CHAPTER XX
BETTY'S RIDE
When Betty Gordon and her young friends had set out from Mountain Camp ontheir snowshoe hike the sun shone brilliantly and every ice-covered branchand fence-rail sparkled as though bedewed with diamond dust. Now that itwas drawing toward noon the sky was overcast again and the wind, had Bettystopped to listen to it, might be heard mourning in the tops of the pines.
But Ida Bellethorne, the black mare, gave Betty no opportunity of stoppingto listen to the wind mourn. No, indeed! The girl had all she could do forthe first mile or two to keep her saddle and cling to the reins.
When first they set forth from the Candace stables the mare went gingerlyenough for a few rods. She seemed to know that the frozen crust of the olddrifts just beneath the loose snow was perilous.
But her sharpened calks gave her a grip on the frozen snow that the wisemare quickly understood. She lengthened her stride. She gathered speed.And once getting her usual swift gait, with expanded nostrils and erectears, she skimmed over the frozen way as a swallow skims the air. Bettyhad never traveled so fast in her life except in a speeding automobile.
She could easily believe that Ida Bellethorne had broken most of the trackrecords of the English turf. She might make track history here in theUnited States, if nothing happened to her!
Betty was wise enough to know that, had Mr. Candace been at home, even inthis earnest need for a surgeon he would never have allowed the beautifuland valuable mare to have been used in this way. But there was no otherhorse on the place that could be trusted to travel at any gait.
Ida Bellethorne certainly was traveling! The speed, the keen rush of thewind past her, the need for haste and her own personal peril, all servedto give Betty a veritable thrill.
If Ida made a misstep--if she went down in a heap--Betty was pretty surethat she, herself, would be hurt. She retained a tight grip upon thereins. The mare was no velvet-mouthed animal. Betty doubted if she had thestrength in her arms to pull the creature down to a walk now that she wasstarted.
The instructions Mrs. Candace had given the girl pointed to a descent intothe valley for some miles, and almost by a direct road, and then around asharp turn and up the grade by a branch road to the village where Dr. Pevylived. Betty was sure she would not lose her way; the question was, couldshe cling to the saddle and keep the mare on her feet until the firstexuberance of Ida's spirit was controlled? The condition of the road didnot so much matter, for once the mare found that she did not slip on thecrust she trod the way firmly and with perfect confidence.
"She is a dear--she undoubtedly is," Betty thought. "But I feel just asthough I were being run away with by a steam engine and did not know howto close the throttle or reverse the engine. Dear me!"
She might well say "dear me." Uncle Dick would surely have been muchworried for her safety if he could know what she was doing. Betty by nomeans appreciated in full her danger.
Indeed, she scarcely thought of danger. Ida Bellethorne seemed assure-footed as a chamois. Her calks threw bits of ice-crust behind her,and she never slipped nor slid. There was nobody on the road. There wasnot even the mark of a sledge, although along the ditch were the shufflingprints of snowshoes. Some pedestrian had gone this way in the earlymorning.
This was not the road by which Betty and her friends had been transportedby Mr. Jaroth. There was not even a hut like Bill Kedders' beside it. Inplaces the thick woods verged right on the track on either side and inthese tunnels it seemed to be already dusk.
It flashed into Betty's mind that there might be savage animals in thesethick woods. Bears, and wild cats, and perhaps even the larger Canadianlynx, might be hovering in the dark wood. It would not be pleasant to haveone of those animals spring out at one, perhaps from an overhanging limb,as the little mare and her rider dashed beneath!
"Just the same," the girl thought, "at the pace Ida Bellethorne iscarrying me, such wild animals couldn't jump quick enough to catch me.Guess I needn't be afraid of them."
There were perils in her path--most unexpected perils. Betty would neverhave even dreamed of what really threatened her. For fifteen minutes IdaBellethorne galloped on and the girl knew she must have come a third ofthe way to Dr. Pevy's office.
The mare's first exuberance passed. Of her own volition she drew down to acanter. Her speed still seemed almost phenominal to the girl riding her,but Betty began to feel more secure in the saddle.
They reached the top of a steep hill. The hedge of tall pines andunderbrush drew closer in on either side. The road was very narrow. Asthe mare started down the incline it seemed as though they were going intoa long and steep chute.
Before this Betty had noted the ice-hung telephone and telegraph wiresstrung beside the road. Sheeted in the frozen rain and snow the heavywires had dragged many of the poles askew. Here and there a wire wasbroken.
It never entered the girl's mind that there was danger in those wires.And, perhaps, in most of them there was not. But across this ravine intowhich the road plunged, and slantingly, were strung much heavierwires--feed cables from the Cliffdale power station over the hill.
"Why, look at those icicles!" exclaimed Betty, with big eyes and watchingthe hanging wires ahead. "If they fell they would kill a person, I dobelieve!"
She tugged with all her might at Ida Bellethorne's reins, and now, wellbreathed, the mare responded to the unuttered command. She came into awalk. Betty continued to stare at the heavily laden wires spanning theroad, the heavier power wires above the sagging series of telephone andtelegraph wires.
In watching them so closely the girl discovered another, and even morestartling fact. One of the poles bearing up the feed wires was actuallypitched at such an angle from the top of the bank on the right hand thatBetty felt sure the wires themselves were all that held the pole fromfalling.
"There is going to be an accident here," declared the girl aloud. "Iwonder the company doesn't send out men to fix it. Although I guess theycould not prop up that pole. It has gone too far."
Even as she spoke the mare stopped, snorting. Her instinct was more keenthan Betty's reasoning.
With a screeching breaking and tearing of wood and wire the trembling polefell! Betty might, had she urged her mount, have cleared the place andescaped. But the girl lacked that wisdom.
The pole fell across the deep road and its two heavy cables came incontact with the wires strung from the other poles below. Instantly theravine was lit by a blinding flash of blue flame--a flame that ran fromwire to wire, from pole to pole, melting the ice that clung to them,hissing and crackling and giving off shooting spears of flame thatthreatened any passer-by.
The mare, snorting and fearful, scrambled back, swerved, and tried toescape from the ravine; but Betty had her under good control now. She hadno spurs, but she yanked savagely at the bit and wheeled Ida Bellethorneagain to face the sputtering electric flames that barred the road.
Only a third of the way to the doctor's and the way made impassable! Whatshould she do? If she turned back, Betty did not know where or how tostrike into the thick and pathless forest. Hunchie, suffering from hisinjured leg, must be aided as soon as possible. Her advance must not bestayed.
Yet there before her the sparking, darting flames spread the width of theravine. Burning a black hole already in the deep drifts, the crossed wiresforbade the girl to advance another yard!
Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp; Or, The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne Page 20