fear.
+
+Then there came a sudden and utterly unexpected halt. At the same moment
+she unconsciously loosened her grip on the horse’s mane. Head over heels
+she went, straight over the pony’s head, and lay huddled on the ground,
+limp and inert.
+
+Jocko sniffed at her an instant and then turned and trotted away. The
+two little imps in his eyes had retired, and he was once more a
+mild-mannered demure gray pony.
+
+Imagine yourself the one small human speck in a great vast wilderness of
+prairie and you can form a vague idea of Billie’s sensations when she
+opened her eyes.
+
+Trying to collect her scattered senses, she pulled herself together and
+stood up. Her head swam and she had a shaky sensation in her knees.
+
+“Let me see,” she said out loud in a puzzled voice. “Cousin Helen and
+the girls are—well where are they? And——Oh,” she cried, pressing her
+hands to her head as memory came back to her and she perceived herself
+to be alone on the plains. Then she looked about for the treacherous
+Jocko, but he had disappeared over the horizon.
+
+When Billie’s blood had resumed its normal tempo and her head had ceased
+to throb, she began to walk in what she judged from the sun to be a
+Southerly direction. She walked for a long time but nowhere could she
+see signs of her friends.
+
+“I might as well be a canoe in the middle of the ocean,” she said at
+length, sitting down on the ground in despair. “I don’t seem to get
+anywhere, and—Oh, dear, how hot and tired and thirsty and hungry I am!”
+
+Once she tried calling, but her voice seemed to her only a small piping
+sound in the great emptiness.
+
+“I declare, I feel about as large as a microscopic insect,” she
+exclaimed with a little sobbing laugh.
+
+Then with a sudden resolution, she began to run.
+
+“I won’t be lost,” she cried. “I won’t! I won’t! Haloo-oo-o,
+Barney—Rosina—where are you?”
+
+Perhaps you have heard of the madness of people lost in a great forest
+or in the desert. It is a terrible growing fear which often turns into
+insanity unless it is held in check. Billie had heard of this madness.
+Her father had once told her of the sad case of a man lost in the
+Adirondacks who ran round and round in a circle, and when at last he was
+found, he was still running in a circle, completely out of his senses.
+
+Checking her impulse to give way to this delirium, the young girl sat
+down and began to think.
+
+“Now, Billie,” she said out loud, as if she were addressing some one
+else, “don’t go and make an idiot of yourself. Be silent and go quietly,
+or you’ll be a raving lunatic in five minutes. Of course the whole ranch
+will set out to find you as soon as they know you are actually lost. And
+of course they will find you. There can be no doubt of that. You are not
+going to die yet. You are far too young and strong and fond of life
+and—and hungry,” she added with a little quaver in her voice.
+
+But not again did Billie give way to the delirium of the lost. With her
+back to the sun she hurried on, not even a village of prairie dogs
+attracting her absorbed attention. As the sun began his afternoon
+course, she became conscious of an intense, unconquerable thirst. At
+first she fought against it, but at last she sat down and indulged in
+memories of spring water. All the cool bubbling wells she had ever seen
+came back to her mind. Memories of a little trickling brook on Seven
+League Island beside which she had once knelt and taken deep long
+draughts; then there was Cold Spring, where she had been on a picnic.
+What a spring that was! A perfect fountain of delicious clear water. She
+recalled a swim she had had in a mountain lake where the water was as
+clear as crystal and very cold. She had swallowed quite a mouthful when
+she dived off a rock, and she could still feel the coolness on her lips.
+
+“But best of all,” she murmured, “best of all was the water in that
+sunken barrel spring on Percy’s place. Oh, for a drop of it now,” she
+cried.
+
+She lay down on the ground and pillowed her head on her arms. Through
+the tall grasses she could see someone still a great way off coming
+toward her so rapidly that the figure loomed larger and larger on the
+landscape. She sat up and waited.
+
+“Here I am,” she heard herself calling. Then she laughed wildly. What
+she had taken for a dumpy squat lady in a bonnet trimmed with two
+pointed velvet bows, turned out to be a great stupid jackrabbit with
+ears as big as a mule’s, who leaped on his hind legs with incredible
+rapidity.
+
+“Silly old thing,” exclaimed Billie irritably. “I thought you were a
+nice, kind, fat old person bringing me a glass of water.”
+
+The truth is the rabbit did bear a striking resemblance to the janitress
+at West Haven High School.
+
+Billie fell asleep and dreamed she was in a fiery furnace calling to her
+father, when suddenly a delicious wetness touched her lips and a few
+drops of water trickled down her parched throat. She opened her eyes.
+Buckthorne Hawkes, Rosina’s brother, was leaning over her with a flask
+of water in his hand.
+
+Was she still dreaming or did she hear him say:
+
+“Next time you will buy an opal of me, eh?”
+
+She opened her eyes again and looked into the face of the peddler who,
+ages back, had cursed them and their ancestors.
+
+But old Mrs. Jack Rabbit had come back. There she was, dark and black
+and squat.
+
+“Good day, Mrs. Jack Rabbit,” Billie called, “did you bring the water?”
+and then she went to sleep with a feeling of security and peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.—HOT AIR SUE.
+
+
+A heated argument was taking place.
+
+“Go on, Hot Air Sue and mind your own business. You are too full of
+curiosity. I tell you I found this girl here. She had run away from
+home.”
+
+“Umph! Umph! Hawkeseye big lie. Hawkeseye always big lie!”
+
+“Woman, will you be quiet. Do you want to make big money. Father rich
+man, see? He pay big money to get girl back. Hot Air Sue make much gold.
+Hot Air Sue have necklace and fine new dress.”
+
+“Umph! Umph!”
+
+“If I promise to take you, will you keep quiet?”
+
+“Umph! Umph!”
+
+Billie’s wandering mind had returned to its dwelling place but she still
+kept her eyes closed even when she felt two strong arms lift her up and
+place her on a seat which seemed almost familiar. She half opened her
+eyes and looked through the lashes. She was in an automobile, but it was
+not the Comet.
+
+“Get in, Sue. Sit here and hold her beside you. I’ll run the car.”
+
+Evidently there were only two seats to the motor car. Billie was
+squeezed into a seat beside the woman and while the peddler, Indian, or
+whatever he was, was cranking up the machine she opened her eyes and
+looked straight into the little pig eyes of a fat Indian squaw.
+
+“Shut eyes,” whispered Hot Air Sue and Billie promptly closed them
+again, feeling suddenly very wide awake and alert.
+
+Presently they were moving smoothly and silently over the prairie. The
+automobile was a very fast one and the wind raised by the swift motion
+had a reviving, refreshing effect on the exhausted girl.
+
+“Water and food,” she whispered into the ear of Hot Air Sue.
+
+“Umph!” grunted the squaw. “Girl ver’ sick,” she said to Hawkes. “Must
+have water and bread.”
+
+The man stopped the car and from under the seat drew forth a box of
+crackers and a bottle of water. Billie ate some of the crackers and
+drank deeply from a tin cup of the water. She never stopped to think of
+how clean the cup was or where the sandwich had come from.
+
+Then she laid her head on the Indian woman’s breast and pretended to go
+back to sleep.
+
+“Where going?” she heard Hot Air Sue ask.
+
+“Across the border,” he said. “Into Colorado. We’ll get there by
+evening.”
+
+The air was beginning to have a cool feeling. They had left the plains
+abruptly behind them and were nearing the mountains.
+
+“I must get back tonight,” said Billie to herself. “Cousin Helen will
+die of heart failure if I don’t.”
+
+Although her body was exhausted, her mind was clear and with her eyes
+closed, she was able to think connectedly and deeply. “I am being
+kidnapped,” her thoughts continued. “Hot Air Sue is my friend and will
+save me if she possibly can. The trouble is we haven’t any money between
+us, I suppose.”
+
+Once after a long time they stopped and Hawkes jumped out and examined
+one of the tires.
+
+“Sue save young lady,” whispered the old Indian woman. “Sue not afraid.
+Don’t wake up.”
+
+The man came and stood at the side of the car and looked into Billie’s
+face.
+
+“Hot Air Sue good old girl,” he said. “Hot Air Sue won’t be sorry she
+helped Hawkeseye. Give me water bottle. Hawkeseye get water. Hot Air Sue
+look after girl. She mustn’t run away. No money, no girl.”
+
+“Umph! umph!” grunted the woman. “Sue would get water for young chief,
+but Sue must hold girl.”
+
+Hawkeseye took the bottle and started down to a spring which bubbled out
+of the rocks at the foot of a small precipice at one side of the road.
+
+Billie watched him as he leaped nimbly from one rock to another. Then
+with one flying leap she was out of the machine and had cranked it up.
+At the sound of the motor the man looked up quickly, dropped the bottle
+with a crash of broken glass and began to run up the cliff. It was a
+difficult place in which to turn, and Billie was obliged to go backward
+down a narrow road, but the young girl kept her head and moved the
+machine slowly and deliberately.
+
+“Hawkeseye come runnin’,” said the Indian woman. “White girl hurry.”
+
+Another moment and they were headed in the other direction, but
+Hawkeseye had reached them. With a bound he seized the back of the
+machine and was lifting himself on his elbows.
+
+Instantly Hot Air Sue whipped out a knife which she had hidden somewhere
+in the depths of her shawl, and slashed him across the wrist. With a
+yell of fury the man fell backward and lay on the ground. Billie gave
+one glance over her shoulder. Never had she felt so deliberately and
+cruelly cold-blooded as at that moment. If Buckthorne Hawkes’ back had
+been broken she would have gone on just the same. But it was not broken,
+for a second glance showed him crawling to the side of the road.
+
+“I’m at Steptoe Lodge. Do you know where that is?” she asked Hot Air
+Sue, who was regarding her efforts at running the motor car with stolid
+admiration.
+
+“Steptoe Lodge thirty miles away.”
+
+“Thirty miles? That’s nothing,” replied Billie cheerfully. “Is this the
+right road?”
+
+“This is first right road. This road wrong later.”
+
+“You mean we take another road that branches off from this?”
+
+“Umph!”
+
+“Will you tell me when we get to it?”
+
+“Hot Air Sue tell everything. Hot Air Sue talk much. That’s why cowboys
+call her ‘Hot Air.’”
+
+Billie laughed. Was it possible she had been dying of thirst in the
+desert only a few hours before, and here she was exhilarated and almost
+shouting with joy over her escape; riding with Hot Air Sue in a
+perfectly strange automobile. But was it perfectly strange? She leaned
+over and looked at the color as they sped along. It was gray. It was a
+racing car and it was built for two.
+
+“Hawkeseye bad man. Hawkeseye call himself school-teacher. He bad
+Indian,” went on Sue. “He no teacher. He thief. He no Indian, either. He
+only half Indian. That’s why Hawkeseye bad man. All white or all red
+better.”
+
+“Hawkeseye steals automobiles,” said Billie.
+
+“Umph! Umph! His sisters, they spoil Hawkeseye. They work to send him to
+school and give him fine clothes.”
+
+“Has he got another sister?”
+
+“Hawkeseye got two sisters—Rosina and Maria.”
+
+“The illustrious Hawkes family,” said Billie to herself. “Well-known in
+the West. I think the most dangerous member of that family had better be
+locked up.”
+
+The first stars were just coming into view when Billie drew up in front
+of Steptoe Lodge, but in all that big ranch house only two human beings
+were there to greet her—Miss Helen Campbell and the Chinese cook.
+
+Seizing a trumpet made of a cow’s horn the Chinaman rushed to the top of
+the house and blew half a dozen blasts that resounded over the prairie
+like the call of the wild huntsman, and in fifteen minutes from every
+direction horses and ponies bearing cowboy riders were dashing across
+the plains toward the Lodge. But far more amazing to Billie was the
+sight of her own red Comet hastening eagerly toward her, and at the
+wheel sat Mary, clever little pupil that she was, and in the back seat
+were Elinor and Nancy crying and calling and waving their handkerchiefs
+all at once.
+
+Miss Campbell had been completely prostrated. She was in bed with a wet
+towel around her head and her eyes were red with weeping. Billie also
+was put to bed and fed by her devoted friends with hot soup and dry
+toast. She was more exhausted than she cared to admit, and it was Hot
+Air Sue, with her talent for inexhaustible conversation, who made
+explanations to the household of Steptoe Lodge.
+
+The next morning two men arrived at the Lodge. They bore a warrant for
+the arrest of one, Buckthorne Hawkes, automobile thief. But Buckthorne
+Hawkes was not to be found. However, they confiscated the gray racing
+car, and the girls knew that Peter Van Vechten was once more in
+possession of his property.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.—ON THE ROAD AGAIN.
+
+
+The Comet had now a guide. No more excursions into the wilderness of the
+unknown for him. Timidly and cautiously he crept along as close to the
+tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad as the highway permitted, for they
+were about to go through the wild rugged country where rise the
+snow-capped ranges of the Rocky Mountains.
+
+With a sigh of relief they said good-by to Steptoe Lodge.
+
+“It was interesting, but uncomfortable,” Miss Campbell had said. For a
+whole day Billie’s experience had quite shaken Miss Campbell’s
+enthusiasm in the journey. It was not a permanent distaste, however.
+Having remained quietly in West Haven for a quarter of a century, the
+little woman was now possessed with a thirst for travel. She had
+developed into a high-toned Gypsy with a disposition to perpetual
+wandering.
+
+The partings at Steptoe Lodge had some of them been quite moving; but
+not Rosina’s, who had bade them a chilly farewell. Her nature was a
+stormy one, a strange mixture of hot and cold, anger and humility,
+courage and fear.
+
+“I don’t know whom she’s angriest with,” Billie had observed, “our
+ex-teacher, Maria, for putting her brother up to such lawless tricks or
+us because we were the victims.”
+
+“I hope they catch him,” said Miss Campbell firmly. “I do, indeed, and
+shut him up in prison for a long, long time. Such dangerous characters
+ought not to be allowed to run at large.”
+
+“They’ll catch him if Brek Steptoe has any influence,” put in Nancy.
+“Barney told me his cousin was never going to put up with Hawkeseye
+again. He had stood all he intended. Rosina was now to choose between
+them.”
+
+“What is that you’re looking at, Nancy?” demanded Elinor, changing the
+subject.
+
+Nancy blushed and laughed.
+
+“A parting gift from Jim,” she replied.
+
+Poor Jim had ridden for some miles beside the Comet and they had gone
+slowly in order to enjoy his company. Then, with a last hand-shake all
+around and a heart-breaking sigh, he stopped in the middle of the road,
+his sombrero in one hand and his horse’s reins in the other. And there
+he stood as still as a statue until the motor car was reduced to a small
+scarlet dot on the horizon. When he had shaken hands with Nancy, he
+thrust a small package into her lap. There were tears in Nancy’s eyes
+when she looked at the contents of the package, although her laugh rang
+out as merrily as her friends’ as she drew forth the hind foot of a jack
+rabbit mounted on a plaited loop of horsehair.
+
+“Does he expect me to wear this thing around my neck,” she cried
+dangling the clumsy paw between her small thumb and forefinger.
+
+“There’s a note,” said Mary, leaning over Nancy’s shoulder.
+
+Nancy smiled again as she read the note, first to herself and then out
+loud:
+
+  “Dear Miss Nancy:
+
+  “I killed the rabbit in an Indian burying ground in the dark of the
+  moon. The hair came from my horse’s tail. He’s a fine little animal,
+  my horse. I love him best in the world next to—something else I
+  like better. I wish it were a gold rabbit’s foot set in diamonds,
+  but it’s a long ways here from a jewelry store, and this is the best
+  I can do. I’ve had it a long time, and it’s brought me good luck at
+  last, because I’ve met you. I hope it will bring you luck. Good-by.
+  It’s the hardest good-by I ever had to say. If I ever strike a gold
+  mine I’m coming East. Good-by again.
+
+                                                                “Jim.”
+  “P. S.—Don’t forget me.”
+
+“Poor, lonely soul!” exclaimed Miss Campbell, wiping the moisture from
+her eyes. “Where are his people, I wonder?”
+
+“He hasn’t any,” answered Nancy. “His father was a miner and he died
+when Jim was a little boy. He’s worked in lumber camps and lived around
+like this all his life. I think he’s very gentlemanly, considering. He
+says Tony has taught him a lot. Jim is only eighteen, you know, although
+he looks much older.”
+
+Deep down in her heart Miss Campbell made a resolution that she would
+like to do something very nice for Jim.
+
+They slept that night at Cheyenne, which had once been a rude little
+frontier town, and was now a handsome city, and the next day pushed on
+toward Laramie. After riding hundreds of miles over level prairie
+grounds, the eyes become accustomed to wide stretches of landscape and
+the mind, too, takes a broader and more generous outlook on life. What
+is called “the peace of the plains” seems to brood over the traveler.
+
+Our five motorists were filled with this quietude as they went Westward.
+All the difficulties of the trip and past dangers were forgotten. They
+were as peaceful as holy pilgrims journeying toward Mecca. At last, late
+in the afternoon, Billie suddenly stopped the car and pointed silently
+toward the setting sun. She had caught her first glimpse of the Rocky
+Mountains.
+
+Far in the distance they lay, the first vague misty opalescent peaks of
+the great chain which divides the West into countries. They were only
+the earliest indications of the wild and beautiful scenery of Wyoming
+through which they were about to pass.
+
+“And after Wyoming comes Utah,” observed Mary Price, thinking aloud.
+
+“And in Utah comes Evelyn,” called Billie.
+
+The girls thrilled at the thought of Evelyn. What might not have
+happened to her since she had been compelled to return to Utah.
+
+“Perhaps her father has made her marry a Mormon,” suggested Mary in an
+awed tone of voice.
+
+“Or shut her in a dungeon,” pursued Nancy, who had a vague idea such
+things might take place in this strange city.
+
+“It’s like the story of the wicked king and the princess,” here put in
+Elinor, her thoughts running on royal blood as usual.
+
+The girls smiled, but the notion was a disquieting one at any rate and
+Billie began silently to calculate how long it would take before they
+could reach Salt Lake City, weather and Comet permitting.
+
+“I wish—I wish——” she began, but the whistle of a locomotive
+interrupted her.
+
+“It’s the express,” exclaimed one of the girls.
+
+“It’s going to stop.”
+
+“But there’s no station.”
+
+“A man is flagging it, don’t you see. It’s the track walker, I suppose.
+Perhaps something is the matter ahead.”
+
+A very tall man with a lean figure, broad shoulders and a flopping
+sombrero hat was, in fact, waving a red flag in front of the Western
+express, which slowed up and presently, almost opposite the motor car,
+came to a full stop. The Comet also paused and waited to see what was
+the trouble.
+
+The engine was too far in front to hear the conversation between the
+engineer, who now thrust his head out of the window, and the individual
+with the flag. But what happened next was exceedingly strange. The
+flagman, casting aside his signal, followed the engineer down the track
+to the first coach, which was the baggage car, and presently emerged on
+the platform leading to the next coach.
+
+And now the engineer was not alone. Several baggage men and train
+officials had joined him, and they walked with their arms held up in the
+air. So absorbed was the motor party with the strange actions of the
+train people that they failed at the moment to notice what the lean
+individual was carrying in his hand. Neither could they tell what was
+taking place in the first passenger coach, but as the train officials
+were herded across the platform, still with arms uplifted, they suddenly
+became aware that the pockets in their coats, trousers and waistcoats
+were turned wrong side out, and that the man who was driving them in
+front of him like a herd of cattle held a pistol in his right hand, on
+the barrel of which the sun shone brilliantly.
+
+“Billie, Billie, go on as fast as you can go, they are train robbers,”
+whispered Miss Campbell hoarsely, almost bereft of her voice from
+fright.
+
+Billie jumped out of the machine, wishing with all her heart that
+somebody would invent a motor car that wouldn’t need to be cranked up.
+
+“Beggin’ your pardon, Miss, will you kindly stay where you are?” said a
+soft, drawling voice behind them.
+
+They turned quickly and faced another broad-shouldered individual with a
+sombrero half covering his lean, sunburned face. His gray eyes twinkled
+with amusement when he saw their consternation.
+
+“We won’t do no harm to you, ladies, except to ask you for a lift after
+this little business is over. Jes’ keep perfectly quiet and ask no
+questions, and we’ll tell you no lies.”
+
+Somehow, Billie did not feel frightened at this gentle, humorous person.
+
+“Suppose we don’t care to give you a lift,” she said, her hand on the
+cranking lever.
+
+“That would be a pity, Miss,” answered the man coaxingly, “because,” he
+went on slowly, “you see——” his hand slipped in his hip pocket and
+drew out a small, dangerous-looking revolver.
+
+“Billie, darling, don’t oppose the creature!” cried Miss Campbell in a
+strangled voice.
+
+“Steady! steady!” said the man. “Don’t git nervous, lady. You’ll come
+through the ordeal as well as you ever was in your life. Jes’ draw in a
+bit.”
+
+Never had the moments dragged so slowly as they did now. Through the car
+windows they could see men and women with arms uplifted. Was it possible
+that one man could rob fifty? No; not one. They perceived two
+confederates, who had sprung up from somewhere, followed behind with a
+pistol in each hand. An intense quiet seemed to hang over the place as
+the robbers went silently through the train, and at last emerged from
+the back. The herd of officials were now made to get out and walk toward
+the engine. The engineer was permitted to climb into his engine, the
+others climbed in anywhere after him. As the train began to get up steam
+a man called out:
+
+“Good heavens! there’s an automobile full of girls. We can’t leave them
+at the mercy of these blackguards.”
+
+“They’re confederates!” called another man.
+
+“Confederates? Nonsense! Don’t you see that fellow has a pistol aimed at
+them?”
+
+As the train started, the passenger ran back to the platform and jumped
+off. The next moment three train robbers and a young man without any hat
+surrounded the Comet:
+
+“Now, don’t try any monkey business, young feller,” said the first
+robber, pointing his pistol at the passenger. “Jes’ stay right where you
+are. I don’t want to commit murder.”
+
+“Put that pistol up, Jim Bowles. I’m not afraid of you or of any of your
+disreputable acquaintances. These ladies are friends of mine, and I
+intend to stay with them.”
+
+The girls, who had huddled down in the car white and silent, took
+courage and looked up.
+
+It was Daniel Moore who was speaking.
+
+Miss Campbell gave a little tremulous cry like a child’s.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Moore, I implore you not to leave us.”
+
+“I mean what I say,” pursued Jim Bowles. “If you wanter be still
+breathing fresh air in another two minutes, stay where you are.”
+
+Daniel Moore looked him calmly in the eye.
+
+“Do you remember Christmas Eve at Silver Bow two years ago?” he asked.
+
+The robber’s face was curiously twisted with emotion.
+
+“Yes,” he replied.
+
+“I cut you down,” said Daniel Moore. “You would have been strung up
+there yet if I hadn’t come back in time. The scar is still there, I
+see.”
+
+He glanced at the man’s sinewy throat around which ran a deep red scar.
+
+With one stride Jim Bowles reached the other side of the automobile and
+seized Mr. Moore’s hand.
+
+“Wuz you the gennelman? Stranger, git in and take it easy. We won’t do
+no harm to these ladies. But we’d like to git a lift. I knowed you wuz a
+brave man as soon as I seen you, and no one kin ever say Jim Bowles
+forgits a favor.”
+
+Daniel Moore climbed in behind with Miss Helen and the girls who huddled
+down somehow, while the robbers pressed themselves into the front and
+Billie started the machine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.—IN THE ROBBERS’ NEST.
+
+
+For an hour the Comet had been toiling upward by a circuitous and
+intricate way. But he had not lost in speed. Billie had made up her mind
+not to linger. If they must see these men into a safe hiding place it
+was well to get it over with as soon as possible.
+
+They had not been permitted to light the Comet’s one illuminating eye,
+but had gone silently and swiftly along. It was now eight o’clock by the
+motor timepiece, but it was still light enough to see the road winding
+in front of them like a white ribbon in the blue gray atmosphere.
+
+“We are most there now, young Miss,” Jim Bowles observed respectfully.
+He admired intensely this intrepid young woman who drove a car better
+than most men.
+
+“Most where?” she asked calmly, but with inward quaking. “It’s better,”
+she thought, “to let him think I’m not frightened, but I am just the
+same.”
+
+“Most to the place we’re goin’ to,” he remarked mysteriously.
+
+“It’s very inconvenient for us,” she replied, gathering courage as she
+noted his respectful manner. “We had expected to reach Salt Lake City
+the day after to-morrow.”
+
+“Salt Lake City,” he exclaimed. “Young lady, it’s lucky you spoke. I
+know a short cut through the mountains and I’ve got a friend as’ll show
+you the way.”
+
+“But it’s just a pass, isn’t it? Not a road for automobiling.”
+
+“Many a prairie schooner has passed that way, Miss, an’ wasn’t none the
+worse for it, neither. The road ain’t known to everybody, but it’ll save
+you half a day’s travel, an’ I’ll be glad to make you acquainted with it
+and protect you on the journey, too.”
+
+“Only a few hours ago we were wishing to find a short cut to Salt Lake
+City,” she thought. “Wishes do come true in such an unpleasant manner
+sometimes.”
+
+The Comet slowed down. The road became very steep and rugged, and
+straight above them loomed a precipice, like an immeasurable black wall.
+As they turned a curve a blast of cold air blew straight into their
+faces, and they began to feel strangely light, as if they had no bodies
+and were floating in space. Presently in the dim light they perceived
+three silent figures standing across the road, each with a shotgun.
+
+“Draw in, men, it’s friends,” called Jim Bowles. “Take this road, Miss,”
+he added, pointing to a broad trail that appeared to have been cut
+through the rocks.
+
+The motorists gave a start of surprise when the Comet presently slipped
+into what proved to be later a sort of cup in the side of the mountain,
+well hidden by the rocky walls surrounding it.
+
+In the dim light they saw a group of log huts huddled close together, as
+if for companionship. There were lights in the windows, and framed in
+the doorway of the nearest hut was the figure of a woman whose face was
+turned anxiously in their direction.
+
+Jim Bowles crawled slowly out of the motor car and began a whispered
+conference with his confederates.
+
+“Mr. Moore,” said Miss Campbell, as she clutched his arm, “we are in a
+nest of robbers. Do you think we shall ever get out alive? Tell me the
+worst before they come back.”
+
+“Don’t let them know you are frightened. These men admire courage more
+than anything else in the world. I will keep with you every moment. The
+man named Bowles owes his life to me, and even with all their
+lawlessness, these poor souls are not ungrateful. Don’t protest about
+anything, and don’t make any demands. Try to be perfectly calm and,
+above all, pretend to be pleased. I believe they’ll do the best they can
+for you tonight. They may even show us out of the gulch, although I
+doubt it.”
+
+Miss Campbell lapsed into silence. She considered that Daniel Moore had
+a very optimistic turn of mind, considering the circumstances.
+
+“You can’t git out of the gulch to-night, Miss,” said Jim Bowles,
+returning to the side of the car. “It’s too dark, and the roads ain’t
+good enough for night travel in that there machine. You’ll have to stay
+here tonight, but before we admit you into our happy homes you’ve got to
+take an oath, an’ if you break it it’ll be the worse for you. We don’t
+take no half measures.”
+
+“What do you want us to promise, Jim?” asked Mr. Moore.
+
+“You’ve got to promise before we let you leave this place that you never
+will tell to nobody what you know about it, and that the one that shows
+you the trail to-morrow morning won’t git pinched through you.”
+
+Jim Bowles was not satisfied until he made each occupant of the motor
+car say solemnly: “I promise,” from Mary, with her high, sweet voice, to
+Daniel Moore in his deeper tones.
+
+And now there came that crucial moment when the Motor Maids and Miss
+Helen Campbell were obliged to leave the protecting interior of the
+Comet and mingle with a band of mountain brigands.
+
+“I can’t do it, Mr. Moore. I tell you, I shall simply die of fright,”
+Miss Campbell whimpered into the ear of Daniel Moore, who seemed like an
+old and intimate friend in this dangerous situation.
+
+“You must,” he said, giving her his arm. “Keep up and don’t show you are
+frightened. If you trust them, they’ll do their best for you, as they
+have promised.”
+
+Then followed Jim Bowles into the first cabin, where the woman had been
+waiting. She was not in sight now.
+
+“Minnie!” called Jim, but there was no answer, and he left the house
+with an exclamation of annoyance.
+
+The girls looked about them timidly. The strangeness and danger of their
+dilemma had made them silent. Mary clung to Elinor and Elinor pressed
+closely to Miss Campbell’s side, while Billie and Nancy kept their hands
+clasped together with that intimate grasp of two friends who need no
+words in which to express their feelings.
+
+There were two rooms in the cabin. The first, a bedroom, and the back
+room a kitchen; and they were astonishingly clean and neat, considering
+the wildness of their occupants. No doubt this was due to Minnie, who
+now appeared, dark-eyed, handsome and defiant. She stood in the doorway,
+looking at them, half boldly and half timidly.
+
+Then Miss Helen Campbell made what she considered afterward the effort
+of her life.
+
+She walked straight up to Minnie and held out her hand.
+
+“How do you do, my dear?” she said. “It’s very kind of you to take us
+into your nice little home. Shall we not be friends? I must introduce
+you to my four girls.”
+
+She raised her heavenly blue eyes and gazed blandly into the girl’s
+fierce dark ones, taking Minnie’s limp hand into hers. Perhaps it had
+been many a day since a lady had spoken kindly to Minnie and treated her
+as an equal. At any rate, she melted completely.
+
+“I’m glad you come,” she said, smiling broadly and showing two rows of
+even white teeth. “It’s awful lonely here sometimes when Jim’s away.”
+She looked across at Jim tenderly, and they all of them understood at
+once what it was that kept Minnie on this lonely mountain side.
+
+It was not long before they were comfortably installed in Jim’s cabin.
+On the little stove in the back room bacon was sending out a pleasing
+aroma. Nancy was engaged in making an omelette. Elinor had charge of the
+tea, while Mary and Billie brought from the store of provisions in the
+Comet the best that it afforded in the way of jam, cheese and mixed
+pickles.
+
+Minnie helped them when she could, but she was very shy and afraid of
+being in the way. Daniel Moore and Miss Campbell sat near the stove
+talking in low voices. Miss Campbell had related to him the story of
+their chance meeting with Evelyn Stone. Occasionally Jim Bowles came and
+stood in the doorway. There was an expression in his eyes half wistful
+and half amused as he regarded these unusual activities in his home.
+
+“Invite Jim and Minnie to supper,” whispered Daniel Moore, “if you want
+to bind them to you with hoops of steel.”
+
+It was never very difficult for the little lady to be charming, and
+having won over Minnie she had somewhat overcome her fears.
+
+“Mr. Bowles,” she said with a graciousness that fairly captivated the
+brigand, “we cannot take possession of your house unless you promise to
+join us at supper. Will you sit here by me, and Minnie, you would rather
+sit with the girls, that is quite plain? Come, Mr. Moore.”
+
+There was not room for all the party at the table, however, and Minnie
+ate her supper with Billie and Nancy on a bench by the stove.
+
+With a sheepish smile on his face Jim Bowles sat down obediently at the
+table and for the first time in his life engaged in an agreeable
+conversation on terms of equality with a real lady.
+
+“If everybody was as nice as you, ma’am,” he said, “I think I would be
+willing to—to—well, give all this up. It’s excitin’ but it’s
+dangerous, and it ain’t respectable.”
+
+“Mr. Bowles,” said Miss Helen, “I believe you are an honest man at
+heart. No man could have such a devoted wife and not have some good in
+him. The moment you decide to give up this—this wild life and are
+looking for honest employment, I shall be glad to help you. There is my
+card. I have only one thing to ask in return: that you see us safely
+through the mountains to-morrow.”
+
+“Granted!” cried Jim, taking the card she offered.
+
+Minnie, who had left the bench and was standing near Miss Campbell’s
+chair, with a rapt expression on her face, cried out fiercely:
+
+“If you only would, Jim! If you only would!”
+
+Suddenly Jim stood up and stretched out his hand for silence.
+
+“Listen!” he whispered.
+
+In the distance came the sound of horses’ hoofs ringing out on the hard
+mountain road.
+
+The door opened and one of the desperadoes thrust in his head.
+
+“Beat it, Jim! Git to the cave! They’re comin’.”
+
+“Ladies, remember your promise!” cried Jim, and with one bound he was
+out of the house and gone.
+
+And then, as if this were not enough to shatter their nervous system
+into little bits, Minnie flung herself on the floor in front of Miss
+Campbell in a perfect passion of tears.
+
+“You won’t give him up!” she cried, beating her hands together in
+misery. “You ain’t goin’ fer to give him up?”
+
+Miss Campbell looked at Daniel Moore, but he refused to advise even by a
+glance.
+
+Billie kneeled down beside Minnie and put her arm around the poor girl’s
+neck, while she looked appealingly at her cousin.
+
+“My poor child,” said Miss Campbell, after a very perceptible pause, “we
+won’t tell on your husband. He is certainly a very lawless character,
+but maybe he’ll reform if he has a chance.”
+
+“Thank you! Thank you!” cried Minnie, kissing Miss Campbell’s small hand
+with all the fervor of her warm nature.
+
+“Now, Minnie, go about your work as if nothing had happened. The girls
+will help you, and leave the rest to me. Well,” she observed in a low
+voice to Daniel Moore, who was standing by the window, looking anxiously
+out, “if any one had told me this morning that this evening I should be
+protecting a train robber from the law, I should never have believed
+them in the world. But things seem to happen out in the West that never
+could happen in the East.”
+
+At that moment fully half a dozen horsemen dashed up to the door.
+
+“Go and sit down,” whispered Daniel Moore. “I think we might protect
+this poor girl if we can, wrong as it would seem to the law.”
+
+The door was flung open and several pistols were pointed into the room.
+
+“Don’t move! Keep still, everybody, or you know where you’re at!”
+
+“Nobody has any intention of moving. Come in,” said Daniel Moore.
+
+A big man in a black slouch hat strode in.
+
+“Come out, Jim Bowles. Don’t try to escape. The house is surrounded.
+You’ll git shot for your pains if you do.”
+
+“Jim Bowles is not in this house,” said Daniel Moore.
+
+“Who are you?”
+
+“My name is Moore. I come from Iowa.”
+
+“And who might these be?” demanded the sheriff, pointing to Miss Helen
+and the girls.
+
+“These ladies are taking a motor trip.”
+
+“Let the women answer for themselves. Who are you?” demanded the sheriff
+roughly.
+
+Miss Campbell drew herself up.
+
+“Would you mind taking off your hat?” she said. “It is easier for me to
+reply to a man when he is not wearing a hat.”
+
+The sheriff removed his hat quickly.
+
+“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “We don’t often see ladies in this wild
+country.”
+
+“We are a party of motorists.” said Miss Campbell. “We took the wrong
+road, and this very kind woman gave us shelter. To-morrow we hope to
+resume our journey.”
+
+“Do you know you are probably in the cabin of one of the worst outlaws
+in the State?”
+
+“Are you sure, sir? It is very difficult to believe, and where one is
+treated with so much hospitality one does not look for such things.”
+
+The sheriff turned to Minnie:
+
+“Where is your husband, girl?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“Is he hiding in this house? Tell me the truth.”
+
+“Look for yourself!” cried Minnie, flinging wide the door into the
+bedroom.
+
+“I believe there’s a mistake, Sheriff,” said one of the men. “The
+chief’s nest is farther up the mountain. These people could never have
+found it in a motor car.”
+
+Presently the men left the house. There was a long, long interval when
+they sat listening with strained ears for sounds in the darkness. Once
+there were shots in the distance. At last, as their heads were drooping
+with fatigue and they yearned to lie down anywhere and sleep, the door
+opened and Jim Bowles crept cautiously in.
+
+“Minnie will guide you to the Gap,” he said. “I will meet you there, and
+show you the short cut through the mountains. Good night. And, Miss
+Campbell, I’ll accept your proposition. I’ve been bad, I suppose,
+because I thought there wasn’t nobody good, even the people that claimed
+to be—an’ there wasn’t no use of me bein’, neither. But I was mistaken,
+by a long shot. You kin have back the money, too. I reckon I’ve got
+enough on hand to give the boys their share and still make it out. I was
+savin’ up to buy a ranch in Idyho. But there’s more ways than this of
+gittin’ on. Minnie, I reckon you’ll be glad. Ain’t you, gal?”
+
+“Glad?” whispered Minnie, moving to his side and resting her cheek
+against his shoulder.
+
+He kissed her shyly.
+
+“I don’t want to git caught—understand?” he said. “But I’ve done with
+this old life forever, so help me.”
+
+He raised his hand to heaven in token of his solemn oath.
+
+“We’ll all help you, Jim,” said Daniel Moore.
+
+But Miss Helen Campbell considered Jim and Minnie her private discovery
+and particular property, and that night, reposing on a steamer rug
+spread over their bed, she dreamed golden dreams of their future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.—IN THE ROCKIES.
+
+
+Billie slept later than her friends next morning. Even their movements
+about the room as they dressed did not disturb her, and when at last she
+opened her eyes the sun was pouring his rays through the small window of
+the cabin and outside was the glory of a mid-summer day; for it was June
+21st, and was to be a memorable day in the annals of their trip.
+
+“Dear me,” she exclaimed, “why doesn’t somebody repeat, ‘Go to the ant,
+thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.’ I seem to scent coffee in
+the air. Chief cook and bottle washer, what have you got for breakfast?”
+
+“Corn bread from Minnie’s corn meal,” replied Nancy, who answered to
+this title, “and shirred eggs, the last in our storehouse, and chopped
+beef——”
+
+Billie jumped up.
+
+“You lavish and wasteful young persons,” she cried. “How do you know we
+won’t need some of these things before we get back to civilization?”
+
+“There are still baked beans,” said Nancy reproachfully. Nancy was a
+born cook, and, like other born cooks, she was only amiable when she was
+not interfered with.
+
+“Go out and look at the scenery,” she continued, “and leave us in peace.
+We won’t starve. There’s a box of wheaten biscuit left.”
+
+“I’d just as soon eat a bale of hay,” cried Billie contemptuously. “And
+there’s the Comet. He has to be fed this morning. How do I know that our
+provisions will last? If the food fails and the gasoline likewise, ‘_et
+puis bon jour_,’ as the song says.”
+
+But Billie wasn’t really apprehensive. The day was too fine and her
+spirits too high.
+
+“The truth is, we are all like the angels in heaven rejoicing over one
+sinner repented,” said Mary in a low voice, for Minnie could be seen
+approaching with a pail of water from the spring.
+
+Toilets are meagre affairs in a cabin in the Rocky Mountains, and in a
+quarter of an hour Billie was fully clothed, washed and combed. Mary had
+closed the door of the cabin while she dressed.
+
+“Don’t look out until you see it all at once,” she said. “It’s too
+wonderful to take it by piece-meal.”
+
+Billie, therefore, had not an inkling of what was in store for her until
+she stepped out of the cabin.
+
+Nothing on all her journeys with her father could equal the grand
+panorama which was revealed beyond the cabin door. They appeared to be
+in a world of peaks—“Mr. and Mrs. Peak, and all the young Peaks,” she
+wrote to her father later. In the far distance were snow-capped peaks
+and nearer were lesser peaks. The cabin was built alarmingly near the
+edge of a great cañon, at the foot of which, hundreds of feet below, lay
+a little green valley amazingly peaceful in all this rugged scenery, in
+which cattle no bigger than pinheads at that distance, were quietly
+grazing.
+
+Billie trembled to think what they might have climbed the night before
+without suspecting it. This was certainly a good place for a robbers’
+nest. The cabin was perched on a shelf in the side of the mountain, and
+brave were the men, Billie thought, who dared to climb the path that led
+to it.
+
+It was a gay breakfast party that gathered around the small table that
+morning and Minnie’s eyes glistened with appreciation at sight of the
+white cloth and the bunch of wild flowers in the center, which had been
+Elinor’s contribution to the breakfast.
+
+Even Daniel Moore reflected the good spirits of Miss Campbell and the
+Motor Maids, although his hat and coat and all his luggage had been
+carried away on the train. He had talked a little of Evelyn with Miss
+Helen before breakfast.
+
+“Don’t you think she is beautiful, Miss Campbell?” he asked.
+
+“I certainly do; but she is very young and impetuous, and we must be
+extremely careful what we do, especially if you think she has been
+influenced against you in some way. Her father seems dreadfully stern
+and cruel. It made me shiver even to look at him.”
+
+“He’s really quite fanatic about his religion,” answered Mr. Moore. “And
+you know what such people are—almost madmen; but he is crafty and
+shrewd and very cruel, and I would hate to involve you and the girls in
+any trouble. That is the reason I was hurrying on to Salt Lake City.
+From the itinerary you gave me, I judged that would be your next
+address, and I wanted to stop you before you got into difficulties.”
+
+“The girls have set their hearts on seeing Evelyn again,” said Miss
+Campbell, carefully refraining from mentioning that her own heart had
+some leanings in that direction also.
+
+But the call to breakfast interrupted the conversation.
+
+Another hour and the front of the little cabin appeared like an
+inscrutable face on the side of the mountain, with closed eyes and
+sealed lips. No need to bar the door now from the sheriff and his men,
+for the birds had flown. But because she was never to see the little
+house again, and because, in spite of everything, she had known some
+happiness there, Minnie dropped the calico curtain at the window and
+fastened the wooden latch on the door. It was the last rites before she
+buried her old life forever in the mountains and began a new one with
+Jim in the East.
+
+With an expression of grave determination on her face she took her seat
+beside Nancy in the front and never once looked back until they had
+rounded the curve of the mountain.
+
+Nobody talked much on that morning ride. Billie was engaged in guiding
+the Comet carefully along the dangerous road which cut through a cleft
+in the mountain, and in many places was just wide enough for the car to
+pass. Sometimes they were on the edge of such dizzy heights that Miss
+Campbell held her breath and clenched her teeth to keep from crying out.
+
+“I dare not even whisper,” she said to herself, “for fear of startling
+that child at the wheel.”
+
+She contented herself with clutching Daniel Moore’s arm, but in her
+heart she doubted if even Jim’s salvation was worth the risk of so many
+lives. As for the girls, they had hardly realized the dangers of the
+ride, so absorbed were they in the marvelous scenery. The snow caps of
+the distant ranges gleamed pink in the sunshine, and deep purple shadows
+lay on the ravines below.
+
+As the Comet mounted up and up the steep grade, Miss Campbell’s head
+became lighter and lighter, and her fears seemed to slip away. The high
+altitude had a strangely intoxicating effect on Nancy, too. She began to
+laugh just from the sheer joy of living.
+
+“I feel like an inhabitant of Mars,” she said. “Just a brains and a
+stomach, and no body. I haven’t but two sensations—hunger and
+happiness.”
+
+“Minnie, it’s ten minutes of twelve o’clock,” said Billie presently.
+“Are we anywhere near the Gap?”
+
+The car had now turned a curve on the mountain and was going down grade.
+
+“It’s just down there,” answered Minnie, “but I don’t see Jim,” she
+added, looking about uneasily.
+
+“Well, really——” began Miss Campbell, and paused.
+
+The notion that Jim might not be there to guide them out of this wild
+country had never come to any of them.
+
+“He’s had a long ways to go to get here,” said Minnie. “He’s had to
+travel all night on horseback, but if nothin’ happens to him, Jim’ll
+keep his word. He ain’t never broke it in his life.”
+
+This was reassuring in one way, but discouraging in another—if nothing
+happened! Why had it not occurred to them that many, many things could
+happen?
+
+Miss Campbell looked reproachfully at Daniel Moore.
+
+“Don’t be uneasy,” he said. “I daresay we can get a guide if Jim doesn’t
+show up.”
+
+The road now took a downward turn so precipitate that they wondered how
+the emigrant vans of the Mormons which had once traveled this way had
+been prevented from rolling over the horses and pitching headlong down
+the incline.
+
+But the Comet made the down grade slowly and deliberately. Back of them
+they could see the road winding around the side of the mountain.
+Suddenly a group of horsemen came into sight around the curve. They were
+mere specks of black against the white roadway at this distance, but
+Minnie recognized them.
+
+“Jim!” she called, her voice rising to a high treble, “Jim, man, it’s
+the sheriff!”
+
+And then, looking like some wild creature which had been summoned out of
+the dark places of the earth, Jim himself appeared, running down the
+side of the mountain, stooping low like a hunted animal. The sweat
+poured from his face; his clothes were torn in ribbons and his hands
+were cut and bleeding.
+
+“You see, I didn’t break my word,” he said; “but it ain’t likely I’ll
+escape now. I’m too tired. I’ve been runnin’ for half the night.”
+
+Minnie was sobbing bitterly.
+
+“Cousin Helen, couldn’t we——” began Billie.
+
+“But, my dear, how can we? What shall we do, Mr. Moore?”
+
+“We couldn’t hide him in the car. Besides, if they caught him, it would
+get you into no end of trouble,” answered Daniel.
+
+“He could have saved himself if it hadn’t been for us,” said Nancy
+reproachfully.
+
+“We could disguise him in Billie’s polo coat with a veil and goggles,”
+suggested Mary suddenly.
+
+Don’t blame these good people for what they now proceeded to do.
+Certainly it was the wildest, most reckless and dangerous adventure ever
+engaged in by six sensible, well-brought-up people, and two of them at
+least old enough to know better. Remember only that their sympathies
+were very much engaged, and that every cent stolen from the limited
+express was to be returned. While the horsemen were hidden behind a wall
+of rock, Jim’s identity was changed. He became a female of uncertain age
+in a polo coat, an automobile bonnet, goggles and a chiffon veil, which
+concealed his countenance. And sitting between Miss Campbell and Daniel
+Moore on the back seat he resembled any other motorist on a long trip.
+
+They moved slowly down into the valley, and the horsemen as they passed
+lifted their black felt hats with quite a gallant air to Miss Campbell
+and her party.
+
+And so Jim was snatched from the clutches of the law. As he will not
+appear again in this story it will probably interest you to know what
+became of this highly romantic, daring individual. After turning over to
+the railroad by a secret agent—none other than Daniel Moore himself—a
+most remarkable letter, printed below (which you no doubt have seen,
+since it was published broadcast in every paper in the country) and
+returning every penny of the money taken that day from the passengers,
+Jim disappeared from the world as a public character. Taking his real
+name, Jim Dolan, he became a private citizen, and at this very moment
+Jim and Minnie Dolan are tenants of one of Miss Campbell’s beautiful
+farms in the vicinity of West Haven. They have two children and are
+useful members of society.
+
+And all because a lady asked a common thief to eat supper with her and
+treated him as a guest.
+
+Here is Jim’s letter to the railroad company, written in a large,
+sprawling handwriting:
+
+  “To Whom It May Concern—and chiefly the Union Pacific Railroad
+  Company: The undersigned was once Jim Bowles, train robber. I am a
+  reformed man from this day. I ain’t got religion exactly, but the
+  world is a better place than I thought it was. I made a mistake.
+  There are some mighty nice people in it, after all. I herewith
+  return moneys took; henceforth from now on forever more, amen, I
+  lead a new life, so help me God! There are two kinds of repentant
+  sinners. The ones that pray all day for forgiveness and forgets to
+  work, and them that works so hard they haven’t got no time to pray.
+  I’m the last kind. I’m going to work. Amen!
+
+                                       “(signed) Jim Bowles—that was.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.—SALT LAKE CITY.
+
+
+Imagine a lovely valley, green and fertile, encircled by a great chain
+of mountains. Glistening to the westward, like a gem on its bosom, is a
+beautiful lake, and from the very heart of the valley rises the city
+itself. It nestles at the foot of a vast granite temple, which towers
+above the homes of the citizens like a great, gray mountain.
+
+“Perhaps the Land of Canaan looked like this to the Israelites,”
+exclaimed Mary Price, as the Comet paused on the steep road in order to
+give our pilgrims their first glimpse of the old Mormon city. For the
+last thirty-six hours they had been surfeited with magnificent scenery.
+
+“Snow-capped mountains and cañons and waterfalls are getting to be just
+everyday affairs,” wrote Billie to her father, still in distant Russia.
+
+It was a rest to their eyes and their minds, therefore, to look down on
+this peaceful and exquisite valley, Evelyn’s home.
+
+“It’s all very beautiful,” observed Miss Campbell. “I’m sure I never saw
+a more enchanting scene in my life. But there’s one thing that makes it
+more beautiful to me even than the Vale of Cashmere, and that’s a hot
+bath. I’m looking forward to a hot bath, my dears, and a good night’s
+rest on a hair mattress in the best hotel in the city. I trust you feel
+the same.”
+
+The girls laughed.
+
+“We look a good deal like a United States geological surveying party,
+after three months in the wilderness,” answered Daniel Moore, looking
+quizzically at the girls’ sunburned faces, and glancing down at his gray
+flannel shirt, borrowed from Jim Bowles.
+
+“I do feel as if I had returned to my natural element,” said Elinor;
+“just a handful of dust. I am chewing dust and seeing dust and hearing
+dust. My hair is dust and so are my clothes.”
+
+“After we are scrubbed and shampooed and manicured and fed and rested,”
+here put in Billie, “I shall write a note to your Evelyn, Mr. Moore.”
+
+The young man hesitated.
+
+“I’ve repented my bargain with you, Miss Billie. I’m afraid you might
+get into some kind of trouble. I should never forgive myself if I
+involved you in any difficulties.”
+
+“Nonsense,” said Billie, who, having made up her mind to see Evelyn, was
+not going to be thwarted at the eleventh hour. “There could be no
+possible harm in my writing and asking her to call. Besides, we know her
+now anyhow, quite well. Don’t we, Helen?”
+
+“Yes-s—,” hesitated her cousin. “But I agree with Mr. Moore, that we
+had better not make any more efforts to see Evelyn, although I can’t
+possibly see how we could become involved in any trouble by renewing our
+acquaintance.”
+
+So the discussion came to an end. What this beautiful city with the
+mysteries which hung over it had in store for them, they could not even
+guess. Perhaps they would visit its chief points of interest like
+ordinary tourists, and perhaps, who knows, they might penetrate far
+deeper into its secrets. They were certain of one thing, however, that
+Daniel Moore, for all his self-contained and calm exterior, was consumed
+with an unquenchable flame of determination. By hook or by crook, he
+would see Evelyn Stone, and, provided she was willing, he would take her
+away from Utah.
+
+“And we are likely to be the ‘hook or crook,’” observed Billie, through
+whose mind these thoughts were passing, as she guided the Comet into a
+broad, spacious street, lined with beautiful stone houses.
+
+“Where does Evelyn live?” asked Nancy. “Couldn’t we go by the house on
+our way to the hotel?”
+
+“Their town house is on this very street,” answered Evelyn’s lover, “but
+they are likely to be in the country at this time of the year. That’s
+another difficulty. You will see the place presently. It’s on the
+corner. Old Stone is a very rich person, I’m afraid. If he hadn’t had so
+much money, he wouldn’t have looked down on me as a son-in-law.”
+
+Billie slowed up as they neared the fine granite mansion built by
+Evelyn’s father. The front shades were all pulled down, and there was
+not a sign of life about the place.
+
+“It looks more like a prison than a home,” Billie exclaimed. “Does he
+keep his pretty Evelyn locked up there all winter?”
+
+“I’m afraid so,” said Daniel ruefully. “She hasn’t had much liberty
+since she met me, anyhow. He’s an infernal old——”
+
+Daniel broke off in the middle of a sentence, for the front door of the
+Stone house had opened, and there on the threshold, like a dragon at the
+castle gate, stood John James Stone. He could never be said to glance
+casually at anything, but his sharp eyes only rested for a moment on the
+passing motor car, and he turned on his heel and entered the house.
+
+“The old fox is never away, you see,” ejaculated Daniel Moore.
+
+But they soon approached an immense, splendid hotel, and the thought of
+hot baths and clean clothes was sweeter to the weary ladies at that
+moment than the most idyllic romance ever conceived.
+
+It was to this hotel that Daniel Moore’s luggage had been checked, and
+there he found and redeemed it with the check the late train robber had
+considerately returned to him.
+
+“You won’t see us again until seven o’clock to-night, Mr. Moore,” Miss
+Campbell had said. “And then you may not know us, we shall be so
+transformed with soap and water.”
+
+“I may have news for you by then,” he said, as they separated at the
+elevator.
+
+And that was the last they were to see of Daniel Moore for many a day to
+come.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“I suppose butterflies feel about as we do,” observed Nancy that evening
+as they filed down to dinner.
+
+“Meaning when they cease to be worms and appear clothed in fine
+raiment,” asked Billie.
+
+“Not so very fine,” answered Nancy, fingering a streamer of her pink
+sash with a tender touch, as she glanced complaisantly down at her
+lingerie frock.
+
+Billie laughed teasingly.
+
+“Little butterfly,” she said, “is there anything; you like better than
+pretty clothes?”
+
+Nancy pouted and smiled.
+
+“There is just this minute,” she answered. “Dinner with waiters and soup
+and mayonnaise and strawberry ice cream.”
+
+They exchanged happy smiles over Nancy’s inconsequential menu.
+
+After a month’s Gypsying, it was good to be civilized for a few days
+before the thirst for wandering came over them again, and they must push
+on toward California.
+
+Daniel Moore was not at the appointed meeting-place, in one of the small
+sitting rooms. They waited impatiently for him for a quarter of an hour,
+and finally left word at the desk that he would find them in the dining
+room. There, in the interest of dinner and of the occupants of other
+tables, their recent fellow traveler completely passed from their minds.
+
+“It takes a thousand miles of privation to appreciate real comfort,”
+observed Miss Helen Campbell, delicately nibbling the breast of a spring
+chicken. “My dear children, how very pleasant this is, to be sure.”
+
+The Motor Maids fully agreed with her. The lights and the flowers, the
+music and the well-trained waiters, as well as the delicious dinner,
+afforded them supreme enjoyment for the moment. They tried to remember
+that less than seventy years had passed since the first ox-drawn
+emigrant wagon had entered the valley.
+
+“And since that time all this has happened,” cried Mary dramatically.
+For it was she, more than the others, who loved the history of the
+places through which they passed. “They say Brigham Young saw it all in
+a dream,” she continued, “and the moment he set eyes on the valley and
+the lake, he said: ‘This is the place. Drive on.’”
+
+“‘And forty years later Brigham Young laid the corner-stone for the
+Temple,’” read Billie from the guide book in a sing-song voice. “‘The
+architecture is composite——’ What’s that?”
+
+She raised her eyes questioningly. “Why, you haven’t heard a word I——”
+she began.
+
+Four pairs of eyes were turned toward the entrance of the dining room,
+where stood a tall, slender, young girl, in a white dress. Her red-gold
+hair was coiled low on her neck. Her arms hung limply at her sides, and
+she gazed with a listless air into space, without seeing any of the
+diners at the tables. Her father, the imperturbable John James Stone,
+was on one side of her, and on the other an equally imperturbable young
+man, with a stern, rather hard countenance, a square jaw and a mouth as
+inscrutable and enigmatic as the shut door of a tomb.
+
+The head waiter conducted the party to a table in a far-distant corner
+of the room, where the girls could see them without staring rudely.
+
+“That’s Evelyn Stone,” said a woman at the table next to them. “She’s
+with her fiancé, Ebenezer Stone. He’s her second cousin, you know.”
+
+“When did you say they were to be married?”
+
+“The day after to-morrow. That’s why they’re in town. She is to be
+married in the annex of the Temple on Saturday. They say she’s not
+over-anxious, either. There was another man in the case, you know. But
+something happened, and she’s consented to marry Ebenezer, who’s always
+wanted her. He’s a good Mormon and hard working. He’s made a lot of
+money, I believe——”
+
+“He’s a piece of granite without any soul,” put in a man in the party.
+
+“Strike it hard enough, and sparks will fly,” said one of the women.
+
+The Motor Maids and Miss Campbell exchanged looks of dismay.
+
+“Married the day after to-morrow,” they repeated in whispers. “And
+stopping in this hotel. Where, oh where, was Daniel Moore?”
+
+They glanced at the door uneasily.
+
+“I think we’d better not stop in here, children,” said Miss Campbell in
+a low voice. “It would be only a kindness to keep Mr. Moore from coming
+into the dining room while they are there.”
+
+She led the way into the broad spacious hall of the hotel. But Daniel
+Moore had not been seen at the desk, nor was he in any of the parlors.
+
+While they searched, Billie examined the hotel register. There on the
+same page with their own names were the three names—“John James Stone,
+Miss Stone, Ebenezer Stone.” Six lines above John James Stone, Daniel
+Moore had written his name in a fine, manly hand. Billie noted the
+number of Evelyn’s room, and then followed her friends up to bed.
+
+“It’s too late for us to interfere, I am afraid,” said Miss Campbell
+sadly, as they stood in a silent little group in her room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.—DAVID AND GOLIATH.
+
+
+It was nine o’clock when Miss Campbell and the girls bade each other a
+final good night. They had talked the matter of Evelyn Stone to shreds
+and ribbons, but Miss Campbell was determined not to interfere.
+
+“My dear children, you are young and romantic girls, and I am a hardened
+old woman, and from my knowledge of the world, I assure you it would be
+unpardonable for us to thrust ourselves into this strictly family
+matter. Miss Stone evidently doesn’t want to marry Daniel Moore, or she
+never would have consented to marry that flint-like person named
+Ebenezer. No one can be coerced into marriage these days,” she added
+emphatically, as if attempts were being made to force her into an
+unhappy marriage.
+
+When Miss Campbell once and for all vetoed a question under
+consideration, the Motor Maids knew that the case was settled and there
+was no further appeal. Therefore, when those two intrepid fighters in
+all difficult battles, Nancy and Billie, retired to their bedrooms,
+their faces wore the downcast expression of the conquered. Nancy pressed
+a button which illuminated all the electric lights in the room,
+including four at the dressing table and a cluster in the center. Then
+she began silently examining a brown freckle on the end of her pretty
+nose. Billie sat near the open window in her favorite position, her
+hands clasping her knees. Nancy’s examining her freckle in the mirror
+was also a favorite position. The freckle, like the immovable cloud in
+the heavens at Terre del Fuego, was a permanent spot on Nancy’s
+physiognomy. When she examined it most closely she was thinking deeply,
+not of the freckle, but of something else. Billie also was immersed in
+meditation. Her brow was wrinkled—a danger signal with her. She was
+about to disobey.
+
+“Nancy-Bell, I’ll do it,” she burst out at last.
+
+“Well, why don’t you?” answered Nancy, not unprepared for the
+declaration.
+
+“Have you guessed what it is?”
+
+Nancy pointed silently to the telephone.
+
+“You’re a mind reader, Nancy-Bell,” exclaimed the other in admiration.
+
+“It isn’t much to read your mind,” answered her friend, not intending to
+be uncomplimentary. “Your eyes have been glued to the reflection of the
+telephone in the mirror for the last five minutes.”
+
+“What shall I say to her, Nancy, dearest?”
+
+Before Nancy could reply, she carefully removed her best frock and laid
+it away. Then she stretched herself on the bed. Nothing would induce her
+to lie down in that cherished garment.
+
+“Say?” she began, stretching herself out comfortably. “Say—well—say
+‘have you forgotten Fontainebleau?’”
+
+“The very thing,” replied Billie. “She doesn’t know my name, of course.
+I might say—‘have you forgotten Prairie Inn? That was where we met her,
+and it wouldn’t involve Daniel. I think she’s down on him, Nancy. It’s a
+shame, poor fellow.”
+
+“I imagine,” continued Nancy reflectively, “that she will go to her room
+early. She didn’t look as if she cared to linger in the company of
+Ebenezer. Perhaps they will stay down and smoke some of those big black
+cigars like that stony man was smoking when we first saw him. If you
+want to catch her alone, you’d better try her now, Billie.”
+
+Billie rose and moved slowly toward the telephone.
+
+“It’s against orders,” she said at last, with an expression not unlike a
+bad little boy’s.
+
+“I know it,” said Nancy, her eyes twinkling mischievously.
+
+“And it may get us into a peck of trouble,” went on Billie. “Will you
+stand by me, Nancy?”
+
+“Did I ever fail you, Billie?”
+
+“Never, Nancy-Bell; and it was an insult to your honor to have asked the
+question. Well, here goes.”
+
+Billie marched to the telephone, and, with heroic decision, put the
+receiver to her ear.
+
+“Miss Evelyn Stone’s room,” she said. “What’s that? Not allowed to call
+her up? Oh, very well. I’ll give my name—Miss Wilhelmina Campbell—an
+old friend—here for a few days.” She placed one hand over the
+mouthpiece and blinked at Nancy. “Shall I say Fontainebleau or Prairie
+Inn?” she called softly to Nancy, who, lying on her back on the bed,
+continued to peruse the brown spot on her nose by means of a small hand
+mirror.
+
+“Prairie Inn,” said Nancy. “No—no, better say Fontainebleau. The father
+was at Prairie Inn.”
+
+“Old Fontainebleau friend——” Billie called over the telephone. Then
+she put up the receiver. “The clerk will call us when he has delivered
+the message,” she explained. “But I’m scared, Nancy. I have a
+premonition of evil.”
+
+The two girls waited breathlessly for five minutes. The telephone bell
+rang out.
+
+Billie sprang to the receiver.
+
+“Hello,” she said softly.
+
+Then she turned quite pale, and placing her hand over the mouthpiece,
+she whispered: “It’s old Stony-face. Come quick. You can hear.”
+
+Even across the room Nancy caught some of those vibrant base tones, and
+with her ear against the telephone, she heard every word he said.
+
+“A friend of my daughter’s, you say? An old school friend, eh?
+Humph——”
+
+Billie had not said that, but she made no denial.
+
+“Campbell the name. Are you aware that my daughter is about to be
+married?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” called Billie. “That’s why I wanted to see her. I—er—you
+know——”
+
+She broke off lamely.
+
+“Oh, Nancy, what shall I say? I’m so frightened.”
+
+Nancy had a brilliant idea, and one most characteristic.
+
+“The trousseau,” she hissed.
+
+“I do so want to see her trousseau,” Billie repeated.
+
+There was a deep laugh, which shook the wires like the roar of a lion.
+
+“Girls are all alike,” he said. “They love finery. Evelyn has got the
+finest trousseau that money can buy. I suppose you have heard of it.
+I’ll have you connected with her room.”
+
+Evidently, Mr. John James Stone had spoken to Wilhelmina from the
+office, where he had made careful inquiries: five ladies in a motor car
+registering from the East; chaperone very distinguished looking.
+
+Billie waited at the telephone. The ordeal of conversing with John James
+Stone had brought beads of moisture to her forehead. But she was still
+not sure that the danger was over. A man like that would be capable of
+keeping himself connected so as to overhear the conversation. The notion
+flashed into her mind, just as a sweet voice said, “Yes?” and she
+determined to take no chances.
+
+“Is this Miss Stone?”
+
+“Yes. Who is this?”
+
+“This is Wilhelmina Campbell”—there was a long pause—“Billie
+Campbell,” she repeated. “Evelyn, have you forgotten that day at
+Fontainebleau?”
+
+Billie had played her trump card now. There was nothing else she could
+do. But she was glad she had not mentioned Prairie Inn, for instantly
+the bass voice interrupted with—“I thought you said school friend?”
+
+“How angry she must be,” thought Billie, “to have her father eavesdrop
+on her like this.”
+
+Evelyn did not pause this time.
+
+“How very nice to see you again. Are you stopping here long?”
+
+“Only a few days. But you made me promise to look you up if ever I came
+to Salt Lake City, and here I am, you see. There isn’t very much time.
+Perhaps I can see you to-night——”
+
+Billie and Nancy exchanged long, frightened glances. They were meddling
+in matters which did not concern them, and which Miss Campbell had
+forbidden them to touch.
+
+“Do come to-night My room is No. 400, on the fourth floor.”
+
+“I’ll be there right away,” said Billie, and she hung up the receiver.
+“Nancy, you’ll have to go to bed, and turn out all the lights. I’m so
+frightened about what I’m doing. It’s wrong, I suppose, but I don’t want
+the others to know anything about it.” She took Daniel Moore’s note from
+her satchel and slipped it in the neck of her dress. “No. 400,” she
+repeated to herself, as she hurried from the room. “He’s certain to go
+up on the first elevator. Fortunately, we’re on the same floor.”
+
+She fled down a corridor; turned a corner and hurried down another,
+almost running into Ebenezer Stone, Evelyn’s stern fiance. She heard
+footsteps behind her, but she did not pause.
+
+“You’ve been saying good-night, Ebenezer?” said the voice of Mr. Stone.
+
+“Yes, Cousin John; and, by the way, there’s a little matter I wanted to
+see you about——”
+
+Billie heard no more. She had reached No. 400, and old John James would
+be detained a moment. As she tapped on the door, she drew the letter out
+of her dress. Instantly the door opened, and Evelyn, beautiful and pale,
+and very unhappy, stood before her.
+
+“Take this quickly,” whispered Billie. “Hide it somewhere. It’s from Mr.
+Moore.”
+
+“Danny!” exclaimed Evelyn, hiding the letter under the pillow.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“But he’s married.”
+
+“He’s not anything of the sort. I should think you’d feel ashamed to
+treat him so badly.”
+
+Billie was standing with her back to the door, and suddenly Evelyn threw
+both arms around her neck and gave her a good squeeze.
+
+“You were the girl at the inn,” she whispered. “And you bring me such
+wonderful news. I thought—they said—they showed me a clipping”—her
+voice changed—“think of not having seen you since Fontainebleau. You’re
+the dearest, sweetest——”
+
+Instinctively Billie felt that the father was standing at the door.
+
+“Good old friends?” she heard him say, in his deep, hollow voice.
+
+“I’m sure his body must be full of black caverns,” she thought.
+
+“Father, this is Miss——” There was just a perceptible pause, and
+Billie felt certain that Evelyn was searching vainly in her memory for
+her name. With great presence of mind, she interrupted her:
+
+“Oh, your father and I have met,” she said. “We were introduced over the
+telephone. I was afraid you might think I was a boy when you heard my
+name was ‘Billie Campbell,’” she added, turning and facing that tower of
+strength and sternness. The young girl and the big man exchanged a long
+glance. They were not unlike David and Goliath on the field of battle,
+and in her heart Billie knew there was going to be a struggle.
+
+“Show the young lady your things, Evie,” he said, with a certain
+complaisant pride in his tone. As if to say: “We will dazzle this young
+person with our magnificence.”
+
+Evelyn wearily led the way into the next room, which was her bedroom,
+and evidently had no outlet except through her father’s room. Billie
+glanced at the filmy laces and beautiful frocks with lukewarm interest.
+She was never particularly interested in clothes.
+
+“It’s a pity Nancy-Bell missed the opportunity,” she thought.
+
+Mr. Stone was called into the next room to the telephone, and in the two
+minutes he was away, Evelyn whispered:
+
+“Where is Danny?”
+
+“In town. You’re not going to marry that——”
+
+“I’m afraid I must.”
+
+“Come with us in the motor to San Francisco.”
+
+Billie hardly realized her own words.
+
+“I can’t, I can’t,” whispered Evelyn, in an agonized tone of voice.
+
+“I must be getting back now,” said Billie, when the telephone
+conversation was over. “The things are lovely, Evelyn. Perhaps we shall
+see you to-morrow. We are going sight-seeing all day, but we shall be
+here for meals. Good-night.”
+
+[Illustration: “Come with us in the motor to San Francisco.”]
+
+The two girls kissed warmly.
+
+Mr. Stone accompanied Billie around the corridor to her room.
+
+“Good-night,” she said, and held out her hand.
+
+He took it in his enormous hand, and, looking down at her with a
+quizzical expression, he said:
+
+“You are a friend of Daniel Moore?”
+
+Billie’s heart almost stopped beating, but she returned his look
+steadily.
+
+“Yes,” she replied, quickly withdrawing her hand. Then she hurried in
+and locked the door behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.—A DAY OF SURPRISES.
+
+
+“The Comet is going to have a rest to-day,” observed Billie the next
+morning at the breakfast table. “He’s being screwed up and oiled and
+cleaned for his last spurt across the continent.”
+
+“For my part,” said Miss Campbell, “I’m glad to take a rest from the
+Comet. I think I have automobile legs, just as ocean travelers have sea
+legs. When I’m sitting still, I seem to be constantly moving, and when
+I’m moving, I feel like a young bird learning to fly. I believe that by
+the time we reach San Francisco, my limbs will refuse their office, as
+grandpapa used to say.”
+
+The girls laughed at the picture Miss Campbell drew of herself.
+
+“I think a bath in the lake will do us all good,” said Billie. “You
+can’t sink, you know, Cousin Helen. All you have to do is to lift your
+feet and you float about like a little chip.”
+
+“First to the Temple; then to see Brigham Young’s houses, and then to
+the lake,” said Mary, studying the guide-book.
+
+“And then back to the hotel for a good night’s rest on a perfectly
+delightful bed,” added Miss Campbell, who had enjoyed her night’s sleep
+exceedingly.
+
+After breakfast, they inquired at the desk for a message from Daniel
+Moore, but he had left none and was not in his room.
+
+As the five ladies left the hotel, half an hour later, a messenger boy
+passed them on the run.
+
+“A rush message for Miss Helen Campbell,” he said breathlessly to the
+clerk.
+
+“She’s gone out,” said the young man, looking up the number of her room
+and examining her letter box with official deliberation. “Her key’s on
+the hook.”
+
+And at that moment, Miss Campbell, with a swish of her silk skirts and a
+flutter of blue chiffon veils, had turned the corner and was out of
+sight. If she had lingered three minutes longer over the breakfast
+table; or if the messenger boy had hurried his steps still more, or the
+clerk had watched more carefully the comings and goings of the guests of
+the hotel, the tide of this story would certainly have been changed.
+
+As it happened, the Motor Maids and Miss Helen Campbell did not return
+to the hotel until late that evening, and all that time this important
+letter was waiting for them.
+
+“On to the Temple!” cried Billie, engaging a little boy to guide them to
+that enormous structure.
+
+“I don’t like it at all,” announced Nancy, as they approached the Mormon
+church. “It’s stern and hard and ugly, and I am sure that Mr. John James
+Stone is just a chip of granite out of one of the sides.”
+
+“He does bear rather a strong family resemblance,” said Miss Campbell,
+gazing rather fearfully at the great structure.
+
+But opinions differed about the Temple.
+
+“I think it’s very fine,” said Billie, “if only for its bigness.”
+
+“I like it as long as I don’t think of it as a church,” observed Elinor.
+“I’m sure I couldn’t say my prayers in it, without feeling that God was
+a cruel king who would punish me severely for my sins.”
+
+“Well, that is what they believe, isn’t it?” asked Mary.
+
+“The only thing I know about their belief,” observed Miss Campbell, with
+a top-lofty air, “is that they frown on old maids.”
+
+“They would never frown on you, dearest cousin, if they saw you first,”
+laughed Billie.
+
+The doors to the Temple were closed to visitors that morning, but their
+little guide led them behind the structure, where stood the Tabernacle,
+a peculiar building, resembling a monster egg. Here was the great organ,
+which Elinor desired particularly to hear, and, by a lucky chance, when
+they entered the auditorium, the place was filled with music. Miss
+Campbell, with Elinor and Mary, seated herself in one of the pews to
+listen, while Billie and Nancy wandered up a side aisle, looking very
+much like two pigmies under the vast dome of the roof. Presently they
+also sat down and composed themselves to listen to the strains of the
+wedding march, the first notes of which had been sounded on the organ.
+
+Some one touched Billie on the shoulder.
+
+It was Evelyn Stone.
+
+“Just for a moment, so that I can talk to you. No one will see us;
+there.”
+
+Unnoticed by the others, the three girls tip-toed down the aisle to the
+entrance, where they hid themselves in a recess in the wall.
+
+“I’ve been over to the annex with father and the florist,” she said. “I
+am to be married there to-morrow, you know—at least, I suppose I am.”
+The annex was another chapel connected with the Temple.
+
+“Poor Daniel Moore,” ejaculated Billie. “We are awfully sorry for him.
+We think he’s one of the nicest men we ever knew.”
+
+“Do you?” exclaimed Evelyn, clasping Billie’s arm and smiling into her
+face, as if she herself had been paid a high compliment.
+
+“Indeed we do,” cried Nancy.
+
+“Oh, dear; oh, dear,” exclaimed the girl, beating her hands together.
+“It would be a great scandal if I ran away on my wedding day. But I am
+so unhappy. Oh, so unhappy, and I do want to see Daniel so much. Why, if
+he wasn’t married, didn’t he ever come near me?” she added, stamping her
+foot angrily.
+
+“He tried and tried, and wrote letters, and everything—but he couldn’t
+get near you. Your father——”
+
+“Oh, yes, father, of course,” said Evelyn, pressing her lips together
+and frowning. “It’s not only that Ebenezer is a Mormon. It’s other
+things—money, I think. Father is involved, I’m certain of it, and
+Ebenezer is rich—very rich.”
+
+“You needn’t run away with Daniel to-morrow,” put in Billie
+irrelevantly. “You can run away with—with the Comet, our motor car——”
+
+“Hush,” interrupted Evelyn. “I’ll send you a note to-night. There they
+come now. Good-by, you dear, kind friends. I feel as if I had known you
+always.”
+
+The two girls hurried back into the Tabernacle and a little later
+emerged from another door and were conducted by their small guide to the
+homes of Brigham Young. And very fine houses they were, “The Beehive”
+especially, with its quaint dormer windows and sloping roof. But
+somehow, our five spinsters were not deeply interested in these historic
+homes, and after wandering around the city for another hour, they
+boarded a small train headed for Salt Lake.
+
+“When people are traveling, they will do anything,” complained Miss
+Campbell, as she tucked a small black bathing suit under one arm and
+disappeared in the bath house. “They will wear hired bathing suits, a
+thing I never expected to stoop to——” her voice continued from the
+interior of her compartment.
+
+“And sleep on the ground,” called Elinor from across the passage.
+
+“And eat with robbers,” began Nancy, when Mary stopped her.
+
+“Hush, Nancy,” she said. “How do you know there are not people listening
+to you?”
+
+A few moments later they strolled out to the pier in their hired bathing
+suits. A woman attendant looked at them closely and then disappeared
+into a telephone booth.
+
+Some morbid people with bad digestions have premonitions of approaching
+trouble, but our four happy young girls and Miss Campbell, youngest and
+happiest of them all in her heart, had no inkling, on that glorious day,
+of disasters to come. They sat silently in a row on the beach and gazed
+enchanted at the wonderful scene. There was not a ripple in the inland
+sea which stretched before them like a sheet of green glass. In its
+bosom were reflected the encircling mountains, mysterious and mystical.
+They, too, were like mountains of glass, in many pale colors, pinks,
+blues, delicate greens and lavenders.
+
+“It’s like a dream picture,” said Mary softly. “I can hardly believe
+it’s true. No wonder it’s called ‘the dead sea.’ It’s so silent and
+still.”
+
+“Nothing lives in it, you know,” said Billie. “No fish of any kind. It’s
+salty beyond words to tell.”
+
+Hundreds of people were scattered about on the beach, but their voices
+and laughter sounded muffled and far away. It was all very strange to
+the travelers who seemed to have fallen under the spell of the enchanted
+lake on whose waters they presently floated in a dreamy state, as if a
+magician’s wand had changed them into so many human boats.
+
+They sat on the sands for a long time after their bath, chatting in low
+voices. Then, after another dip, they dressed and lunched in the
+restaurant of the splendid bathing pavilion, one of the finest
+structures of its kind in the world. Again they sat on the beach
+watching the opalescent mountains. They felt intensely drowsy in the
+warm, dry air, and by and by sleep descended on them, and they lay like
+so many enchanted victims by the still waters of that mysterious lake.
+
+At last the sun set in a blaze of red and gold, wonderful to behold, and
+the five sleepers sat up and rubbed their eyes.
+
+“Dear children, it’s been a remarkable experience,” announced Miss
+Campbell; but whether she referred to the nap or the bath or the entire
+splendid day she did not explain.
+
+It was seven o’clock when they reached the hotel in a blissful state of
+irresponsibility, like human beings who had wandered unexpectedly into
+fairy land.
+
+There would be lots to tell Daniel Moore that night at dinner, they were
+thinking. And perhaps he would have news for them.
+
+All this time Billie and Nancy had carefully kept secret the meeting
+with Evelyn Stone.
+
+Letters awaited them at the hotel, and last of all, Miss Campbell opened
+a note from Daniel Moore, so certain was she that they would see him in
+ten minutes in the dining room. Suddenly, without warning, she burst
+into the next room where the four girls were engaged in a quartette of
+buttoning up.
+
+“Oh, my dears, my dears, something dreadful has happened,” she cried.
+“Mr. Moore has been arrested and put in jail for receiving stolen goods
+from the train robbers. He expects to get bail, he says, very soon, but
+he advises us to leave this town at once. It’s that dreadful Stone man
+who has done it. Poor Mr. Moore says—‘I look for trouble for you and
+dread your being involved in anything disagreeable. Don’t lose a moment
+in leaving Salt Lake City. They have no case against me, of course, but
+I am afraid the old villain will keep me here until after Evelyn’s
+marriage. He’s a very powerful man in this town. I beg of you not to
+make any efforts to see Evelyn. He is capable of most anything, I think,
+and it is too late to stop the wedding now.’ Now, wasn’t I right not to
+let you deliver that note, Billie, dear?” she added triumphantly. “I
+tell you it is most dangerous interfering with other people’s affairs.”
+
+Billie smiled faintly and exchanged a frightened look with Nancy.
+
+“We had better leave town to-morrow morning,” she said. “We can’t leave
+to-night. The Comet isn’t quite ready.”
+
+“Leave town, indeed!” exclaimed Miss Campbell. “We have nothing on our
+consciences. We shall stay as long as we choose. This is a free country,
+and I am not in the least afraid of that dreadful Mormon. Let us go down
+to dinner and forget all about him.”
+
+And down she went presently, sweeping into the dining room like a
+haughty little queen, the Motor Maids following behind her. Elinor held
+her head high. She was a princess and feared no man, neither Mormon nor
+Gentile. Mary walked innocently at her side. Her conscience was clear,
+and she was not afraid to look the whole world in the face. Then came
+the guilty ones, pale and silent. Oh, heavens! What it is to have a
+black secret on one’s soul. The food had no taste. The music clashed
+inharmoniously, and the murmur of the conversation of other diners
+grated on their nerves.
+
+“Nancy, dear, you have no appetite,” Miss Campbell was saying, when a
+waiter approached bearing a long, official-looking envelope on a tray.
+
+“Another communication from our poor friend, I suppose,” she observed,
+breaking the seal and drawing out the letter without noticing the
+inscription on the envelope which announced that it came straight from
+the Department of Police, Salt Lake City.
+
+As Miss Campbell read the communication contained within this formidable
+cover, a deep scarlet flush spread over her face, which gradually faded
+into a deadly white pallor. She tried to speak, but her lips refused to
+frame the words.
+
+The girls were very much frightened and several of the waiters drew near
+with evident curiosity. It was Elinor who had the presence of mind to
+say:
+
+“Dear Miss Campbell, won’t you take my arm? I am quite through dinner.”
+And the two walked slowly from the room, taking the mysterious letter
+with them.
+
+“We had better wait a moment,” whispered Billie to the other girls. “It
+would be less conspicuous than if we all rushed out at once. People are
+already looking at us.”
+
+She tried to butter a piece of bread, but her hands trembled and she
+felt that the color had left her cheeks. Nancy was the picture of
+misery.
+
+“What is it, girls?” whispered Mary in a frightened voice.
+
+“I don’t know,” answered Billie; “but something dreadful has happened, I
+feel sure. The letter was from the Chief of Police, I think. I did
+deliver the note to Evelyn Stone, Mary. I know it was wrong to have
+disobeyed, but I couldn’t see the harm of giving one person a letter
+from another person.”
+
+“Oh, Billie!” exclaimed Mary, “there is no telling what that dreadful
+man will do to us. He may put us in jail, too.”
+
+The notion was too much for their endurance, and with one accord they
+rose and fled from the room.
+
+They found Elinor sitting on the floor beside Miss Campbell holding her
+hand. The document was spread out before them, and Miss Campbell was
+reading it aloud.
+
+“‘You are regarded as suspicious characters,’” she read in a voice that
+had a tone of shrillness in it the girls had never heard before. “‘As
+suspicious characters,’” she repeated, hardly able to take in the
+meaning of the words, “‘and, therefore, as persons undesirable in this
+city, you are requested to leave the town within twelve hours. If not,
+you will be compelled to give an account of certain actions not regarded
+as lawful in the State of Utah. Signed, Chief of Police.’”
+
+The girls were breathless with amazement and horror. Driven out of town
+like criminals, and all for having shielded a poor, repentant thief who
+had returned what he had stolen.
+
+Without a word Billie went to the telephone and called up the garage
+wherein the Comet was temporarily stabled.
+
+“What time does the sun rise?” she asked while she waited for the
+number.
+
+“At about five o’clock, I think,” answered Mary.
+
+“Have Miss Campbell’s motor car at the hotel to-morrow morning at five
+o’clock,” she ordered.
+
+Miss Campbell rose. The girls looked at her timidly. They had never seen
+her angry before.
+
+“I won’t try to talk with you to-night,” she said in a voice that was
+almost a whisper. “I shall not attempt to speak again until we leave
+this hateful city far behind us.”
+
+She had hardly left the room when there was a light tap on the other
+door.
+
+Billie opened it and a chambermaid gave her a note, and quickly departed
+down the corridor.
+
+This is what the note said:
+
+  “I accept your invitation, and will meet you to-morrow at the
+  railroad station in Ogden. Send a line by the chambermaid, who will
+  wait around the corner of the hall, letting me know what time you
+  intend to start. With a heart full of gratitude from one who is most
+  unhappy,
+
+                                                               “E. S.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.—THE ELOPEMENT.
+
+
+The morning mists still clung to the mountains and the citizens of the
+Mormon city appeared to be wrapped in a profound slumber when the Comet
+flashed joyously along the quiet streets.
+
+How good it seemed to settle back among his comfortable cushions and
+hasten to leave this unfriendly town.
+
+Billie at the wheel looked straight in front of her. Her heart was
+unquiet and her gray eyes troubled.
+
+“If I only had the nerve to break the news to Cousin Helen that I have
+invited Evelyn to come with us,” she thought. “By seven o’clock we shall
+be there. Oh, dear! oh, dear! I have asked her, so I suppose I’ll have
+to stand by my own deeds, and I’m glad she’s going to run away, but I do
+wish she had eloped in another direction.”
+
+The other Motor Maids were likewise troubled in their minds, and sat in
+uneasy silence. Miss Helen herself finally broke the quiet. First she
+removed a black veil, a thing she rarely wore, and replaced it with her
+usual blue one. Her face had resumed its normal happy expression, and
+the dimple had returned to her left cheek. Salt Lake City lay behind
+them.
+
+“If I were not afraid of turning to a pillar of salt,” she said, smiling
+her old, natural smile, “I should like to look back just once on this
+strange town that turns its visitors from its doors, for I shall never
+come here again unless I’m brought in irons.”
+
+The girls smiled, somewhat relieved that their beloved chaperone had
+emerged from the one fit of rage in which they had ever seen her.
+
+“But my heart bleeds for that poor girl,” she continued. “I wish I had
+the power to help her. Has the child no spirit that she permits herself
+to be forced into this unhappy marriage?”
+
+“Would you really like to help Evelyn Stone if you had a chance, Cousin
+Helen?” asked Billie suddenly.
+
+“I only wish I had the chance, dear,” exclaimed the other charitably.
+
+Billie gave the merest blink of a wink to Nancy and increased the
+Comet’s speed to forty miles an hour.
+
+It was long before seven o’clock, therefore, when they drew up at the
+Ogden railroad station. Only a few people were about at that early hour,
+but framed in the doorway of the waiting room stood a slender, girlish
+figure, dressed in gray, a gray veil wrapped closely around her hat and
+face.
+
+Billie drew a deep breath.
+
+“Cousin Helen, you’ve got the chance to help Evelyn Stone,” she said,
+getting over the confusion as quickly as possible. “I asked her the
+other night to run away with us in the Comet, and she has accepted. Here
+she is.”
+
+There was not time for the astonished lady to reply; for the girl in
+gray, seeing the red car, rushed out, carrying her suitcase with her.
+
+In another instant, she and her luggage were installed on the front seat
+with Nancy and a new Motor Maid was added to the Comet.
+
+“Dear Miss Campbell,” she said leaning back and taking the older woman’s
+hand, “I can’t tell you how happy I am. You are the kindest, the nicest,
+the best—” she continued incoherently, her voice choking with emotion.
+“If I had had anyone else to go to—but I have no one except my father’s
+sister, and she is not in sympathy with me. I thought of going somewhere
+by train, but where? The other time when I ran away I had decided to
+teach school, but it was very difficult to get a position, and when I
+found you knew Daniel and Billie asked me, I couldn’t resist it. You
+will forgive me, won’t you?”
+
+Miss Campbell was not proof against the charms of the beautiful girl,
+and melted at once into her old delightful and agreeable self.
+
+“My dear,” she said, pressing the girl’s hand, “it is a pleasure to add
+you to our party. I confess I’m afraid of your father, but I trust he
+has no idea you have run away with us.”
+
+“No, no, he hasn’t. You see I left last night before he came up to his
+room. He thought I was asleep. I am certain he thinks I’ve gone East,
+because I bought a ticket to Chicago and took the midnight train. He has
+no way to know that I left the train at Ogden and he has no legal
+grounds for stopping me anyway, unless he trumps up something as he did
+before when I went off with the horse.”
+
+“He’d be quite capable of trumping up anything he could think of,”
+thought Miss Campbell, but she said nothing and they did not allude to
+the subject again that day.
+
+Evelyn Stone, free from the thraldom of her father and her unhappy
+engagement, was like a bird out of a cage. She was so happy that it was
+impossible to be sad in her presence. Although indirectly she had been
+the cause of their disgraceful departure from Salt Lake City, they were
+obliged to admit that she was a great addition to the party in their
+present strained state of nerves. When she finally unwound the long gray
+veil and disclosed her lovely face glowing with color, the Motor Maids
+and Miss Campbell felt that they would be willing to take almost any
+risk to do her a service.
+
+The whole thing was like a strange dream at any rate. She was a
+beautiful princess flying from her old ogre of a father through country
+of surpassing loveliness; for nothing can exceed the beauty of the
+scenery around Ogden. However, they did not pause until they had left
+the country of the ogre well behind them and had passed into the state
+of Nevada. The Comet covered one hundred and five miles that day and
+they slept that night at a small country hotel well on the other side of
+the border.
+
+The next morning on the way to breakfast, Evelyn bought a newspaper at
+the desk.
+
+“I knew I would find something,” she said. “Listen to this: ‘The wedding
+of Miss Evelyn Stone, only daughter of John James Stone of Salt Lake
+City, to Ebenezer Stone, bank president and owner of gold mines, has
+been postponed on account of the serious illness of the young woman. The
+ceremony was to have taken place to-day at twelve o’clock in the Annex
+of the Tabernacle. John James Stone has been called East on important
+business. His daughter is with her aunt at their country place, Granite
+Hills.’”
+
+“Thank heavens, he’s going East,” observed Miss Campbell, “since we are
+going West.”
+
+Evelyn continued to search the paper anxiously.
+
+“Poor Danny, I’m afraid there’s no news about him,” she said at last
+with a sigh.
+
+“At least he’ll be glad to know that the marriage didn’t take place,”
+suggested Elinor.
+
+Once more Evelyn gave her radiant smile.
+
+“To think that if it hadn’t been for all of you—”
+
+“Chiefly Billie—” put in Nancy.
+
+“Yes, Billie, especially, I should have been this morning the most
+wretched about-to-be-bride that ever—”
+
+She broke off suddenly and screened her face with the newspaper.
+
+“Father and Ebenezer passed by the door just then,” she whispered. “Oh,
+what shall I do? I’m so afraid of bringing trouble on you, Miss
+Campbell. Perhaps I’d better give up. There’s no use trying—” the poor
+girl began to sob miserably.
+
+Now, there was a decidedly martial strain in the Campbell family which
+had produced soldiers and fighting men in war and politics for three
+generations in America and a dozen in Scotland, and two members of that
+illustrious race at that moment began to hear the pibroch of the clan
+summoning them to battle. Two of the Campbell children exchanged glances
+of stern Campbell determination. Two descendants of Sir Roderick
+Campbell, illustrious scion of a fighting race, bore suddenly a strong
+resemblance to his unflinching countenance as depicted in an old
+portrait in Miss Campbell’s dining room.
+
+Miss Campbell rose from the table. There was a dangerous light in her
+usually gentle eyes and she held her head well up.
+
+“Boom, boom!” sounded the call to battle in her ears. The bagpipes of
+her ancestors were playing a wild strain. Down through the ages and
+across thousands of miles of land and water she could hear that martial
+air:
+
+  “The Campbells are coming, O-ho! O-ho!
+  The Campbells are coming, O-ho! O-ho!”
+
+Then up rose the younger Campbell all booted and kilted for the fray.
+
+“Evelyn,” said the elder Campbell quietly, “are you a girl of any spirit
+and courage at all?”
+
+“I hope so,” exclaimed the poor girl, shrinking into her chair
+miserably.
+
+But we must not blame her for her lack of courage. Remember, that she
+had been brought up by a man who was granite straight through to the
+heart.
+
+“Well, now is the time to show it then, my child. We shall fight for
+you, the girls and I, and we will stand by you, but you must make some
+effort yourself. You cannot be made to marry if you don’t want to, and
+there is no law that I know of that would require you to return against
+your will to your father. You are not a child.”
+
+Fortunately that morning the dining room was quite empty, and only a
+poor waitress saw the two armies lined up for battle. The opposing
+forces now entered. John James Stone and his relative, Ebenezer, marched
+quietly into the field, looking very formidable, it must be owned, with
+their white, expressionless faces and black clothes. General Helen
+Eustace Campbell and Captain Billie lead the other army, which marched
+gallantly out to meet them. The battle was a brief one.
+
+“Evelyn, disobedient and wicked girl, how dare you mortify me as you
+have done?” began John James in a voice of thunder.
+
+Evelyn shook with fear.
+
+“And how dare you,” exclaimed the intrepid Helen, “interrupt me and my
+guests at breakfast? This young woman, twenty years of age, has placed
+herself in my care. She declines to marry your relative and there is no
+law in this country by which you can force her to do so. She also
+declines your support and protection and there is no law which will
+force her to accept it if she does not wish. She is not a child.”
+
+“Madam, do you know who I am that you dare to interfere with me and my
+affairs?” cried the infuriated Mormon.
+
+“I do,” exclaimed Miss Campbell in a high, clear voice, folding her
+arms. “I know that you are a scoundrel and that you are willing to cheat
+and lie in order to obtain your ends. I am not afraid of you and I do
+not consider you of the least importance. Your daughter is at this
+moment my guest, and I refuse to have her annoyed.”
+
+The tall man and the little woman faced each other while the poor,
+craven bridegroom that was to have been, shrank back in amazement.
+
+Then the most remarkable transformation took place on the face of
+Goliath, John James. He dropped his stone mask with a suddenness so
+abrupt that they almost imagined they heard it break as it fell to the
+floor. His brow cleared and he flashed a smile that had a faint
+glimmering of Evelyn’s in the curve of the lips.
+
+“Madam,” he said, holding out his hand, “let us be friends. I admit that
+I am beaten and that I may say that I am not ashamed to be conquered by
+a woman of such spirit and courage. I only wish my daughter had as
+much.”
+
+Miss Helen put her small hand into his. She was too amazed for the
+moment to realize what she was doing.
+
+“Come, Ebenezer.”
+
+The great man made a low, ceremonious bow and departed from the room.
+
+Then, what did General Helen Eustace Campbell do but have a genuine case
+of hysterics and require to be supported to her apartment by five highly
+excited young women!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.—A MEETING IN THE DESERT.
+
+
+Sand hills and plains, plains and sand hills, stretching out
+indefinitely and interminably. There was only one bit of color in all
+the monotonous landscape. A flash of red on the desert.
+
+Six weary travelers, brown as Indians, hot and thirsty, their clothes,
+their hair, their eyes and nostrils filled with a fine dust. But a good
+traveler never complains and not one voice was lifted in protest.
+
+Bang! went a tire—the second that day. Billie wearily stopped the motor
+and climbed out followed by the others.
+
+“I feel as if we had come out of the nowhere into the here,” observed
+Nancy in a sad, thin voice.
+
+“I don’t think there is any here,” replied Elinor, endeavoring to wash
+the dust from her face with her handkerchief and some eau de cologne.
+“This is just as much nowhere as where we came from.”
+
+“Do you know, Elinor,” said Nancy after a pause, in which the two girls
+looked about them hopelessly, “I believe we are lost. I have been
+thinking so for the last hour. Billie is afraid to tell us, and so is
+Mary, but I have suspected it ever since we lost sight of the railroad.”
+
+“And this could hardly be called a road. It’s nothing but a trail
+through sage brush.”
+
+“It would be a pity to leave our bones to whiten on the desert,”
+observed Nancy cheerfully.
+
+“I shall make tea,” exclaimed Elinor with sudden inspiration. “If you
+are lost in the desert on the seventh of July, drink a cup of tea. It
+will keep your veins from swelling and bring wisdom and comfort.”
+
+By the time Billie and Mary had put on a new tire the tea was ready, and
+seated on the sand in a circle, the thirsty travelers sipped the
+delicious beverage. Billie was very quiet and black care sat upon her
+brow. Mary also was silent. The truth is there was no trail at all. They
+had lost it a mile back.
+
+Now a trail is a very subtle and illusive thing, once it’s lost, and
+one’s imagination plays many strange tricks in a desert of sage brush. A
+dozen times Mary had whispered to Billie: “There’s the trail,” and
+Billie had replied, “That looks a good deal more like it to the right.”
+No matter which way they looked they saw the lines which marked the
+trail. And when they looked again, the lines had shifted into a new
+direction.
+
+At last Billie rose up and faced the company.
+
+“I have to report to you that we are lost,” she said. “We are completely
+and utterly lost and have been for two hours. It’s a quarter to five
+o’clock and we can’t decide whether to turn back Eastward or go on
+toward the West. I leave it to the company.”
+
+“Go on, go on,” they cried in one voice.
+
+Why go back when there was no more trail behind than there was in front?
+Back into the Comet they climbed and on they went but progress was slow
+and the way was heavy. Sage brush impeded them greatly and at six
+o’clock they appeared to be just as deep in it as ever. They were very
+low in their minds and very tired. In all the long journey things had
+never seemed at such a low ebb.
+
+At last Nancy leaned out of the car, for what reason she could not have
+told, but suddenly there came to her that inexplicable feeling that
+comes to us all occasionally. She felt she was about to enact a scene
+which somewhere, somehow she had before. Her eyes swept the deep
+blueness of the skies unseeingly and then fixed themselves on—what was
+it—an enormous crane or was it—?
+
+“Billie, Billie,” she cried. “It’s the race. It’s the flying
+machines—look, there are two, one just behind the other!”
+
+The Comet stopped mechanically in response to the excitement of his
+mistress, and out they all jumped for a better view. The aeroplanes were
+coming toward them swift as birds on the wing. The larger one, like a
+great eagle was well in advance of a smaller one, following as a little
+bird chases a big one. They were so high up they might really have been
+taken for birds by one who had never seen a flying machine. Then that
+thing which had once happened was now re-enacted before their astonished
+eyes. The small bird advanced no farther, but swiftly and surely began
+to drop. And as the machine neared the earth back they jumped into the
+car and hastened to the spot where they had seen it fall. But this time
+there was no crumpled broken mass of débris. The aeroplane had swooped
+down neatly and quietly and a young man stood over it working at the
+machinery with feverish haste.
+
+“It’s Peter Van Vechten,” cried Mary, the first to recognize him.
+
+He looked up astonished to find human beings about in that desert spot,
+and still more amazed to find his former rescuers.
+
+“We started from San Francisco on July 4,” he explained, “and I was
+making good progress until this beastly engine broke down. I’ve been
+keeping right behind all the time, much to his disgust. A train goes
+with us. You’ll hear it go by presently. What I wanted to do was to fly
+all night to-night and get over the Rockies ahead of him. My engine
+broke half an hour ago and I had to come down and fix it and now I see
+it’s beyond fixing.”
+
+He smiled ruefully as they gathered around him.
+
+“If we could only do something,” exclaimed Billie. “We can never forgive
+ourselves for having taken you for a thief. I hope you will accept our
+apologies.”
+
+“Don’t ever let it trouble you any more,” he replied. “I had almost
+forgotten it really. When one flies very high in the air, one forgets
+lots of things that happen on the earth beneath.”
+
+He turned again to his machine.
+
+“It’s a beastly break,” he exclaimed, exasperated.
+
+All this time, Nancy’s mind was very busy, trying to recall something.
+“If only you could remember, you could help him,” an inner voice kept
+saying to her.
+
+“I know,” she cried suddenly. “I have it,” and she rushed from the
+circle of sympathizing ladies and began rummaging in an interior
+compartment of the Comet.
+
+“What is the child doing?” exclaimed Miss Campbell, the only one to
+notice her remarkable behavior.
+
+And then the strangest thing happened.
+
+“Mr. Van Vechten, will this help you any?” she asked, returning with
+that small piece of machinery she had kept as a souvenir all those weeks
+ago, which seemed a century past.
+
+The young man very nearly embraced Nancy in his joy, and, Nancy would
+not have minded it very much, perhaps, at that agitating moment.
+
+“Oh, wonder of wonders,” he cried. “It’s the very piece I was breaking
+my heart for a moment ago, and here it is like a gift from heaven.”
+
+“I’ve been saving it for you all this time,” laughed Nancy, and her
+friends joined in her merriment, for Nancy had really quite forgotten
+the souvenir until this moment.
+
+They learned from Peter Van Vechten that the road was some two hundred
+yards away. They had been running parallel to it all this time and
+furthermore, a few miles on, he had caught glimpses of a village where
+they might spend the night.
+
+“And where will you get your supper, Mr. Van Vechten?” demanded Miss
+Campbell.
+
+“I don’t think I’ll get any from present prospects,” he answered. “I
+keep chocolates in my pocket all the time and a flask of beef tea. One
+needs lots of food up there,” he added pointing to the skies. “It’s
+bitter cold.”
+
+“Why can’t we have supper out here?” suggested Billie. “We can get it
+ready while Mr. Van Vechten mends his machine and it will be so much
+jollier for everyone than going supperless or eating canned things at
+the hotel.”
+
+This was a most welcome suggestion and the invitation was eagerly
+accepted by the young aeroplanist. They brought out all their best
+stores and prepared a real feast in his honor, with hot coffee and their
+breakfast fruit as a finishing touch.
+
+The Motor Maids learned many interesting things from the young man. The
+real thief, who, it was believed, had flown away in one of the flying
+machines at Chicago, had been caught the very next day on the exhibition
+grounds and had, as it turned out, no more knowledge of flying than a
+wingless insect.
+
+Hawkeseye, the Indian halfbreed, had been caught, and was at present
+doing a term in the penitentiary.
+
+“How do you fly in the right direction at night?” they asked him, and he
+showed them a little compass lighted with electricity.
+
+“I go due East by this,” he said. “Slightly to the North until after the
+Rockies, and then straight as an arrow to Chicago. It will be a rough
+sail over the Rocky Mountains. All those canyons and crevices and
+valleys are so many suction holes to the aeroplanist. But the air over
+the prairie country is as smooth as a lake in the summer time.”
+
+There was no lingering over the supper, good as it tasted, and before
+twilight deepened into misty gray, Peter Van Vechten had said good-by to
+the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell.
+
+He seated himself in his aeroplane. The motor began whirring busily, and
+presently the machine rolled on the ground for a brief instant and began
+rising slowly and easily. He waved his hand and smiled to them as he
+mounted the air. Then away he flew and in three minutes was a speck in
+the distance.
+
+Miss Campbell’s eyes filled with tears.
+
+“I do hope and pray he’ll get there safely,” she said.
+
+“He is one of those people who always make one feel lonesome after he
+goes away,” observed Mary still watching the horizon.
+
+The young aeroplanist was indeed one of those rare persons the charm of
+whose presence still lingers after he has departed, like the vibrations
+after a chord of music.
+
+But the adventure was over. He was flying East and their path was due
+West, and they must be getting on their way before night set in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.—A BIT OF OLD ITALY.
+
+
+It was August 22, Miss Campbell’s birthday, although she herself had
+quite forgotten it, this being a celebration she was careful not to
+remember.
+
+The girls had been planning for a long time to give her a birthday
+party. It was to be a surprise picnic wherever they happened to be
+between Sacramento and San Francisco. It was Evelyn who chose the spot
+for the party and who guided them to a lovely vineyard planted on
+terraces up the side of a mountain with a little valley smiling at its
+feet.
+
+“The owners of the vineyard are Italians, all of them,” said Evelyn,
+“and you will certainly feel that you are in Italy when you get there.
+They are so simple and adorable. And there is a kind of an inn where we
+can stay. They call it the ‘Hosteria.’ Oh, you will love it, I know.”
+
+The picnic was to begin in the morning. Miss Helen, prepared for an all
+day trip, was properly surprised when Billie turned the Comet into a
+little mountain road running between grapevines now heavy with fruit.
+
+Men and women were gathering the grapes in baskets, singing while they
+worked.
+
+At the top of the mountain was the tiniest little village imaginable,
+all stucco houses on a dusty street with a church at one end. Next to
+the church was the inn and standing at the door of the inn was the
+landlord and owner of the vineyard, Pasquale.
+
+“Buon giorno, Signorina,” he cried. “I giva you the gooda welcome. I
+have receive the letter of the Signorina. All isa prepared.”
+
+Across the entrance of the hosteria ran a legend printed in red letters
+on a white background:
+
+                 “MAN RETUNS TO HAPNES THIS DAY—AUGUS.
+                          TWENTY-SEC. SIGNORA
+                            ELEANORA CAMEL.”
+
+Miss Campbell read the inscription over twice before she could make out
+its meaning.
+
+“Absurd children,” she cried delightedly, “you are giving me a birthday
+party. I knew you were suppressing something with all your giggling this
+morning. And here I had quite forgotten I was a year older to-day.”
+
+“Not a year older, dearest cousin, a year younger,” cried Billie. “It
+was Evelyn who knew about this fascinating little place, and we thought
+we would entertain you here instead of at one of those tiresome hotels.”
+
+Pasquale rubbed his hands together and smiled broadly with his head on
+one side.
+
+“La Signora, she isa surprisa,” he exclaimed, as pleased as a child.
+
+He led the way to the back of the house, through a low-ceilinged room
+paved with red tiles. At a small door at the end of the passage he
+paused and placed his fingers on his lips with an expression so arch and
+crafty that the girls laughed out loud in spite of his motions for
+silence. Then he flung open the door grandly and placed his hand on his
+heart, heaving a deep and dramatic sigh.
+
+It was not to be expected that our tourists who had come through every
+variety of scenery, grand, sublime and beautiful, should be very
+enthusiastic now. But the Italian knew that he had something very fine
+to show. Just as an old picture dealer knows when he has a good picture
+and a good audience. The girls fairly danced on the grassy terrace
+overlooking the exquisite little valley at the foot of the mountain. And
+there, on the lawn, stood a table covered with a white cloth.
+
+“The ladies willa eat breakfast at what time?” asked Pasquale. “The
+festa, she commenca at two. You willa come—not so?”
+
+“Oh, yes, we will see all of it, Pasquale,” replied Evelyn.
+
+Pasquale lingered.
+
+“The ladies willa pardon. They have no objec to two others who also eta
+here?”
+
+But the ladies were not in the humor to object to anything. They were
+too much engaged in admiring the little valley and the olive grove
+opposite which clung to the hillside like a soft gray mist.
+
+“It’s just like a little Italy,” cried Billie, enthusiastically. “It
+looks like Italy. The people are all Italians and so are the houses and
+the terraced vineyards. Isn’t it sweet?”
+
+“Wait until you see the festa,” said Evelyn, “and Pasquale’s daughter,
+Lucia. She is out now gathering grapes with the others, I suppose.”
+Pasquale now appeared bearing a big soup tureen, followed by a graceful
+young Italian boy who carried a dish of grated cheese. There were plates
+of ripe olives on the table and in the centre a pyramid of fresh figs
+and grapes. How charming it all was! Down in the vineyard below came the
+sound of singing, which grew louder as the young men and girls climbed
+the mountain to the village.
+
+They were very happy and jolly, and Miss Campbell made a little speech.
+
+“Sweet, lovely girls,” she said, “do you know how very dear you are to
+me? We have been through so much together, through so many, dangers
+which we will forget, and pleasures which we shall always remember; up
+hill and down dale—across mountains—”
+
+“And prairies,” suggested Nancy.
+
+“Yes, across these interminable prairies, that I feel, now that we are
+coming to the end of it all, how lonesome I am going to be without you.
+I hope you will all marry, my dears. There is no one in the world so
+lonely as a spinster—”
+
+Evelyn’s face flushed. The subject of marriage was a painful one to her,
+because, although she had written twice to Daniel, not one word had she
+received from him since she left Salt Lake City. And deep in her heart,
+she was wholly and utterly miserable. No one but Billie noticed the
+tears that glistened in her eyes, and under the table, the two girls
+clasped hands for a moment.
+
+“—a spinster past middle age,” went on Miss Campbell, looking so
+charming and appealing that the girls were obliged to rush from their
+seats and embrace her.
+
+And in the midst of this scene of affection, comes Pasquale, smiling
+affably, and bearing an immense bouquet of roses.
+
+“For La Signora Cam-el,” he said. “A gen-man presents with compliments.”
+
+“But who—what gentleman?” demanded Miss Campbell.
+
+“I cannot say, Signora. They are of Sacremen’—these roses here. They
+came thisa morning by express, in the diligenza from the valley.”
+
+“Where is the gentleman?” asked Billie.
+
+Pasquale shrugged his shoulders almost to his ears and spread his hands
+out apologetically. Then he disappeared into the inn and presently
+returned with bouquets for each of the girls. Evelyn’s was as large as
+Miss Campbell’s, of roses, and the younger girls were smaller bunches of
+heliotrope, which gave out a delicious fragrance.
+
+“Is he here at this inn?” demanded Nancy, burning with curiosity.
+
+“No, signorina, the gentleman, he coma after the flowers.”
+
+“Mystery of mysteries,” exclaimed Miss Campbell. “Who can it be?”
+
+“It’s just like Mr. Ignatius Donahue,” said Elinor.
+
+“It’s more like papa,” put in Billie.
+
+Evelyn would have liked to add—“It’s more like Daniel,” but she could
+not bring herself to mention his name when he had treated her so coldly.
+
+“How did anyone know we were here?” asked Miss Campbell.
+
+“The hotel clerk knew,” replied Billie, “because we asked him about the
+road.”
+
+At last, after finishing off with fruit and cheese and cups of black
+coffee, the delicious birthday luncheon reached an end, like all good
+things, and the ladies went forth to see the festa.
+
+Down the street came some forty young men and girls singing a wild
+Sicilian pastorale, each verse of which ended in a weird turn. Many of
+them were crowned with grape leaves, like Bacchanalian dancers, and some
+of them carried baskets filled with the fruit. It was the end of the
+grapecutting season, and each year, Pasquale, the great man of the
+village, gave a festa at this time.
+
+In front of the inn was a long narrow table whereon stood jugs of wine,
+plates of cold meats and ripe olives, dear to the heart of every true
+Italian. The table fairly groaned under the weight of food—cheeses and
+long loaves, salads, figs, oranges and grapes.
+
+A gentle old priest with a humorous, kindly smile, came out of the
+church and welcomed the motorists.
+
+“You will enjoy the festa,” he said. “It is a pretty sight not often
+seen out of Italy.”
+
+The feasting and singing lasted until late in the afternoon. Then the
+dancing began in the yard of the inn. Pretty Lucia, Pasquale’s daughter,
+and a young man with fierce black eyes, danced a tarentella together and
+another man and woman danced a Sicilian dance wilder even than the
+tarentella. Finally everybody began dancing and the girls joined in,
+leaving Miss Campbell and the old priest seated in a pergola at the side
+of the house, absorbed in an interesting conversation.
+
+As darkness descended torches were lit, but it was difficult to
+distinguish faces and no one noticed two men in dark slouch hats drawn
+well over their faces who mingled with the crowd. Evelyn Stone, standing
+alone on the outskirts of the crowd, watched her four friends waltzing
+among the dancers.
+
+“How much happier Lucia is than I am,” she was thinking. “How I wish I
+had been born just a simple peasant girl. Money means so little in
+comparison.”
+
+But her reflections were rudely interrupted. A black scarf was thrown
+over her head and she was lifted off her feet and carried out of the
+circle of light into the darkness.
+
+Owing to the unusual festivities, supper for the guests at the inn was
+very late that evening, and not until well past eight o’clock did
+Pasquale announce that the ladies would be served on the terrace.
+
+“Where is Evelyn?” asked Miss Campbell anxiously when they had gathered
+around the table.
+
+“Perhaps she has gone off with Lucia,” suggested Billie.
+
+But Lucia was waiting on the table and had not seen her. Pasquale sent a
+boy scurrying around to search for her while the others ate their
+supper. They were quite sure she had wandered off with some of the
+villagers whom she had known before.
+
+Night deepened and the moon came up, flooding the valley with its golden
+rays. It was very chilly, and they put on their ulsters and sat in a row
+on the terrace, waiting. From the inn yard came the sound of music and
+the beat of the dancers’ feet on the hard ground.
+
+At last the waiting grew unbearable. Miss Campbell went to confer with
+the old priest next door and the girls hurried down the village street
+to search for their friend from house to house. Men were sent down the
+mountain road to the valley below. Others hunted through the vineyard.
+Somewhere in the village a clock struck midnight. The music ceased. The
+dancers crept off to bed, cold and tired.
+
+The Motor Maids climbed upstairs to their small bedrooms under the
+eaves.
+
+Nothing could be done until morning, the priest said. And while it
+seemed impossible to sleep, they agreed they must take some rest.
+
+Tired out with the long day, they did sleep however, and the sun was
+high in the heavens before they waked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.—A CHANGE OF HEART.
+
+
+Next morning, they dressed hurriedly, reproaching themselves that they
+had slept so late.
+
+“What’s to be done?” cried poor Miss Campbell, half distracted as she
+rushed about her room. “Shall we telegraph her father?”
+
+“How do we know he hasn’t kidnapped her?” suggested Mary.
+
+“Suppose we telegraph Mr. Moore?” said Elinor.
+
+“But where is Mr. Moore? He has never written a line in answer to our
+letters. That’s why I am uneasy. That poor girl was growing more unhappy
+every day.”
+
+“Shall we notify the police of Sacramento, then?” put in Billie.
+
+“That would be a good idea, but we must see Pasquale first. Send him up
+here at once, Billie,” called Miss Campbell as the young girl departed,
+pinning on her hat as she ran down the narrow steps outside.
+
+A hundred conjectures flashed through their minds as they hastened to
+get into their clothes. Could Evelyn have done anything rash and
+foolish? But Miss Campbell felt sure the girl was much too thoughtful
+and unselfish to have involved them in a trouble of that sort. No, it
+was that Stone man, her father, who had spirited her away.
+
+Pasquale appeared at the door. His face was an impenetrable mask,
+through which his small eyes twinkled like the eyes of an animal.
+
+“Pasquale,” cried Miss Campbell, “what are we to do? Where has the young
+lady gone? Have your men really brought no news whatever?”
+
+“No news, Signora,” he replied, rubbing his hands.
+
+“Don’t stand there blinking at me,” she cried. “Tell me what I must do.
+Is there no telegraph station up here?”
+
+“No, Signora, but breakfast, ita is served, Signora.”
+
+“Breakfast! Don’t talk to me about breakfast when I’m half distracted.
+Have some coffee ready and send around the motor car. We will start at
+once for Sacramento or some town where we can telegraph.”
+
+“The Signora will pleasea have breakfast,” continued the imperturbable
+Italian.
+
+Miss Campbell was tying on her blue veil ready to leave the instant they
+had swallowed their coffee.
+
+“Have the bags carried down,” she cried, “and strapped on the car.”
+
+“The Signora willa be pleased with breakfast. It is Americana breakfast,
+made specialmente for Signora and the young ladies—the chicken
+broila—Signora.”
+
+“The man will drive me mad,” cried Miss Campbell rushing down stairs
+with veils flying, her hand bag in one hand, her coat in the other,
+followed by the girls who had been struggling to pack their suitcases
+and get away as soon as possible.
+
+At the bottom of the steps, they met Lucia, smiling and fresh in spite
+of her dissipations of the day before.
+
+“The ladies will please enter for breakfast,” she said.
+
+Back of them came Pasquale without any suitcase at all.
+
+“On the terrace, Signora. Ah, the terrace, it is bella, bella, in the
+morning. Sacremen—you will see her on a clear day. Ah, madama, I
+entreata you to step forth on the terrace.”
+
+Pasquale and Lucia stood in the most theatrical attitudes imaginable,
+their hands outstretched, exactly like two opera singers when they had
+reached the closing notes of a grand duetto.
+
+“Ah, Signora, thisa gooda breakfast,—chicken broila—questa bella
+vista—”
+
+“Good heavens, the man is mad. They are both perfectly mad,” cried poor
+Miss Campbell rushing to the terrace and almost into the arms of—Oh,
+horror of horrors! Oh, unspeakable disgrace! John James Stone, who
+actually held her imprisoned in his iron embrace and looked down into
+her face with an expression so tender that Nancy and Mary were obliged
+to retire into the hall for a moment where they fell on each other’s
+necks and laughed immoderately.
+
+“Release me, sir! How dare you?” cried the excited little woman, looking
+around to see if anyone else had been a witness of this disgraceful
+encounter.
+
+There was, indeed, quite an audience. Daniel Moore, leaning on a cane,
+his other arm clasped in Evelyn’s, stood close at hand; also the four
+Motor Maids, Pasquale chuckling with joy and Lucia smiling broadly.
+
+“Evelyn, my dear, you have given us such a fright. Where did you come
+from,” exclaimed Miss Campbell, almost in hysterics. “And Daniel Moore,
+too.”
+
+“It’s a good ending to what might have been a very tragic affair, Miss
+Campbell,” replied Daniel. “Evelyn was kidnapped last night by Ebenezer
+Stone but as luck would have it, Mr. Stone and I were making the trip
+from Sacramento to catch you here and we met them on the road last
+night. They had an accident, in fact, and stopped our car for assistance
+without knowing whom we were. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fight that
+scoundrel, Ebenezer,” he continued, clenching his fist and growing very
+white.
+
+“Have you been ill?”
+
+“He has been very ill,” put in Evelyn, clasping his arm and leaning on
+him.
+
+“Too ill even to know that Evelyn was not married,” went on Daniel.
+“That little wretch of a mare when she dragged me around by my leg,
+injured my hip. I owe my life to Miss Billie, and I ought to be thankful
+that the injury was no worse. The worry about Evelyn and the arrest in
+Salt Lake City precipitated matters, I suppose and I have been in the
+hospital ever since, until the day before yesterday. It didn’t seem to
+matter much with Evelyn married to that—to that——”
+
+“Never mind,” said Evelyn soothingly. “Father and I never really did
+like him. Did we father?”
+
+This was rather straining a point but Mr. John James Stone was quite
+equal to it. The truth is the stony old Mormon had suffered a change of
+heart.
+
+“Ebenezer is a cold blooded scoundrel,” he observed in a tone of
+conviction which brought covert smiles even to the lips of his long
+suffering daughter.
+
+“But, please, tell me quickly how you and Mr. Stone came to meet?”
+demanded Miss Campbell, the answer of which question they were all
+burning to know.
+
+Mr. Stone cast upon the charming little spinster a glance so melting
+that it was impossible for the Motor Maids to keep from laughing.
+
+“They have you to thank for that, Miss Campbell,” replied the big man.
+“I am completely won over, I assure you, madam. A charming woman is the
+most powerful influence in the world.”
+
+An expression of amazement passed over the spinster’s face, followed
+almost immediately by one of intense amusement and embarrassment. There
+was a strained silence. Then Pasquale, clearing his throat several times
+significantly, announced breakfast.
+
+In spite of the fatigue and nervous strain of the past six hours,
+everybody was hungry and Evelyn Stone was the most joyous member of the
+breakfast party. The shadow which had darkened her entire young life was
+dispelled. She had never dreamed that hidden deep somewhere behind that
+granite exterior her father had a real flesh and blood heart.
+
+It was Miss Campbell who had discovered it and it was Miss Campbell who
+must now pay the penalty of her discovery.
+
+No one ever knew exactly what conversation passed between her and the
+Mormon gentleman on the terrace that morning after breakfast. But they
+guessed that the little spinster had received a declaration of love and
+an offer of marriage. At any rate, half an hour later, she shut herself
+into her room and refused to appear again until dinner time.
+
+As for Mr. Stone, he took an automobile ride with the Motor Maids and
+made himself most agreeable. On the way home, he bought everything he
+could find in the way of fruit and flowers for the little lady who had
+touched his heart. He was as frankly and openly in love as a boy, and
+love which comes to those past fifty is of an extremely poignant nature.
+
+But Miss Campbell had no intention of wedding even a reformed Mormon and
+settling in Salt Lake City.
+
+“Never again will I enter that hateful place except in chains as a
+prisoner,” she had repeated many times, and her old lover, whose youth
+had been renewed like the eagle’s and whose character had been strangely
+transformed, entreated in vain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.—SAN FRANCISCO AT LAST.
+
+
+It was just at sunset, a time pre-arranged by Mr. Stone, who now thought
+of everything, when the two automobiles paused on the brow of a hill
+near Berkeley.
+
+Spread before them was the glorious panorama of San Francisco Bay. San
+Francisco, at one end of the peninsula, was shimmering gold in the last
+rays of the sun as it sank in the ocean at the very entrance of the
+Golden Gate. The whole scene might have been painted with a brush dipped
+in gold so glorified were the surrounding hills and bay by the sun’s
+rays.
+
+It was all very much like a dream, unreal and strange as they hastened
+up and down the hilly streets of San Francisco and finally came to a
+stop at the St. Francis Hotel.
+
+It was the end of their trip across the continent; the end of the summer
+and the beginning of happiness for their new friends. To-morrow there
+would be a wedding at which four Motor Maids would act as bridesmaids
+and Mr. John James Stone would give his daughter to Daniel Moore with a
+real fatherly blessing.
+
+The bridegroom gave a dinner that night to the bridal party. It was a
+grand affair, a real dinner party. The girls wore their very best
+dresses and carried bunches of violets sent by that abject and
+thoughtful lover, Mr. Stone.
+
+During the dinner which was given in one of the pretty private dining
+rooms of the St. Francis, John James Stone rose in his might and made a
+speech, just as if they were the most distinguished company in the
+world.
+
+“Miss Campbell,” he said, and that lady stirred uneasily under the fire
+of his ardent black eyes, “and young ladies, I feel that I cannot let
+this delightful evening slip by without taking the opportunity to thank
+you for a gift which I count as the most precious I have ever received
+in my whole life.”
+
+He spoke with the tone of an orator, his voice, vibrating and deep,
+rising and falling like the sound of the waves on the seashore, and his
+words were somewhat Biblical, after the manner of the Mormon
+speechmaker.
+
+“All my life I have been as one walking in the dark,” he continued.
+“Even my daughter was a shadow to me. Only one thing was real. Money!
+And now I have lost a great deal of my money. It has slipped from my
+fingers into the hands of another man, who, thank God, has not forced
+himself into my family and never will. But I have received something in
+place of my fortune which is now and always will be of infinitely more
+value to me than money. The darkness is lifted and I stand in the light.
+I feel as one who has been groping in the night and have now turned my
+face toward the rising sun. You have made me the gift of sight. This
+gracious little lady,” he continued, turning to Miss Campbell, “whose
+spirit and courage first aroused my admiration and then a deeper
+feeling,” he placed his hand on his heart with the most unblushing
+candor. It was difficult for the other members of the party to hide
+their smiles. “This elegant little lady although she will not consent to
+make me the happiest of mortals has at least succeeded in inspiring me
+with a new content.
+
+“Will she therefore and the young Motor Maids—” he paused and smiled at
+this expression which he had caught from the girls—“do me the honor to
+accept a slight token of my gratitude?”
+
+The Mormon produced a package which he had been concealing under his
+chair. That the souvenirs had been planned long beforehand was evident,
+for the boxes bore the stamp of Salt Lake City.
+
+The souvenirs were jewels and very beautiful. For each of the Motor
+Maids was a ring set with a deep yellow topaz, the setting and stone
+representing the “All-Seeing Eye,” the Mormon symbol carved on the
+Temple and in many other places in Salt Lake City. This was an
+especially appropriate choice since it might also stand for the Comet’s
+all-seeing eye which had guided them safely across two thousand miles.
+
+Miss Campbell’s present was a beautiful topaz brooch and represented
+nothing except the deep regard of the giver.
+
+They were obliged to accept these gifts, strange as it seemed to them to
+be receiving presents from one so recently a bitter enemy. But then,
+like Jim Bowles, Mr. Stone was a reformed character. Love had
+transformed his whole being.
+
+Only two more incidents remain to be told before this history comes to
+an end. One of them concerns Peter Van Vechten, who, the girls learned
+at the hotel, never reached Chicago, although he succeeded in flying
+past the Rocky Mountains. But no else in the race reached the goal and
+he proceeded farther than any of the other aeroplanists. The young man
+was the grandson and only heir of one of the richest men in America.
+
+“And we took him for a thief,” said Billie, sadly.
+
+“I never did,” said Mary.
+
+The other occurrence will show that life is full of coincidences and
+that if our memories are good and our impulses kind, we can always help
+someone.
+
+The morning of the wedding Elinor was waiting for her friends at a
+window at one end of the hotel corridor. Someone else was waiting there
+also, but the two had not even glanced at each other so engrossed were
+they in their own thoughts. A door opened and a voice called:
+
+“Elinor.”
+
+“Yes?” called two voices at once and two girls turned and faced each
+other.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” they both began at the same moment and paused
+laughing.
+
+“My name is Elinor,” began one.
+
+“So is mine,” finished the other.
+
+Then they laughed again, politely and pleasantly.
+
+“Do you know. I think we look very much alike,” began the strange girl.
+Her voice was English. “I am older than you, many years, I should
+imagine, but still we have the same profile.”
+
+The two girls sat down on the window sill and began to talk.
+
+“Are you visiting in San Francisco?” began Elinor Butler.
+
+“No, not visiting, only—well, we have been traveling—we have been to a
+great many ranches through the West——”
+
+Our Elinor gave the new Elinor a long, careful scrutiny.
+
+“Her name is Elinor. She looks like you——” a voice said in her mind.
+
+“Are you not looking for a friend?” she asked presently.
+
+“But, how did you guess?” exclaimed the other girl, clasping her hands
+with great agitation.
+
+“And his name is Algernon de Willoughby Blackstone Winston?”
+
+“Yes, yes,” cried the English Elinor. “How did you know?”
+
+“I know because I reminded him of you,” answered Elinor Butler, “and
+because my name is Elinor.”
+
+Then she gave the English girl the address of Steptoe Lodge.
+
+“It is in answer to my prayers—my meeting you,” cried the older girl.
+“Only it has taken such a long time. If only one has the patience to
+wait; but it has been very hard. Once we heard of his being in Canada,
+but when we went to fetch him, his father and I, he had gone and left no
+trace whatever. We were told that there are a great many young
+Englishmen on ranches in the Western States and we have been to—Oh,
+hundreds of places. Lord Blackstone has had detectives looking for him.
+But you see he changed his name and we have had no success.”
+
+“You will be certain to find him this time,” said Elinor, “only when you
+go to fetch him, don’t tell him beforehand. Take him by surprise.”
+
+The two girls looked into each other’s eyes, and smiled and pressed
+hands and—kissed.
+
+“With all my heart I thank you a thousand times,” said the English
+Elinor.
+
+“I hope you will be very, very happy,” said the American Elinor.
+
+Once more they kissed, as dear friends about to be separated for a long
+time, and Elinor Butler hurried to join her friends at the elevator. On
+the way, she caught a glimpse through an open door of a splendid looking
+old man leaning on a cane. He was very tall with the slight stoop of an
+old soldier, and as he glanced in her face, she saw that his eyes were
+the same as those of the cowboy’s who had sat out a dance with her one
+night in the courtyard of Steptoe Lodge.
+
+At last the story is done. The journey across the continent has not been
+an unprofitable one. Through the kindly efforts of Miss Helen Campbell
+and the Motor Maids, lovers long separated have been reunited; hearts of
+stone melted into flesh and blood, and bad men transformed into good.
+
+Before they left San Francisco, our young girls on a lark one day
+consulted a crystal gazer. She was only a common fortune teller but
+sometimes these wandering Gipsy souls make correct guesses.
+
+“In the crystal,” she said, “I see a great stretch of water. There is a
+ship on it. The waves are rough. I see foreign countries. You will take
+a long journey across the ocean. I see a flash of red like a shooting
+star——”
+
+“The Comet,” laughed Billie.
+
+Perhaps, like the Motor Maids, you will be skeptical of the crystal
+gazer’s predictions concerning their future. But she spoke the truth as
+you will find for yourself if you read the next volume of this series.
+In the new book the Motor Maids will wander in their Comet through the
+British Isles and there many interesting and delightful adventures await
+them.
+
+As the story ends, we find them gathered together in Miss Campbell’s
+sitting room at the Hotel St. Francis. On the next day they are to take
+the train for home. Mr. Stone is with them, and they are listening
+silently to a song Elinor is singing at the piano. It is a Gipsy song,
+and very appropriate. Our four girls after their summer wanderings have
+turned into Gipsy lasses, brown skinned clear-eyed daughters of the
+Zingari.
+
+As they listen to the thrum of the accompaniment, the walls of the
+little parlor fade away and once more they find themselves around the
+camp fire under the stars on the plains.
+
+Here is the song Elinor sang to her friends.
+
+  “‘The white moth to the closing vine,
+  The bee to the open clover,
+  And the Gipsy blood to the Gipsy blood
+  Ever the wide world over.
+
+  “‘Ever the wide world over, lass,
+  Ever the trail held true,
+  Over the world and under the world
+  And back at the last to you.
+
+  “‘Out of the dark of the gorgio camp,
+  Out of the grime and the gray,
+  (Morning waits at the end of the world),
+  Gipsy, come away.
+
+  “‘The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky,
+  The deer to the wholesome wold,
+  And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
+  As it was in the days of old.
+
+  “‘The heart of a man to the heart of a maid—Light
+  of my tents, be fleet!
+  Morning waits at the end of the world,
+  And the world is all at our feet!’”
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+
+Motor Maids Series
+
+Wholesome Stories of Adventure
+
+By KATHERINE STOKES.
+
+Cloth Bound. Illustrated. Price, 50c. per vol., postpaid
+
+THE MOTOR MAIDS’ SCHOOL DAYS.
+
+[Image]
+
+Billie Campbell was just the type of a straightforward, athletic girl to
+be successful as a practical Motor Maid. She took her car, as she did
+her class-mates, to her heart, and many a grand good time did they have
+all together. The road over which she ran her red machine had many an
+unexpected turning,—now it led her into peculiar danger; now into
+contact with strange travelers; and again into experiences by fire and
+water. But, best of all, “The Comet” never failed its brave girl owner.
+
+THE MOTOR MAIDS BY PALM AND PINE.
+
+Wherever the Motor Maids went there were lively times, for these were
+companionable girls who looked upon the world as a vastly interesting
+place full of unique adventures—and so, of course, they found them.
+
+THE MOTOR MAIDS ACROSS THE CONTINENT.
+
+It is always interesting to travel, and it is wonderfully entertaining
+to see old scenes through fresh eyes. It is that privilege, therefore,
+that makes it worth while to join the Motor Maids in their first
+’cross-country run.
+
+THE MOTOR MAIDS BY ROSE, SHAMROCK AND HEATHER.
+
+South and West had the Motor Maids motored, nor could their education by
+travel have been more wisely begun. But now a speaking acquaintance with
+their own country enriched their anticipation of an introduction to the
+British Isles. How they made their polite American bow and how they were
+received on the other side is a tale of interest and inspiration.
+
+Any volume sent postpaid upon receipt of price.
+
+HURST & COMPANY—Publishers—NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+GIRL AVIATORS SERIES
+
+Clean Aviation Stories
+
+By MARGARET BURNHAM.
+
+Cloth Bound. Illustrated. Price, 50c. per vol., postpaid
+
+THE GIRL AVIATORS AND THE PHANTOM AIRSHIP.
+
+[Image]
+
+Roy Prescott was fortunate in having a sister so clever and devoted to
+him and his interests that they could share work and play with mutual
+pleasure and to mutual advantage. This proved especially true in
+relation to the manufacture and manipulation of their aeroplane, and
+Peggy won well deserved fame for her skill and good sense as an aviator.
+There were many stumbling-blocks in their terrestial path, but they
+soared above them all to ultimate success.
+
+THE GIRL AVIATORS ON GOLDEN WINGS.
+
+That there is a peculiar fascination about aviation that wins and holds
+girl enthusiasts as well as boys is proved by this tale. On golden wings
+the girl aviators rose for many an exciting flight, and met strange and
+unexpected experiences.
+
+THE GIRL AVIATORS’ SKY CRUISE.
+
+To most girls a coaching or yachting trip is an adventure. How much more
+perilous an adventure a “sky cruise” might be is suggested by the title
+and proved by the story itself.
+
+THE GIRL AVIATORS’ MOTOR BUTTERFLY.
+
+The delicacy of flight suggested by the word “butterfly,” the mechanical
+power implied by “motor,” the ability to control assured in the title
+“aviator,” all combined with the personality and enthusiasm of girls
+themselves, make this story one for any girl or other reader “to go
+crazy over.”
+
+Any volume sent postpaid upon receipt of price.
+
+HURST & COMPANY—Publishers—NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Motor Maids Across the Continent, by 
+Katherine Stokes
+
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