Читать книгу Outdoor Girls at New Moon Ranch - Stratemeyer Edward - Страница 4

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From where the Outdoor Girls stood together on the porch it seemed inevitable that some one must be dreadfully hurt, perhaps killed, in the crash.

The moving van, with its runaway horses, dashed directly across the road just as the swiftly driven car reached the intersection.

With a grinding of brakes the roadster swerved swiftly to one side. There was a thud as the front fender of the car came into forceful contact with the rear of the moving van. The girls screamed as the machine, like a toy automobile, hesitated for a moment with two wheels raised high off the ground; then calmly, almost deliberately, ran off the road and turned over on its side!

Meanwhile, the moving van that had caused all the damage rushed blindly down the side road, the driver sawing at the reins and shouting wildly to the maddened horses.

“They’re killed! They’re killed!” cried the girls, and rushed down the road toward the overturned roadster.

Clem and Roy were there before them. The latter whirled about, looking rather white and shaken as the girls came up to him.

“It’s all right. Don’t get excited,” he cried. “Nobody’s hurt. They—they fell in a flower bed!”

This seemed like a fairy tale to the terrified girls, but the next moment they saw that it was true.

A large estate bordered that side of the road and this, in turn, was shut off from the highway by a hedge. Behind the hedge rhododendrons and peony bushes were massed in profusion. The roadster, checked in the turning over process by the hedge, had spilled its cargo into as soft and colorful a bed as one could wish!

There sat the victims of the accident, looking rather dazed and shaken-up, to be sure, but otherwise none the worse for their hair-raising adventure.

The two boys had already picked themselves up, rather ruefully stretching out arms and legs to make sure that no bones were broken. Now they turned to the girls. But the latter had recovered themselves, too, and refused to be helped.

“If we are going to be Outdoor Girls we’ve got to learn to look out for ourselves,” the twins said, extricating themselves with some difficulty from the mass of bushes.

Carolyn Cooper put both hands to her golden, curly head and screamed.

“My hat! I’ve lost my hat!” she wailed. “Oh, somebody find my hat!”

“It was the latest Paris sports model, too!” cried Lota, clapping both hands to her heart in a comic gesture of despair. “Find it, some one! Hurry—before she dies of fright!”

“Humph!” snorted one of the new boys. “Lucky you didn’t lose your head, Carolyn.”

“I should say so, with you driving, Hal Duckworth!” retorted the fair-haired girl, with spirit. “Why don’t you keep your eyes on the road?”

“With you beside me, how could I?” the lad retorted, with a grin.

“Gracious!” exclaimed Meg Bronson, a sturdy, forthright girl, with intelligent eyes and humorous mouth. “If Carolyn has that effect on you, Hal, I’ll see to it that next time I occupy the front seat!”

“It would be just the same,” said Hal gallantly, and everybody laughed at the look Meg threw him.

“You expect me to believe that?” she cried.

It was about this time that some one realized that, since there was no tragedy, introductions were in order. Carolyn made them with the tact and sunny smile that had already endeared her to the Outdoor Girls.

While the young people are busily engaged in meeting each other a moment will be taken to describe briefly some of the adventures of the Outdoor Girls up to the present time.

Their adventures began with the well-remembered hiking and camping trip told of in “The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale.”

From then on interesting experiences followed thick and fast, among other places, at Rainbow Lake, in Florida, and at Wild Rose Lodge. Then came that summer of glorious adventure in the saddle and, later, the thrilling vacation at Cape Cod where they had met and helped Sally Ann Bevins, the New England girl.

They remembered with pleasure the more recent trip along the coast of Cape Cod in Clem Field’s motor boat, the Liberty. It was during this adventurous cruise that they had met and befriended Carolyn Cooper and were successful in restoring her to an uncle who, curiously enough, had his residence in Deepdale.

In the book directly preceding this, entitled “The Outdoor Girls at Spring Hill Farm,” the young people had participated in a treasure hunt, though the thrilling adventure had started as a quiet and quite ordinary vacation on Spring Hill Farm.

During the course of these adventures, the original Outdoor Girls had dropped out, one by one. First there was Betty Nelson, their loved “Little Captain.” Betty, as already mentioned, had married Allen Washburn, the young lawyer, and, as Mrs. Washburn, was gloriously happy.

Amy Blackford, another of the original quartette, had married Will Ford, brother of Grace Ford. And Grace was now Mrs. Frank Haley.

So, of the original number of Outdoor Girls only one remained unmarried—Mollie Billette, she of the dark eyes and quick tongue. And, from present appearances, the girls had every reason to believe that Mollie would soon follow in the trail her friends had blazed!

At the time of their first visit to Cape Cod, the girls had made the acquaintance of Stella Sibley and Irene Moore. These two jolly, decidedly worthwhile girls had later joined their club.

Now, at the time of the present story, three new members were about to be initiated, Carolyn Cooper and the Bronson twins, Meg and Lota. Meg’s real name was Margaret, of course; but she had so long been known by the affectionate nickname that her friends were apt to forget that she had any other.

The Bronson girls were orphans. But they were fortunate in the possession of a guardian, Daniel Tower, who made up to them as far as he was able for the immeasurable loss of their parents. Tower was a lumberman, a fine, bluff old fellow with waving white hair, twinkling eyes, and a ruddy complexion. Perhaps it is sufficient to add that he was every bit as kind-hearted as he looked.

When the lumberman settled in Deepdale, Meg and Lota came on to join him. There they all met—and fell in love with—the Outdoor Girls and their club, with the result that they had finally been asked to join.

This brief explanation leads back to the point where the rapidly driven motor car had collided with the moving van, depositing its occupants in the midst of a flower bed.

“This is Hal Duckworth,” said Carolyn, introducing one of the new boys to the Outdoor Girls. “As you may already have gathered, he was at the wheel when this terrible thing happened. It’s a wonder we weren’t all killed.”

“It is!” Mollie agreed, as she and the other Outdoor Girls, married and single, acknowledged the introduction to Hal Duckworth.

“Still I think Mr. Duckworth was very clever to land you in a flower bed instead of a sand-bank,” chuckled Irene.

Hal Duckworth threw her a grateful glance.

“That’s the first kind word I’ve heard since I landed,” he said.

“‘Landed’ is right!” giggled Lota.

The second youth, Dick Blossom, was a bit harder to know than his friend and bosom chum, Hal Duckworth. He seemed rather shy with the girls. His smile was ready, but his hands, big and bony, often got in his way to such an extent that, in sheer desperation, he would thrust them into his pockets and keep them there until necessity forced him to remove them from that safe sanctuary. In spite of his bashfulness, or perhaps because of it, the unmarried girls liked him immediately and the married girls felt a yearning to take him under their wing.

The introductions once accomplished, the boys turned their attention to the motor car. It, like the girls and boys, was uninjured, but the hedge and flower bed into which it had plunged were considerably damaged.

“We’d better go back to the house,” Stella suggested. “Peters can bring our car down and haul this one out.”

“Bright idea,” said Hal Duckworth immediately. “I suppose Peters is the hired man?”

“Chauffeur,” Stella corrected. “Come along, everybody. It’s time we started our meeting.”

As the young people, in hilarious spirits now, trailed along toward the house Betty and Amy, arm in arm, glanced back toward the scene of the wreck.

Mollie still lingered there; beside her were both Clem and Roy.

“I wonder if either has proposed?” murmured Amy, with apparent irrelevance. But her chum understood.

Betty chuckled.

“Probably both!” she said.