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The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge

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The Outdoor Girls
at
Wild Rose Lodge
or
The Hermit of Moonlight Falls

by
Laura Lee Hope

Author of "The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale," "The
Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point," "The Moving
Picture Girls," "The Bobbsey Twins,"
"Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue,"
"Six Little Bunkers at Grandma
Bell's," Etc.




Contents



I Just Fun.
II The Falling Tree.
III The Queer Little Man.
IV Good News.
V Betty Takes a Dare.
VI Nearly Wrecked.
VII Bad Tidings Confirmed.
VIII Premonitions.
IX A Visitor.
X Hurrah for Allen.
XI The Hold-Up.
XII Sheep!
XIII The Enemy Routed.
XIV Nothing Human.
XV Wild Roses.
XVI The Whirlpool.
XVII The "Thing".
XVIII Surprised.
XIX Like Old Times.
XX Very Much Alive.
XXI Out of the Dark.
XXII Tragedy.
XXIII A Moonlight Apparition.
XXIV Recovered.
XXV The Old Crowd Again.





The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge




Chapter I

Just Fun



"Did you ever see a more wonderful day?"

The four Outdoor Girls, in Mollie Billette's touring car and with Mollie
herself at the wheel, were at the present moment rushing wildly over a
dusty country road at the rate of thirty miles an hour.

Grace Ford was sitting in front with Mollie, while Betty Nelson and Amy
Blackford "sprawled," to use Mollie's sarcastic and slightly exaggerated
description, "all over the tonneau."

"You look as if you had never done a real day's work in your life," said
Mollie, with a disapproving glance over her shoulder at the girls in the
tonneau.

"We never have," returned quiet Amy, with a grin.

"And we are proud of it," added Betty, as she defiantly settled her feet
still more comfortably on the foot rail. "Why should we be energetic when
it is so much easier to be lazy?"

"There the proper spirit speaks," applauded Grace Ford from the front. "I
think I shall have to change places with you, Betty. It's far too exciting
up here with Mollie. She insists upon staging near collisions every few
feet--thus keeping me awake!"

"Great heavens!" cried Mollie, pressing an impatient foot upon the
accelerator to which the great car responded with an eager purring, "did
any one ever give us the mistaken title of Outdoor Girls, I wonder? They
should have called us the Rip Van Winkle club, instead."

"Now she's getting sour-castic," commented Grace lazily. "Have some candy,
honey, and sweeten up."

She passed the ever-present box of delicacies over to Mollie, to which
overture the young driver responded with so indignant a stare that Grace
quickly withdrew the box, tucked it behind her, and strove to look
unconscious.

"Please, ma'am, I didn't mean to do it," she said meekly.

"Well, don't do it again, that's all," returned Mollie, uncompromisingly,
her eyes once more on the road ahead, "I've eaten so many chocolates this
week that I've had indigestion and mother threatened to cut down my
allowance."

"Goodness, it's my allowance that suffers," retorted Grace, ruefully,
"since it is my candy that you eat."

"Stop quarreling, girls, and answer my question." said Betty, sitting up
straight and regarding delightedly a vista of flying hills and woodland
greenery. "I asked you a few minutes ago if you had ever seen so wonderful
a day?"

"Yes, plenty of 'em," returned Mollie, as she took a sharp curve on two
wheels. "If you weren't too lazy to notice anything, Betty Nelson, you
would see that there is a storm coming up. Look at those clouds over there
in the east."

"Oh, you're a kill-joy!" cried Betty, cocking an optimistic eye up at the
sky. "It's only one teeny little cloud anyway, and who cares for clouds
when the boys are coming home?"

Both Amy and Grace felt a breathless little tug at their hearts at the
joyful challenge in Betty's words, but Mollie, with a perverseness that
was sometimes characteristic of her, refused to be too happy.

"Who says they're coming home?" she asked. "Now you're only guessing."

"Guessing!" cried Betty indignantly. "What do you mean--guessing? The war
is over, isn't it?"

"Yes; and has been for quite a while," Mollie responded dryly. "But that
doesn't say that the boys are coming home right away."

"We don't care about the right away," interrupted Amy, with a quiet
happiness in her face that made Betty hug her impulsively. "We can wait
patiently, now that we know they are safe."

"It's all right for you to talk about patience, Amy," retorted Mollie,
throttling her engine and sliding at breakneck speed down a long hill
without the thought of using a brake. A brake to Mollie meant something to
be used at the last minute when she couldn't think of anything else to do.
"You're an angel, but I'm not----"

"No, indeed!" said Grace, so emphatically that the girls in the tonneau
chuckled and Mollie looked at her threateningly.

"For goodness' sake, don't waste time looking at me," Grace pleaded, as
they bounced into a hole in the road and out again, fairly jouncing the
breath from the girls' bodies. "Keep your eyes on the road, Mollie dear.
We're not ready to die yet."

"Well, look out, or you may--ready or not," threatened Mollie darkly, as
the car skidded around another precipitous turn and the girls saw with
relief a long stretch of flat road before them.

"Just the same the boys must be coming home before very long," said Amy,
quietly returning to the subject. "And when they do come we'll have to
give them some sort of big party or something, girls."

"Of course we will," said Grace, munching contentedly on a chocolate.
"Something that will make the people in Deepdale sit up and take notice."

"We-el--I don't know," objected Betty thoughtfully. "They say that the few
soldier boys who have come home object to any sort of fuss being made over
them. They seem to want to forget everything that has happened 'over
there,' and any sort of celebration brings the whole thing vividly before
them again."

"Yes, that's true, too," Mollie agreed. "I remember our doctor telling
mother that if people only wouldn't try to force confidences from the boys
and would try to keep all thought of the awful things they had been
through out of their minds, there would be fewer cases of nervous
breakdowns."

"Pop!" said Grace, snapping her finger resignedly. "There go all our hopes
of a good time, Amy. When the boys come home all we shall be allowed to do
will be to smooth their fevered brows and hold their hands."

"Well, we might do worse things even than that," said Betty, with a light
laugh, and Mollie shot her a malicious glance.

"Just watch Betty objecting to that" she said wickedly. "Before we know it
she will be sighing that Allen has only one fevered brow to smooth!"

Amy and Grace looked at Betty mischievously--at Betty who could not for
the life of her look as unconcerned as she would have liked.

"Don't be so foolish" she said hastily, at which the girls only laughed
the more.

"Never mind, honey," said Amy, putting an arm fondly about her chum. "I
guess we will all be crazy with joy to get the boys home again."

"Well, you needn't think you can hold hands with Will and smooth his
fevered brow all the time," said Grace unexpectedly. "Because I really
have some share in him myself, you know. Remember, mine was one of the
three pictures he kept under his pillow."

Readers of previous volumes in this series may recall that joyful letter
written to Betty not so long ago in which Sergeant Allen Washburn--now
Lieutenant Allen Washburn--had spoken of the three pictures which Will
Ford had kept under his pillow during his long convalescence in one of the
army hospitals over there. These readers may also remember that one of the
pictures was of the boy's mother, another of his sister, Grace, and the
third of shy little Amy Blackford, who now was blushing so furiously at
the mere mention of it.

"How about poor Frank and Roy?" asked Mollie, mentioning the other two
boys who made up the quartette of the girls' boy chums. "Who will attend
to their fevered brows?"

"Oh, you and Grace can take turns at that," said Betty, lightly adding,
with a little sigh: "Try as we can, Amy and I never know quite how to pair
you four off. We can't for the life of us find out which of you likes
Frank best and which inclines to Roy."

"That's right, kid--keep 'em guessing," said Mollie slangily, as she
turned on power and challenged a steep grade. "Grace and I believe in
scattering our favors--as 'twere. See that hill just ahead of us? What do
you bet I make it without changing gears?"

"If you make it without changing our looks, I'll be happy," said Grace
ruefully, as they bumped and rumbled to the top of the steep grade. "Look
out, Mollie!" she added suddenly, indicating a big pile of brushwood that
jutted out almost into the center of the road. "For goodness' sake, slow
down!"

But Mollie did more than slow down. She stopped--and with such suddenness
that the girls were all but thrown out of the car and Betty bumped her
nose on the seat in front.

They had scarcely regained their poise when they were startled by a shrill
cry from Amy.

"Girls!" she almost screamed, clutching Betty's arm in a grip that hurt,
"look at that tree. It's going to fall! Oh, we'll be killed!"

The girls followed the direction of her pointing finger and looks of
horror sprang to their eyes. Slowly, its descent retarded somewhat by the
branches of other trees, a towering giant of the forest tottered and
crashed its destructive way downward. And they were directly in its path!




Chapter II

The Falling Tree



For a moment the Outdoor Girls sat fascinated, paralyzed, without the
power to move a muscle. Then suddenly Grace seemed galvanized to action.
She leaned toward Mollie, grasping the steering wheel of the motionless
car frantically.

"For heaven's sake, Mollie, get out of the way! Start the car!" she
screamed.

"I can't!" Mollie answered, tight-lipped. "Something's wrong. The motor's
dead."

But with Grace's scream, Betty had come to her senses and had scrambled
out of the car, dragging the still paralyzed Amy after her.

"Grace, get out! Mollie, are you crazy?" she shouted wildly. "You'll be
killed--"

Automatically Grace started to clamber to the road, but Mollie still
fussed with brakes and levers, her lips in a tight line, her eyes blazing.

"Something's wrong--but I'll get her started," she muttered over and over
to herself while Betty raged at her from the road.

"Get out! get out!" fumed the Little Captain. "Jump, or I'll come after
you and we'll both be killed. Mollie!"

Luckily for Mollie's suicidal stubbornness, the great tree had been halted
for a moment in its downward plunge by some particularly heavy foliage and
branches, but the girls could see that it was only a matter of seconds
until the giant should tear itself loose and come plunging down upon them.

And still Mollie fumbled with levers in a vain and foolish attempt to save
her beloved car at the risk of her own life.

Betty had just jumped upon the running board in a wild attempt to drag her
chum from the car when suddenly help came to them from an unexpected
quarter.

An elderly man came running from the woods, evidently attracted by their
excited cries. He gave one look at the toppling tree, even now tearing
itself loose from the impeding branches, another at the machine with the
two girls still in it, and then, with a speed and decision which seemed to
belie his age, went to the rescue.

"Come--help me push!" he cried to Amy and Grace, who were still standing
dumbly in the middle of the road. A moment later he had thrown himself
with all his might against the machine, striving to push it out of the
path of the falling tree.

In an instant of time the girls had added their strength to his and the
automobile was moving slowly down the road. Luckily the car was on a down
grade or they never could have managed it. As it was, there was just time
to get out of the way when the great tree came crashing down, its
outermost branches just brushing Amy's skirt. The giant had fallen on the
very spot where the car had been only a moment before!

"Girls," breathed Betty, with a shaky little attempt at a laugh, "I guess
we've never in our lives been nearer death than we were just then."

And while the girls are marveling at their almost miraculous escape from a
terrible death, time will be taken to introduce the Outdoor Girls to those
readers who have not yet met them and also to review briefly a few of the
exciting and interesting adventures they have had up to the time of this
present narrative.

There were four of them. Betty Nelson, or the "Little Captain" as the
girls often called her because she had such a decided talent for knowing
just the right thing to do at just the right moment, was eighteen,
dark-haired and dark-eyed. She had a fund of vitality and more than her
share of sense and good judgment--all of which went toward making her what
she was, the most popular girl in Deepdale.

Grace Ford, tall, slender and willowy, was almost the same age as Betty,
but that fact and her love of the outdoors were the only things she had in
common with the "Little Captain." Her father, James Ford, was a lawyer,
and her mother, Mrs. Margaret Ford, a rather dressy lady who spent a good
deal of her time at clubs, was quite a figure in the society of Deepdale.
However, all through the war Mrs. Ford had worked with an untiring
enthusiasm for the "cause," a fact which had made her many more friends
than her social popularity could ever have done.

Next in the little quartette came Mollie Billette. Mollie was seventeen,
French-American, and impulsive, with a quick temper that made more trouble
for herself than for any one else. She and Betty were alike in their
splendid vigor and vitality. Mollie, or "Billy" as she was sometimes
called by her chums, had a very lovely widowed mother and an extremely
mischievous young brother and sister, Paul and Dora (nicknamed "Dodo"),
who were twins and six. Although the twins were pretty nearly always in
trouble, they were really adorable children, whom everybody loved.

Amy Blackford, shy, sweet, pretty, completed the quartette. There had been
a mystery about her past which had recently been cleared up, and it may
have been this mystery that caused the girls to treat her with a little
more consideration and gentleness than they did each other. Her guardian
was a broker in the city who knew very little of the past except through
letters.

The four boys who were close chums of the girls and had added to the
interest and excitement of more than one of their adventures were Allen
Washburn, who was very much interested in Betty, and in whom Betty was
very much interested; Will Ford, Grace's brother, who had carried Amy
Blackford's picture all through the war; Frank Haley, Will Ford's closest
chum, and Roy Anderson who had not much distinction of any kind except
that he was "lots of fun" and a chum of the other three boys.

In the first volume of this series the girls went on a camping and
tramping tour, tramping for miles over the country and meeting with many
adventures on the way.

Later they had more fun at Rainbow Lake, in a motor car, in a winter camp,
in Florida, at Ocean View, then at Pine Island where the girls and boys
together had cleared up a mystery surrounding a gypsy cave.

Later the girls and boys found themselves caught in the meshes of the
great war, as many hundreds of thousands of others had been. The boys
responded eagerly to the bugle call, and the girls, too, were eager for
Army service and finally went to a hostess house at Camp Liberty. Though
the girls had never worked harder in their lives, they found that the task
had a stirringly romantic side as well.

Then in the volume directly preceding this, entitled "The Outdoor Girls at
Bluff Point" the girls had had perhaps the most exciting adventure of all.

The Hostess House at Camp Liberty having burnt down, the chums found
themselves forced to take a much-needed, although not entirely welcome,
vacation and had decided to spend it at a romantic spot near the ocean
called Bluff Point. The cottage on the bluff had been loaned to the girls
by Grace's patriotic Aunt Mary, who declared that she owed something to
the chums for having worked so hard for the good old Stars and Stripes.
Mrs. Ford, worn out with war work, had gone with the girls to chaperon
them.

Bad tidings at first threatened to overwhelm the chums. The Fords received
word that Will was seriously wounded "somewhere in France" and later
Mollie received a telegram from her mother saying that the twins, Dodo and
Paul, had disappeared. Still later, while everything was at its blackest,
Betty read Allen Washburn's name among the missing. However, everything
cleared up later when the twins, who had been kidnapped, were recovered
and their kidnapper sent to justice. Still later Allen proved that the
report that he had been missing was an error by writing to Betty himself
and in the letter he also spoke of Will Ford and the fact that he was
getting over his wound splendidly. Of course there had been great
rejoicing and the vacation had proved a happy one after all.

And now, at the time of this story, the war was over and the first
regiments of soldiers had arrived from the other side and the girls were
expecting a joyful reunion with the boys at any time.

They had not yet made definite plans for the summer and were just in the
position of waiting for something to happen when something had happened
with a vengeance--but not at all the kind of something which the four
girls had expected.

"I think you are right, my dear," said the man who had saved the lives of
at least two of the girls, rubbing his hands fussily together and peering
out of small, near-sighted eyes, first at the tree and then at the girls.
"It was a close call--a very close call. I declare, it was very nearly the
closest call I ever saw!"

For the first time the girls really looked at him. He was a rather small
man, slenderly built, with long sensitive hands and a very bald head, in
the center of which a tuft of hair stood comically upright. These
characteristics, coupled to the squinting eyes, gave the man a very odd
appearance.

He was so queer a figure standing there in the center of the road that the
girls found themselves staring unduly. Realizing something of this, Betty
jumped down from the running board where she was still standing and held
out her hand to the little man, thanking him in a voice that still
trembled a little for the great service he had done them. The other girls
followed suit and so overwhelmed their rescuer that he seemed quite
embarrassed and looked around nervously as if for some means of escape.

Betty, seeing his embarrassment, was about to take pity upon him when
something happened that they had not bargained for. It began to rain, not
gently, but in a deluge, taking the girls completely by surprise.

Instinctively they turned toward the car, but Mollie suddenly began to
laugh in a half-hysterical manner.

"This is what I call fun" she said. "Engine dead, caught in the rain, and
I've even left the side curtains at home! I guess we're in for it, girls."




Chapter III

The Queer Little Man



While the girls stood looking wildly at each other their unknown rescuer
seemed suddenly galvanized to action.

"This won't do at all!" he cried, raising both hands to his bald head
which was by this time very wet and more shiny than ever. "You will get
your death of cold, young ladies, you surely will. You must come with me.
Here, right along this path I have a cottage--" All the time he was
talking he was hustling them fussily ahead of him, for all the world like
some old hen with a brood of chickens.

The girls, not knowing what else to do and being in rather a bewildered
frame of mind, allowed themselves to be hustled. The rain was sheeting
down in a terrific cloud burst, so that their clothes clung to them damply
and they began to shiver.

They circled the fallen tree which had so nearly been their undoing, and a
moment later found themselves upon a narrow footpath which seemed to lead
into the very heart of the woods.

"I wonder where he is taking us," whispered Grace in Betty's ear. "Maybe
he's a murderer or something."

In spite of her discomfort, Betty giggled.

"Did you ever see a murderer with a bald head like that?" she asked.

It seemed to the girls as if the path must be at least a mile long, but
just as they were despairing of ever reaching the end of it, they came out
into a partially cleared space and through the trees caught a glimpse of
something that looked like a house.

Their new acquaintance, who up to this time had been bringing up the rear,
now took the lead and led them over tangled underbrush, stones and
foot-bruising rocks, to his strange little dwelling.

"It's a house, it's a house!" cried Grace thankfully, as they hurried
after the little man. "I guess somebody will have to wring me out when we
get inside. I'm soaked through!"

"Goodness, why don't you tell us something we don't know?" grumbled
Mollie, but nobody was listening to her. They had reached the house and
the man had swung the door open hospitably.

"Step inside, step inside, do," he urged with a nervous gesture that
reminded the girls once more of the proverbial hen. "You will find it dry
at least, and I will have a fire for you in a hurry. Just a moment till I
get some wood--just a moment--"

And while he rambled on, suiting his words with quick nervous action, the
girls crowded inside the cottage and looked about them curiously.

The room they had entered was large and scrupulously neat. At first glance
it seemed a queer combination of hunting lodge and museum of natural
history. The rough clapboards and beams of the ceiling and walls had never
been plastered, and this very crudity seemed somehow to give the room an
air of warmth and home-likeness that was very inviting.

Hung on the walls were several fairly large skins of animals, a gun or
two, and over the huge open fireplace, which very nearly covered one end
of the room, hung the magnificent head of a buck.

On the wall opposite the fireplace was a set of rudely-erected shelves,
one beneath the other, and these shelves were covered with specimens of
butterflies, beetles and other bugs of every size and description. That
the specimens had been mounted by an expert even an inexperienced eye
could see.

The girls, who had been regarding the oddities of the room with growing
interest, were brought back to a realization of the discomfort of wet
clothes by the owner of the place himself.

The latter had brought firewood from somewhere, and, with the aid of half
a dozen matches, had succeeded in getting a fairly good blaze.

Then with a smile of satisfaction he turned to the girls, rubbing his
hands together genially.

"Come nearer to the fire--come closer--do," he urged in his quick nervous
way. "I am sure you are chilled through--quite chilled through. I will
bring chairs." He stopped abruptly and looked about him with an
embarrassed air, his gaze coming to rest on the only chair which adorned
the room.

Betty, seeing his confusion, was trying to think of something helpful to
say, when the little man suddenly found a way out of his quandary.

"Ah, I have it!" he cried, seizing enthusiastically upon a long bench that
stood on one side of the room. "Four can sit upon this quite easily, I am
sure. A happy thought--a very happy thought--" and he pulled and tugged at
the bench until he succeeded in moving it close to the fire.

Afterward it occurred to the girls that they might have helped him, for it
was a very heavy bench and he was rather a frail old man. But at the time
they were too interested in this unusual place and their rather
extraordinary host to think of anything very rational.

However, they seated themselves dutifully in a row upon the bench, "for
all the world like an orphan asylum out for an airing," as Mollie said
later, and gratefully stretched out their sodden shoes to the blaze.

They were cold and they were wet and they were fast becoming very hungry,
all of which might have been expected to form a very good reason why they
should have been miserable. But they weren't miserable--not at all. To the
Outdoor Girls the thrill of an adventure always more than counterbalanced
the possible discomforts attending it.

Their host started to draw up the one chair in the room, hesitated a
moment then, as though he had just thought of something, turned and darted
through the door, closing it with a little click behind him.

For the space of half a second the girls looked after him. Then they
looked at each other. Then they drew a long breath and let loose the flood
of curious questions which had been struggling for expression for the past
twenty minutes.

"Well, isn't this a lark?" cried Mollie, her eyes dancing, "Half an hour
ago we were awfully bored, and now look at us."

"Yes, look at us," said Grace with a little sniff. "I'm sure we're not
very much to look at right now with our hair wet, and our clothes--"

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