It was almost as much of a shock to Miss Campbell and the others to see
Billie so unstrung as to find the Comet stolen.
The young girl's feeling for her car was of a very real character, and
if the Comet had been a favorite animal or a human being even, she could
not have been more distressed.
"Billie, my darling, you must not give way so," cried her cousin,
putting her arms gently around Billie's neck. "We shall find the Comet,
I'm sure."
"I never dreamed anyone would take him," sobbed Billie. "I thought he
would be quite safe in this lonely place. It was stupid of me to have
left him unprotected like that all night long."
Her friends, who had been subdued and silent in the presence of her
grief could hardly refrain from smiling at the notion of Billie's
sitting up all night to protect the automobile from kidnappers. Billie,
her normal, cheerful self, was the most sensible person in the world;
but Billie, the prey of tears and doubts, was just as unreasonable as
any other weeping, unhappy girl.
While she had her cry out on Miss Helen's shoulder with her devoted
Nancy hanging over her, Mary and Elinor began to look about them.
"The robber must have been a chauffeur, Elinor," said Mary, "and a very
good one, too, because he not only knew how to run the Comet but to
repair it."
"What are we going to do?" asked Elinor irrelevantly.
The two girls stood thinking. The robber had not taken their suitcases
which they had been obliged to unstrap and open the night before; nor
had he touched their camping outfit. Only the motor had been filched
from them while they slept.
"I think the first thing to do is to make ourselves comfortable," Mary
remarked as her eyes fell on the alcohol stove. "Then we'll get
breakfast and Billie will be more cheerful. Perhaps someone will come
along by then."
As soon as Billie noticed her friends arranging their tumbled hair and
washing their faces from the bottle of drinking water they always
carried with them, she stopped crying at once.
"I'm awfully ashamed," she exclaimed, as embarrassed as a boy caught in
the act of shedding tears. "I'm afraid I've been a fearful cry-baby, as
if weeping could do any good. Here, let's wash them off and get busy,"
she added, trying to smile while she poured some of the water over her
pocket handkerchief and bathed her red eyes.
"Don't you care, Billie," cried Nancy. "I was glad to see you a little
human like the rest of us. And it was a dreadful blow."
Mary, with her unfailing desire to make everybody comfortable under the
most trying circumstances, began presently to prepare coffee over the
alcohol stove, and the fragrance of the bean did seem to comfort them
somewhat in their trying position. When the most optimistic person in a
party becomes the prey of wretchedness, the others usually pretend a
cheerfulness they by no means feel. But now that Billie had regained her
composure, Miss Campbell's spirits began to sink.
She made a pitiful little toilet with a teacupful of drinking water and
her eau de cologne. She arranged her snow white hair in its usual
three-finger puffs, pinned on her lace jabot with great care and then
surveyed the far-stretching country with an uneasy glance.
"If one robber is around another is sure to be," she began. "Oh, dear,
oh, dear! if we had only never started on this madman's journey. Your
father was a foolish fellow ever to have consented, Billie. What are we
but five weak helpless women lost in the wilderness?"
"No, we are not," protested Billie. "Indeed we are not any of those
things, Cousin Helen. I was for a moment when I found we had lost the
Comet, but I know we shall get the Comet back and everything will be all
right, I don't yet know how, but I certainly don't intend to give up
hope at this stage of the game."
"First breakfast," said Mary, spreading out the lunch cloth and
supplying each person with an orange, a soft boiled egg and a cup of
coffee. "First a little nourishment and then see how much more hopeful
you'll all feel."
It was hardly what might be called a cheerful meal and it was quickly
dispatched especially by Billie in whose mind a plan was already
formulating.
"Nancy," she said to her friend who had followed her to the edge of the
grove and was standing silently beside her, "where are your field
glasses?"
The glasses were promptly produced from Nancy's suitcase.
"Do you think," Billie continued, "that I could climb one of those pine
trees? I believe if I could get to one of the upper branches, I could
see for miles around the country. I might even see the Comet."
"You know Miss Campbell would never consent, Billie," Nancy objected,
"even if you could shin up that slippery pine tree."
"Just you engage Cousin Helen in conversation for five minutes and I'll
engage to do the rest. It's really a matter of costume, anyhow."
So saying, Billie calmly slipped off her corduroy skirt and coat,
revealing herself in pongee bloomers and a pongee blouse. Then she
kicked off her russet leather pumps and hung the long strap of the field
glasses over her shoulder.
The tree she had chosen to climb was the tallest one in the group, and,
as is the case with pine trees, it had not put forth any substantial
limbs until more than half-way up. But the trunk was scarred and
corrugated with the marks of former limbs that had died, and Billie used
these as footholds as she shinned up the tree.
Nancy had not attempted to engage Miss Campbell in conversation. She
stood rooted to the spot, fascinated while Billie worked her way up and
finally swung herself into a fork where the big stone pine divided and
became as two trees. Then, choosing the next largest branch, she climbed
on as nimbly as a sailor in the rigging of a ship. Nancy admired her
friend's graceful and agile figure, and occasionally through the
foliage, she caught glimpses of Billie's earnest face. Her gray eyes
were filled with the fire of her resolution, and her mouth, in which
sweetness and determination were blended, was closed tightly. Not a lock
of her fine light brown hair had been disturbed by the climb and the two
side rolls were as smooth and glossy as silk.
All this while Miss Campbell and the others had been busy storing away
the breakfast dishes which could not under any circumstances be washed.
It was various degrees between seven and half-past by the several
watches in the party and the sun had mounted the Eastern heavens and was
shedding its glory over the great plain.
"Someone must surely be coming this way soon----" Miss Campbell was
saying when a jolly voice singing an Irish song broke in on the silence.
"I had a sister Helen, she was younger than I am,
She had so many sweethearts, she had to deny 'em;
But as for meself, I haven't so many,
And the Lord only knows, I'd be thankful for any."
A man on horseback immediately hove into sight around a bend in the
road. He was long and lean and brown with eyes as mildly blue as the
summer sky above them. The thin lips of his large mouth had a nervously
humorous twitch at the corners, and his yellow hair, much longer than
men wear their hair in the East, could be seen underneath his sombrero.
He wore a blue flannel shirt with a bright scarlet tie, velveteen
trousers and long cowhide boots which extended beyond the knees. He was,
in fact, a cowboy. The girls were certain of it although he did not wear
the fantastic sheepskin trousers they had seen in pictures. But he had
every other mark of the cowboy, the lean Texas horse, the high-built
saddle, much decorated, and the jingling spurs on his high-heeled boots.
Giving the belated motorists one grand, sweeping, comprehensive glance,
he was about to amble on politely, since it was none of his business to
show interest in things that did not concern him, when Miss Campbell
rushed dramatically into the road and stretched out her arms with
gestures of distress.
"Oh, I beg of you, sir, don't leave us," she cried. Billie in the garb
of Peter Pan watching from the tree tops could not restrain her smiles;
and Nancy from behind the same tree giggled audibly.
"Excuse me, ma'am, I didn't know you were in any trouble," said the
cowboy reining in his horse and lifting off his sombrero. "I'm Barney
McGee, at your service, ma'am. What can I do for you?"
[Illustration: "I'm Barney McGee, at your service, ma'am."]
"Our motor car broke down here last night and it was too dark to repair
it. We were obliged to stay here all night. And while we slept, a robber
stole it. We are simply stranded on the road. What can we do?"
Barney McGee gave a long, melodious whistle.
"Lifted your motor, ma'am! That was a d----, excuse me, a devilish low
scoundrelly trick. If I could get to a telephone, we would round him up
before he gets to Wyoming."
"Oh, Mr. McGee, if you would only help us, we would owe you a debt of
gratitude all our lives."
"You say the motor was out of fix, ma'am?" he asked. "Then it may have
broken down, again. I'll just climb up and take a look at the
countryside. What color was the car?"
"Red."
To Nancy's consternation, Barney McGee stood up on his saddle and
grasping a limb, drew himself up into the very tree in which Billie was
now making herself as scarce as possible.
It was an absurd situation and the two young girls hardly knew whether
to keep silent or to speak. Billie kept saying to herself:
"I'm sure I look just as I do when I wear my gymnasium suit, but, oh,
dear, I wish he hadn't chosen this tree."
As the cowboy swung up the next limb, Billie leaned around and looked
straight down into his face. She was about to say:
"You needn't come any further. I can see the country perfectly," when
words failed her and she burst out laughing.
Barney McGee smiled gravely back.
"Excuse me, I am afraid I've intruded," he said, observing the silk
bloomers with an expression of guarded amusement.
"I suppose he thought I was a Suffragette," Billie laughingly told her
friends afterwards.
"Billie, my dear child, what are you doing?" cried Miss Campbell, who
now for the first time saw the strange bird roosting in the tree above
them, and the good lady groaned aloud as her eye took in her young
relative's costume.
"Wilhelmina," she exclaimed in a shocked voice, "what will Mr. McGee
think of you--in--in those things?"
"Don't scold her, ma'am," called down the cowboy, "it's an illigent
climbing costume."
"I have some glasses, Mr. McGee," said Billie calmly. "I haven't been
able to manage them yet and keep my balance. Perhaps you can do better
than I can."
Barney McGee, as nimble as a mountain goat, as he pulled himself above
Billie, his spurs jingling musically, now took the glasses and scanned
the surrounding country.
While he looked, Billie scrambled down as fast as she could and in two
seconds had slipped back on her skirt and buckled her patent leather
belt.
The Motor Maids and Miss Helen felt not unlike a shipwrecked party with
a sailor aloft in the lookout searching for a sail in that vast ocean of
prairie.
"Hip, hip, hurray!" cried Barney McGee, so suddenly, that he gave Miss
Helen a start of surprise. "I've found it, ma'am. I've found the red
motor and it's coming this way. Sure as me name is Barney, it is. It's
driven by one person and it's goin' fast."
"Coming this way?" they cried in unison.
"It's about three miles to the southwest and at the rate it's goin' it
ought to be here in no time."
"Is it on this road?" cried Billie.
"It is, Miss, and it'll pass by here unless it shoots out over the
prairie, which it won't."
"It is very strange," said Miss Campbell. "I should think the thief
would take another direction."
"Perhaps he's doubling on his tracks," suggested Mary.
Barney had a long pistol in his belt and this he now took from its case,
and examined critically while the girls looked on fearfully.
"You're not going to shoot him, I hope?" asked Billie.
"It may not be necessary, Miss."
"No, no. Don't do that under any circumstances," put in Miss Campbell.
Barney gave a humorous, good-natured grin.
"I'll defend the ladies," he said.
The suspense of waiting was almost more than they could endure. Miss
Campbell proposed that they pile all the suitcases one on top of the
other and take their stand behind them, like an improvised fort.
Billie suggested that they lay them across the road so that the car
would be obliged to stop. As for Barney, he leapt on his Texas horse and
took his stand like a sentinel in the middle of the road, pistol cocked.
But the Comet appeared before the girls could do anything. They saw it a
long way off like a red speck on the road and as it came nearer, their
wonder grew in proportion. On the chauffeur's seat sat Peter Van
Vechten.