At first the girls could not believe their eyes. But it was all too
true. The deep tracks in the dust of the road showing the well-known
prints of the Striped Beetle's tires told beyond a doubt that the car
had gone on and left them.
"But I never heard it start!" said Gladys.
"It was the murmuring of your old brook, Hinpoha, that you were raving
about," said Chapa, "that filled our ears."
It took them actual minutes to realize that Pearl, the spineless
clinging doll-faced girl they had befriended, had sold them out.
"And we took her for such a baby!" said Hinpoha, in bewilderment.
"Who would ever dream she could drive a car?" gasped Gladys. "She was
afraid to toot the horn." To lose your automobile in the midst of a
tour must be like having your horse shot under you. One minute you're
en route and the next minute you're rooted, if the reader will forgive
a very lame pun. And the spot where the Striped Beetle had been
(figuratively) shot from under the girls could not have been selected
better if it had been made to order for a writer of melodrama. There
was not a house in sight nor a telephone wire. The dust in the road was
three inches deep and the temperature must have been close to a
hundred. They were at least five miles from the nearest town. Chapa
looked at Medmangi, Medmangi looked at Hinpoha, and Hinpoha looked at
Gladys. Gladys, having no one else to look at, scratched her head and
thought.
"Well," she said finally, "we can't stay here all day. We might as well
walk to the nearest town and tell the police. They may be able to trace
the car. It was stolen once before and they found it in a town forty
miles away."
Whenever anyone mentions that walk in the heat the four girls begin to
pant and fan themselves with one accord. They had gone about three
miles when they came upon the Striped Beetle standing in the road,
abandoned. With a cry of joy the girls threw themselves upon it. The
cause for its abandonment soon came to light. The gasoline tank was
empty. Otherwise it was undamaged. But before it could join the
innumerable caravan again it must have gasoline, and naturally there
was none growing on the bushes.
"You two sit in the car and see that no one else runs away with it,"
said Gladys to Medmangi and Chapa, "and Hinpoha and I will go for
gasoline."
It was not until they had finished the two miles to town and stood by a
gasoline station that they remembered that they had no money. The
gasoline man firmly refused to give them any gas unless they paid for
it. Gladys was aghast. Hinpoha leaned wearily against a post and mopped
her hot face. Hinpoha suffers more from the heat than the rest of us.
"Pretty tough to be dead broke, aint it, lady?" asked a grimy urchin,
who had been an interested witness of Gladys's discomfiture.
"Worse to be alive and broke," jeered another one. Gladys's face was
crimson with heat and embarrassment. She turned and walked rapidly away
from the place, followed by Hinpoha.
"You'll have to wire home for money now," said Hinpoha.
"And lose the bet," said Gladys, disconsolately. "And father'll laugh
his head off to think how neatly we were beaten.
"I know what I'll do," she said, resolutely. "I'll not wire him at all.
I'll wire the bank where I have my own money and have them wire me
some."
Accordingly, she hunted up the telegraph office and sent a wire collect
to her bank, feeling much pleased with herself at the idea of having
found a way out without calling on her father for aid.
The telegraph office was in the railway station and she and Hinpoha sat
down after sending the wire and waited for the ship to come in,
wondering what the other girls would think when they failed to come
back with the gasoline. It was past dinnertime but there was no dinner
for them as long as they had no money. From jaunty tourist to penniless
pauper in two hours is quite a change. An hour passed; two hours, but
no gold-laden message came over the wire. Hinpoha had been chewing her
fingers for the last hour.
"Oh, please stop that," cried Gladys irritably, "you make me nervous.
You remind me of a cannibal."
"Isn't there a poem about 'My beautiful Cannibalee?" returned Hinpoha.
"I'll go out and eat grass if that will make you feel any better," she
continued. She strolled outdoors, leaving Gladys listening to the
clickety-click of the telegraph instrument and growing more nervous
every minute. Presently Hinpoha came back and said she couldn't stand
it outside at all because there was a crate of melons and a box of eggs
on the station platform, and she was afraid she wouldn't have the
strength to resist if she stayed out there with them.
"And it's going to rain," she announced. "You ought to see the sky
toward the west."
And then the darkness began to make itself felt; not the blue darkness
of twilight, but the black darkness of thunder clouds through which
zig-zags of lightning began to stab. A baby, waiting in the station
with its mother for the train, began to wail with fright and Hinpoha
forgot her hunger in an effort to amuse him. Then the storm broke. The
train roared in just as it began and mingled its noise with the
thunder. Hardly had it disappeared up the track when there came a crash
of thunder that shook the station to its foundations, followed by a
dazzling sheet of blue light, and then the telegraph operator bounded
out of his little enclosure, white with fear. His instrument had been
struck, as well as the wires on the outside of the building and the
roof began to burn. Gladys and Hinpoha rushed out into the rain
regardless of their unprotected state and found shelter in a near-by
shed, from which they watched the progress of what might well be taken
for a second deluge.
"If the water rises much higher in the road we won't need any
gasoline," remarked Hinpoha. "The Striped Beetle will float."
"I only hope the girls got the storm curtains buttoned down in time,"
Gladys kept saying over and over again.
"If it starts to float," persisted Hinpoha, "do you suppose it will
come this way, or will they have to steer it? Would the steering-wheel
be any good, I wonder, or would they have to have a rudder? Oh," she
said brightly, "now I know what they mean by the expression 'turning
turtle'. It happens in cases of flood; the car turns turtle and swims
home. If it only turned into turtle soup," she sighed.
Gladys looked up suddenly. "What time was it when we sent that wire to
my bank?" she asked.
"A quarter after one," replied Hinpoha, promptly. "I heard a clock
chiming somewhere. And I calculated that I would just about last until
you got an answer."
"A quarter after one," repeated Gladys. "That's Central time. That was
a quarter after two Cleveland time. The bank closes at two o'clock.
They probably never sent me any money!"
"Now you'll have to wire your father after all," said Hinpoha.
For answer Gladys pointed to the blackened telegraph pole which was
lying with its many arms stretched out across the roof of the station.
There would be no wires sent out that day.
By the time the rain had ceased the darkness of the thunder clouds had
been succeeded by the darkness of night, and Hinpoha and Gladys took
their way wearily back over the flooded road to where the Striped
Beetle stood.
"Did you have to dig a well first, before you got that gasoline?"
called Chapa, as they approached. (They _had_ put down the storm
curtains, Gladys noted.)
Gladys made her announcement briefly and they all settled down to gloom.
"Talk about being shipwrecked on a desert island," said Hinpoha. "I
think one can get beautifully shipwrecked on the inhabited mainland. We
are experiencing all the thrills of Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss
family Robinson combined."
"We haven't any Man Friday," observed Gladys.
"What good would he be if we had him?" inquired Hinpoha, gloomily.
"He could act as chauffeur," replied Gladys, "and supply the modern
flavor."
"This is Friday, too," remarked Medmangi.
"That's why the car won't start," said Hinpoha, "it won't start
anything on Friday."
"Couldn't we dig for oil?" suggested Chapa. "We're in the oil belt.
There must be all kinds of gasoline in the earth under our very feet,
and we languishing on top of it! It's like the stories where the man
perishes of thirst in the desert right on top of the water hole."
"We really and truly are Robinson Crusoe-like," said Gladys, looking
out at the flooded fields and deserted road.
"Robinson Crusoe had the advantage of us in one thing," said Hinpoha,
returning to her main theme. "He had a corn-stalk, and clams, and
things."
"'If we only had some ham, we could have some ham and eggs, if we only
had some eggs,'" quoted Gladys.
"Here's where the Slave of the Lamp would come in handy," sighed
Hinpoha.
"You might rub the lamp," said Gladys, pointing to the tail light, "and
maybe the Slave will appear."
"I want baked potatoes on my order," said Gladys.
"And I want broiled chicken," said Chapa.
Hinpoha got down and solemnly rubbed the tail lamp of the Striped
Beetle, exclaiming, "Slave, appear!"
Something black bounded out of the darkness at the side of the road and
landed at her feet. It was Mr. Bob, who had gone off for exercise. He
carried something in his mouth which he laid decorously on the ground
beside her. She stooped to look at it. It was an apple.
The girls all shouted. Hinpoha straightened up. "Girls," she said
solemnly, "coming shadows cast their events before, I mean, coming
events cast their shadows before. Where there's honey you'll find bees,
and where there's apples you'll find trees. The famine is over, and now
for the feast."
She led the way down the road with Chapa and Medmangi on either side.
They found the tree, close beside the road, and loaded with fruit. They
filled their pockets for Gladys and returned to the Striped Beetle, and
then for some time, as Hinpoha said, "Nothing was heard in the air but
the hurrying munch of the greening."
"It must be a disadvantage to be a negro," remarked Hinpoha
reflectively, "you can't tell the difference when they're clean."
"May I ask," inquired Gladys politely, "just what it was that caused
you to make that remark at this time?"
"Greening apples," returned Hinpoha, calmly. "You can't tell which are
ripe and which are green."
"You can tell by the seeds," said Gladys.
"All seeds are black by night," returned Hinpoha.
"Not changing the subject," said Chapa, "but where are we going to stay
to-night?"
"You're not _going_ to stay," replied Hinpoha, "you're staying. Right
here. The Inn of the Striped Beetle.
"Under the wide and starry sky
Fold up the seats and let us lie!"
"We'll sleep with the raggle taggle gypsies, O!" added Gladys.
"I want a fire," said Hinpoha. "We always have a fire when we sleep
out."
"Well, build one in a puddle, if you can," said Gladys. "Your hair will
be the only blaze we have to-night."
Chapa and Medmangi stood up together on the running-board and began to
sing dolefully,
"Forsaken, forsaken, forsaken, am I,
Like the bones at a banquet, all men pass me by."
"I wish a few would pass by," said Gladys, "By the way, have you
noticed that not a single car or wagon has passed through here since
we've been stranded? I thought this was the main road."
"If this is the main road," said Hinpoha, "I'd hate to be stranded on a
by-path."
Of course, the girls did not know then that the storm had washed out
the bridges on either side of them and the roadway had been closed to
traffic. They sat peering into the darkness like Columbus looking for
land and wondering why no one came along to whom they could appeal for
a tow into the village. The moon shone, a slender sickle in the west
that Gladys said reminded her of the thin slices of melon they used to
serve for breakfast at Miss Russell's school.
"I think it looks more like a toe nail," said Hinpoha, squinting
sidewise at it.
"Don't look at it squarely, it'll bring you bad luck," said Chapa.
"I'm not looking at it," said Hinpoha, "it's looking at me."
"Where does the man in the moon go when it turns into a sickle?" asked
Medmangi.
"That doesn't worry me half so much as where Pearl went with my silver
mesh bag," said Gladys. That brought them all down to earth again and
back to the cause of their predicament, and the moon turned into a
yellow banana and fell off the sky counter while they voiced their
indignation. And, of course, they all turned on Hinpoha for being taken
in by her in the first place, and Hinpoha vented her irritation on Mr.
Bob, who was sitting with his head on her knee in a lover-like attitude.
"It's all your fault that we are in this mess," she said to him,
crossly. "If you hadn't jumped out of the car after that yellow dog and
chased him into the empty store I wouldn't have had to go after you,
and if I hadn't gone after you I would never have discovered Pearl and
brought her along with us. It's the last time I'll ever travel with
you." Mr. Bob, feeling the reproach in her tone, crept away with his
head down.
"O come, let's not quarrel about whose fault it was," said Gladys. "It
isn't the first time people have been taken in."
"We seem to be left out, rather than taken in," murmured Hinpoha.
"You're unusually brilliant to-night," remarked Chapa. "It must have
been the apples, because on an ordinary diet you never say anything
bright."
"Is that so?" said Hinpoha.
"Look at the stars," said Gladys hastily, "aren't they brilliant
to-night?"
"Almost as brilliant as Hin--" began Chapa.
"If we sit up late enough," said Gladys, cutting in on Chapa's remark,
"we may see some of the winter stars. I actually believe there's Orion
now."
"And the Twins," cried Hinpoha, forgetting her momentary offended
feeling in the interest of her discovery.
"And Sirius and the Bull and the River," added Gladys. "It's just like
getting a peep at the actors in their dressing-rooms before it is time
for them to come out on the stage, to see the winter stars now."
"I hate to look at the stars so much," said Hinpoha, dolefully. "They
make me feel so small."
"I should think that anything that made you feel small would--"
Gladys again interrupted the flow of Chapa's wit, directed this time
against Hinpoha's bulk.
"I'm going to bed," she announced. There was a scramble for the robes
and for comfortable places in the tonneau, and it took much adjusting
and readjusting before there was anything resembling quiet in the
bedchamber of the Striped Beetle. But weariness can snore even on the
floor boards of a car and that long walk over the road had done its
work for at least two of the girls. The last thing they heard was
Hinpoha drowsily spouting:
"Let me sleep in a car by the side of the road,
Where the hop toads are croaking near-by,
With Medmangi's camera between my knees stowed,
And Gladys's foot in my eye!"
And then, when they were all nicely settled and had dropped off to
sleep, Hinpoha had the nightmare and screamed the most blood-curdling
screams and cried out that the apple tree was hugging her to death,
which sounded nonsensical, but was really suggestive. For, in the
morning she discovered that green apples are gone but not forgotten
when used as an article of diet and sat doubled up in silent agony on
the floor of the car and announced she was dying.
"It serves you right," said Medmangi, in her best doctor manner. "You
were in such a hurry to eat them that you ate every one that came along
without waiting to find out whether it was ripe or not. The rest of us
stuck to the ripe ones and we're all right."
"Well, the unripe ones are sticking to me," groaned Hinpoha, unhappily.
Mr. Bob laid his head on her knee with an air of sympathy. Where
Hinpoha is concerned he never stops to think whether the sympathy is
deserved or not.
"What family do apples belong to, anyway?" asked Gladys idly, seeing it
was time to turn Medmangi aside from preaching to Hinpoha.
"Not my family," said Chapa, "we're all peaches."
"Forget-me-not family," said Hinpoha, with another groan.
They ate more apples for breakfast, except Hinpoha, who pretended not
to see when they offered them to her. Then Gladys decided to walk to
town again to see what cheer there was there.
"Up, up, Hinpoha," she cried, "and join me in my morning stroll."
"You should say 'Double up, Hinpoha', like 'double up Lucy'," said
Chapa, and then dodged as Hinpoha's hand reached out for her hair.
Hinpoha tried to stand up, but immediately sat down again, and Chapa
went to town with Gladys.
They sat and watched the repairmen fixing the wires of the telegraph
and, after a while, the messages began to pour in again. And one of
them was the one that brought joy to Gladys's soul and as soon as the
formalities were gone through she had actual money once more. They
bought enough gasoline to bring the Striped Beetle in and returned to
the anchored ones in triumph. They found that during their absence
Hinpoha had manufactured a large "For Rent" sign and hung it on the
front of the car, intending, as she said, to go into business and rent
out the car at a dollar an hour until they had enough money to proceed.
"How were you intending to rent it out without any gasoline to run it?"
inquired Gladys.
"Make them pay in advance," replied Hinpoha.
"With the constant stream of foot-sore pedestrians over this road it
would no doubt have been profitable," said Gladys, scanning the road up
and down. There was not a living being in sight. But Gladys knew the
reason now, for she had seen the washout.
To get the Striped Beetle back to town they had to drive through
private property to reach the other road. After eating breakfast--the
first real meal they had had since the morning before--they set out
once more for Rochester to meet Nyoda.
"So it's money makes the Striped Beetle go," said Hinpoha reflectively,
as they sped along. "And I had been thinking all the while it was
gasoline."