"I hid in it," said Margery. "In the garage. And he," she pointed to the man, "drove away and I was afraid to come out."
"What made you hide in the car?" asked Nyoda.
Margery gave a quick glance around. "I saw my uncle," she said in a half whisper. "He was looking at the fire. He didn"t see me. I ran away and hid in the garage and when people began coming for their cars I was afraid they would find me and I got into this one. Pretty soon my uncle came into the garage. I was down on the floor of the limousine and he didn"t see me. Just then the driver got up in front and began to take the car out, but I didn"t dare open the door and come out. He drove away with me and I didn"t know what to do, so I stayed in. Then the car stopped on the road and I was going to get out and run away when the other car came up behind and ran into us. I was afraid it was my uncle and didn"t even come out when the car nearly fell over. But I was frightened and cried and you heard me and opened the door."
"Tell me," said Nyoda, "was your uncle the man with the goggles?"
"No," answered Margery, "he wasn"t. My uncle is a little, thin man with gray hair."
"It"s a mercy you weren"t hurt," said Nyoda, thinking with a shudder of the blow we had dealt the limousine. "You did get cut," she cried, turning the flashlight full on her face. The blood was running down her cheek from a cut in her forehead and her arm was also bleeding. We tied her up with strips of handkerchiefs and set her on the back seat of the Glow-worm.
The owner of the limousine decided to leave it there and come for it in the morning, and, as our engine was not hurt we thought best to drive on. The man offered to pay for having our wheel fixed and the fender put on again and seemed dreadfully afraid we were going to sue him. He gave us his name and address and told us to send the bill to him. He lived in the neighborhood and could find his way home on foot.
After he had disappeared in the fog and the Glow-worm was once more proceeding on her journey, we suddenly realized that we did not know where we were nor in which direction we were going. We were not on the road to Chicago, we knew, because the road we had followed out of Wellsville in pursuit of the Frog had gone off at right angles to that road. At the time we had thought only of finding out what had become of Margery and had followed him blindly. The fog was getting thicker instead of thinner and it was impossible to see anything like a sign post. A sharp east wind was blowing that chilled us to the bone. It was rather a dismal situation we found ourselves in. Of all kinds of bad weather I hate fog the worst. It makes me feel as if I had lost my last friend. Nyoda hadn"t any idea where she was going, but she kept the car moving slowly, hoping that we would come to a town pretty soon. We sounded the horn constantly to warn any other vehicles on the road and Nakwisi offered to sit in front and keep a lookout with her telescope.
"Telescope!" said Sahwah, scornfully. "What you want is a collide-o- scope!" Whereupon we all pinched her for making a pun and went on shivering.
Just when we got off the road I don"t know, but gradually we became aware that it was not hard earth we were riding over but something that swished under the wheels like long gra.s.s.
"We"re in a field!" cried Sahwah.
Nyoda turned the car around and we went a few yards, expecting to get back into the road every minute. Then suddenly the car began to go down hill very rapidly, and at the bottom there was a grand splash, and we found ourselves up to the wheel hubs in water. We had run into a stream of some kind. The bottom was soft mud and to keep from sinking we had to go on across. Luckily it was shallow and not very wide and the water did not come inside the car. Margery screamed all the way across and we had a rather breathless few minutes, until we came out on the farther bank. Once on dry land again Nyoda stopped the car and flatly refused to drive another inch. We were off the road, we had no idea where we were, and there was too much danger of running into things in the fog.
None of us dared to think what might have happened if that river had been deep.
So here we were stranded, at about two o"clock in the morning, in a field n.o.body knew where, by a road whose direction we could not even guess, with a thick mantle of fog rolling around us as dense as the smoke had been a few hours before. Could it have been only a few hours before that we came near burning to death? And now we were in nearly as much danger of freezing to death. Fire and dampness all in one night!
It certainly was a varied experience.
And the cold was no joke. It pierced the very marrow of our bones. We were not dressed for any such weather as that. We had had two blankets in the car but there was only one left when we recovered it from the Frog. Sahwah suggested that we join hands around the Glow-worm and sing "When the mists have rolled away".
"You"ll have to get out and walk around, if you don"t want to catch cold," said Nyoda. We walked up and down for a while, each with a hand on the other"s shoulder so as not to get separated and lost in the fog.
This walk soon turned into a snake dance and then a war dance around the Glow-worm. It must have been a weird sight if anyone had seen us, ghostly figures flitting about in the illumined fog around the car. I suppose they would have taken us for dancing nymphs or will-o"-the- wisps, or some other creatures which inhabit the swamps.
We really became hilarious as we danced, although it was a serious business of keeping warm, and on the whole I would not have missed that night for anything. I adore unusual experiences and I"m sure not many people have been stalled in a fog when on an automobile trip and have had to spend the night dancing to keep warm. Margery didn"t see the funny side of it, and you really couldn"t blame her, poor thing, for it was all her fault that we were in this mess and she had been so badly frightened earlier in the night and then so shaken up when the Glow- worm ran into the limousine.
She didn"t want to dance to keep warm and sat shivering in the car with the one blanket around her, except when Nyoda made her get out and exercise.
Morning came at last and when the sun rose the fog lifted. We found ourselves in the middle of a field some distance from the road, near the stream into which we had plunged the night before. We must have been off the road for some time before we noticed it. The place where we had run off was where the road turned and we had kept on straight ahead instead of turning. We got out of the field and followed the road. It was not a regular automobile road and was not sign-posted. We did not know whether we had gone north or south from Wellsville the night before. The fog had us completely turned around. By the position of the sun, the road extended toward the south. How far we had come we could not tell. We thought of going back to Wellsville and striking the main road again, but then Nyoda decided that by finding a road which ran toward the west we could strike the other trunk line route that went up to South Bend by way of Rochester and Plymouth. We did not want to make Wellsville again if we could possibly help it, for fear we would run into Margery"s uncle.
That ride to Rochester was more like a bad dream than anything else. As I have said, we were not on the main automobile road, and we soon got into such ruts and mud holes as I have never seen. In places the road was strewn with stones and we were nearly shaken to pieces going over them. It was not long before we came to a sound asleep little townlet, but we didn"t have the heart to wake it up and ask it its name, so we went on to the next. It was then about six in the morning and a few people were stirring in the main street. We found by inquiry that we were in the town of Byron and that by turning to the west beyond the schoolhouse we would strike a road which eventually led to Rochester.
"Eventually" was the right word. It certainly was not "directly". It twisted and turned and ended up in fields; it wound back and forth upon itself like a serpent; it dissolved in places into a lake of mud. We didn"t go very fast because we were afraid the wobbly wheel would wobble off. Hungry as we were we decided to wait until we reached Rochester before getting breakfast, so we could put the car into the repair shop the first thing and save time. We staved off the keenest pangs of hunger by plundering an apple tree that dangled its ripe fruit invitingly over the road, and I haven"t tasted anything so delicious before or since as those Wohelo apples, as we named them.
The poor Glow-worm minus the one fender looked like a glow-worm with one wing off and the wobbling wheel gave it a tipsy appearance. Nyoda frowned as she drove; I know she hated the spectacle we made.
"Needles and pins, needles and pins, When a girl drives an auto her trouble begins,"
spouted Sahwah.
"Aren"t we nearly there?" sighed Nakwisi, as she came back to the seat after rising to the occasion of a b.u.mp.
"Long est via ad Tipperarium", replied Sahwah, and then bit her tongue as we struck a hole in the road.
The morning was beautiful after the foggy night and our spirits soared as we traveled along in the sunshine, singing "Along the Road that Leads the Way". But it was not long before there was a fly in the ointment. Turning around one of the innumerable curves in the road we saw the red roadster proceeding leisurely ahead of us.
CHAPTER V.
As far as we could make out there was only one person in the car and that was the driver, and if he had left the scene of the burning hotel with a girl in a tan suit she was no longer with him. I think Nyoda would have turned aside into some by-road if there had been such a thing in sight, but there wasn"t. The Frog turned around in the seat and saw us coming. That action seemed to rouse Nyoda to fury. Two red spots burned in her cheeks and her eyes snapped.
"I"m going to overtake him," she said with a sudden resolution, "and ask him pointblank why he is always following us."
At that she put on speed and went forward as fast as the wobbling wheel would allow. But no sooner had she done this than a surprising thing happened. The Frog looked around again, saw us gaining on him, and then the red roadster shot forward with many times the speed of ours and disappeared around a bend in the road.
"He"s running away from us!" exclaimed Sahwah.
"He may be afraid we are going to make it unpleasant for him for stealing the Glow-worm," said Nyoda. "But," she added, "I can"t understand why he has ventured near us at all since that episode. You would expect him to put as much s.p.a.ce as possible between himself and us."
"He probably didn"t know we were following him," said Sahwah, shrewdly.
But the whole conduct of the Frog since the beginning was such a puzzle that we could make neither head nor tail out of it, so we gave it up and turned our attention to the scenery. Behind us a motorcycle was chugging along with a noise all out of proportion to the size of the vehicle, and we amused ourselves by wondering what would happen if it should try to pa.s.s us on the narrow road, with a sharp drop into a small lake on one side and a swamp on the other. But the rider evidently had more caution than we generally credit to motorcyclists and made no attempt to pa.s.s us, so we were not treated to the spectacle of a man and a motorcycle turning a somersault into the lake or sprawling in the marsh.
We certainly were ready for our long delayed breakfast when we finally got to Rochester, after giving the Glow-worm into the hands of the doctor once more. The poor Glow-worm! She never had such a strenuous trip before or after. The man on the motorcycle came into the repair shop while we were there to have something done to his engine, and he listened with interest while we were telling the repair man how we had run into the limousine in the fog. He looked at Margery curiously and I wonder if he noticed that her suit did not fit her by several inches.
But Nyoda says men are not very observant about such things.
He was a good-looking, light-haired young man, and he stared at us with a frank interest that could not be called impertinent. I believe there is a sort of freemasonry between motor tourists, especially when they are having motor troubles, that makes it seem perfectly all right to talk to strangers. When the young man asked where we were from and where we were going we answered politely that we were on our way to Chicago by way of Plymouth and LaPorte. (We had decided not to go to South Bend at all, as it was out of the way of the route we were now traveling.) Nyoda added that we hoped to make Chicago before night.
Here Sahwah advised her to rap on wood. We had planned to make it before nightfall once before. When we told about the fire the young man agreed that we certainly had had adventures a-plenty. He ended up by telling us a good restaurant where we could get breakfast (he evidently had been in town before) and we hastened to find it, leaving him explaining to the repairman what was the matter with his motorcycle.
While we were eating breakfast we saw him pa.s.s on the opposite side of the street and enter a building which bore the sign of the telegraph company. I couldn"t help wishing that we knew his name and would meet him again on the trip, he seemed such a pleasant chap. I am always on the lookout for romantic possibilities in everything.
The Glow-worm was to be ready to appear in polite society sometime in the afternoon and we had nothing to do but kill time until then. There were no picture shows open in the morning so the only thing left for us to do was to go for a walk through the town. It was terribly hot, nearly ninety in the shade, and what it was out in the sun we could only surmise. Margery wanted to keep her veil down because she was afraid of meeting people, and Sahwah thought it would appear strange if only she were veiled and suggested that we all keep ours down, but they nearly stifled us. So we compromised on wearing the tinted driving goggles, which really were a relief from the glare of the sun, even if they did look affected on the street, as Nakwisi said. I"m afraid we didn"t have our usual blithe spirit of Joyous Venture, as we walked up and down the streets of the town, looking, as Sahwah said, "for something to look at". The frequency with which the Glow-worm was being laid up for repairs was beginning to get on our nerves. Sahwah remarked that if we had set out to walk to Chicago we would have been there long ago, and that the rate at which we were progressing reminded her of that gymnasium exercise known as "running in place", where you use up enough energy to cross the county and are just as tired as if you had gone that far, while in reality you haven"t gotten away from the spot.
Nakwisi stood up on a little rise of ground and focused her spy-gla.s.s in the direction of Chicago and said she had better try to get a look at the Forbidden City from there because she might never get any nearer.
Nyoda had torn her green veil on her hatpin and the wind had whipped the loose ends out until they looked ragged and she was frankly cross.
"When lovely woman stoops to folly, And learns too late that veils do fray--"
chanted Sahwah, trying to be funny, but no one even laughed at her. We were too much exhausted from the heat and too busy wiping the perspiration out of our eyes.
As a town of that size must necessarily come to an end soon, we found ourselves after a while, beyond its limits and on a country road. We saw a great tree spreading out its shady branches at no great distance and made for it. With various sighs and puffs of satisfaction we sank down in the gra.s.s and made ourselves comfortable. Of all the sights we had seen so far on our trip the sight of that tree gave us the most pleasure. We had not sat there very long when a young man pa.s.sed us in the road. He was the light-haired young man we had seen in the repair shop. He lifted his hat as he pa.s.sed but he did not say anything. He was on foot, from which we judged that he also had some time to kill while his motorcycle was being fixed.
We did not sit long under that tree after all. First, Sahwah discovered that she was sitting next to a convention hall of gigantic red ants and a number of the delegates had gone on sight-seeing excursions up her sleeves and into her low shoes, which naturally caused some commotion.
Then a spider let himself down on a web directly in front of Margery"s face and threw her into hysterics. And then the mosquitoes descended, the way the Latin book says the Roman soldiers did, "as many thousands as ever came down from old Mycaenae", and after that there was no peace. We slapped them away with leaves for a time but there were too many for us, so in sheer self-defense, we got up and began to walk back to town. The only thing we had to be thankful for so far was that the Frog had apparently vanished from the scene.
We went back to the little restaurant where we had eaten our breakfast and ordered dinner. We had our choice between boiled fish and fried steak and we all took steak except Margery, who wanted fish. The heat had taken away our appet.i.tes, all but Margery"s, and she ate heartily.
Dinner over, we went out into the heat once more. We went up to see if the picture show was open yet, for the thought of a comfortable seat away from the sun and with an electric fan near, was becoming more alluring every minute. It was open and we pa.s.sed in with sighs of joy.
Somewhere along the middle of the performance, Sahwah, who was sitting next to me, gave me a nudge and pointed to the other side of the house.