Betty Gordon at Ocean Park

Front matter

i. i

Class

K

Chapter I

“But nothing ever happens on this road,” wailed Libbie. “We’ve tried it before and never saw even a rabbit or a chipmunk. We just have to climb, and climb.”

“That tells the story,” laughed Bobby Littell, her cousin, tossing her curls. “It is the climb you object to. Really, Libbie, you are getting too fat to move.”

“I’m not either,” cried the plump and dreamyeyed Libbie. “It’s horrid of you to call me fat. I am just pleasingly plump.”

“Oh! Oh!” rallied the curly-headed one; but before she could say more Betty Gordon, her closest chum, who did not often disagree with Bobby, intervened:

“Don’t tease poor Libbie about her avoirdu¬ pois, Bobby. She cannot really help it, you know.”

“Indeed?” scoffed Bobby, but laughing too.

“As long as she takes a box of caramels to bed with her she will continue to put on weight. Posi-tive-ly!”

“These remarks upon poor Libbie’s all too fleshy figure have nothing to do with the possibil¬ ity of romance appearing on this road,” Louise, Bobby’s sister and the plump girl’s cousin, put in briskly. She was always the peacemaker. Al¬ though she was a year and a half younger than Bobby, she was so quiet and sensible that she seemed the elder. “But how can we tell, Libbie, what is waiting for us just around the corner?”

“We-ell,” responded Libbie doubtfully, unable to make a better rejoinder, and the six girls marched on up the stony hillside road.

Norma and Alice Guerin were of the party, and that for a very good reason. Betty and the Littell girls made their headquarters near Wash¬ ington, D. C., between school terms. The Guerin girls lived in another part of the country. It was now June, and vacation plans were rife among the roster of pupils at Shadyside, a boarding school which these girls attended.

Betty Gordon, who dearly loved Norma and Alice, whom she had known even longer than she had the Littells, had decided to include the former in her plans for the summer vacation, now not far distant.

“Uncle Dick writes that the lawyer has found a cottage at Ocean Park,” Betty said, continuing the topic that had previously held their united attention. “Bob is to run down next Saturday to see if the place is all right.”

“Why!” demanded Bobby, “what does Bob Henderson know about selecting a house? I wish your uncle would let you and me go, Betty.”

“Well, I guess Bob knows something too,” de¬ clared Betty loyally. “You know he’s got lots of sense, Bobby.”

“What does that mean?” demanded her chum, rather sharply.

“It expresses some agreement with a modicum of doubt,” said Louise, and, thus having repeated a favorite observation of one of their teachers, smiles appeared on all the girls’ faces.

That is, on all but that of the plump Libbie. She toiled on despairingly behind the others, mut¬ tering :

“Nothing ever does happen on this road, I tell you.”

“What nonsense!” cried Alice Guerin gaily. “You know very well, Libbie, that something is sure to happen when Betty Gordon leads the way. And there will be delightful happenings down there at Ocean Park. I can scarcely wait to slip the scholastic yoke for the summer,” mimicking the words of another of their instructors at Shadyside.

“That doesn’t make any difference to this road,” grumbled Libbie. “And I’ve got a stone bruise.”

Suddenly Betty, who was in advance with Bob¬ by, halted and held up her hand for silence.

“What’s the matter?” demanded her chum, staring at her. “Why stand here like a traffic officer, Betty?”

“Listen!” commanded Betty Gordon.

Just ahead of the girls was a sharp and wooded turn in the road. From beyond that turn a sound had first reached her ears. Now the others heard it.

“You notice, Libbie, that something is about to happen,” laughed Louise. “Wait.”

Libbie promptly sat down on a bowlder. “Wait” could mean but one thing to her—“rest.” The sound they heard was the sputtering roar of a balky motor. It stopped abruptly. Then two angry voices broke into argument.

“Something really has happened,” agreed Norma Guerin.

“It is an auto breakdown,” announced Bobby, with more confidence. “As you are the past-mis¬ tress of the art of coaxing a balky motor engine to life and duty, Norma Guerin-”

“Let us see who is in trouble, first,” said Betty, with some caution.

She led the way, and the six girls rounded the turn in the road, chattering and curious, Libbie reluctantly bringing up the rear. A big tour¬ ing car was stalled in the middle of the narrow road. No other conveyance could have got by on the one side or the other.

Two young men had their heads under the hood. They were both coatless and their bared arms were smutched with oil. They had flung their hats and coats into the tonneau of the car, and to Betty’s mind they did not seem suitably dressed in any case for a long automobile trip. Yet the car showed evidences of much travel.

One of the young fellows jerked his head away from the motor and stared around at the sextette of Shadyside pupils. For an instant he looked startled—Betty thought he seemed frightened. Though why he should be afraid of a group of girls it would be hard to say. They were scarcely of frightful aspect.

This fellow was a man in his early twenties. He had a lean, deeply lined face which was un¬ naturally hard of expression. A mean grin de¬ veloped on his features, he shrugged his shoulders, and then attracted the attention of his mate with a nudge of his elbow.

“I say, Jasp, look what’s blown in. You couldn’t have shut the door tight.”

Betty flushed at these words, and even Louise Littell looked annoyed. Norma, who might have briskly gone forward to offer her expert services, came promptly to a standstill.

“Heh?” ejaculated the second man, who, when he stood up and looked around, likewise displayed an unpleasant, if youthful, visage.

“You’ll know us, girls, if you see us again, I reckon,” growled this second fellow. “But I sup¬ pose we should be proud to have your company,” and he made a sweeping and scornful bow.

“Never mind ’em,” said the first speaker, going back to his work. “Get busy. Want to be nailed here?”

“There’s something coming down the hill now,” the man, Jasp, said. “If it’s that girl with her freak pony-”

“Don’t waste time.”

“Just the same,” the girls heard Jasp mutter, “she saw us when we passed, just as sure as you are a foot high.”

“Drop it, Jasp!” exclaimed the other. “Want to tell all you know? Little pitchers have big ears.”

But he stood out from the car again to listen, and was undoubtedly made more anxious by the rattling noise he heard. Betty and her companions heard the sound as well. They stared at each other with suspicion. The thought took root in their minds that there was something very wrong with these two young men as well as with their car.

“Do you suppose it is stolen?” whispered Bob¬ by in Betty’s ear.

“Sh!” rejoined the other warningly.

“Humph!” ejaculated the rebellious Bobby. “I’m no small child, I’d have them know. Fancy his calling us ‘little pitchers.’ ”

The rattling of wheels grew louder, although the vehicle approaching was not in sight. The road wound up among the clumps of trees and bowlders were scattered over the hillside in such a crooked way that people approaching each other on it met unexpectedly. The road’s twists and turns, as well as its steepness, were good reasons for Tibbie’s expressed objection to hiking this way.

The two young men fussing with the car were evidently in haste to get away. The glances they shot now and then at the girls from Shadyside were almost threatening. Betty felt that their departure would possibly relieve the tension, so she said:

“Well, Norma, you cannot doctor this car, I guess. Let’s go on.”

The two fellows glanced after them, but said nothing more within the hearing of the sextette. But the latter were glad to get out of sight of the stalled car.

“They are two awful men!” Alice Guerin de¬ clared.

“What did I tell you?” complained Libbie. “This road-”

“Dear me!” Bobbie broke in with laughter, “I am sure we struck something out of the or¬ dinary. They might be automobile bandits from their looks.”

“Hush!” warned Betty. “Here comes that wagon, or whatever it is.”

At the moment the automobile engine behind them broke into a roar. The noise continued, became more subdued as the driver manipulated the mechanism, and then the girls heard the car start on down the hill. It went with an angry spurt of speed and, in a few moments, the noisy throbbing of the engine mellowed in the distance.

“Well,” remarked Bobby, “they went without biting us.”

Alice Guerin suddenly uttered a wondering cry. Unlike the others she had been looking forward instead of back.

“Dear me, Betty Gordon!” she cried, “you’ve been out West and all. Is this what they call a pinto pony?”

“Where’s a pinto pony?” demanded Betty, whirling about to look up the road.

She joined the other girls in an exclamation of surprise, if not of alarm. The strangest vehicle, drawn by the strangest looking animal, driven by the strangest looking girl they had ever seen, had just come into view. The animal was small and very gracefully built and trotted perfectly over the stony road. It was mainly of a yellow-brown color striped with black about barrel, legs, neck and even across its face. Altogether it was a most curious looking driving animal.

“Somebody’s painted the poor horse,” cried Louise. “What a pity.”

“Goodness I” exclaimed her sister Bobby, “don’t you see what that is? It’s not a horse at all.”

“Elucidate, Miss Know-it-all!” exclaimed the still puzzled Louise.

The creature looked more like a donkey than it did like a horse, for it had very little mane and only a paint-brush tail. It wore a heavy muzzle.

“Why, girls, it’s a zebra!” cried Bobby.

“Right out of a circus,” murmured Libbie. “Oh, my!”

“I should say that girl driving is out of a cir¬ cus, too,” drawled Bobby.

“What a strange looking outfit,” murmured Betty Gordon, staring as hard as any of the io BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK

others at the approaching girl and her strange driving pony.

She was a lanky girl in an ugly brown and white checked gingham dress of an atrocious cut and fit, if it could be said to fit at all, and wearing a faded sunbonnet stiffened all about, it was evi¬ dent, with narrow shingles, like a Shaker’s bon¬ net. Her feet were bare.

She sat in the narrow seat of what looked like a sulky, save that it must have been “home made.” There were no pneumatic tires, no springs, and every spoke and joint in the entire vehicle rattled as though the sulky was about to fall apart. That was why the noise of the girl’s approach had been heard so far in advance of her appearance.

She was a girl of perhaps fifteen, but very strong. She braced her bare feet against the bar behind the zebra’s hindquarters and held to the reins with the muscles of her wrists and forearms swelling plainly under the brown skin. The strange animal was evidently hard-bitted, if it was well trained.

When it saw the six girls standing beside the road the zebra gave every evidence of being skit¬ tish. It shied over toward the other ditch, dan¬ cing and otherwise acting in threatening style. The girl grabbed a slender willow branch from the

II socket beside her and cut him smartly along the flank.

But she was so fully taken up with the zebra’s actions that she did not observe what lay before her. The animal had danced too far off the road. When it darted forward again under the sting of the lash to get past the group of schoolgirls, the off wheel of the sulky smashed with terrific impact against a bowlder that here cropped out of the ditch’s bank.

The sulky stopped as though it had collided with the most immovable object in the world. And the zebra stopped, too, thrown back upon its haunches. The harness was strong; but the wheel was not. It collapsed like a falling house of blocks, and the lanky girl in the sunbonnet and gingham dress was shot over the zebra’s head and came down sprawling into the roadway al¬ most at the feet of the girls from Shadyside School.

Chapter II

Following the accident, Betty Gordon was the first of the startled and surprised spectators to move. She was not quick enough to break the fall of the long-legged driver of the strange turn¬ out, but she was in season to grab the bit of the zebra before it could break away with the shat¬ tered sulky and escape.

Betty was more used to horses than any other girl of her party, if she was not used to such a strange driving animal as this attached to the sulky. And as the zebra was muzzled she did not mind—not very much, at least—if it did snap at her. Let it dance and quiver and snort all it wanted to, Betty hung on.

That was quite in keeping with the girl’s char¬ acter. Impulsive she was, and rather daring and reckless, but her determination and her ability to carry through a thing once it was begun, tempered that natural impatience and impulsiveness. Her character was more rounded than that of most girls of her age, and she won the confidence of older people because of such attributes.

And she needs have good sense and a poise above that of most girls of thirteen or fourteen. Betty Gordon had lived in so many places and had adventured into such strange conditions that her character had developed in accord with the practical demands made upon it.

She had been left an orphan more than two years before this story opens and left to the care and upbringing of a bachelor uncle whom she had never seen. But when she did see and get ac¬ quainted with Mr. Richard Gordon the girl was sure that such another uncle never could have come into the life of a lonely, eager, and imag¬ inative girl.

Mr. Gordon’s business affairs made it impos¬ sible for him to take Betty with him wherever he went. He was a promoter of oil and mining properties and he traveled a good deal in outof-the-way places. He did not at first see how he could take his niece with him at all.

So he found her what he believed would be a healthful and happy home in the country, and in the first volume of the series, entitled “Betty Gor¬ don at Bramble Farm,” the girl really began to learn to take care of herself and to endure not a few trials and temptations. Her surroundings were unpleasant at the farm; but she met there

I 4 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK

Bob Henderson, likewise an orphan, who had proved since that meeting to be the most faithful boy chum and cavalier that a girl could possess. While at Bramble Farm, too, Betty became ac¬ quainted with the Guerin sisters. But her subse¬ quent adventures for some time separated Betty from the Guerins and everybody else she had known in the neighborhood of the farm, save Bob.

Betty actually had to run away from Bramble Farm, and for a different, but quite as good, rea¬ son, Bob ran away too. In “Betty Gordon in Washington,” the second book of the series, the two friends met again in the United States cap¬ ital, and there Betty was befriended by the Littell family, and later went with Roberta and Louise Littell to Shadyside School. There also went Alice and Norma Guerin and the Littell girls’ Vermont cousin, Elizabeth, or Libbie Littell.

Before these schooldays, however, and a year before the present summer, Uncle Dick found himself so situated in Oklahoma that he could have Betty with him for a time. Betty started for the West, and with her went Bob Henderson bound on a private mission. In “Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil” Bob found his relatives and aided them to secure a fortune by selling their land to oil speculators. Betty had some wonder¬ ful adventures in and around Flame City, and toward fall they all returned East, Betty and Bob to enter school and Mr. Gordon to travel in Can¬ ada on important business.

Betty joined her girl friends from Washing¬ ton and Bob joined the boys he had met at Fairfields, the Littells’ beautiful Virginia home. The girls went to Shadyside School and the boys en¬ tered the Salsette Military Academy, directly across a beautiful lake from Shadyside. “Betty Gordon at Boarding School,” the fourth volume, relates the fine times the young people enjoyed in and about these institutions of learning.

At Christmas Mr. and Mrs. Littell opened their home on the Potomac to their daughters and their school friends, and Fairfields became the scene of delightful activities—parties, horseback rides, motor trips, and innumerable pleasant out¬ ings. But to Betty’s mind the most enjoyable thing of all was having her Uncle Dick with her for some time, for he came from Canada for the holidays. Mr. Gordon had promised to visit an old friend at Mountain Camp, and Betty longed to accompany him to the Adirondacks. But school was scheduled to open very soon after New Year’s, and as Roberta Littell, who was always addressed as “Bobby,” even by her good-natured parents who had no boy in the family, said: “School has the first call.”

One never can tell what is going to happen next in this world, however. Something did happen that made it possible for Betty and her friends to spend nearly a fortnight at Mr. Jonathan Can¬ ary’s lodge in the snow-bound wilderness, and the adventures of the party as recorded in “‘Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp” were thrilling. Bet¬ ty made new friends in this last volume of the series, as always; the most important among them being the three Bellethornes.

The happy and exciting time at Mountain Camp had come to an end all too soon. The young folks were recalled to Shadyside and Salsette. The months that had elapsed since the opening of both schools had been busy and in¬ teresting ones for Betty Gordon and all her friends. And now the closing of school for the summer was but a fortnight off.

This was one Saturday afternoon when the six girls had started off for a long hike without being escorted by any of their boy friends from the mil¬ itary academy across the lake. Perhaps Libbie had objected to this road up the mountain be¬ cause she knew they would meet none of the Salsette youths in this direction. Libbie was a ro¬ mantic girl. She had her own choice among the Salsette boys—Timothy Derby. He wore shellrimmed spectacles and read poetry with her.

“Don’t—ever—say—again, Libbie, that— nothing will happen!” panted her cousin Bobby, who had run almost as quickly as her chum, Bet-

1 7

ty, to the rescue. Only Bobby was bent on res¬ cuing the sprawling girl who had shot over the zebra’s head and was now almost under his feet. “Get up! Hurry! Suppose that creature kicks you!” Bobby added gaspingly.

“He’d better not!” declared the strange girl in a loud but not unpleasant voice. “I’d lay into him with a goad if he did. And he knows it, the rascal. Ben Ali ain’t half as crazy as he acts.”

“Ben Ali?”

“That zebry. Oh, yes, that’s his name. Stand still, you botheration!” she added, moving nearer to take the bridle from Betty’s hand.

Betty gave it up willingly, for although she had learned something about horses she was not alto¬ gether sure that a zebra was even as trustworthy as a wild Western pony.

“That wheel is smashed all to smithereens, ain’t it?” observed the strange girl. “Well, them fellers will get away now, for sure. Did you see ’em?”

“Who?” asked Libbie, wide-eyed.

“You mean the two young men in the automo¬ bile?” asked Betty quickly.

“Yes. Them’s them. Smarties! They tried to cash a bad check at my pop’s hay and grain store in Stoneville. But he didn’t bite. Si Cutler ain’t as dumb as city folks think him. No, sirreel”

l8 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK

The girls from Shadyside were as much amused by the way the girl spoke as by her odd appear¬ ance.

“Them fellers got that car off’n my uncle. Uncle Phin ain’t so smart as pop. When they went by the house just now I saw the car and I knew it. I harnessed Ben Ali-”

“This?” interposed Bobby again.

“The zebry. I harnessed him and put out af¬ ter them. And if he wasn’t the meanest thing that ever trotted on four hoofs I wouldn’t have broke down here. But here I am, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Oh, not all!” cried Betty, her eyes suddenly dancing. “You must tell us something more, Miss—Miss Cutler.”

“Sally is my name. Sally Cutler. And Silas Cutler is my father. Hay and grain store, and a liv’ry stable, and into anything else he can turn a penny at. At Stoneville, over the moun¬ tain.”

“Thank you, Sally,” said Betty more quietly. “My name is Betty Gordon, and these girls with me—well, they are all named Littell or Guerin. You will have to learn which is which gradualfy. But you can tell us something we all want to know right now. How did you come to be driving such a creature as this zebra?”

“Ben Ali?”

tg

“Yes,” Betty said. “It seems to me the strangest thing-”

“Nothing strange about it,” interrupted Sally Cutler promptly. “Pop had to take most of Hannigan’s Famous Caravan for a feed bill, and we’ve got to make what use we can of it. This zebry did a trick act in the ring. He’s as old as the hills, they say, and pretty tame—for a zebry. So I drive him. And he don’t eat hardly a thing. But the elephant! Goodness me I If pop had kept the elephant, in two months he would have been a bankrupt, no two ways about it I”

Chapter III

“DeAr me!” breathed Louise, who was noth¬ ing if not practical. “Is she sort of crazy, do you suppose? Fancy having a circus on one’s hands!” She said this so low that Sally Cutler could not possibly have heard.

Libbie, who stood next to Louise, was inter¬ ested.

“My!” she said aloud. “How interesting! Just think of all those circus performers in tights and tinsel being in one’s—er-”

“Livery stable or feed store, Libbie?” de¬ manded Bobby, bursting into a laugh. Then to Sally, she added: “I guess your father had his hands full.”

“You’d think so if you saw the fat lady,” re¬ turned Sally gloomily enough. “She’s broken down our best sofa sitting on it. And she’s al¬ ways sitting. Never walks a step if she can help it. She’s not as bad as the elephant was-”

“Goodness’ sake!” gasped Betty Gordon.

“My head is ringing! Do I hear the same things you other girls hear? Do tell me the truth, Sally Cutler—did the elephant actually sit on the sofa?”

“No, you goosey,” replied the country girl, with scorn. “I meant about her eating. The doctor’s put her on a diet—the fat lady, I mean. But he wasn’t ever on a diet in his life—the ele¬ phant, that is. Pop got rid of him in a hurry. But the living skeleton eats ’most as much. He ain’t on a diet.”

“I know I am going to be silly before this is over,” declared Betty, laughing. “I can’t follow you at all. The fat lady—the elephant—the liv¬ ing skeleton— What a conglomeration! Are they all at your house?”

“Not the elephant, I tell you. Or pop would have gone broke. He says so himself. But the rest of ’em—goodness! What could you do? There was the fat lady and the skeleton, and the bearded lady and the tattooed boy. That’s her son.

“Who’s son?” queried Betty, trying to get it all straight in her mind.

“The bearded lady’s. He’s a nice boy if he is all marked up. You don’t see it when he’s got his clothes on. I like that boy. And he helps do the chores. The bearded lady cooks some, too. But the fat lady and the skeleton just sit an the sofa—when it ain’t broke—like a king and queen on their throne, sort of. They’ve never done anything but that, you see. You see, just being fat and awfully skinny is an awfully wear¬ ing job. They have to keep their minds on it all the time.

“Dear me!” murmured Betty again, while the other girls did not know whether to sympathize with Sally Cutler or burst into hilarious laughter.

“Yes, the fat lady’s on a diet. Otherwise pop would have had to let her go to the highest bid¬ der same as he did the elephant. But I don’t know as he makes much by her only eating apples and a sort of a dry mash that comes in a package like chicken feed. You see, she is hungry all the time, poor soul; and she says it helps her to see other folks eat. That living skeleton, he tries to comfort her by eating enough for twins. I never! You’d think to look at him that if he swallowed a pea you could trace it all the way down to his waist, he’s so mortal thin. But as much as he eats—and it’s a plenty!—you’d never know from the look of him that it had any effect. But it all adds to the bill, and pop’s beginning to get good and worried.”

Betty drew a long sigh and the other girls moved restlessly. Their leader begged:

“Do explain, Sally. We’re awfully interested. How did your father come by this circus?”

“Hay and grain bill.”

“Oh! The circus didn’t pay its bills?”

“Hannigan’s Famous Caravan, it was called. They had bad weather. Lots of these mud shows do. Mud shows is what they call the circuses that travel about on wheels instead of going by rail¬ road; the little ones. It wasn’t a bad show, either, when it started out two months ago. The tattooed boy told me all about it. He’s traveled with circuses all his life, he and his mother. In the winter they live with his grandfather on a farm up in Maine. I don’t believe he likes the circus as much as he did. Humph!

“Well, Hannigan owed my pop a bill from last year, and then he got a lot of stuff this spring on the promise that he’d pay both bills at once. But the lithograph people clamped a lien on him and scraped the till clean as soon as he had a good week or two on the road. Then the bad weather came and they struck Brackenbury—that’s only ten miles from Stoneville.”

“And there it broke down?” asked Betty.

“Went broke. Complete. Why, the poor old lion hadn’t been fed for so long that it broke down and cried when it saw a round steak. And the tiger yowled just like our old cat waiting for milk at the barn door. Poor things!” said Sally reflectively.

“It must have been a sorrowful sight/* giggled Bobby.

“You’d say so. At the last show they gave, Bolivar, the elephant, was so busy begging for peanuts around the edge of the ring that he couldn’t be made to do his trick properly. And, you know, beside an elephant a peanut is awful small!”

This was finally too much for the listeners. Whether they angered Sally or not, they burst into uproarious laughter. After a moment the country girl grinned, too, showing her fine white teeth.

“Does sound funny, doesn’t it?” she observed, quite composed. “Well, that’s how it was. Hannigan ran away. He didn’t have anything to run away from but debts. The others got away the best they could—all but the fat lady, the bearded lady, the skeleton and that boy. He’s nice,” Sally repeated reflectively.

“Well, pop took what he could make use of. Bolivar ate two bales of hay and more’n a bale of rye straw the first twenty-four hours. Then pop chained him in the middle of our back lot, expecting he’d burst and not wanting the stable wrecked. But he didn’t do anything but weave himself to and fro on his big feet like he was knitting a pair of wool socks. Pop telegraphed all round the country to other circuses and finally one circus wanted him—and paid for what Boli¬ var had eaten to get him. So pop was rid of him.”

“And you and your father took the freak folks in because they had nowhere to go?”

“They put ’em out of the hotel, and we found ’em sitting on the roadside with their baggage, in the rain. You see, Hannigan hadn’t paid them a cent. And it had all come so sudden that they didn’t know which way to turn. And, believe me, that fat lady don’t turn often! She’s perfectly satisfied to sit still and let somebody else do the worrying.”

“And is your father going to look after them?” asked Betty. “He must be a kind man.”

“Well, he’s considered pretty sharp at a bar¬ gain,” said Sally Cutler, with evident pride in the absent Silas. “He is keepin’ ’em, yes. But he proposes to get his money back—and maybe a profit. He’s got ’em all signed to a contract, even the tattooed boy, and he’s dickering now with a man that’s got a dog show and maybe they will get a concession at some shore place and show ’em all there for the season, if they can get a good ballyhoo so late in the summer. I’ll be ticket seller, and I’ve picked out just the dress I want to wear. It’s in the window of the Bon Ton Emporium at Blackenbury.”