The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House | Page 5

of the fields. It seemed almost an impossibility to turn the car in that narrow space without precipitating it down either one or the other of the steep banks.
After many fruitless attempts and barely escaped tragedies, however, Mollie finally succeeded, and the car was sent flying down the white stretch of road that led to Camp Liberty and the hospital.
"Oh, I hope we'll get there in time," Amy murmured over and over again, and kept looking at the pathetic little victim. "Is she still breathing, Betty? Are you sure?"
To this Betty always nodded in the affirmative, her little mouth grimly set, her eyes fixed steadily ahead, as though she would draw their destination nearer to them by the very force of her desire.
"I wonder," Mollie flung back at them from between clenched teeth, "what that motorcyclist looked like. I'd like to meet him again--with a firing squad."
"Why I saw him," came Grace's muffled voice from the floor of the car.
"So did I," added Amy.
"So you would recognize him again?" Mollie demanded eagerly, swerving the car perilously near the edge of the road.
"Are you sure?" added Betty, taking her eyes from the far horizon and regarding Grace intently.
Both girls nodded vigorously.
"His head was down, of course," Amy continued, "but I'd know his face in a minute if I saw it again. Eyes close together, long nose--"
"And a little mustache," Grace finished eagerly. "The kind Percy Falconer used to wear and we girls called an eyebrow on his lip."
"He must have been a thing of beauty," commented Mollie.
"He had the meanest kind of face," said Amy, with a little shudder. "The kind you wouldn't like to meet on a dark night."
"I should have judged as much from your description," said Betty dryly. "There's one good thing about him--we ought to be able to recognize him easily."
"You talk as though you expected to meet him again," said Amy, looking at her curiously.
"I do," answered Betty determinedly. "Some time we're going to find that fellow and make him pay for what he's done. Think of it!" she added, turning upon them suddenly while her eyes flashed fire. "To run down a helpless old woman in the road and then not even stop to find out whether you've killed her or not! We'll find him if we have to search the country for fifty miles around!"
CHAPTER III
THE SHADOW OF MYSTERY
The girls never forgot that mad ride to Camp Liberty. Mile after mile sped by on wings, and it was not till they were on the outskirts of the town itself that the victim of the accident showed signs of returning consciousness.
Then she sighed, moved her head a little restlessly on Betty's shoulder, and opened her eyes.
"Oh, dear," she said, faintly but so abruptly that Betty and Grace started. "I knew I'd have--to do it--some day!"
When the girls came to know her better they no longer wondered at her quaint and unexpected sayings. But at the moment this queer statement, coming as it did from one who they thought must be hovering at death's door, rather startled them.
"Wh--what?" stammered Betty, bewildered, while the others stared with wide eyes. "What did you say?"
"I said," replied the surprising old woman, in a stronger voice, trying unsteadily to straighten herself in the seat and raising trembling hands to her rather dilapidated old hat, "that I was sure to come to it some day. There's a fate in such things."
The girls looked at each other uncertainly, and into the minds of each flashed the startled suspicion that perhaps the poor old soul was mentally defective. Or, maybe, the accident--
The woman seemed to sense something of their bewilderment, and into her eyes, still bright in spite of her age and what she had just gone through, there came a twinkle--yes, a real twinkle.
"No, I'm not crazy," she assured them, regaining her strength with amazing quickness. "You see, it seemed kind o' funny to me after all these years o' swearin' that I'd never ride in one o' these gasoline cars to find myself in one after all,--and at my time o' life."
The girls gasped with relief, but still had the strange feeling of one who has been speeding over the water with all sails set and suddenly finds herself in the midst of a dead calm.
"B-but," stammered Amy, voicing the general sentiment, "we thought--were afraid--you were hurt badly--"
"Guess maybe I'd have thought so, too, if I'd had the chance," responded the surprising old lady ruefully. "Pretty well mussed up, I guess, and stunned. Shouldn't wonder if I found a heap o' bruises around me somewhere--but no bones broke. You see," she added, as though imparting a great secret, "the Sandersons' bones jest never was made to break. Now, there was our cousins--the Petersons--they was different. One o' that family wouldn't dare