The Camp Fire Girls Go Motoring; Or, Along the Road That Leads the Way

by Hildegard G. Frey

We stopped at so many places and asked if they had seen a brown car with black stripes carrying four girls in tan suits that our voices became husky on those words. Sahwah suggested that we print our inquiry on a pennant and fasten it across the front of the car. But nowhere was there a sign or a trace of the car for which we were seeking. People had seen brown cars, but no girls in them, and they had seen tan coats in black or red cars, but nowhere was the tan and brown in combination.

Looking for a needle in a haystack has several advantages over looking for an automobile on a hundred mile stretch of road. For one thing, there is only one haystack, so you are pretty sure of finding your needle there if you look long enough; whereas there were several roads to Indianapolis; and for another thing, your needle is stationary and not traveling through the haystack, so you are reasonably sure when you have ascertained that it is not in a certain part of the haystack that it will not be there at a later time; whereas the Striped Beetle might be moving from place to place, in which case we were going to have a lively time catching up with it.

Especially did we inquire if there had been any accidents. Once we had a scare; we were told that a brown car had been struck by a suburban car that morning and several girls seriously injured. The injured ones had been taken to a hospital in Indianapolis, but the automobile was in a repair shop in the village of D——. We hastened to D—— and elbowed our way through the crowd in front of the repair shop to see the wreck of the car and sighed with relief when we saw it was not the Striped Beetle. One door was still intact and that bore the monogram DPS in large block letters.

If Fate has anything to do with the color of paint, or rather, if the color of paint has anything to do with Fate, brown must be an unlucky shade to paint a car. The number of brown cars which had come to grief along that road was unbelievable. In another place one had turned turtle on a bridge and thrown its passengers into the river beneath, but those passengers were all men, we were told, and we did not stop to investigate further. One woman told a story of having seen four girls walking along the road almost frantic because their car had been stolen while they got out to look at something in a field, and we thought these might possibly be our girls. Hinpoha is crazy about calves and if she saw a calf in a field she would not only go over and pet it herself, but drag all the others along too. When asked to describe their dresses the woman said vaguely that they had had on some light kind of coats or suits, she couldn't remember which, and she wasn't sure about the veils. They might have been green for all she knew, but she always had been color blind and hated to make a definite statement because she had been fooled on more than one occasion. Where the girls were now she did not know; she thought they were walking to the nearest town to notify the police.

While there was nothing definite about this information it was just enough to tantalize us, and we wondered if the Striped Beetle really had been stolen and the girls were wandering about in distress. We strained our imaginations trying to picture what had happened to Gladys that she did not appear in Rochester, and conjured up all sorts of circumstances to account for it. But I doubt if an imagination as rich as the mine of Ophir could have guessed at the truth, so I don't see how we can be blamed for missing it entirely.

The clouds that had been reclining along the horizon all afternoon began to mount and deepen in color, and the occasional mutterings of thunder became more frequent. From being oppressive the air became stifling and we were all on the verge of collapse. The fatigue of getting out of the car so often to follow up things that looked like clues was beginning to tell on us. And the suspense was worse than anything else. Up to now, when we thought that Gladys was on the road ahead of us and we would catch up with her in Chicago, we had cheerfully put up with all the mishaps which had befallen us, for none of them turned out seriously and we were entirely light-hearted. But now we were really worried about Gladys. Her not appearing after she had wired us that she was coming began to take on a sinister meaning. It is much easier to live through mishaps yourself than imagine them happening to someone else.

Taken altogether, that afternoon's trip is one on which I like to put the soft pedal when harking back in memory. And happy for us then that we did not know what it was going to end in. The sky behind us had turned inky black and it became evident that the storm which was coming would be no ordinary one. A wind sprang up that increased in velocity with a peculiar moaning sound. A strange light was in the air that made the white farm houses and barns gleam sharply against the dark sky. Nyoda looked with some anxiety at the lowering clouds.

"I think it would be a wise plan to make the next town before that storm breaks loose," she observed, thoughtfully. "You know the storm curtains don't fasten tightly on the one side, and if we're caught we're going to be drenched."

The next town was Kokomo, about ten miles away, where we were to stop at the telegraph office and see if there was a message from Gladys. Then began a race the like of which I have never seen before. It was the speed of man matched against the speed of the storm gods. Behind us the storm was breaking; we could see the grey wall of the rain in the distance; the wind was rising to a tornado and the thunder claps seemed to split the earth open. And there we were, scudding along before it, like a tiny craft fleeing from a tidal wave. The Glow-worm bore us onward like a gallant steed, and I compared our headlong flight with the King of Denmark's ride when his Rose of the Isles lay dying.

"Think of something cheerful," said Sahwah, crossly; "Gladys isn't lying at the point of death."