Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp by Alice B. Emerson

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BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP

Or, The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne

by

ALICE B. EMERSON

Author of _Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm_, _Betty Gordon at Boarding
School_, "Ruth Fielding Series," etc.

Illustrated

New York
Cupples & Leon Company
Publishers

Books for Girls
By ALICE B. EMERSON
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated

BETTY GORDON SERIES

BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON
BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL
BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL
BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP

RUTH FIELDING SERIES

RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTH-WEST
RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE

Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York
1922

[Illustration: THE WHOLE PARTY TURNED OUT GAILY.
"Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp."]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE ORANGE SILK OVER-BLOUSE

II THE FRUITS OF TANTALUS

III OFF FOR A GALLOP

IV A SECOND IDA BELLETHORNE

V MEASLES

VI A DISAPPEARANCE

VII ALL MRS. STAPLES COULD SAY

VIII UNCLE DICK MUST BE TOLD

IX THE LIVE WIRE OCTETTE

X BEAUTIFUL SNOW

XI STALLED, AND WITHOUT A DOCTOR

XII THE TUNNEL

XIII AN ALARM

XIV THE MOUNTAIN HUT

XV THE LOST GIRL

XVI THE CAMP ON THE OVERLOOK

XVII OFF ON SNOWSHOES

XVIII GREAT EXCITEMENT

XIX THE EMERGENCY

XX BETTY'S RIDE

XXI BETTY COMES THROUGH

XXII ON THE BRINK OF DISCOVERY

XXIII CAN IT BE DONE?

XXIV TWENTY MILES OF GRADE

XXV ON THE DECK OF THE SAN SALVADOR

CHAPTER I

THE ORANGE SILK OVER-BLOUSE

"This doesn't look like the street I came up through!" exclaimed Betty
Gordon. "These funny streets, with their dear old-fashioned houses, all
seem, so much alike! And if there are any names stuck up at the corners
they must hide around behind the post when I come by like squirrels in the
woods.

"I declare, there is a queer little shop stuck right in there between two
of those refined-looking, if poverty-stricken, boarding-houses. Dear me!
how many come-down-in-the-world families have to take 'paying guests' to
help out. Not like the Peabodys, but really needy people. What is it Bobby
calls 'em? 'P.G.s'--'paying guests.'

"I was a paying guest at Bramble Farm," ruminated Betty, still staring at
the little shop and the houses that flanked it on either side. "And I
certainly had a hard time there. Bobby says that these people in
Georgetown are the remains of Southern aristocracy that were cast up on
this beach as long ago as the Civil War. Unlike the castaways on cannibal
islands that we read about, Bobby says these castaways live off the
'P.G.s'--and that's what Joseph Peabody tried to do! He tried to live off
me. There! I knew he was a cannibal.

"Oh! Isn't that sweet?"

Her sudden cry had no reference to the army of boarding-house keepers in
the neighborhood, nor to any signpost that pointed the way back to the
little square where the soldiers' monument stood and where Betty was to
meet Carter, the Littells' chauffeur, and the big limousine. For she was
still staring at the window of the little shop.

"What a lovely orange color! And that starburst pattern on the front! It's
lovely! What a surprising thing to see in a little neighborhood store like
this. I'm going to buy it if it fits me and I've money enough left in my
purse."

Impetuous as usual, Betty Gordon marched at once to the door of the little
side-street shop. The most famous of such neighborhood shops, as described
by Hawthorne, Betty knew all about. She had studied it in her English
readings at Shadyside only the previous term. But there was no
Gingerbread Man in this shop window!

In the middle of the display window, which was divided into four not very
large panes, was arranged on a cross of bright metal a knitted over-blouse
of the very newest burnt orange shade. The work was exquisitely done, as
Betty could see even from outside the shop, and she did hope it would fit
her.

On pushing open the door a silvery bell--not an annoying, jangling
bell--played a very lively tune to attract the attention of a girl who sat
at the back of the shop, her head bent close above the work on which she
was engaged. Although the bell stopped quivering when Betty closed the
door, the girl did not look up from her work.

Sharp-eyed Betty saw that the stranger was knitting, and she seemed to be
engaged upon another over-blouse like that in the window, save that the
silk in her lap was of a pretty dark blue shade. Betty saw her full, red
lips move placidly. The girl was counting over her work and she actually
was so deeply immersed in the knitting that she had not heard the bell or
realized that a possible customer had entered.

"Ahem!" coughed Betty.

"And that's twenty-four, and--cross--and two--and four----" The girl was
counting aloud.

"Why," murmured Betty Gordon, her eyes dancing, "she's like Libbie
Littell when she is somnambulating--I guess that is the right word.
Anyway, when Libbie walks in her sleep she talks just like that----

"_Ahem!_"

This time Betty almost shouted the announcement of her presence in the
shop and finally startled the other girl out of her abstraction. The
latter looked up, winked her eyes very fast, and began to roll up her work
in a clean towel. Betty noticed that her eyes were very blue and were
shaded by dark lashes.

"I beg your pardon," said the shopgirl. "Have you been waiting long?" She
came forward quickly and with an air of assurance. Her look was not a
happy one, however, and Betty wondered at her sadness. "What can I show
you?" asked the shopgirl.

She was not much older than Betty herself, but she was more self-possessed
and seemed much more experienced than even Betty, much as the latter had
traveled and varied as her adventures had been during the previous year
and a half. But now the stranger's questions brought Betty to a renewed
comprehension of what she had actually entered the shop for.

"I'm just crazy about that blouse in the window--the orange one," she
cried. "I know you must have made it yourself, for you are knitting
another, I see, and that is going to be pretty, too. But I want this
orange one--if it doesn't cost too much."

"The price is twelve dollars. I hope it is not too much," said the
shopgirl timidly. "I sold one for all of that before I left Liverpool."

Betty was as much interested now in the other girl as she was in the
orange silk over-blouse.

"Why!" she exclaimed, "you are English, aren't you? And you and your
family can't long have been over here."

"I have been here only two months," said the girl quietly.

There was a certain dignity in her manner that impressed Betty. She had
very dark, smoothly arranged hair and a beautiful complexion. She was
plump and strongly made, and she walked gracefully. Betty had noted that
fact when she came forward from the back of the shop.

"But you didn't come over from England all alone?" asked the curious young
customer, neglecting the blouse for her interest in the girl who spread
out its gossamer body for approval.

"It took only seven days from Liverpool to New York," said the other girl,
looking at Betty steadily, still with that lack of animation in her face.
"I might have come alone; but it was better for me to travel with
somebody, owing to the emigration laws of your country. I traveled as
nursemaid to a family of Americans. But I separated from them in New York
and came here."

"Oh!" Betty exclaimed, not meaning to be impertinent. "You had friends
here in Georgetown?"

"I thought I had a relative in Washington. I had heard so. I failed to
find her so--so I found this shop, kept by a woman who came from my
county, and she gave me a chance to wait shop," said the English girl
wearily.

"Mrs. Staples lets me knit these blouses to help out, for she cannot pay
large wages. The trade isn't much, you see. This one, I am sure, will look
lovely on you. I hope the price is not too much?"

"Not a bit, if it will fit me and I have that much money in my purse,"
replied Betty, who for a girl of her age had a good deal of money to spend
quite as she pleased.

She opened her bag hastily and took out her purse. The purse was made of
cut steel beads and, as Betty often said, "everything stuck to it!"
Something clung to it now as she drew it forth, but neither Betty nor the
shopgirl saw the dangling twist of tissue paper.

"And I'll buy that other one you are knitting," Betty hurried to say as
she shook the purse and dug into it for the silver as well as the bills
she had left after her morning's shopping. "I know that pretty blue will
just look dear on a friend of mine."

She was busy with her money, and the English girl looked on hopefully. So
neither saw the twist of tissue paper fly off the dangling fringe of beads
and land with a soft little "plump" on the floor by the counter.

"Dear me!" breathed the shopgirl, in reply to Betty's promise, "I shall
like that. It will help a good bit--and everything so high in this
country. A dollar, as you say, goes hardly anywhere! And this one will fit
you beautifully. You can see yourself."

"Of course it will. Do it up at once," cried the excited Betty. "Here is
the money. Twelve dollars. I was afraid I didn't have enough. And be sure
and keep that blue one for my friend. Maybe she will come for it herself,
so give me a card or something so she can find the place. Shall she ask
for you?"

"If you please," and the English girl ran to write a card. She brought it
back with the neatly made parcel of the over-blouse and slipped it into
Betty Gordon's hand. The latter thanked her and looked swiftly at the name
the other had written.

"Good-bye, Ida Bellethorne," she said, smiling. "What a fine name! I hope
I can sell some more blouses for you. I'll try."

The shopgirl made a little bow and the silvery bell jangled again as Betty
opened the door. Betty looked back at the English girl, and the latter
looked after Betty. They were both interested, much interested, the one in
the other, and for reasons that neither suspected. Ida Bellethorne was not
much like the girls Betty knew. She seemed even more sedate than the
seniors at Shadyside where Betty had attended school with the Littell
girls since the term had opened in September.

Ida Bellethorne was not, however, in any such happy condition as the girls
Betty Gordon knew. She might have told the warm-hearted customer who had
bought the over-blouse a story that would indeed have spurred Betty's
interest to an even greater degree. But the English girl was naturally of
a secretive disposition, and she was among strangers.

She turned back into the store when Betty had gone and the door, swinging
shut, set the bell above it jingling again. A door opened at the end of
the room and a tall, aggressive woman in a long, straight, gingham frock
strode into the room. She had very black, heavy brows that met over her
nose and this, with the thick spectacles she wore, gave her a very stern
expression.

"What's the matter with that bell, Ida?" she demanded, in a sharp voice.
"It seems to ring enough, but it doesn't ring any money into my
cash-drawer as I can see."

"I sold my over-blouse out of the window, Mrs. Staples," said the girl.

"Humph! What else?"

"Er--what else? Why--why, she said she might come back for the one I am
making."

"Humph!" ejaculated Mrs. Staples a second time. "I don't see as that will
fill my cellar with coal. Couldn't you sell her anything else out of the
shop?"

"She didn't say she wanted anything else," said Ida timidly.

"Oh! She didn't? You'll never make a sales-woman till you learn to sell
'em things they don't want but that the shop wants to sell. And I was
foolish enough to tell you that you could have all you could make out of
those blouses. Oh, well! I'm always being foolishly generous. Come! What's
that on the floor? Pick it up."

Mrs. Staples was very near-sighted, yet nothing seemed to escape her
observation. She pointed to the twist of white tissue paper on the floor
which had been twitched out of Betty Gordon's bag. Ida stooped as she was
commanded and got the paper. She was about to toss it into the
waste-basket behind the counter when she realized that there was some hard
object wrapped in the paper.

"What is it?" asked Mrs. Staples, in her quick, stern way, as she saw Ida
open the twist of paper.

"Why, I--Oh, Mrs. Staples! look what this is, will you?"

She held out in the palm of her hand a little, heart-shaped platinum
locket with a tiny but very beautiful diamond set in the center of its
face, and when she turned it over on the back was engraved the intertwined
letters "E.G."

"For the land's sake!" ejaculated Mrs. Staples, coming nearer and grabbing
the locket out of Ida's hand. "Where did you get this?"

"Why, Mrs. Staples, you saw me pick it up."

"But how did it come there?"

"Oh, I know!" Ida Bellethorne cried, with sudden animation. "That girl
stood right there. She opened her bag to get out her purse and she must
have flirted it out to the floor."

"Humph!" said the storekeeper doubtfully.

"Give it to me, Mrs. Staples, and I'll run after her," cried the English
girl anxiously.

"Humph!" This was Mrs. Staples' stock ejaculation and expressed a variety
of emotions. Just now it expressed doubt. "And then you'd come back and
tell me how thankful she was to get it, while maybe it doesn't belong to
her at all. No," said Mrs. Staples, "let her come looking for it if she
lost it."

"Oh!" murmured Ida Bellethorne doubtfully.

"Perhaps she will never guess she dropped it here."

"That's no skin off your nose," declared the vulgar shopwoman. "You've no
rights in this thing, anyway. What's found on the floor of my shop is just
as much mine as what's on the counter or in the trays behind the counter.
I know my rights. Until whoever lost this thing comes in and proves
property, it's mine."

"Oh, Mrs. Staples!" cried her employee. "Is that the law in this country?
It doesn't seem honest."

"Humph! It's honest enough for me. And who are you, I'd like to know, a
greenhorn fresh from the old country, trying to tell me what's honest and
what ain't? If that girl comes back----"

"Yes, Mrs. Staples?"

"You sell her that other blouse if you want to, or anything else out of
the shop. But you keep your mouth shut about this locket unless she asks
for it. Understand? I won't have no tattle-tales about me; and if you
don't learn when to keep your mouth open and when to keep it shut, I'll
have no use at all for you in my shop. Remember that now!"

CHAPTER II

THE FRUITS OF TANTALUS

Betty Gordon had glanced hastily at her wrist watch as she went out of the
little store. It was very near the minute appointed for her to meet Carter
at the square. And she had forgotten to ask that girl, Ida Bellethorne
(such an Englishy name!), how to find her rendezvous with the Littells'
chauffeur.

She hesitated, tempted to run back. Had she done so she would have been in
time to see Ida pick up the little locket that Uncle Dick had given Betty
that very Christmas and which she carried in her bag because it seemed the
safest place to treasure it while she was visiting. Her trunk was at
Shadyside.

So it is that the very strangest threads of romance are woven in this
world. And Betty Gordon had found before this that her life, at least, was
patterned in a very wonderful way. Since she had been left an orphan and
had found her only living relative, Mr. Richard Gordon, her father's
brother, such a really delightful guardian the girl had been to so many
places and her adventures had been so exciting that her head was
sometimes quite in a whirl when she tried to think of all the happenings.

Uncle Dick's contracts with certain oil promotion companies made it
impossible as yet for him to have what Betty thought of as "a real,
sure-enough home." He traveled here, there and everywhere. Betty loved to
travel too; but Uncle Dick was forced to go to such rough and wild places
that at first he could not see how Betty, a twelve year old, gently bred
girl, could go with him.

Therefore he had to find a home for his little ward for a few months, and
remembering that an old school friend of his was married to the owner of a
big and beautiful farm, he arranged for Betty to stay with the Peabodys at
Bramble Farm. Her adventures as a "paying guest" in the Peabody household
are fully related in the first book of the series, entitled "Betty Gordon
at Bramble Farm," and a very exciting experience it was.

In spite, however, of the disagreeable and miserly Joseph Peabody, Betty
would not have missed her adventures at the farm for anything. In the
first place, she met Bob Henderson there, and a better boy-chum a girl
never had than Bob. Although Bob had been born and brought up in a
poorhouse, and at first knew very little about himself and his relatives,
even a girl like Betty could see that this "poorhouse rat" as he was
slurringly called by Joseph Peabody, possessed natural refinement and a
very bright mind.

Betty and Bob became loyal friends, and when Betty, in the second volume,
called "Betty Gordon in Washington," had fairly to run away from Bramble
Farm to meet her Uncle Dick in the national capital, badly treated Bob ran
away likewise, on the track of somebody who knew about his mother's
relatives. Betty's adventures in Washington began with a most astonishing
confusion of identities through which she met the Littells--a charming
family consisting of a Mr. Littell, who was likewise an "Uncle Dick"; a
motherly Mrs. Littell, who never found young people--either boys or
girls--troublesome; three delightful sisters named Louise, Roberta, and
Esther Littell; and a Cousin Elizabeth Littell, who good-naturedly becomes
"Libbie" instead of "Betty" so as not to conflict in anybody's mind with
"Betty" Gordon.

The fun they all had in Washington while Betty waited for the appearance
of her real Uncle Dick, especially after Bob Henderson turned up and was
likewise adopted for the time being by the Littell family, is detailed to
the full in that second story. And at last both Betty and Bob got news
from Oklahoma, where Mr. Richard Gordon was engaged, which set them
traveling westward in a great hurry--Betty to meet Uncle Dick at Flame
City and her boy chum hard on the trace of two elusive aunts of his, his
mother's sisters, who appeared to be the only relatives he had in the
world.

Betty and Bob discovered the aunts just in time to save them from selling
their valuable but unsuspected oil holdings to sharpers, and in "Betty
Gordon in the Land of Oil" one of the most satisfactory results that Betty
saw accomplished was the selling of the old farm for Bob and his aunts for
ninety thousand dollars.

Uncle Dick decided that Betty must go to a good school in the fall, and
they chose Shadyside because the Littells and their friends were going
there. Bob, now on a satisfactory financial plane, arranged to attend the
Salsette Military Academy which was right across the lake from the girls'
boarding school, Uncle Dick, who was now Bob's guardian, having advised
this.

Hastening back from Oklahoma, while Uncle Dick was called to Canada to
examine a promising oil field there, Betty and Bob met the girls and boys
they previously got acquainted with in Washington and some other friends,
and Betty at least began her boarding school experience with considerable
confidence as well as delight.

It was not all plain sailing as subsequent events prove; yet in "Betty
Gordon at Boarding School," the fourth volume of the series, Betty had
many; pleasant adventures as well as school trials. She was particularly
interested in the fortunes of Norma and Alice Guerin, who had been Betty's
friends when she was living at Bramble Farm; and it was through Betty's
good offices that great happiness came to the Guerin girls and their
parents.

The hospitable Littells had invited their daughters' school friends (and,
to quote Bob, there was a raft of them!) to come to Fairfields for the
Christmas holidays, and at the close of the first term they bade good-bye
to Shadyside and Salsette and took the train for Washington.

Fairfields, which was over the river in Virginia, was one of the most
delightful homes Betty Gordon had ever seen. It was closer to Georgetown
than to the nation's capital, and that is why Betty on this brisk morning
was shopping in the old-fashioned town and had come across the orange silk
over-blouse in the window of the neighborhood shop.

It was really too bad that Betty did not run back to the shop to ask for
directions to the soldiers' monument square. She would have been just in
season to interrupt the scene between Ida Bellethorne and Mrs. Staples and
before the latter had threatened Ida with dismissal if she told Betty
about the tiny locket. When she came to find it out, this loss of Uncle
Dick's present, was going to trouble Betty Gordon very much.

"Where in the world can that soldiers' monument be?" murmured Betty to
herself as, after hurrying on for a distance and having turned two
corners, she found herself in a neighborhood that looked stranger than
ever to her.

Not a soul was in sight at that moment, but presently she saw a small
negro boy shuffling along, drawing a piece of chalk on the various houses
and stoops as he passed.

"Boy, come here!" called Betty to the little fellow.

At once the colored boy stopped the use of his piece of chalk and stared
at her with wide-open eyes.

"I ain't done nuffin, lady, 'deed I ain't," he mumbled, and then began to
back away.

"I only want to know where the soldiers' monument is," she returned. "Do
you know?"

"Soldiers' monument am over that way," and the boy waved his hand to one
side, where there was a hilly street, and then hurried out of sight.

"Oh, dear! that's not very definite," sighed Betty.

But now she ran down the hilly street at a chance, turned a crooked corner
and came plump upon the square and the soldiers' monument. There was the
Littells' big, closed car just turning into the square from another
street.

"What luck! Fancy!" gasped Betty, running swiftly to the place where the
big car stopped.

"You're better than prompt, Miss Betty," said the driver of the car. "I am
glad I hadn't to wait for you, for Mister Bob told me particular to get
you home for luncheon. You'll be wanted."

"What for? Do tell me what for, Carter!" Betty cried. "I thought Bob
Henderson was awfully mysterious this morning at breakfast. Do you know
what is in the wind, Carter?"

"Not me, Miss Betty," said the chauffeur, and having tucked the robes
about her he shut the door and got into his own place. But before he
started the car he said through the open window: "I have to delay a
little, Miss. Must drive around by the bank and pick up Mr. Gordon. But I
will hurry home after that."

"Oh! Uncle Dick did go to the bank here," murmured Betty, nestling back
into the cushions and robes. "I wonder if he is going to stop off at
Mountain Camp on his way back to Canada. Oh!" and she sighed more deeply,
"if we could only go up there with him----"

The car stopped before the gray stone bank building. Uncle Dick seemed to
have been on the watch for them, he came out so promptly. Although his
hair was graying, especially about the temples, Mr. Richard Gordon was by
no means an old looking man. He lived much out of doors and spent such
physical energy only as his out-of-door life yielded, instead of living on
his reserve strength as so many office-confined men do. Betty had learned
all about that in physics. She was thoroughly an out-of-door girl herself!

"Oh, Uncle Dick!" she cried when he stepped into the car, "are you really
and truly getting ready to go north again?"

"Must, my dear. Have still some work to do in spite of the ice and snow in
Canada. And, as I told you, I mean to stop and see Jonathan Canary."

"That is what I mean, Uncle Dick," she cried. "Will you go to that lovely
Mountain Camp all alo-o-one?"

"Mercy me, child, you never saw it--and in winter! You do not know whether
it is lovely or not."

"It must be," said Betty warmly, "You have explained it all so beautifully
to us. The lovely lake surrounded by hills, and the long toboggan slide,
and the skating, and fishing for pickerel through the ice, and--Oh, dear
me! if we can't go----"

"If who can't go?" demanded her uncle in considerable amazement.

"Why, me. And Bob. And Bobby Littell and Louise, and the Tucker
twins, and all the rest. We were talking about it last night.
It--would--be--won--der--ful!"

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