The plan had been that the Camp Fire girls should start on their riding trip several hours ahead and that they meet later and camp for the night at some agreeable place along their journey.
Marta and Bettina ran forward, intending to stop the approaching car. Both girls were thinking that the car was moving much more swiftly than usual.
Almost immediately they saw that the automobile coming toward them was not Mrs. Burton's, but a small khaki-colored roadster driven by a United States officer with another soldier on the seat beside him.
They were going along at full speed as if they were carrying information of great importance.
Then suddenly, without Marta or Bettina recognizing the cause, the car swerved, made a wide detour and quickly overturned. A few seconds later when the two girls, hoping to be of service, had reached the car, the young United States officer was crawling slowly out from beneath the wreck.
He tried to stand up and to smile reassuringly at Bettina, who chanced to be ahead, but the next moment if she had not put out her arm to steady him he would have fallen.
A little while after he was sitting unheroically amid the dust of the roadside, smiling somewhat quizzically up at his rescuer.
"I don't believe I am seriously hurt," he remarked cheerfully, "but as I know you are patriotic and would like to try your first-aid remedies upon me, please go ahead. I am Lieutenant Carson and at present I appear to be a somewhat unsuccessful Paul Revere. But would you mind explaining, while you are washing the dirt out of this plagued cut on my forehead, why you are wearing a costume that seems to suggest a combination of an Indian princess' outfit and a soldier's uniform?"
Marta Clark was devoting her attention to the other soldier, who did not appear to be hurt but only slightly dazed from his mishap.
Bettina for an instant regretted that she was unable to change places with Marta. She had studied first aid, of course, along with her Camp Fire work, but was not accustomed to masculine patients.