CHAPTER X.


At first the girls could not believe their eyes. But it was all too
true. The deep tracks in the dust of the road showing the well-known
prints of the Striped Beetle's tires told beyond a doubt that the car
had gone on and left them.

"But I never heard it start!" said Gladys.

"It was the murmuring of your old brook, Hinpoha, that you were raving
about," said Chapa, "that filled our ears."

It took them actual minutes to realize that Pearl, the spineless
clinging doll-faced girl they had befriended, had sold them out.

"And we took her for such a baby!" said Hinpoha, in bewilderment.

"Who would ever dream she could drive a car?" gasped Gladys. "She was
afraid to toot the horn." To lose your automobile in the midst of a
tour must be like having your horse shot under you. One minute you're
en route and the next minute you're rooted, if the reader will forgive
a very lame pun. And the spot where the Striped Beetle had been
(figuratively) shot from under the girls could not have been selected
better if it had been made to order for a writer of melodrama. There
was not a house in sight nor a telephone wire. The dust in the road was
three inches deep and the temperature must have been close to a