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

Striped Beetle had been in his establishment and no party of girls such as we described. He was as much in the dark as we were about the trunk. Had we been carrying Gladys's trunk ever since

rm, and through gaps between houses we could see Mrs. Moffat's house down on Main Street. We s

her some more mysterious m

up Main Street. As he passed the street where we were he looked down,

raph envelope. Nyoda tore it open and a look of b

t?" we all

it," s

earth are you? Wait Rochester fo

t from Ind

ad fallen behind us on the road, who had passed ahead of us along the northern route to Chicago whom we had been blindly following? How had Gladys in Indianapolis received the telegram we had sent to Chicago, giving our address in Rochester? If Gladys had not come along the northern route, how came her trunk to be in

e use we did not even guess, and wonderful displays of crockery and printed calico. We seemed to create quite a sensation when we came in although there were other people in the store. The proprietor came forward hurriedly and asked us what we wanted. A strange look came into his face when we said we just came in to look around. He and his wife and the two or three clerks in the place all looked at each other, but they said no more. But as we moved

at we were running up against of late? The people around here seemed to know something about us which we did not know ourselves. Last night our landlady for no satisfactory reason had put us out of her house, and here were the store people plainly suspicious of us.

There was something more terrifying about this silent, skulking foe than there would have been about an armed highwayman. So far to-day he had not appeared, but we

thank him for telling us about t

een us standing there on the sidewalk than he paused

" said Sahwah. "What on

aps a little more so. The proprietor followed us around like a shadow and heaved an audible sigh of relief when we went out. Utterly disgusted, we went back to Margery. The time passed heavily until noon and then we went out on Main Street to watch f

veral degrees hotter than the day before. We ate our dinner in squads, one squad eating while the other did sentinel duty. We beguiled the time by singing "Wait for the Wagon", "Waiting at the Church ", and every other song we knew on the subject. People looked at us curiously as we sat in a row on a low stone wall. One man asked us if we were waiting for

that telegram?" asked Sahwah

l, all right," she answered. "I

said Sahwah, "and see a

he light, not the yellow telegraph form, but a queer, bluish beetle-like thing.

ed Sahwah, findin

ancient Egyptian figure of a beetle. T

But how came it into Nyoda's coat pocket? Was this also a part of

d Curiouser,"

ed umbrella and I hadn't the slightest notion of where I got it. And the next day there was a notice in the paper, 'Will the young lady who took the gold-handled umbrella from the wash-r

nywhere since noon but up to that restaurant and Sahwah and I sat alon

ning when we were looking t

"that scarab never came from a store in this town. Things like that are handled by dealers in c

ave no right to keep it. I'm going to turn it over to the police,

ands a motorcycle putt-putted past in a cloud of dust and we

id, half regretfully. Little did we think that the only decent

ng out, however, for Nakwisi was looking through her spy-glass at the clouds. After some inquiry we found the police station. When Nyoda told her story about finding

and it nearly broke the town and we can't have any more accidents. You take it on to the next town and tell 'em you didn't find it till you got there, see?" Half angry and half amused at this dauntless representative of the l

usted our patience with waiting. "I don't know but what it would be a good idea to set out in the d

hat she would be here at noon, why she didn't wire again when she found she couldn

e visions of the Striped Beetle lying smashed up somewhere and our girls being carried to a hospital. I can't get it ou

hwah. Nyoda and I promptly went up to the telegraph office and inqu

d gone with Gladys and looked at the route to Indianapolis. "If any message comes to this office

nearly a foot thick) from our tires. I looked around every little while from my seat in the tonneau to see if the Frog was following us, but there w

was bad enough in the car, for the dust rose up in choking whirls until we could taste it. I have never known such a hot day before or since, although I have seen the thermometer higher; but that day the air seemed to be minus its breat

night," said Nyoda, scanning a bank of apoplectic-looki

street looks like the heat waves over the radiator." I could not help w

. 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 w

f 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

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

ate 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 woma

ering 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 circumsta

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 non

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 pecul

ks loose," she observed, thoughtfully. "You know the storm curtains don't fas

d 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 w

aid Sahwah, crossly; "Gladys isn

a dead stop in the road four or five miles from town. Our exclamations of disgust were still hovering in the air when the storm struck us. As Sahwah has always described it, "And then the water came down at Lodore." I could devote several pages to the fury of that

re all as wet as if we had fallen off the dock at home. We abandoned the car and ran for the shelter of a big tree near-by. We were no sooner under its spreading branches when, with a sound like the crack of doom, lightning struck it and it went crashin

e color was running out of her dripping veil all over her face, put her hand in her pocket to find her handkerchief and wipe her face. Along with the handkerchief out fell the curious scarab which we had forgotten in the search for Gladys. The man eyed it intently as Nyoda put it back into her pock

the downpour. With deft motions he fastened the Glow-worm behind the limousin