The Campfire Girls Go Motoring | Page 6

we can trail her through the city to
the motor road," said Sahwah. "You know how much we talked about
being self-reliant? We'll probably find her where the road branches out
from the city, waiting with a stop watch to see how long it took us to
find her."
"We'll get there," said Nyoda grimly, her sporting blood up.
Everywhere along the road people told us about the 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