New Horizons (20 page)

“All right, let's at least find it,” Celia said.

Mr. Ryland drove up and down streets, but the girls could not spot the public library.

“We might as well go on to the college and wait for Mary Lou. There's not enough time left to do anything else,” Mandie said.

“Yes, miss,” Mr. Ryland said, shaking the reins.

“Oh good, this time of day the parking spaces will be in the shade of the trees. It has turned out to be an awfully warm day, hasn't it?” Celia commented.

“It certainly has—in more ways than one,” Mandie said with a little laugh.

As they came to the front of the college, Mandie leaned forward and said, “Look, there's one of those motorcars—and it's taking up several parking spaces.”

“I wonder who it is driving that thing,” Celia said.

“I do believe it's a young woman,” Mandie said as they came closer.

“You're right,” Celia replied. “Now, who can she be?”

“I don't know, but who does she think she is to take up so many parking spaces?” Mandie said disgustedly.

Mr. Ryland slowed their carriage down as they got closer, and then he came to a stop near the motorcar. He looked back at the girls.

“That woman should move her motorcar, Mr. Ryland. There is barely enough space for us to even park,” Mandie said to him. Then, looking at the woman in the vehicle, she called out, “You have to move. There's not enough space.”

“I have to move?” the woman replied, laughing. “I'll sit here all day if I want to.”

Shocked, Mandie said, “No, you won't, either. If you don't move, I'll go inside the office and get someone to come out here and make you move.”

Several other people were standing around and could hear the conversation. There was a lot of snickering.

Suddenly the motorcar lurched forward with a big roar, out of control.

Mr. Ryland's horse panicked and sped off with the carriage. Mr. Ryland lost control, and the carriage swerved into a rock
wall on the side of the road. There was a loud crash, and Mr. Ryland was thrown from the carriage. Mandie was hit by the debris and passed completely out. Celia quickly jerked up her long skirts and jumped forward, trying to grab the reins.

“Whoa, boy, whoa, boy!” she called to the horse as she tightened her hold on the reins. “Steady now, boy. Whoa, whoa,” she called in a soothing voice. The horse slowed down, and she managed to get him to stop. He was stomping his feet and snorting.

She jumped down from the carriage, her skirts held high, and raced to soothe the frightened horse as she managed to tie the reins around a lamppost. Rushing back to the carriage she found Mary Lou and Grace trying to help Mandie. Other people were bending over Mr. Ryland as he lay unconscious on the road.

“Mandie! Mandie!” Celia cried, tears streaming down her face. Her skirts were twisted and she had lost her hat.

“Celia, we need to get a doctor,” Mary Lou said, quickly looking around.

“Mr. Ryland looks like he's hurt pretty badly,” Grace said.

The girls who had been standing around the motorcar began fussing. “Mandie shouldn't have started all this arguing, anyhow,” one was saying.

“She thinks she can have her way about everything,” a tall girl said.

“It's all her fault,” another one said.

Grace stood up and yelled back at the crowd. “It was not her fault. I saw everything. I was standing right here. That
woman deliberately drove her motorcar into the carriage.”

“Mandie's just a stuck-up snob who thinks she can buy anything she wants,” one girl said. “She and her grandmother are snooty, filthy-rich people without a sense of decency.”

Grace hastily approached the girl who said this. “Let me tell you one thing. Her grandmother gave me my scholarship or I wouldn't have been able to come to college here. And I pray for her every day because of it.”

Mandie was groaning, but she was still unconscious as she lay in the carriage.

A young man pushed his way through the crowd, saying loudly, “Please let me through. I'm Dr. Zeager.” He was carrying a medical bag and he quickly got to Mandie to examine her. “She needs to go to the hospital immediately. So does the man lying out there in the road.” He stood up and sternly said, “Please stand back.”

A man who was with him came through the crowd, picked up Mandie, and carried her to another carriage that had stopped in the road. Then he and the doctor picked up Mr. Ryland and put him in the carriage next to Mandie.

“We have to go with her,” Celia screamed at the doctor through the noisy crowd.

At that moment another carriage had pulled up and stopped. Celia glanced at it and immediately recognized the driver as Mr. Donovan, the driver Mrs. Taft had originally tried to hire at the beginning of the school year. Celia called out, “Please, Mr. Donovan, can you take us to the hospital?”

Mr. Donovan hurried down from his carriage and came to help Celia out of the carriage. “Miss, what on earth has been going on here?” he asked. “Come quickly. We will follow the doctor.”

“Mary Lou, Grace, come on!” Celia called to them, and they climbed into Mr. Donovan's carriage.

The doctor drove his carriage at a high rate of speed, and Mr. Donovan kept up with him. Celia tried to talk against the noise of the carriage to explain what happened.

“That motorcar was taking up too many parking spaces, and suddenly it just sped into our carriage, Mr. Donovan. Oh, I'm so worried about Mandie,” she said as tears streamed down her face.

“And poor Mr. Ryland,” Mary Lou added.

“I intend finding out who that woman was driving that motorcar and see that she is punished for it,” Grace said firmly. “I also intend reporting those girls to the college for the remarks they were making.”

“Oh, what about the carriage Mandie's grandmother bought for her and Celia? It was so damaged I don't believe it will run anymore. And we just left it in the street back there,” Mary Lou said, trying to glance back.

“I saw some boys trying to move it out of the street,” Grace said, trying to calm her friends down.

It was only a few blocks to the hospital, but it seemed like miles as Mandie and Mr. Ryland lay there unconscious. Finally the doctor turned the carriage through the gate and pulled up in front of a huge stone building.

Suddenly people from the hospital came running out and took
Mandie and Mr. Ryland inside. Grace, Celia, and Mary Lou followed but were stopped by a nurse in the front reception room.

“I am Rita, Dr. Zeager's nurse. I'm sorry, but you are not allowed to go inside until a doctor says you can. Please wait out here.” She indicated a row of chairs against the wall. “I will let you know the condition of the patients as soon as possible.” She hastily went through a door into the other part of the hospital.

Celia was crying and Mary Lou tried to console her.

“I need to let someone know about Mandie,” Celia said. “Her mother doesn't have a phone, but I think her grandmother does. I just hate to get Mrs. Taft involved in this. I can imagine what will happen if she arrives.”

“But you have to let someone know, Celia,” Mary Lou said.

“I wish I could call my mother, but we don't have a phone at our house yet, either. We live on a horse farm way out in the country,” Celia said.

“I thought you looked like you were experienced with horses when you took on the task of controlling that horse just now,” Grace said.

Celia shivered as she said, “I haven't had anything to do with horses since one threw my father and killed him several years ago.” Fresh tears streamed down her face.

“You saved Mandie's life, Celia, because you knew how to control a runaway horse,” Mary Lou said, reaching to put an arm around her.

“I'm worried about her. We don't know how badly she is hurt,”
Celia said, beginning to shake all over.

Grace looked around, saw a stack of blankets on a shelf behind the counter, and got up to get one for Celia.

“Thank you,” Celia said in a shaky voice.

They waited for what seemed to be hours before the doctor finally came out to speak to them.

“My staff and I have made a thorough examination of both patients,” he said. “Mr. Ryland has come to and seems to be suffering from a broken arm, plus some cuts and bruises. At his age he is really lucky to have survived that fall from the carriage.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Now, the young lady, Miss Shaw, is still unconscious and must be left here under observation.”

“Oh no,” Celia said in a shaky voice. “What is wrong with her, doctor?”

“She suffered a terrible blow on the head,” Dr. Zeager replied. “But she is resting right now after the medication we gave her.”

“I need to let her mother know,” Celia said.

“Yes, you should definitely let her family know where she is,” the doctor said. “Now, you girls are from the college, is this correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Mary Lou said. “I'm Mary Lou Dunnigan. Celia Hamilton and Mandie live at my house. Grace Wilson here lives in the dormitory.”

“Then why don't you young ladies go home and see what you can do about contacting Miss Shaw's relatives, and I will know
where to find you if I need you.” He started to go back through the door.

“What about Mr. Ryland?” Mary Lou asked. “Do we need to contact his family?”

“No, he has given us his information, so we will do that,” the doctor replied.

“Thank you, Dr. Zeager,” Celia said, rising and holding the blanket about her.

Mr. Donovan had waited outside with his carriage and the girls went out to give the news. He immediately offered to drive them anywhere they needed to go.

Since Celia badly needed to change her clothes, they all went to the Dunnigans' house. There they explained to the Dunnigans what had happened.

“I will help you contact Mandie's family,” Mr. Dunnigan offered.

Celia explained about the lack of phones.

“We can still contact them through our law enforcement,” Mr. Dunnigan said. “I'll go down and talk with them while you girls get cleaned up.”

“Would you please leave Mandie's grandmother to the last to contact?” Celia asked Mr. Dunnigan in a shaky voice. “I know Mandie would rather have her stepfather, or even my mother, come if possible.”

“I'll do my best,” Mr. Dunnigan promised her as he left.

The girls went upstairs to clean up.

“Grace, why don't you just spend the night here with us?” Mary Lou asked.

“But I'm all dirty,” Grace said, looking down at her dress.

“We look to be close to the same size. I think you could put on one of my dresses and it would fit well enough,” Mary Lou said.

“All right then, but I do have a class first thing in the morning,” Grace reminded her.

“Mr. Donovan said he would return tomorrow morning to see if he could take us anywhere,” Celia reminded them, “so he can drive you back to school, Grace. I'm not going anywhere until I know how Mandie is going to be.”

“Neither am I,” Mary Lou added. “I want to be sure she's all right.”

“I have to go in for that one class, but then I can come back,” Grace said.

“Yes, please do,” Mary Lou replied.

“I'll get some clothes, too,” Grace said. “And I also want to talk to the people at the college and let them know what happened. I intend to follow through with this. Those girls were shouting lies about Mandie.”

“Well, I hope they get some strong punishment,” Celia said, her voice full of anger.

The three girls didn't sleep much that night. They talked awhile and then dozed, woke, and talked more. Celia gave them the verse she and Mandie always recited when in trouble or danger.

“Hold hands and say this: ‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee,' ” she explained.

The other girls joined in with her, and they finally drifted off to sleep just hours before sunrise.

chapter 15

Everyone was up early the next morning, after a night of restlessness. Mr. Donovan came by to take Grace back to the college, and then he returned to the Dunnigans' to be available if anyone else needed his carriage.

Mrs. Dunnigan invited him in for coffee, and as everyone sat around the table, Mr. Donovan told them that he had gone down to the carriage factory early that morning to check on the girls' carriage, as that is where it was taken after the accident. “It was completely destroyed,” Mr. Donovan had to tell them.

“I talked to the law enforcement officer last night, and they promised to contact Mandie's family. I gave them some names and addresses, so I imagine we'll be hearing from someone soon,” Mr. Dunnigan said.

“I need to go to the hospital and see about Mandie,” Celia said in a shaky voice.

“They won't let you in, so you might as well wait here,” Mary Lou reminded her. “I imagine Grace will find out something
before she comes back here. And I imagine she will be making herself heard in that college today.”

“In a way I hope Mrs. Taft will be the one contacted,” Celia said. “She will really straighten out a few things if she shows up down here.”

Finally there was a knock at the front door. The local law enforcement officer had come with news, so the Dunnigans invited him in for a cup of coffee.

“We were rather lucky,” he said. “We sent a message in Morse code to the train depot in Franklin, North Carolina, and asked that they send it on to Mr. John Shaw, Miss Amanda Shaw's uncle. A reply came back that Mr. Shaw and his old Indian friend are on a hunting trip only a few miles from here. We sent a man out this morning in an effort to locate them. They will be told that there has been an accident and they should contact you immediately,” the officer told Mr. Dunnigan.

“Oh, thank the Lord,” Celia said under her breath. “I just know that Mr. Shaw will be here as soon as he gets the message.”