All the joy of the stolen ride instantly vanished. Jack Kimball, Ed Foster, and Walter Pennington were no longer the jolly, laughing youths, chasing the motor girls. They were three very much frightened young men, for the girls, and the car in which the other members of the Robinson family had been riding, could neither be seen nor heard!
Through the pouring rain the boys dashed on. The rays of light from the search-lamps revealed nothing but a stretch of mud that, every moment, became deeper and more treacherous!
Then came a fork in the road, and beside the turn, a lane offered a possible clue to the sudden departure of the girls from the main highway.
“We’ve got to get out and look for their tracks,” said Jack. “I suppose they put on all kinds of speed to get away from the rain.”
But although the other cars must have passed over that place somewhere, and not more than half an hour before, not a mark of the heavy wheels could be discerned in the deep, dark mud, though Jack took off one of the oil lamps and flashed it across the road.
“Golly!” exclaimed Ed, in earnest despair.
“Which way?” asked Walter, deferring now to the much-alarmed brother of Cora Kimball.
“I wish I knew,” replied he, with a sigh.
“Suppose we make straight for the Wayside?” suggested Ed. “They may have known of the roadhouse.”
“How far to Wayside?” asked Jack.