The Nowadays Girls in the Adirondacks or, The deserted bungalow on Saranac Lake
result was to set the echoes reverberating, and to strain their throats.
"Oh, come on, we'll find the trail ourselves," Sylvia finally said.
They hastened along, but had not reached the fork in the path when the
storm burst.
There was a series of vivid lightning flashes, the thunder seemed
doubly loud out in that wilderness, and then came the drenching rain.
"Come under this tree!" urged Rose, darting toward a beech.
"You may be struck!" Hazel warned her.
"Have to take a chance," Rose retorted. "Beech trees are the safest,
I've heard, and I can't stand out in the rain."
But the tree was not much shelter, and as the shower showed no
indication of slackening, and as the girls were now fairly desperate,
they decided to keep on. Their clothes could stand a good deal of rain
before becoming wet through, and their shoes were waterproof, so they
were not in such desperate plight as might otherwise have been the case.
But it grew darker and darker, and at last they found themselves
stumbling along in the woods, tripping over fallen trees, banging into
trunks and getting tangled in underbrush.
"We're off the trail!" cried Sylvia. "We can't go on. We must stop or
we may come to some harm."
Frightened, they huddled together, while the rain beat down pitilessly.
"Oh, help! help!" suddenly screamed Rose. It was as though she could
stand the strain no longer. "Help! help!" she cried. "We are lost!"
Above the patter of the rain on the leaves, and above the low muttering
of thunder a voice answered:
"Stay where you are. We're coming!"
CHAPTER XXXIV
FOUND
Silence followed this, to the girls at least, momentous announcement.
That is as much silence as was possible under the circumstances, with
the noise of the storm reverberating through the forest.
"Did--did you hear that?" gasped Sylvia, after a pause.
"Of course," answered Hazel, and she spoke a bit sharply, as if her
nerves were near the breaking point.
"Was it--was it a voice?" Sylvia went on, as though she could not quite
believe the evidence of her own ears. "Was it a voice, or one of those
loons, or owls?"
"It was a _voice_," declared Mrs. Brownley. "I heard it distinctly. It
must be some of our party searching for us. You had better call once
more, girls. My voice simply refuses to make itself heard."
"Mr. Russman! Pete! Harry!" called Sylvia. "Where are you? Come to us!"
A crashing noise sounded in the underbrush, but it was too dark to see
by whom it was made. Now and then a flash of lightning would vividly
light up the scene, but it was of such brief duration, and produced
such a glare, that the girls and their chaperon could really see
nothing beyond a black and dripping circle of trees that girt them
about. Following Sylvia's cry, though, there came an answer.
"Stay where you are! We're coming. Don't move. There's a bad fall near
where you are and you may slip over. Stand still."
"That doesn't sound like any of our friends!" exclaimed Alice.
"No," agreed Hazel. "But it's some one, at all events. And I never was
so glad in all my life before to hear a human voice. It may be some of
the other guides--those of Sam's party."
"Could it be--could it be--Roy?" faltered Rose.
"That isn't Roy's voice," declared Sylvia, with decision. "I only wish
it were he! But he is probably too weak to answer in those firm tones."
"We're coming," the unseen rescuers went on. "Be there in just a few
seconds now!"
The girls could see lights flashing among the trees and bushes. Lights
that were not the vivid glares of the sky-electricity. The storm seemed
to be dying out, at least the thunder was not so loud nor the flashes
so frequent, but the drizzle of rain still kept up.
The girls huddled around Mrs. Brownley, wet and rather miserable, yet,
aside from the depression caused by the failure to find Roy, there was
plenty of spirit and spunk left in each and every one. They were wet,
tired and hungry, but they had not given up hope, not even when they
knew they were lost.
"Oh, but to think of the walk back to the bungalow," half groaned
Hazel. "Can we make it to-night, girls?"
"We'll _have_ to!" insisted Sylvia.
"And there may be good news of Roy waiting for us," said Rose, eagerly.
"That is, if this isn't a party that has already found him."
"I don't believe they are any of our friends." Sylvia spoke in a low
voice. "They would know who we were, and they'd call us by name. And if
they had found poor Roy they'd let us know that the first thing."
"But who can they be?" asked Alice.
"We'll know in another moment. Here they are!"
A number of lights flashed all around. They came from the pocket
electric torches without which no camp is now complete. And the tiny
glows were in the hands of four young men who crowded up along the
dripping trail to face the lost ones.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting," said the leader, flashing his light
in Sylvia's face. "But we didn't expect company, and we had gone to
bed. We heard you call and----"
He interrupted himself suddenly to exclaim:
"Great pines and little fir trees! It is Night! Miss Pursell! What in
the world are you doing here?" he cried.
"Oh! oh!" gasped Roy's sister, weakly. In an instant she had recognised
Felton Ware--the Knight of the Overturned Canoe--the cavalier of the
dance. And with him were his three companions who had helped to give
the girls such a good time at the hotel.
"Look here, fellows!" Felton cried. "Here are our friends--the pretty
girls."
He said it--shamelessly--openly, and none resented it. The said pretty
girls were only too glad to see the boys.
"Well, if this isn't a go!" exclaimed Jimmie Pendleton.
"Is it true, or am I dreaming?" Bert Young wanted to know.
"If I am dreaming, don't wake me up," pleaded Carroll Beach.
"But I say!" went on Felton, eagerly. "What are you doing here? Out in
the rain at night! Where's your camp? What has happened? You look----"
"Don't mention our looks, young man!" interrupted Aunt Theodora. "We
know we must be frights. But is there any place around here where we
can stay--a hotel or boarding-house? We are lost!"
"Why, come to our tent!" urged the Knight of the Overturned Canoe,
eagerly. "We came up here to camp, but never expected to see you folks
again. We have a big extra tent, ready for some more of the fellows we
expect next week. You can all fit into that nicely. There are cots in
it. We can get you up some kind of a meal. You can't possibly travel
through the woods now. Stay with us until morning, please."
"It sounds most inviting," sighed Sylvia.
"Welcome to our woodland camp, Princess of the Night," said Felton,
whimsically, with a low bow. "I'm sorry we haven't a red velvet carpet
to spread to the tent, but truth compels me to state that the trail is
so winding that it would take a very large magic carpet to cover it.
But what has happened?" he asked.
Sylvia told him, and her companions told him, singly, in a chorus, by
duets, in a trio and then filled in any gaps that were left with a
grand ensemble that left nothing unrelated.
Then the boys led the way back to their camp. A fire in the midst of a
circle of tents was dying down, but there was dry wood to pile on, and
soon there was a roaring blaze adding heat to its cheerfulness. Coffee
was quickly made, food set out, and in the seclusion of a large tent
Sylvia and her friends, with Mrs. Brownley, made themselves comfortable.
"If those young men aren't providential I never saw any persons who
were," declared the chaperon, as she sat on the edge of a cot, munching
a sandwich from one hand and waving an empty coffee cup with the other,
to emphasise her point.
"They certainly are," agreed Rose.
The boys did everything possible for their unexpected visitors, and
said they would escort them back to the bungalow the first thing in
the morning. One of the young men was quite familiar with the woodland
trails, having camped in that neighbourhood before.
"And we'll help you look for your brother," added Felton. "Bald
Mountain is not a great way from here. But you certainly took the wrong
trail. However, we're glad to see you again!"
"Well?" remarked Hazel, in a questioning tone, as she sat on the edge
of her cot, after the boys had said "good-night;" and she looked at the
others, the while swinging her stockinged feet to and fro to aid in
drying them, for their shoes had been wet through.
"I don't know that I'd call it well," commented Sylvia, reflectively,
"but I suppose we ought to be thankful that none of us is really ill.
That's one blessing."
"Yes," agreed Mrs. Brownley, "that is a blessing. We came out of the
predicament very fortunately, I think."
"And it certainly was a predicament," added Rose, as she went to the
flap of the tent to peer out.
"Looking for anything in particular?" asked Alice.
"Or any one?" inquired Sylvia, with decided emphasis.
Rose turned quickly, her cheeks showing redder than ever in the glow
of the lantern. Perhaps it was from the excitement of the day, however.
"I just wanted to see what the boys were doing," she answered. "I
believe they are drying our shoes over an oil stove," she went on. "I
can just see inside their cooking-tent--it's open."
"Gracious! I hope they don't cook our shoes!" exclaimed Alice, with
a laugh, and a most commendable effort to lend a little gaiety to a
situation that was certainly in need of it. "I have read of starving
sailors eating their shoe laces. Fortunately my walking boots are
button ones," she added, with another little laugh.
"It's only when laces are of some sort of hide that they make soup of
them," put in Mrs. Brownley, deciding to do what she could to help
remove the load from Sylvia's mind.
"That's so," chimed in Hazel. "The ordinary cloth shoe lace would not
make a very appetising meal. Though I suppose they could boil the
tongue of a shoe, and serve it in some sort of an _entrée_," she went
on. "And the shoe wouldn't be much the worse after the operation. Look,
Rose, since you have undertaken the post of observer, and tell us if
the boys are taking the tongues out of our shoes."
"So they won't talk in their sleep?" demanded Sylvia, rising to the
occasion with a joke--"alleged," as she designated it afterward; when
they were going over all the points of the momentous time.
"Aren't we silly?" demanded Hazel.
"It's just as well to try to be cheerful," said the chaperon. "Nothing
is so bad as to lose hope, and while we haven't in the least done
that, still it is just as well to try to have a little reserve fund
of good-humor to fall back on in times of emergency. Oh, I didn't
quite mean that!" she added, quickly, as she caught a look of alarm on
Sylvia's face.
"It doesn't matter," was the quiet comment of Roy's sister. "It is
just as well to recognise the fact that we--that I--may have to face
an--emergency."
She halted and stumbled over the word, but the others knew how hard it
must have been for her to speak it. And they all realised what a grim
emergency might confront them.
But the little cloud soon passed, for Rose--brave little Rose--rising
gallantly to the occasion, exclaimed:
"Those silly boys!"
"What are they up to now?" asked Hazel, for Rose was still at the
tent-flap.
"Why, they're dancing around, holding our shoes, one on each hand, and
actually they are waltzing--doing the hesitation with the shoes on
their hands, held in the air."
"Really?" demanded Sylvia, and there was a rush on the part of the
three girls to join Rose at the flap. Mrs. Brownley remained sitting
with dignity on the edge of a cot. That is with dignity, but with
certain reservations, for she had taken off some of her damp garments