The Motor Girls in the Mountains or The Gypsy Girl's Secret Part 19

Her sympathies were aroused in an instant.

"Poor little thing," she murmured to herself. "I wonder if I can't catch her and perhaps help set that wing."

She followed the bird for some distance, but it managed to keep just a little out of reach of her outstretched hand.

So much of design appeared in this that at last the truth dawned upon Cora, and she laughed outright.

"You little fibber!" she exclaimed. "You haven't any broken wing at all.

You're just trying to draw me away from your nest, so that I sha'n't find your babies."

To make sure that her guess was correct, she followed the bird a little farther. Then the little creature seemed to realize that she had accomplished her object, and rising from the ground, she soared swiftly away.

"Sold!" laughed Cora to herself. "I'll have to tell the others about that. They'll have the laugh on me, of course, but it's too good to keep.

But I'd better go back or they'll begin to get worried about me."

She turned in the direction of the picnic party, as she thought, and began to walk rapidly. But at the end of five minutes she saw no trace of them and a vague uneasiness began to take possession of her.

"That little cheat must have led me a good deal farther than I thought,"

she said to herself. "I guess I'd better call out to them."

She sent out a loud yodel, such as she and the other girls were accustomed to use as a call, and waited expectantly for an answer.

But no answer came.

She repeated the call, but with the same result.

"It must be these trees," she a.s.sured herself. "They smother the sound so that it can't go more than a few rods. I'll go on a little farther and try again."

She almost ran now, stumbling occasionally in her haste, and trying to crowd back an awful fear that was rapidly taking form.

Once more she stood still and called at the top of her voice, called desperately, frantically, repeatedly. But for all the response she received she might as well have been in the center of the Sahara desert.

Then she stumbled over a tree root and rolled over and over down the mountain side, to bring up at last in a wilderness of brushwood.

She was dazed for a few moments by the fall, but soon realized that she was not hurt. She arose and pushed her way in a zigzag course, trying to mount the hillside down which she had fallen.

CHAPTER XIV IN THE WILDERNESS

Cora was lost!

For an hour past she had refused to admit it to herself. The utmost that she would concede was that she had become separated from her party. But that of course often happened, was bound to happen again and again, when one was out in the woods.

Jack and the rest must be looking for her as eagerly as she was for them.

How heartily they would laugh and joke over the needless fears that had a.s.sailed her when she first realized that she was alone.

So she had reasoned with herself, thrusting resolutely into the background the terrible dread that kept trying to get possession of her mind, marshaling all the pathetic sophistries by which those in similar plight have tried to delude themselves from the beginning of the world.

But with every moment that pa.s.sed she grew more certain of the truth, until she seated herself on a fallen tree, and, burying her face in her hands, gave way to the tears she tried in vain to hold back.

There was no use in blinking the fact. She was lost in the Adirondack wilderness, cut off for the time being from her friends, doomed perhaps to suffer incredible hardships before she should be rescued. She shuddered as she recalled instances of others, lost in that vast region, strong men, some of them, for whom rescue had arrived too late.

She pressed her fingers into her throbbing temples and tried to think.

But her head swam, and it was only by a strong exertion of her will that she was able to pull herself together. It was some minutes before she had herself well in hand and was able to bring all her powers to bear on the problem before her. That problem had suddenly a.s.sumed gigantic proportions. Unless she solved it correctly, her life might pay the penalty.

"What shall I do?" she asked herself. "What shall I do?"

North, east, south, west, wherever she looked she could see nothing resembling a trail. In all that tangle of trees, rocks and undergrowth there was no indication that the foot of man had ever disturbed its solitude. And as Cora looked wildly about her, the forest seemed to mock her with a lurking smile as though taunting her helplessness.

But she resolutely crushed back the feeling of panic that clutched at her heart and hunted about desperately to get her bearings. It was ridiculous, she told herself, that she should not find something that would give her the needed clue.

She knew in a general way that the bungalow lay a little north of east.

It was not much to go by, but if she could keep in that line it might make all the difference between safety and disaster.

But how was she to find the cardinal points? She had no compa.s.s with her.

And then her heart gave a great bound as she thought of her watch!

Like all the Motor Girls, Cora, in her frequent journeyings, had picked up a good many points of woodcraft. Among others, she knew how by a simple device to locate the south, and with this as a starter find the other points of the compa.s.s.

Where she sat, the trees were so thick that a perpetual twilight reigned beneath. A little to the right, however, they thinned out somewhat, and rays of light fell through the foliage. Here was her chance to get an idea of the sun's location.

She went hurriedly to the spot and opening her watch carefully turned it until the figure twelve pointed directly at the sun. Then she measured half the distance between twelve and the hour hand and knew that this central point indicated due south. Directly opposite, of course, was north. Standing, then, with her face to the north, it followed that the east was on her right hand and the west on her left.

She had a tiny penknife with her, and with this she cut two strips of bark and dovetailed them in the form of a cross, so that each of the four ends stood for one of the cardinal points. On these she cut the appropriate initials and carefully planted it in the ground at her feet.

Then she put back her watch with a sigh of satisfaction.

Now she had at least a point of departure. All she had to do was to start in the right direction and depend upon further glimpses of the sun to correct her course from time to time.

From the beginning her progress was slow, owing to the absence of a trail and the necessity of forcing her way through the underbrush. At times she had to make a considerable detour, to avoid brush so thickly matted that she could not penetrate it. This of necessity threw her out of the course she was trying to keep. And her consternation was great to find, on reaching a more open spot, that the sun was now hidden by thick clouds.

Still she went doggedly on for two hours or more, taxing every ounce of courage and resolution that she possessed, finding a mental relief in the physical effort that kept her from dwelling too intently on her desperate plight. The afternoon was rapidly waning and the gloom of the forest was deepening into dusk. And just then, panting with fatigue and exhaustion, her eye caught something familiar close to her feet.

It was the cross of bark that she had made two hours earlier!

This, then, was the reward of all her exertions. Obeying that inexorable and malign law that seems to hound desert and forest wanderers, she had worked around in a circle to the very point from which she had started!

For a moment it seemed to Cora that she must be dreaming. She could not bring herself to admit that all the toil and effort of the afternoon had come only to this. It was absurd, ridiculous! She rubbed her eyes and looked again. It was only too surely the fact. There was the little cross with the edges still raw from the blade of her knife.

Fate had played a cruel joke on her-a joke that might prove to be deadly.

She had taxed her muscles until she was dropping with weariness, kept up her courage with the thought that she was making progress, only to find that all was utterly wasted, and that she was no nearer safety than when she had started. The reaction came on her with a rush and for a moment she thought she was going to faint.

Now, for the first time, the full horror of her situation dawned on her.

As long as she had kept in motion, she had been buoyed up by the thought that at any minute she might win her way to safety. But now her chance, for the day at least, was gone. She was alone, cut off from all human companionship in that vast wilderness, and night was coming on!

What was to be her fate? She had everything to live for, youth, health, friends, home and love. She was just on the brink of womanhood, and life ran at full tide through her veins. The future stretched before her, glowing with promise and with hands heaped high with treasures. She was just getting ready to drink the wine of life. Was the cup to be dashed rudely to the ground, just as she was lifting it to her lips?

For a little while she surrendered to these gloomy imaginings. The shock had been too severe for her to rally all at once. Then she took a grip on herself.