Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp by Alice B. Emerson

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"What's this?" demanded Mr. Richard Gordon, who happened to be coming back
to the end of the train to look for his niece and her chum.

"Oh, Mr. Gordon!" sputtered Bobby, scrambling up, "it's got her! A wolf!
It's got Betty!"

"A wolf?" repeated Uncle Dick. "I didn't know there were any wolves left
in this part of the country."

Major Pater was with him. Mr. Gordon grabbed the latter's walking stick
and went up that tunnel a good deal quicker than Bobby had come down it.
And when he got to the surface he found his niece, laughing and crying at
once, and almost smothered by the joyful embraces of a big Newfoundland
dog!

"A wolf indeed!" cried Mr. Gordon, but beating off the animal
good-naturedly. "He must be a friend of yours, Betty."

"Oh, dear me, he did scare us so!" Betty rejoined, getting up out of the
drift, trying to brush off her coat, and petting the exuberant dog at the
same time. "But it is a dear--and its master must be somewhere about,
don't you think, Uncle Dick?"

Its master was, for the next moment he appeared at the top of the bank
down which the "wolf" had wallowed. He hailed Uncle Dick and Betty with a
great, jovial shout and plunged down the slope himself. He was a young man
on snowshoes, and he proved to be a telegraph operator at that station
three miles south.

"Wires are so clogged we can't get messages through. But we knew that
Number Forty was stalled about here. Going to be a job to dig her out.
I've got a message for the conductor," he said when he reached the top of
the drift that was heaped over the train.

"Wasn't it a hard task to get here?" Mr. Gordon asked.

"Not so bad. My folks live right over the ridge there, about half a mile
away. I just came from the house with the dog. Down, Nero! Behave
yourself!"

"We are going to be hungry here pretty soon," suggested Mr. Gordon.

"There will be a pung come up from the station with grub enough before
night. Furnished by the company. That is what I have come to see the
conductor about."

"I tell you what," said Betty's uncle, who was nothing if not quick in
thinking. "My party were bound for Cliffdale."

"That's not very far away. But I doubt if the train gets there this week."

"Bad outlook for us. We are going to Mountain Camp--Mr. Canary's place."

"I know that place," said the telegraph operator. "There is an easy road
to it from our farm through the hills. Get there quicker than you can by
the way of Cliffdale. I believe my father could drive you up there
to-morrow."

"In a sleigh?" cried Betty delightedly. "What fun!"

"In a pung. With four of our horses. They'd break the road all right.
Ought to start right early in the morning, though."

"Do you suppose you could get us over to your house to-night?" asked Mr.
Gordon quickly. "There are a good many of us----"

"How many in the party?" asked the young man. "My name's Jaroth--Fred
Jaroth."

Mr. Gordon handed him his card and said:

"There are four girls, four boys, and myself. Quite a party."

"That is all right, Mr. Gordon," said Fred Jaroth cheerfully. "We often
put up thirty people in the summer. We've a great ranch of a house. And I
can help you up the bank yonder and beat you a path through the woods to
the main road. Nothing simpler. Your trunks will get to Cliffdale sometime
and you can carry your hand baggage."

"Not many trunks, thank goodness," replied Mr. Gordon. "What do you think,
Betty? Does it sound good?"

"Heavenly!" declared his niece.

Just then a brakeman came up through the tunnel to find out if the wolf
had eaten both the gentleman and his niece, and the telegraph operator
went down, feet first, to find the conductor and deliver his message.

"Then the idea of going on to Mountain Camp by sledge suits you, does it,
young lady?" asked Mr. Gordon of Betty.

"They will all be delighted. You know they will, Uncle. What sport!"

The suggestion of the telegraph operator did seem quite inspired. Mr.
Gordon and Betty reentered the train to impart the decision to the others,
and, as Betty had claimed, her young friends were both excited and
delighted by the prospect.

In half an hour the party was off, Betty and her friends bundled up and
carrying their bags while Mr. Gordon followed and Fred Jaroth led the way
on his snowshoes and carrying two suitcases. He said they helped balance
him and made the track through the snow firmer. As for Nero, he cavorted
like a wild dog, and that, Bobby said, proved he was a wolf!

Once at the top of the bank they found it rather easy following Jaroth
through the woods. And when they reached the road--or the place where the
highway would have been if the snow had not drifted over fences and
all--they met the party from the station bringing up food and other
comforts for the snowbound passengers. As the snow had really stopped
falling it was expected that the plow would be along sometime the next day
and then the train would be pulled back to the junction.

"But if this man has a roomy sled and good horses we shall not be cheated
out of our visit to Mountain Camp," Mr. Gordon said cheerfully.

The old farmhouse when they reached it certainly looked big enough to
accommodate them all. There was a wing thrown out on either side; but
those wings were for use only in the summer. There were beds enough and to
spare in the main part of the house.

When they sat down to Mrs. Jaroth's supper table Bob declared that quite
evidently famine had not reached this retired spot. The platters were
heaped with fried ham and fried eggs and sausages and other staple
articles. These and the hot biscuit disappeared like snow before a hot sun
in April.

Altogether it was a joyous evening that they spent at the Jaroth house.
Yet as Betty and Bobby cuddled up together in the bed which they shared,
Betty expressed a certain fear which had been bothering her for some time.

"I wonder where she is, Bobby?" Betty said thoughtfully.

"Where who is?" demanded her chum sleepily.

"That girl. Ida Bellethorne. If she came up here on a wild goose chase
after her aunt, and found only a horse, what will become of her?"

"I haven't the least idea," confessed Bobby.

"Did she return before this blizzard set in, or is she still up here in
the woods? And what will become of her?"

"Gracious!" exclaimed the sleepy Bobby, "let's go to sleep and think about
Ida Bellethorne to-morrow."

"And I wonder if it is possible that she can know anything about my
locket," was another murmured question of Betty's. But Bobby had gone fast
asleep then and did not answer.

Under the radiance of the big oil lamp hanging above the kitchen table,
the table itself covered with an old-fashioned red and white checked
cloth, the young folks bound for Mountain Camp ate breakfast. And such a
breakfast!

Buckwheat cakes, each as big as the plate itself with "oodles of butter
and real maple syrup," to quote Bob.

"We don't even get as good as this at Salsette," said Tommy Tucker grimly.
"Oh, cracky!"

"I want to know!" gibed his twin, borrowing a phrase he had heard New
England Libbie use on one occasion. "If Major Pater could see us now!"

Libbie and Timothy forgot to quote poetry. The fact was, as Bobby pointed
out, buckwheat cakes like those were poems in themselves.

"And when one's mouth is full of such poems, mere printed verses lack
value."

Romantic as she was, Libbie admitted the truth of her cousin's remark.

A chime of bells at the door hastened the completion of the meal. The boys
might have sat there longer and, like boa-constrictors, gorged themselves
into lethargy.

However, adventure was ahead and the sound of the sledge bells excited the
young people. They got on their coats and caps and furs and mittens and
trooped out to the "pung," as the elder Jaroth called the low, deep,
straw-filled sledge to which he had attached four strong farm horses.

There were no seats. It would be much more comfortable sitting in the
straw, and much warmer. For although the storm had entirely passed the
cold was intense. It nipped every exposed feature, and their breath hung
like hoar-frost before them when they laughed and talked.

During the night something had been done to break out the road. Mr.
Jaroth's horses managed to trample the drifts into something like a hubbly
path for the broad sled-runners to slip oven They went on, almost always
mounting a grade, for four hours before they came to a human habitation.

The driver pointed his whipstock to a black speck before them and higher
up the hill which was sharply defined against the background of pure
white.

"Bill Kedders' hut," he said to Mr. Gordon. "'Tain't likely he's there
this time o' year. Usually he and his wife go to Cliffdale to spend the
winter with their married daughter."

"Just the same," cried Bob suddenly, "there's smoke coming out of that
chimney. Don't you see it, Uncle Dick?"

"The boy's right!" ejaculated Jaroth, with sudden anxiety. "It can't be
that Bill and his woman were caught by this blizzard. He's as knowing
about weather signs as an old bear, Bill is. And you can bet every bear in
these woods is holed up till spring."

He even urged the plodding horses to a faster pace. The hut, buried in the
snow to a point far above its eaves, was built against a steep hillside
at the edge of the wood, with the drifted road passing directly before its
door. When the pung drew up before it and the horses stopped with a sudden
shower of tinkling bell-notes, Mr. Jaroth shouted:

"Hey, Bill! Hey, Bill Kedders!"

There was no direct reply to this hail. But as they listened for a reply
there was not one of the party that did not distinguish quite clearly the
sound of weeping from inside the mountain hut.

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-shovel 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 he 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!

CHAPTER XVI

THE CAMP ON THE OVERLOOK

Mountain Camp was rightly named, for it was built on the side of one
mountain and was facing another. Between the two eminences was a lake at
least five miles long and almost as broad. The wind had blown so hard
during the blizzard that the snow had not piled upon the ice at all,
although it was heaped man-high along the edges. The pool of blue ice
stretched away from before Mountain Camp like a huge sheet of plate glass.

The two storied, rambling house, built of rough logs on the outside, stood
on a plateau called the Overlook forty feet above the surface of the lake.
Indeed the spot did overlook the whole high valley.

The hills sloped down from this height in easy descents to the plains.
Woods masked every topographical contour of the surrounding country. Such
woods as Betty Gordon and her friends had never seen before.

"Virginia forests are not like this," confessed Louise Littell. "The pines
are never so tall and there is not so much hardwood. Dear me! see that
dead pine across the lake. It almost seems to touch the sky, it is so
tall."

This talk took place the next morning when they had all rested and, like
all healthy young things, were eager for adventure. They had been welcomed
by Mr. and Mrs. Canary in a way that put the most bashful at ease.

Even Ida Bellethorne had soon recovered from that sense of strangeness
that had at first overpowered her. The girls had been able to help her out
a little in the matter of dress. She appeared at the dinner table quite as
one of themselves. Betty would not hear of Ida's withdrawing from the
general company, and for a particular reason.

In truth, Betty felt a little condemned. She had considered a suspicion of
Ida's honesty, and afterward she knew it could not be so! The English girl
had no appearance of a dishonest person. Betty saw that Uncle Dick was
favorably disposed toward Ida. If he did not consider her all right he
surely would not have introduced her to Mr. and Mrs. Canary as one of his
party.

Nor did Uncle Dick allow Ida to tell her story the evening they arrived at
the camp on the Overlook. "To-morrow will do for that," he had said.

At breakfast time there were so many plans for exciting adventure
discussed that Betty surely would have forgotten all about Ida
Bellethorne's expected explanation had it not been for the lost locket.
The possibility that Ida knew something about it had so impressed Betty
that nothing else held her interest for long.

Every one had brought skates from Fairfields, and the great expanse of
blue ice--no ice is so blue as that of a mountain lake--was unmarked.
Naturally skating was the very first pleasure that beckoned.

"Oh, I'm just crazy to get on skates!" cried Bobby.

"I think I'll be glad to do some skating myself," came from Libbie, who
had been reading a book even before breakfast.

"What do you say to a race on skates?" came from Tommy Tucker.

"I think we had better get used to skating up here before we talk about a
race," said Bob. "This ice looks tremendously hard and slippery. You won't
be able to do much on your skates unless they are extra sharp."

"Oh, I had 'em sharpened."

"Don't forget to wrap up well," admonished Mrs. Canary. "Sometimes it gets
pretty cold and windy."

"Not to say anything about its being cold already," answered Bobby. "My,
but the wind goes right through a person up here!"

While the other seven ran off for skates and wraps, Betty nodded to Uncle
Dick and then, tucking her arm through that of Ida Bellethorne, urged her
to follow Mr. Gordon from the breakfast room to a little study, or "den,"
that was possibly Mr. Canary's own.

"Now, girls," said Uncle Dick in his quiet, pleasant way and smiling with
equal kindness upon his niece and the English girl, "let us get
comfortable and open our hearts to each other. I think you know, Ida, that
Betty and I are immensely interested in your story and we are hungry for
the details. But not altogether out of mere curiosity. We hope to give you
aid in some way to make your situation better. Understand?"

"Oh, Mr. Gordon, I quite understand that," said the English girl seriously
and without smiling. "I never saw such friendly people as you are. And you
both strangers to me! If I were at home I couldn't find better friends, I
am sure."

"That's fine!" declared Uncle Dick. "It is exactly the way I want you to
feel. Betty and I are interested. Now suppose you sit down and tell us all
about it."

"Where shall I begin?" murmured the girl thoughtfully, hesitating.

"If I were you," returned Uncle Dick, with a smile, "I would begin at the
beginning."

"Oh, but that's so very far back!"

"Never mind that. One of the most foolish mistakes which I see in
educational methods is to give the children lessons in modern history
without any reference to ancient history which comes to them in higher
grades. Ancient history should be gone into first. Suppose, Ida, you begin
with ancient history."

"Before Ida Bellethorne was born, do you mean?" asked the English girl
doubtfully.

"Which Ida Bellethorne do you mean?" asked Mr. Gordon, while Betty stared.

"I was thinking of my beautiful black mare. The darling! She is seven
years old now, Mr. Gordon; but I think that in those seven years enough
has happened to me to make me feel three times seven years old."

"Go ahead, Ida," said the gentleman cheerfully. "Tell it in your own way."

Thus encouraged, the girl began, and she did tell it in her own way. But
it was not a brief way, and both Mr. Gordon and Betty asked questions and
that, too, increased the difficulty of Ida's telling her story.

She had been the only living child of Gwynne Bellethorne, who had been a
horse breeder and sometimes a turfman in one of the lower English
counties. She had been motherless since her third birthday. Her only
living relative was her father's sister, likewise Ida Bellethorne, who had
been estranged from her brother for several years and had made her own
way on the continent and later in America on the concert stage.

Ida, the present Ida, remembered seeing her aunt but once. She had come to
Bellethorne Park the very week the black mare was foaled. When they all
went out to see the little, awkward, kicking colt in the big box stall,
separated from its whinnying mother by a strong barred fence, the owner of
the stables had laughingly named the filly after his sister.

"But," Ida told them, "father told Aunt Ida that the filly was to be my
property. He had, I think, suffered many losses even then. He made a bill
of sale, or something, making the filly over to me; but I was a minor, and
after father died my guardian had that bill of sale. He showed it to me
once. I don't see how Mr. Bolter could have bought my lovely mare when I
got none of the money for her."

This was not, however, sticking to the main thread of the story. Ida knew
that although her aunt had come to the Park in amity, there was a quarrel
between her father and aunt before the haughty and beautiful concert
singer went away, never more to appear at Bellethorne, not even to attend
her brother's funeral.

Before that sad happening the mare, Ida Bellethorne, had come to full
growth and as a three-year-old had made an astonishing record on the
English race tracks. The year Mr. Bellethorne died he had planned to ship
her to France for the Grand Prix. Her name was in the mouths of every
sportsman in England and her fame had spread to the United States.

The death of her father had signaled the breaking up of her home and the
severing of all home ties for Ida. Like many men of his class, Mr.
Bellethorne had had no close friends. At least, no honorable friends. The
man he had chosen as the administrator of his wrecked estate and the
guardian of his unfortunate daughter, Ida felt sure had been dishonorable.

There seemed nothing left for Ida when the estate was "settled." One day
Ida Bellethorne, the mare, had disappeared, and Ida the girl could learn
nothing about her or what had been done with her. At that she had run away
from her guardian, had made her way to Liverpool, had taken service with
an American family sailing for the United States, and so had reached New
York.

"I found a letter addressed to Aunt Ida after my father died," explained
the girl, choking back a sob. "On the envelope in pencil father had
written to me to find Aunt Ida and give it to her. He hoped she would
forgive him and take some interest in me. I've got that letter safe in
here." She touched the belt that held her blouse down so snugly. "I hope
I'll find Aunt Ida and be able to give her the letter. I remember her as a
most beautiful, tall woman. I loved her on sight. But, I don't know----"

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