NORMA'S LETTER
This was not Betty Gordon's first experience with an oil well set
off prematurely, and while she was naturally excited, she was not at
all afraid.
"Get on Clover!" shouted Bob. "I do wish you'd ever wear a hat--"
Betty laughed a little as she scrambled into her saddle. Bob, mounting
his own horse, wore no hat, but it was a pet grievance of his that Betty
persistently scorned headgear whether riding or walking.
"Gallop!" cried Bob. "Shut your eyes if you want to--Clover will
follow Reuben."
The white horse set off, his awkward lunge carrying him over the ground
swiftly, and the little bay Clover cantered obediently after him. Oil
continued to rain down as they headed toward the north.
Betty closed her eyes, clutching her letter and candy box tightly in both
hands and letting the reins lie idle on her horse's neck. Clover,
galloping now, could be trusted to follow the leading horse.
"Getting better now!" Bob shouted back, turning in his saddle to see that
Betty was safe.
Betty's dark eyes opened and she shook back her hair, making a little
face at the taste of oil in her mouth. She slipped Norma Guerin's letter
into her pocket, glancing down at her blouse as she did so.
"I'm a perfect sight!" she called to Bob dolorously. "I don't believe I
can ever get the oil spots out of this silk."
"Sue the company!" Bob cried, with a grin. "Don't let Clover go to sleep
till we're nearer home, Betty."
The girl urged the little bay forward with a whispered word of
encouragement, and gradually, very gradually, they began to draw out of
the rain of oil.
Betty Gordon was not an Oklahoma girl, though she rode with the
effortless ease of a Westerner. She was an orphan, of New England stock,
and had come from the East to the oil fields to join her one living
relative, a beloved uncle whose interest in oil holdings made an
incessant traveler of him.
This Richard Gordon, "Uncle Dick" to Bob Henderson as well as to Betty,
had found himself unexpectedly made guardian of his little niece at a
time when it was impassible for him to establish a home for her. His time
and skill pledged to the oil company he represented, Mr. Gordon had
solved the problem of what to do with Betty by sending her to spend the
summer with an old childhood friend of his, a Mrs. Peabody who had
married a farmer, reputed well-to-do. Betty's experiences, pleasant and
otherwise, as a member of the Peabody household, have been told in the
first book of this series entitled "Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm; or The
Mystery of a Nobody."
She made some true friends during the months she spent with the Peabodys,
and perhaps the closest, and certainly the most loyal, was Bob Henderson.
A year older than Betty, the fourteen year old Bob, whose life at Bramble
Farm had been harsh and unlovely and preceded by nothing brighter than a
drab existence at the county poor farm, became the champion of the
dark-eyed girl who had smiled at him and suggested that because they were
both orphans they had a common bond of friendship.
How Bob Henderson got track of his mother's people and what steps were
necessary before he could discover a definite clue, have been related in
the second volume of the series, entitled, "Betty Gordon in Washington;
or Strange Adventures in a Great City."
In this book Bob and Betty came together again in the Capitol City, and
Betty acquired a second "Uncle Dick" in the person of Richard Littell,
the father of three lively daughters who innocently kidnapped Betty, only
to have the entire family become her firm friends. While in Washington
Bob and Betty each received good news that sent them trustfully to
Oklahoma, there to meet Uncle Dick Gordon, and later, Bob's own aunts.
The story of the "Saunders' place" and of the unscrupulous sharpers who
tried to cheat the old ladies who were the sisters of Bob's dead mother,
has been told in the third book about Betty Gordon. This book, "Betty
Gordon in the Land of Oil; or The Farm that Was Worth a Fortune," relates
the varied experiences of Bob and Betty in the oil section of Oklahoma
and the long train of events that culminated in the sale of the Saunders
farm for ninety thousand dollars. Uncle Dick had been made guardian of
Bob, at his own and the aunts' request, so Bob was now a ward with Betty.
The possession of money, though it meant the difference between
poverty and debt and great comfort, had, to date, made very little
change in the mode of living of Miss Faith and Miss Charity Saunders,
or of their nephew.
This morning he had been delayed by some extra work on the farm, for the
oil company did not take possession till the first of the month, now a
week away, and Betty had ridden to the oil fields ahead of him. She
divided her time between the Saunders' place and the Watterby farm, where
she and Bob had stayed when they first came to Flame City.
"Whew!" gasped Bob as they finally emerged from the black curtain of oil.
"Of all the messy stuff! Betty, you look as though an oil lamp had
exploded in your face."
"Now I'll have to wash my hair again," mourned Betty. "You'd better come
to Grandma Watterby's and get tidied up, Bob. It's nearer than your
aunts', taking this road; and they always have the stove tank full of
hot water."
Bob took this advice, and the sympathetic Watterby family came to the
oil-spotted pair's assistance with copious supplies of hot water, soap
and towels and liberal handfuls of borax, for the water was very hard.
Fortunately, Betty had a clean blouse and skirt at hand (most of her
wardrobe was in the guest room at the Saunders farm), and Bob borrowed a
clean shirt from Will Watterby, in which the boy, being much smaller than
the man, looked a little absurd.
"I'm clean, anyway, and that makes me feel good, so why should I care how
I look?" was Bob's defense when his appearance was commented on.
"I'm so hungry," announced Betty, coming out of her room, once more trim
and neat, and sniffing the delicious odor of hot waffles. "I wonder if I
could pin my hair up in a towel and dry it after lunch?"
"Of course you may," said Mrs. Will Watterby warmly. "Did you fix a place
for Betty, Grandma?"
"What a silly question, Emma," reproved old Grandma Watterby
severely. "Here, Betty, you sit next to me, and Bob can have Will's
place. He's gone over to Flame City with a bolt he wants the
blacksmith to tinker up."
Ki, the Indian who helped with the farm work, smiled at Betty but said
nothing more than the single "Howdy," which was his stock form of
salutation. Mrs. Watterby's waffles were quite as good as they smelled,
and she apparently had mixed an inexhaustible quantity of batter. Every
one ate rapidly and in comparative silence, a habit to which Bob and
Betty were by now quite accustomed. When Mr. Gordon was present he
insisted on a little conversation, but his presence was lacking to-day.
"You go right out in the sun and dry your hair, Betty," said Mrs.
Watterby, when the meal was over. "No, I don't need any help with
the dishes. Grandma and me, we're going over to town in the car
this afternoon and I don't care whether I do the dishes till I come
back or not."
This, for Mrs. Watterby, was a great step forward. Before the purchase of
the automobile, bought with a legacy inherited by Grandma Watterby,
dishes and housework had been the sum total of Mrs. Will Watterby's
existence. Now that she could drive the car and get away from her kitchen
sink at will, she seemed another woman.
Betty voiced something of this to Bob as she unfastened the towel and let
her heavy dark hair fall over her shoulders. She was sitting on the back
porch where the afternoon sun shone unobstructed.
"Yes, I guess automobiles are a good thing," admitted Bob absently. "I
want Aunt Faith to get one. A runabout would be handy for them--one like
Doctor Guerin's. Remember, Betty?"
"My goodness, I haven't read Norma's letter!" said Betty hastily. "I left
it in my other blouse. Wait a minute, and I'll get it."
She dashed into the house and was back again in a moment, the letter Bob
had handed her just before the shower of oil, in her hand.
Bob, in his favorite attitude of lying on his back and staring at the
sky, was startled by an exclamation before Betty had finished the first
page of the closely written missive.
"What's the matter?" he demanded, sitting up. "Anybody sick?"
"Oh, Bob, such fun!" Betty's eyes danced with pleasure. "What do you
think! Norma and Alice Guerin are going to Shadyside!"
"Well, I'm willing to jump with joy, but could you tell me what
Shadyside is, and where?" said Bob humbly. "Why do the Guerin girls want
to go there?"
"I forgot you didn't know," apologized Betty. "Shadyside is the boarding
school, Bob. That's the name of the station, too. It's five hours' ride
from Washington. Let's see, there's Bobby and Louise Littell and Libbie,
and now Norma and Alice--five girls I know already! I guess I won't be
homesick or lonely."
But as she said it she glanced uncertainly at Bob.
That young man snickered, turned it into a cough, and that failing,
essayed to whistle.
"Bob, you act too funny for anything!" This time Betty's glance was not
one of approval. "What does ail you?"
"Nothing, nothing at all, Betsey," Bob assured her. "I'm my usual
charming self. Are Norma and Alice going to Washington first?"
"No. I wish they were," answered Betty, taking up the letter again.
"Bob, I'm afraid they're having a hard time with money matters. You know
Dr. Guerin is so easy-going he never collects one-third of the bills he
sends out, and any one can get his services free if they tell him a hard
luck story. Norma writes that she and Alice have always wanted to go to
Shadyside because their mother graduated from there when it was only a
day school. Mrs. Guerin's people lived around there somewhere. And last
year, you know, Norma went to an awfully ordinary school--good enough, I
suppose, but not very thorough. She couldn't prepare for college there."
"Well, couldn't we fix it some way for them?" asked Bob interestedly.
"I'd do anything in the world for Doctor Guerin. Didn't he row me that
time he found us out in the fields at two o'clock in the morning? You
think up some way to make him accept some money, Betty."
Doctor Hal Guerin and his wife and daughters had been good friends to Bob
and Betty in the Bramble Farm days. The doctor, with a large country
practice that brought him more affection and esteem than ready cash, had
managed to look after the boy and girl more or less effectively, and
Norma, his daughter, had supplied Bob with orders from her school friends
for little carved pendants that he made with no better tools than an old
knife. This money had been the first Bob had ever earned and had given
him his first taste of independence.
"I don't think you could make Doctor Guerin take money, even as a
loan," said Betty slowly, in answer to Bob's proposal. "Norma wouldn't
like it if she thought her letter had suggested such a thing. What
makes it hard for them, I think, is that Mrs. Guerin expected to have
quite a fortune some day. Her mother was really wealthy, and she was an
only child. I don't know where the money went, but I do know the
Guerins never had any of it."
Bob jumped to his feet as she finished the sentence.
"Here's Uncle Dick!" he cried. "Did you see the new well come in, sir?"