Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
THE LOST GIRL
"That ain't Bill!" exclaimed Jaroth. "That's as sure as you're a foot high. Nor yet it ain't his wife. If either one of them has cried since they were put into short clothes I miss my guess. Huh!"
He hesitated, standing in the snow half way between the pung and the snow-smothered door of the hut. Sheltered as it had been by the hill and by the woods, the hut was not masked so much by the drifted snow on its front. They could see the upper part of the door-casing.
"By gravy!" ejaculated Mr. Jaroth, "it don't sound human. I can't make it out. Funny things they say happen up here in these woods. I wouldn't be a mite surprised if that crying—or"
He hesitated while the boys and girls, and even Mr. Gordon, stared amazedly at him.
"Who do you think it is?" asked Uncle Dick finally.
"Well, it ain't Bill," grumbled Jaroth.
The sobbing continued. So engaged was the person weeping in the sorrow that convulsed him, or her, that the jingling of the bells as the horses shook their heads or the voices of those in the pung did not attract attention.
Jaroth stood in the snow and neither advanced nor retreated. It really did seem as though he was afraid to approach nearer to the hut on the mountain-side!
"That is a girl or a woman in there," Bob declared.
"Huh!" exclaimed Bobby sharply. "It might be a boy. Boys cry sometimes."
"Really?" said Timothy. "But you never read of crying boys except in humorous verses. They are not supposed to cry."
"Well," said Betty, suddenly hopping out of the sleigh, "we'll never find out whether it is a girl or a boy if we wait for Mr. Jaroth, it seems."
She started for the door of the hut. Bob hopped out after her in a hurry. And he took with him the snow-sovel Jaroth had brought along to use in clearing the drifts away if they chanced to get stuck.
"You'd better look out," said Jaroth, still standing undecided in the snow.
"For what?" asked Bob, hurrying to get before Betty.
"That crying don't sound natural. Might be a ha'nt. Can't tell."
"Fancy!" whispered Betty in glee. "A great big man like him afraid of a ghost—and there isn't such a thing!"
"Don't need to be if he is afraid of it," returned Bob in the same low tone. "You can be afraid of any fancy if you want to. It doesn't need to exist. I guess most fears are of things that don't really exist. Come on, now. Let me shovel this drift away."
He set to work vigorously on the snow heap before the door. Mr. Gordon, seeing that everything possible was being done, let the young people go ahead without interference. In two minutes they could see the frozen latch-string that was hanging out. Whoever was in the hut had not taken the precaution to pull in the leather thong.
"Go ahead, Betty," said Bob finally. "You push open the door. I'll stand here ready to beat 'em down with the shovel if they start after you."
"Guess you think it isn't a girl, then," chuckled Betty, as she pulled the string and heard the bar inside click as it was drawn out of the slot.
With the shovel Bob pushed the door inward. The cabin would have been quite dark had it not been for a little fire crackling on the hearth. Over this a figure stooped—huddled, it seemed, for warmth. The room was almost bare.
"Why, you poor thing!" Betty cried, running into the hut. "Are you here all alone?"
She had seen instantly that it was a girl. And evidently the stranger was in much misery. But at Betty's cry she started up from the hearth and whirled about in both fear and surprise.
Her hair was disarranged, and there was a great deal of it. Her face was swollen with weeping, and she was all but blinded by her tears. At Betty's sympathetic tone and words she burst out crying again. Betty gathered her right into her arms—or, as much of her as she could enfold, for the other girl was bigger than Betty in every way.
"You?" gasped the crying girl. "How—how did you come up here? And in all this snow? Oh, this is a wilderness—a wilderness! How do people ever live here, even in the summer? It is dreadful—dreadful! And I thought I should freeze."
"Ida Bellethorne!" gasped Betty. "Who would ever have expected to find you here?"
"I know I haven't any more business here than I have in the moon," said the English girl. "I—I wish I'd never left Mrs. Staples."
"Mrs. Staples told us you had come up this way," Betty said.
Immediately the other girl jerked away from her, threw back her damp hair, and stared, startled, at Betty.
"Then you—you found out? You know"
"My poor girl!" interrupted Betty, quite misunderstanding Ida's look, "I know all about your coming up here to find your aunt. And that was foolish, for the notice you saw in the paper was about Mr. Bolter's black mare."
"Mr. Bolter's mare?" repeated Ida.
"Now, tell me!" urged the excited Betty. "Didn't you come to Cliffdale to look for your aunt?"
"Yes. That I did. But she isn't up here at all."
By this time Uncle Dick and the others were gathered about the door of the hut. Jaroth, with a glance now and then at his horses, had even stepped inside.
"By gravy!" ejaculated the man, "this here's a pretty to-do. What you been doing to Bill Kedders' chattels, girl?"
"I—I burned them. I had to, to keep warm," answered Ida Bellethorne haltingly. "I burned the table and the chairs and the boxes and then pulled down the berths and burned them. If you hadn't come I don't know what I should have done for a fire."
"By gravy! Burned down the shack itself to keep you warm, I reckon!" chuckled Jaroth. "Well, we'd better take this girl along with us, hadn't we, Mr. Gordon? She'll set fire to the timber next, if we don't, after she's used up the shack."
"We most surely will take her along to Mountain Camp," declared Betty's uncle. "But what puzzles me, is how she ever got here to this lonely place."
"I was trying to find the Candace Farm," choked Ida Bellethorne.
"I want to know!" said Jaroth. "That's the stockfarm where they pasture so many sportin' hosses. Candace, he makes a good thing out of it. But it's eight miles from here and not in the direction we're going, Mr. Gordon."
"We will take her along to Mountain Camp," said Uncle Dick. "One more will not scare Mrs. Canary, I am sure."
Ida brought a good-sized suitcase out of the hut with her. She had evidently tried to walk from Cliffdale to the stockfarm, carrying that weight. The girls were buzzing over the appearance of the stranger and the boys stared.
"Oh, Betty!" whispered Bobby Littell, "is she Ida Bellethorne?"
"One of them," rejoined Betty promptly.
"Then do you suppose she has your locket?" ventured Bobby.
To tell the truth, Betty had not once thought of that!