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 far 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 got 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.