The Outdoor Girls Around the Campfire by Laura Lee Hope (free novel 24 txt) 📖

with a chuckle, “hanging up a piece of rag and throwing her jacket on the floor!”

“She has it bad, poor child,” laughed Mollie, as, caught in the act, Amy laughed sheepishly.

“If you were attending to your own affairs, you wouldn’t have time to see so much,” she retorted, proceeding to restore her jacket to its proper place.

“There’s one thing we must remember,” said Betty soberly. “And that is, not to neglect our Old Maid of the Mountains just because the boys are here. I think she has come to depend on us more than we think.”

The girls agreed to this, saying that nothing should make them forget the lonely little old lady in the cabin up on the hill.

And then, a little before they expected them, came the boys.

The girls heard their voices before they saw them, and Betty’s heart jumped when she recognized Allen’s voice. Not till that moment had she realized how great had been her fear that his “mysterious” case would make it necessary for him to remain in town.

The girls gave one hasty moment to the smoothing of their hair, made untidy by a rather stiff breeze, and the next moment were rushing into the woods to meet the boys half way.

They had agreed not to show too much enthusiasm over the arrival of the latter for the reason, as Mollie had stated, that the boys were getting spoiled with so much attention showered upon them.

But in the joy of the moment the girls forgot all about their resolution, with the result that the boys were treated to a most riotous welcome.

“Seems as if we were getting pretty popular around here, fellows,” said Roy, with a grin, and Mollie promptly attempted to put him in his place.

“Any man would be welcome under the circumstances,” she said haughtily, and not till afterward did the boys think to ask her what she meant by that statement.

As for Allen, he made straight for Betty where she had lingered a little behind the others.

“Say, it’s been a long time,” he cried boyishly, taking both her hands in his, his brown, handsome face alight with eagerness. “Did you miss me, Betty?”

“Never mind us, Allen,” drawled Grace, with a wink at the assembled company. “Would it be doing you a favor to remove ourselves from the surrounding landscape?”

“Don’t bother,” laughed Allen, while the wild rose in Betty’s face turned a deeper pink. “We don’t mind you in the least, do we, Betty?”

“Not at all,” said Betty, demurely, and Mollie threw up her hands in despair.

“They’re just plain crazy, both of them,” she said. A moment later she turned to Frank, adding in a different tone: “What’s the matter with you and Will, anyway? You both look as mad as hops.”

“That’s nothing to the way we feel,” Frank assured her, and immediately he and Will poured forth a tale that made the girls stare in surprise and excitement.

It seemed that when Frank and Will had started back to Deepdale the morning after they had spent the night in camp with the girls, helping them get up their tent, they had not gone very far along the road when they had been stopped by a couple of rough-looking men. The latter had flourished pistols at them and commanded them to “Loosen up!”

“Oh! And did you?” queried Amy, horrified.

Will shrugged.

“What else could we do?” he said. “We were unarmed.”

“Did—did they steal much?” asked Grace, going around to Will as though to protect him from the danger which had threatened him.

“They took my watch and some odd change I happened to have on me, and forty dollars of Frank’s,” said Will, at which Frank pulled a long face.

“It was just after pay day,” he admitted ruefully.

“And we’ve been spending all our spare time since trying to find the scoundrels,” finished Will, grimly. “And we’ll get ’em yet!”

“Let us help,” begged Amy. She was always very brave when Will was around. “If you were robbed near here maybe the same tramps did it that have been annoying us.”

“What?” cried Allen, his anxious glance traveling toward Betty. He had heard of the set-to the girls had had with the tramps on Triangle Island from Will and Frank, and it is safe to say the young lawyer had not spent a really comfortable minute since. “Are those fellows still bothering you?”

“I think they came again last night,” admitted the Little Captain. “They gave us a good deal of a scare, but as soon as they knew we had seen them, they ran off into the woods again.”

“Cowards!” muttered Allen, clenching his fist. “I’d just like to get my hands on them!”

“You have nothing on me, old man,” Will assured him. “As soon as we get some lunch”—here he sent a pleading glance in the direction of the girls—“it will be our job to comb the surrounding country pretty thoroughly. If we don’t find the thieves, at least we can make a good try at it.”

So agitated were the girls and boys over this latest act of the ruffianly tramps that they did not eat lunch with as much zest as usual. All they could think of was their eagerness to start off on a search for the thieves who had so boldly robbed the two boys.

It was decided that they separate into pairs—Allen and Betty, Frank and Mollie, Roy and Grace, and Amy and Will, advancing in different directions through the woods. They were to return to the camp in an hour or two and report what they had found—if anything.

“And we want to make it a point to cover as much distance as possible,” said Will, just before they started. “No stopping on the way, you know.”

“Speak for yourself, Will Ford,” Mollie retorted. “You needn’t worry about the rest of us.”

Then they parted, setting off briskly on their tour of inspection.

For quite a distance Betty and Allen were silent, occupied with their rather sober thoughts. Then Betty, realizing that they had not spoken for a long while, looked up at Allen teasingly.

“Don’t look so dreadfully black and cross,” she said. “Have I offended you, m’lord?”

“Heavens, no,” said Allen, adding with a deepening of the scowl on his forehead: “I want to find those tramps, Betty, and put them where they can’t cause you any more trouble. I can’t tell you how worried I am about leaving you here, alone and unprotected.”

“I’m not alone, the girls are with me,” Betty protested, with a maddening smile.

“Bosh!” retorted Allen impolitely, at which the Little Captain only chuckled.

There followed another long silence in which they conscientiously searched the surrounding woodland in an attempt to discover something that might give them a clew to the whereabouts of the tramps. Again it was Betty who broke the silence.

“Allen,” she said, “you’re worried about something else besides me, aren’t you?”

Allen started as though she had read his thoughts.

“You are a little witch, aren’t you?” he asked, lightly. “You can even tell what a fellow’s thinking.”

“But what is wrong?” persisted Betty. “Won’t you tell me, please?”

Betty was irresistible when she spoke that way—at least she was to Allen.

“I didn’t mean to trouble you with it,” he said, reluctantly. “Especially as I’m still not at liberty to go into details. But I am worried, Betty. You see, it’s my duty, as a lawyer, to see that justice is done whenever it is possible. And now I have reason to believe—to know—that a great injustice has been committed and I can’t see my way clear to righting the wrong.”

“Is it,” asked Betty, after a sympathetic silence, “anything to do with that old man’s will—the client who died?”

Allen nodded. Then he said suddenly, turning to her with his old cheerful smile: “But we’re not going to let shop talk spoil our fun, are we, little Betty? I’ll have to be going back on Monday.”

“Oh,” cried Betty, disappointed, “can’t you stay?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Allen, gravely. “Business is business, you know.”

“Y-yes,” said Betty doubtfully. “I suppose so.”