The Campfire Girls Go Motoring | Page 6

brown car that had gone just ahead of us and pointed out the direction it had taken. Every time we turned a corner we expected to hear the laughter of the girls who were leading us such a merry chase, but we didn't. Soon we were out of the city and on the country road once more, and we were quite a bit puzzled not to find them waiting for us. We certainly thought the joke was to have ended here. But a man walking along the road had seen the car go by half an hour before.
"Half an hour!" we echoed. "Gladys must have been speeding to have gotten so far ahead of us." Of course, the Striped Beetle is a six- cylinder car and more powerful than the Glow-worm, which is a four, and then they hadn't stopped at every corner to ask the way, so it wasn't so strange after all that Gladys was so far ahead.
"We'll make some speed on this road," said Nyoda resolutely, "and if we don't catch Lady Gladys before she gets to Ft. Wayne, I'll know the reason why. This is the road to Bryan, isn't it?" she asked, with her hand on the starting-lever.
"No," said the man. "This here road goes through Napoleon and Defiance. It gets to Ft. Wayne all right, but it doesn't go through Bryan."
Nyoda stopped in surprise. "The southern route?" she said, wonderingly. "Why, we decided on the northern. Whatever could have made Gladys change her mind without letting us know? Are you sure it was a brown car with four girls dressed just like us?"
The man was positive. It was the suits and the veils all alike that had caught his eye in the first place. He didn't generally remember much about the cars that went past. There were too many of them. But these girls looked so fine in their tan suits that he just had to look twice at them. They were laughing fit to kill and all waved their handkerchiefs at him as they passed.
We looked at each other in astonishment. It was undoubtedly the Striped Beetle that was going along the southern route and we couldn't understand it.
"Do you suppose," I said, "that Gladys could have misunderstood when you were playing 'John Kempo' and thought it was the southern route that won?"
"She must have," said Nyoda. "It's not impossible. We were all laughing and talking so much nonsense at the time that it was hard to think straight. But it doesn't make any difference," she added, "this route is as good as the northern, and we are right behind them and I mean to catch up before we get to Ft. Wayne." I knew what Nyoda was thinking about. The man had said the girls in the car were laughing fit to kill, and that looked very much as if there were some joke on foot. We knew very well they were running away from us and were going to lead us a chase to Ft. Wayne.
As we started off in pursuit I looked around from the tonneau, where I was then sitting, and saw a red roadster not far behind us. There was one man in it and he was the Frog I had seen goggling at Nyoda in the dining-room at Toledo.
We were not so terribly surprised when we did not find the Striped Beetle at Napoleon where we stopped for gasoline. We knew now that they would not let us catch them before we got to Ft. Wayne. We inquired at the service station and found that the brown car had stopped for gasoline nearly an hour before. Clearly they were not losing any time on the road. Neither were we gaining on them at that rate. Nyoda looked thoughtful as she started out once more. I knew she was meditating a lecture for Gladys when she caught up with her, about running away from us. Nyoda was responsible for the welfare of seven girls and how could she fulfil her trust if she had only three under her eye? And I knew as well as I knew anything that Gladys would forfeit her right to be leader by that little prank and for the rest of the trip would follow meekly along behind us. Nyoda would never in the world stand for her going off like that. But by the puzzled frown on her face I knew that she didn't understand it any more than I did. Gladys was the last one in the world to do such a thing. There must be some reason.
From my seat I could see that the Frog, who had also stopped for gasoline when we did, was not far behind us. The car he was in looked like a racing car, with