RED RAGS
"Well, we've been making pretty good speed for the last three hours,"
said Mollie, taking first one hand, then the other, from the steering
wheel and stretching her cramped fingers experimentally. "Now if nothing
else happens--"
The sound of an explosion cut short the rest of the sentence, and she
put on the brakes, at the same time tooting a signal to Betty. The
latter stopped her car and came running back to see what had happened.
"Tire," said Mollie laconically, forestalling the inevitable questions.
"I knew our luck had been too good to be true. Well," with the air of a
martyr accepting the inevitable, "I suppose there's nothing to do but
get busy and fix it, though, of course, this spoils our chances of
getting to Bensington to-night," Bensington being the town midway
between Deepdale and Bluff Point where they had planned to spend the
night. It was also the only town for miles around that boasted a hotel.
"Oh, I don't know," said Betty in reply to Mollie's gloomy prediction.
"It won't be the first time we've accomplished the impossible."
"But it will soon be dark."
"Goodness! it won't be dark for hours and hours," Betty laughed at her.
"And this oughtn't to take us more than half an hour at the longest.
Come on now, let's get busy."
Thus inspired, the girls "got busy," but they were tired with the long
drive and everything seemed to go wrong. Their usually skillful fingers
fumbled, the tire was "too big or too little or something," to quote
Amy, and at the end of a quarter of an hour's useless struggle their
tempers were worn to a frazzle and they were ready to cry.
"Well, I never had anything act like that before," cried Mollie
irritably. "I'd like to give the person that wrote about the 'depravity
of inanimate things' a medal. The old tire's got a mean disposition,
that's all."
"Well, it isn't the only one," Grace was beginning, when Mollie turned
and glared at her.
"If you mean me--"
"I meant all of us," Grace explained. "As long as we have been going
together, this is the first time I can remember when all of us have been
in the doleful dumps at once."
This brought a reluctant smile even to Mollie's gloomy countenance, and
Betty laughed merrily.
"Perhaps it's just as well," said the Little Captain, adding with a
chuckle: "It's the same way with onions--if everybody eats 'em, no one
can notice the unpleasantness in the other fellow."
This brought a real laugh, and Mollie said fondly:
"I always knew you were a 'philosophiker,' Betty, dear. But," she added,
vindictively kicking the tire that lay at her feet, "all the philosophy
in the world won't put this tire on for us. And we can't very well get
to Bensington on three wheels and a rim."
"No!" cried Grace, sarcastically. "Who would have guessed it?"
Mollie started to retort, but the threatened resumption of hostilities
was cut short by the sound of a motor in the distance.
"Hark!" cried Mollie, a dramatic hand raised to a listening ear. "Do I
hear the approach of an angel?"
"If you do, he has a pretty earthly means of transportation," laughed
Betty. "To me, it sounds like a machine or a motorcycle."
"How can you?" cried Mollie, still dramatically poised. "It is an angel,
I tell you, come to help us out of our predicament."
"It is a motorcycle," cried Amy excitedly. "The engine is making too
much noise for an automobile."
"Well," suggested Mrs. Ford quietly, "whoever it is, I think it might be
a good idea to get out of the middle of the road."
"But if we do," Grace protested, "he'll go right past us."
"And if we don't we'll get run over," added Mrs. Ford.
The girls looked at each other helplessly.
"I tell you," cried Betty suddenly, her eyes sparkling with a new idea.
"Give me that old red rag we use for a duster, Mollie, and I'll go and
signal your angel."
"Betty, you'll do no such thing," cried Amy, shocked, while Mollie dug
under the seat for the improvised signal flag. "Think of signaling a
strange man!"
"But you forget he's an angel in disguise," laughed Betty, snatching the
dust cloth Mollie held out to her. "Anyway," she added, over her
shoulder, "desperate cases require desperate remedies," and was off
round the turn of the road.
There wasn't much time to spare either, for when she had clambered up on
a rock by the side of the road, the motorcyclist was only a few hundred
feet away.
At the unexpected sight of a red rag wildly waved by a very graceful
little figure in a gray traveling suit, he looked surprised but promptly
put on his brakes. He leapt from his machine and came running toward her
while Betty descended from her perch just in time to meet him at the
foot of the rock.
"Is there anything the matter?" he asked, in a nice voice that Betty
immediately liked. In fact, she liked nearly everything about him, from
his sunburned face and merry blue eyes to his trim leather boots and
puttees. So she gave him a friendly little smile that showed all her
dimples, much to his secret admiration.
"Why, yes, there is," she answered, adding with a chuckle: "If there
hadn't been, I shouldn't have been perched on that old rock, waving a
ridiculous red dust rag!"
Then, as they made their way around the turn in the road toward the car
where Mrs. Ford and the girls were waiting for them, she explained the
situation, adding with another smile: "You see, I had to stop you some
way, so I chose the very first method I could think of."
"It certainly was effective," he answered, smiling.
Then after mutual introductions, by which the girls learned that their
new friend's name was Joe Barnes and that he had been on his way to
Deeming, a village about five miles away when Betty's red flag had
brought him to so sudden a stop, the youth went to work with a will at
the tire while the girls alternately watched him and helped by handing
him the tools he needed.
In what seemed no time at all to the girls he had finished his task and
had pulled out a handkerchief and was wiping his begrimed hands with it.
"My, you did do that in a hurry!" sighed Mollie, patting the new tire
happily. "You did in fifteen minutes what five of us couldn't do in half
an hour."
"You were probably tired," he answered, glancing at the car, which gave
unmistakable evidence of the many miles they had come that day. "Are
you, have you--" he hesitated, evidently not knowing whether his
question would be taken in good part or not. "Are you going very much
farther?"
"Only about a hundred miles," laughed Betty, then added in answer to his
startled glance: "Not to-night, though. We are just going as far as
Bensington."
"But Bensington is about fifteen miles away," he protested, adding as he
glanced up at a lowering gray cloud overhead: "And if I know anything
about weather signs, you will have to use some speed to get there before
the storm."
"The storm!" they cried simultaneously, following his glance, while
Mollie added petulantly:
"Goodness, haven't we had enough troubles for one day without getting a
drenching into the bargain?"
"But we haven't got the drenching yet," Mrs. Ford reminded her, adding,
with a cordial smile as she held out her hand to Joe Barnes: "We don't
know how to thank you Mr. Barnes, for taking all this trouble for us."
"Please don't," he begged, flashing his nice smile upon them. "I am only
too glad to have been of assistance. And now, if I might suggest--"
Another glance at the ominous cloud which had grown bigger and blacker
even in these few minutes, sent the girls scrambling unceremoniously to
their seats while Joe Barnes lifted his hat and stood waiting for them
to start. Once his eyes rested upon Betty, and there was so much
undisguised admiration in them that she flushed prettily and threw in
the clutch with a jerk that was not at all skillful.
"Good-bye," they called, and "good-bye," he answered, as the two cars
sprang forward in a cloud of dust. Not until they were out of sight did
Joe Barnes turn away and retrace his steps toward his deserted
motorcycle.
"Joe, my boy," he communed with himself, shaking his head over the
memory of Betty's dimples, "that little Miss Nelson is one girl in a
million. I wonder now," slowly mounting his machine and looking
reflectively at the road in front of it, "why I didn't ask if I might
call." Then the absurdity of the idea made him laugh at himself. "What
nonsense to think of taking advantage of an accident--Where was it they
said they were stopping for the night? Oh, yes, Bensington. Well, he
might go there and take a chance on seeing them--her. Fate might even be
kind to him and burst some more tires!" Then he laughed at himself again
and started his motor.
Meanwhile Grace, who had noticed Joe Barnes' expressive glance in
Betty's direction and the latter's subsequent confusion, commented upon
the coincidence.
"Goodness, Betty," she drawled lightly, "I always knew you were a heart
breaker, but I never saw you make a conquest in so short a time. Half an
hour and--poof--it's all over but the shouting."
Betty gave an annoyed little laugh.
"Don't be foolish, Gracie," she commanded adding reflectively as she
skillfully avoided a rock in the road: "He was awfully nice looking
though, and pleasant."
"Of course!"
"But I couldn't help wondering," Betty went on, as though talking to
herself, "why he was here at all when his country needs him."
"Um--yes, that was rather strange," mused Grace. "One isn't used to
seeing a young, good-looking and apparently healthy boy on this side of
the water these days, unless he's in khaki. I wonder if our knight by
the wayside is by any chance one of those insects we term--"
"Slackers?" finished Betty, adding in quick defense: "No, I'm quite sure
he isn't that kind. You know we have had a good chance to study both
types, and he doesn't look like a slacker."
"Granted," agreed Grace, adding with a quick change of mood: "Just the
same, it makes me feel desperate to see any young fellow running at his
own free will about the country, evidently enjoying life, while our boys
are giving up everything--"
"But, if Joe Barnes isn't a slacker," Betty reminded her gently, "he is
probably passionately envying our boys the right to 'give up
everything'."
"Perhaps," replied Grace, eyes fixed moodily upon the flying landscape.
"But when I think of Will--"
For a long time there was silence. Then Betty gave a little start and
regarded with disfavor a big drop that rested on the third finger of her
right hand. She immediately resigned the guidance of the car to her left
hand while she held up the right for Grace's inspection.
"What's the matter with it?" queried the latter, who had been engrossed
in her not too happy meditations.
"Rain," cried Betty succinctly, adding with a whimsical little smile: "I
don't know whether Joe Barnes is a slacker or not, but I do know he's a
good prophet. We surely shall have to put on some speed if we want to
reach Bensington before the storm!"