“Sold!” laughed Cora to herself. “I’ll have to tell the others about that. They’ll have the laugh on me, of course, but it’s too good to keep. But I’d better go back or they’ll begin to get worried about me.”
She turned in the direction of the picnic party, as she thought, and began to walk rapidly. But at the end of five minutes she saw no trace of them and a vague uneasiness began to take possession of her.
“That little cheat must have led me a good deal farther than I thought,” she said to herself. “I guess I’d better call out to them.”
She sent out a loud yodel, such as she and the other girls were accustomed to use as a call, and waited expectantly for an answer.
But no answer came.
She repeated the call, but with the same result.
“It must be these trees,” she assured herself. “They smother the sound so that it can’t go more than a few rods. I’ll go on a little farther and try again.”
She almost ran now, stumbling occasionally in her haste, and trying to crowd back an awful fear that was rapidly taking form.
Once more she stood still and called at the top of her voice, called desperately, frantically, repeatedly. But for all the response she received she might as well have been in the center of the Sahara desert.
Then she stumbled over a tree root and rolled over and over down the mountain side, to bring up at last in a wilderness of brushwood.