Читать книгу: «Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Old Apache Trail», страница 7
“Harlowe!” answered Grace weakly. “Oh, Emma, I’m going to faint!” she cried, and collapsed.
When Grace recovered consciousness she was in her own camp. A camp fire was blazing, and a group of anxious faces were bending over her. Grace smiled and closed her eyes.
“She has fallen asleep, don’t disturb her,” said Elfreda Briggs. “The poor child is utterly exhausted. It is a wonder that she is alive after what she plainly has gone through.”
CHAPTER XV
IKE DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF
GRACE and Emma, following Grace’s faint, had been carried into camp by Lieutenant Wingate and Ike Fairweather. Emma, giving way to the reaction, after her trying experience, had immediately sunk into a profound sleep, from which they had not awakened her. The two girls had been put to bed, neither awakening until long after daylight.
Miss Briggs had examined the bullet wound on Grace’s scalp and decided that it should have attention as soon as she awakened.
No one was in her tent when finally Grace opened her eyes. After a few minutes of blissful resting, the Overton girl got up and dressed. She was a little dizzy at first, but the sensation quickly passed, and she walked out just as luncheon was being prepared.
There was a shout of welcome as Grace appeared, and the girls of the party ran to her, fairly overwhelming her with their joyous embraces. Emma, who had awakened and dressed, came out a few minutes after Grace.
“We are famished. Please give us something to eat,” begged Grace. “While we are eating you may tell us what has been going on here.”
“I reckon we’d like to hear ’bout you first,” spoke up Ike.
Grace thereupon related the story of the experiences of herself and Emma, touching briefly on her own part in it.
“I reckon the woman thet got shot is goin’ to die,” observed Ike.
“How do you know?” questioned Grace, bending a keen glance on the driver.
“Heard the bandits talkin’ about it up in the mountains.”
Ike then told of the search that Hippy and himself had made for the missing girls, of their losing the trail and not finding it again, and finally of having discovered the bandits, spied on them, and from their conversation learned that Grace Harlowe and Emma Dean had escaped.
Ike said he learned, too, that the bandits were about to start for the Overton camp, at the direction of Belle Bates, “and shoot the place up for keeps,” as Ike put it. Hearing that, and knowing that the two girls had escaped, Ike and Hippy started for home as fast as their horses could travel, fully expecting to find Grace and Emma at the camp. They had arrived at camp about an hour before the bandits.
“The battle you know ’bout, I reckon. Western Jones here shot two of the critters off their horses, but the galoots gathered up their wounded and rode away with ’em. I’ll bet there ain’t a one of ’em that hasn’t a bullet hole in his carcass followin’ thet raid. You fixed one in the leg up on the mountain. I heard ’em say so. Reckon you must have shot high on purpose, ’cause you hit him nigh the hip.”
“I am glad it was no worse,” observed Grace gravely.
“Hope they keep on comin’ ’long, so, by the time we get to the end of the trail, they’ll be purty well shot off.”
“By the way, I shot at and hit an animal that I think must have been a cougar,” Grace informed them. After she had described the terrifying scream of the animal, Ike nodded.
“Thet’s cougar. Must have hit him hard or he’d jumped you. They’re bad medicine when wounded. Reckon he crawled off an’ died. What are you goin’ to do now?”
“I think the first thing to be done is to sew up Mrs. Gray’s scalp wound,” suggested Elfreda. “Do you wish me to do it, Grace?”
“Yes. I was going to ask you to do that for me. Suppose you do it now.”
Elfreda got her first-aid kit and her needles and silk, selected what she wished from the kit and handed the rest to Emma to hold.
“It might be wise to have some one else assist you. Remember, Emma has never worked in a hospital,” suggested Grace, seating herself in the camp chair that Anne had placed for her.
“Time she began,” answered Elfreda briefly. “Emma, you will be present, but not heard, during this proceeding.”
Ike Fairweather had drawn up a soapbox and sat down on it just outside of the circle that had gathered about the scene. His eyes were filled with curiosity. Ike did not fully understand what was “coming off,” as he later described it, but felt certain that he was about to witness something interesting.
Steeling herself to resist the pain, Grace talked as Miss Briggs inserted the needle and began stitching the scalp together, but the lines of her face showed the strain under which Grace was laboring.
“Elfreda, haven’t you nearly finished with that patchwork?” she finally asked in a queer, strained voice.
“One more stitch and I am done. There! It is fini, as the Frenchmen would say. Thank you, Emma. I will take the kit.”
The kit dropped from Miss Dean’s nerveless fingers, and, uttering a little moan, she collapsed.
“Emma has fainted. Throw a pail of water on her face,” directed Elfreda, calmly proceeding to place a bandage over Grace’s head.
Nora ran for water, while Anne, who had sprung forward, turned the fainting girl over on her back and fanned her with a sombrero.
Emma’s faint was the crowning climax for Ike Fairweather. Ike went over backward with his soapbox, landing on his back in a dead faint.
Hippy grabbed the old coach driver, the veteran of many a hold-up and thrilling battle in the mountains, and twisted him about so his head might be higher than his feet.
“Nora darling, fetch two pails of water,” called Hippy. “What ails this bunch of tenderfeet, anyway?”
Grace smiled in spite of her suffering, as Elfreda assisted her to a cot that had been placed for her. In the meantime Ike and Emma were regaining consciousness.
“Well, I swan!” gasped Ike Fairweather after Hippy had laughingly assisted him to a sitting position, Anne having performed a similar service for Emma. “Never did nothin’ like thet before.”
“I hope you never do it again if you continue to pilot this outfit,” rebuked the lieutenant.
“I won’t,” promised Mr. Fairweather. “Next time I shore’ll look t’other way,” he added, amid laughter.
Grace beckoned to him to come to her.
“Did Mr. Jones return to Globe?” she asked.
“Yes, and the young women gave him a right nice present beside what he asked for helpin’ me to get the ponies out here.”
“I want to thank you for all the trouble you had in looking for Miss Dean and myself. That is what I wished to say to you,” added Grace smilingly. “When do you think we should strike camp and go on?”
“Whenever you feel fit, Miss.”
“I think it will be advisable to wait until morning, even though the bandits attack us here again.”
“Reckon they got enough for a day or so,” observed Ike dryly. “To-morrow mornin’, then, is it?”
“Yes. Make camp to-morrow afternoon wherever you think best, only do not let us get past your camping place. Thank you so much. I do not know what we should have done without you, but I sincerely hope our more serious troubles are now at an end,” added Grace.
“Mebby, mebby,” observed Ike Fairweather, thoughtfully stroking his whiskers. “Between you an’ me, I don’t reckon they be.”
CHAPTER XVI
A GLIMPSE INTO FAIRYLAND
THE Overton girls’ equipment wagon, as was customary, went ahead of the outfit next morning, and had been gone for nearly two hours when the party decided to start on their way.
Hippy Wingate saddled their horses for them, and gallantly assisted them to mount.
“That husband of mine must have learned how to assist ladies to their saddles when I wasn’t looking,” frowned Nora.
Grace shook her head.
“It is the thought of how near he has come to losing us all in the battles with the bandits that has softened Hippy’s heart,” corrected Grace Harlowe.
“I wish I could believe it,” muttered Nora Wingate.
The outfit started out, led by Lieutenant Wingate, who took a circuitous route to reach the Apache Trail, in order to avoid the steep ascent that they would have encountered had they taken a more direct course to the trail.
The eyes of the Overton girls were sparkling. For the moment they had forgotten their troubles, forgotten the peril-laden mysteries of the Apache Mountains, forgotten all but the glorious morning, and the wonders that lay all about them.
The first halt made was at the Great Forest of Sahuaro, a forest of giant cacti which flourishes all through the Apache and other mountain regions in that immediate section. Some of these great, awkward plants are all of fifty feet high, and from their spiny, fluted trunks issue branches which almost equal the trunks in diameter.
Crowning this weird, ungainly invention of nature is a brilliant red waxen flower of great beauty.
“That is the state flower of Arizona,” Grace informed her companions, pointing to the sea of red that stretched away for a long distance. “I propose that we dismount, have our luncheon here and chat for an hour or so.”
“Motion carried,” cried Emma, slipping from her saddle.
Ponies were tethered, and while Hippy was seeking water “for man and beast,” as he expressed it, the girls got out their mess kits and rations. Grace built a little cook fire, and, in remarkably short time, the mess call was heard at the edge of the cactus forest, while the ponies nibbled at what they found.
“I’ve been thinking,” began Hippy, “that – ”
“Marvellous,” murmured Emma.
“That only weaklings faint away,” finished the lieutenant.
“Is that all you had in your mind beside thought of food?” Emma came back spiritedly.
“No, not all. What I really was about to say, was that this outfit should have a name.”
“Perhaps we already have a name among certain persons who have smelled our powder,” twinkled Grace Harlowe.
“I too have been thinking that we, as an organization, should call ourselves something,” agreed Elfreda.
“Aren’t we the Overseas Girls?” questioned Nora.
“Not now. We may be all at sea, but we are not overseas,” answered Grace.
“I move we call ourselves the Rough Rider Patrol,” suggested Hippy.
“Awful!” objected Emma. “This is not a part of the State Constabulary.”
“I have it!” cried Hippy. “You’ll say it’s a stroke of genius when you hear it. I have the name that fits this outfit from the ground up. ‘The Automobile Girls on Horseback,’ that’s the name for you children,” glowed Hippy.
A chorus of laughs greeted the suggestion.
“Instead of being a stroke of genius, I should call that a stroke of paralysis,” declared Nora.
“Such is the support that Hippy Wingate gets from his wife,” complained the lieutenant.
“Can you blame her?” teased Grace. “Anne, Elfreda, we have not heard from you.”
“While you people have been making sport of Hippy’s suggestions, I wish to say that he has made an excellent one,” asserted Elfreda.
“Oh, Elfreda!” cried Anne and Nora in one voice.
“I will give you to understand that I am no automobile girl on horseback,” asserted Emma indignantly. “I won’t ride under any such name, either. I – I’ll faint away first. There now!”
“Save the heroics, Emma. Nothing is further from my mind than to call our outfit by that name,” replied Elfreda.
“I call that downright mean,” objected Hippy, with mock indignation. “You raise my hopes to the skies, shower me with compliments, calculated to prove that I am not a paralytic, then you drop me over the edge. I leave it to Nora if that isn’t cruelty to animals.”
“It is,” agreed Nora gravely, whereat the Overton girls broke into a peal of merry laughter.
“You are both wrong and right, Hippy Wingate. I stand on what I said a few moments ago, that you made an excellent suggestion,” declared Miss Briggs. “I did not mean that your title was wholly good, for it isn’t.”
“Awful,” interjected Emma Dean.
“For the love of goodness, give our legal talent a chance,” begged Hippy, frowning at Emma.
“Hippy mentioned the Rough Rider Patrol, which gave me the idea for a name that I think will grow upon you as you sleep over it.”
“Not on Hippy. Only snores follow in the wake of Morpheus when he’s headed in my direction,” retorted the lieutenant.
“Elfreda, what is your suggestion?” asked Grace.
“My suggestion is that we be known as Grace Harlowe’s Overland Riders!”
“No, no!” protested Grace. “Give some one else a chance. Why not as well call us Lieutenant Wingate’s Overland Chasers?”
“Grace Harlowe’s Overland Riders! That’s the name. Yip, yip, yeow!” shrilled Emma Dean.
“Look out, she’s going to do the fainting act again,” warned Hippy sharply, whereat Emma subsided.
“We are all agreed on the question of the name suggested by Elfreda,” announced Anne. “It is a fine name, and cannot be improved upon.”
“Neither can the Overland Riders,” interjected Emma.
“Of course, if you girls wish it that way, I have no objection, but it does seem to me that the name ‘Overland Riders’ should be sufficient without having to hook my name ahead. ‘Overland’ sounds like Overton and is a good word for us, a lucky word.”
“Grace Harlowe’s Overland Riders it is, now, always and forever,” announced Elfreda.
“So long as the unearthly, ghostly, weird sahuaro shall flourish and grow red flowers,” added Hippy Wingate amid the laughter of his companions.
“Overland Riders, boots and saddles!” called Grace, springing up.
The Riders followed her, each running to her pony, quickly coiling the lead rope about the pommel of her saddle and mounting.
“That was well done, girls. Only Lieutenant Wingate bungled,” called Captain Grace as she started away at a gallop.
“I missed my stirrup,” answered Hippy lamely, but no one heeded, if she heard.
“We make camp at Summit, do we not?” asked Elfreda, riding up beside Grace.
“That was the word that Mr. Fairweather left for us. He says we shall have a wonderful view there, and that an excellent camping site is to be had just off the trail. I hope we shall not be visited by the trouble-makers to-night.”
“So do I, but I actually believe you would be in the dumps, in a regular blue funk, were we to be allowed to move along peaceably without excitement or thrills,” averred Miss Briggs.
Grace smiled and clucked to her pony.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon, when, after a day of toiling up steep grades, along precipitous cliffs, scattered mesas and buttes, they rode out on a level stretch of trail with a view spread before them such as none of those joyous, happy girls ever before had gazed upon.
“The Summit!” shouted Grace. “Did you ever see anything so perfectly gorgeous?” Grace removed her sombrero and sat gazing in silent enjoyment of the scene.
Roosevelt Lake, an emerald gem set in the vari-colored mountains, lay twenty-seven miles below them. To their left, against the skies, loomed the famous Four Peaks Mountains, and, to the right and below them, the Sierra Ancha Range, all a mass of gorgeous colors in the light of the late afternoon sun.
Hippy could repress his bubbling spirits no longer. He cleared his throat loudly.
“Hippy is going to make another speech,” said Anne.
“If he does I’ll run,” wailed Emma.
“Ladies and gentlemen – that includes myself – you are gazing on the largest artificial body of water in the world – Roosevelt Lake – a body of water completely walled in by mountains, thirty miles long and four miles across at its widest part. Set in the – ”
“Please defer your oration until it is too dark to see,” begged Grace laughingly. “I prefer to enjoy the view now.”
“Hippy being wound up, you can’t stop him. I know, for I have tried many, many times,” whispered Nora.
“Set in the sapphire rocks of the great colorful mountains, held back by the dam, like Hoppi, the Nile God, at whose magic touch the mighty Egyptian River brings forth such abundance, our prosaic Uncle Sam is causing the desert – Whoa! Wha – ”
Lieutenant Wingate’s pony, left to its own devices while its master was lost in the glory of his own oratory, had nosed off the trail to browse, and stepped on a rounded rock. The pony, in trying to recover its balance, went down violently on its knees. Hippy went over the animal’s head, landing on his back in the dirt at the side of the trail.
Hippy uttered a grunt when he struck the ground.
“He’s killed! He’s killed!” cried Nora. “Serve him right if he is.”
“Oh, Nora, don’t say that,” begged Grace, restraining her laughter.
Hippy sat up slowly and picked up his sombrero.
“As I was saying when, for the moment checked by this trifling brute-interruption,” spoke Hippy, “our prosaic Uncle Sam is causing the desert to bloom as the rose. The dam is two hundred and eighty feet high. That is the distance through which the overflow falls into Salt River Canyon. Ladies and gentlemen – that includes myself – I have finished.” Hippy got up and began brushing the dirt from his clothes.
“The kind Fates be thanked,” murmured Elfreda Briggs.
“Hippy must have been studying a new guide book,” observed Anne mischievously.
“He has not painted the picture a stroke too gorgeously,” averred Grace. “This truly is a glimpse right into fairyland.”
Hippy Wingate’s chest swelled with pride.
CHAPTER XVII
GOING TO BED IN THE CLOUDS
THE Overland Riders did not turn from the scene until the “sapphire rocks,” described in Lieutenant Wingate’s colorful oratory, had turned a dull gray as the sun moved over behind the mountains to the west.
“Forward for a quick gallop to the camping site!” called Grace, who led the way alone. “Column of two’s!”
In this formation they presented a spirited appearance.
Ike Fairweather heard them pounding along the trail, and stepped out to watch the troop come on. They swept down on him in a cloud of dust, and in answer to an enthusiastic wave of his sombrero, Grace spun her own sombrero as high in the air as she could hurl it, drove her pony forward to meet it, and deftly caught it as it came spinning back.
“Whoo – oo – oope!” shouted Ike.
“Woo – oo – oo – oo!” howled Hippy, trying to imitate an Indian war whoop, but failing miserably.
Not to be outdone by Grace Harlowe, the lieutenant too spun his sombrero into the air, but instead of spinning it on its rim he spun it flat.
The sombrero floated gracefully off in the direction of Roosevelt Lake, sinking lower and lower into the shadows of the chasm hundreds of feet below them, until it finally disappeared altogether.
“My hat! My hat!” howled Hippy.
The Overland Riders were almost hysterical with laughter when they brought their ponies down to a quick stop, after Grace, in her merriment, had nearly ridden down Ike Fairweather. Ike had only saved himself from disaster by hastily throwing himself into the roadside ditch.
Nora Wingate was laughing so much that she forgot to scold her husband, and Hippy kept them laughing for as much longer as possible, so that Nora might not remember to give him the good-natured grilling that he knew he deserved.
It came, however, when Ike teased him about letting a woman outdo him in riding and hat tossing.
“You wouldn’t imagine that my husband ever was a bird of the air, flying above the clouds as gracefully as a wild duck on its way to a new home in the sunny south. Now would you, Mr. Fairweather?”
“Well, seein’ as you have put the question up to me pintedly, I don’t reckon as I would,” was Ike’s conclusion, after a brief stroking of his whiskers.
There followed another merry laugh at Hippy’s expense, then the outfit dismounted and led their ponies to the tethering ground that had been selected for the purpose.
“You folks’ll find it a little crowded, but the camp is high and fine,” volunteered Mr. Fairweather.
“Where is your wagon?” asked Lieutenant Wingate.
“’Bout a hundred yards further along the trail. Not room enough for it hereabouts, an’ I can’t drag it up the hill where the horses are. I reckon thet after this I’ll have the horses in pistol shot of me all the time.”
“Either that or we shall have to post a guard over the animals every night,” said Grace. “Please show us where to take our ponies,” she requested.
A “tote path,” a narrow path used principally by foot travelers, led up the mountain side, winding through cacti and scrub cottonwoods for more than a hundred yards, and up this narrow, crooked path the Overland Riders led their saddle ponies, finally emerging on a narrow mesa or tableland, bordered with scraggly cottonwoods that found their moisture in a nearby mountain stream.
The camp of the Overton girls had been pitched by this stream, fresh water close at hand being a vital thing to outdoor camps.
Hippy Wingate tied his pony to a tree, and, stepping to the edge of the mesa, waved a hand toward the black abyss beyond and below them.
“The yawning chasm!” he exclaimed, and sat down.
“That is the most fascinating speech you ever made, Lieutenant Wingate,” observed Miss Briggs.
“Eh? That so? Why?”
“Because there were only three words in it,” interjected Emma Dean.
Hippy sniffed, and, getting up, went over and untied his pony.
While the men were staking down the horses and fetching water for them from the stream, the girls were busily engaged in preparing supper. Ike not only had pitched the tents, but had placed the luggage of his charges in its proper place and set the camp in order in advance of the arrival of the party.
The campfire was still low, purposely kept so for cooking purposes, but a heap of wood nearby promised a cheerful blaze later on.
Pork and beans, bread without butter, canned soup and cake, that Hippy Wingate declared had been baked on a cactus plant, together with a large pot of coffee, formed the principal part of the evening’s bill of fare.
“Not a prize winner in variety, but great chow,” approved Hippy, which was high praise for Lieutenant Wingate.
Following the meal, Elfreda questioned the old stagecoach driver about the country where they were encamped.
“All Apache ground,” answered Ike with a comprehensive wave of the hand. “They’ve fit over every inch of it. You’ll see some of them folks to-morrow or next day. How long do you reckon on stayin’ at the Lodge?”
“What is there to keep us busy there?” asked Grace.
“The lake, the cliff dwellers’ homes, Apaches, an’ huntin’ in the Sierra Anchas, if you folks care for thet. There’s great fishin’ in the lake too.”
“It sounds interesting,” agreed Grace, “but of course you know we do not care to camp where there are people. What we are out for is to get away from people. What is there in the way of game in the Sierra Ancha Range?”
“Deer, bear an’ cougar is the big game. Plenty of smaller stuff.”
“I will talk with our party about the hunting, but I hardly think they will care for it. Is it possible to visit the cliff dwellings?” questioned Grace.
“Some of ’em. Others can’t be reached.”
Elfreda glanced quickly at Grace and frowned to herself.
“You mean that no one has been able to get to them, Mr. Fairweather?”
“Yes, Mrs. Gray.”
“Why not?”
“Sharp cliffs hundreds of feet up or down.”
“One can get above them, I suppose?” persisted Grace.
“Yes, by takin’ a trail ’round the mountain.”
“I’ll take a try at exploring them,” observed Hippy as if he really meant it.
“You will not if you keep on eating,” declared Nora.
“Are there other trails that lead to the top – I should say that lead to the mountain where these cliff dwellers lived?” questioned Grace.
“From other directions, yes.”
“So that one could get there without following the route we have taken thus far?”
“Oh, yes.”
“What are you driving at, Grace?” demanded Anne.
“Information, Anne dear. Remember, one never can know too much about anything.”
“Yes he can,” differed Hippy. “One can know too much about overland riding. I know so much about it already that it pains me to think about how much I do know, and the journey isn’t half over. At this rate I shall acquire so much information that my brain surely will blow up one day.”
“Your what?” asked Emma innocently.
Even Ike Fairweather joined in the laugh, that followed. Nora nodded, and smiled her approval at Emma.
“I should prefer to blow up from an oversupply of brains than to faint because of short measure,” retorted Hippy heatedly.
“Brakes on!” ordered Grace, trying hard not to laugh. “That was real mean of you, Hippy Wingate. I think you should apologize to Emma.”
“All right, let’s go. I do apologize, Miss Dean. My seeming rudeness was not rudeness at all, it was merely an effort on my part to make conversation and to maintain my reputation for making myself agreeable. I’ll go further with my apology and assure you that I know that it wasn’t because you are sometimes brainless that you fainted, but because – ”
“Hippy Wingate!” rebuked Nora sharply. “I shall never, never speak to you again unless you tell Emma you are sorry.”
“Whether I mean it or not?”
“Please do as I ask you to.”
“Ike, have you another hat in the wagon that I can wear to town to-morrow?”
Mr. Fairweather said he had not.
“I am sorry, Miss Dean, and I hope you will forgive me for my rude – my seeming rudeness,” corrected Hippy.
Emma’s face broke out into smiles, indicating that the clouds had passed.
“You are forgiven, Hippy,” she nodded.
“Whether I mean it or not?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. I will think it over and let you know to-morrow whether or not I do mean it.” Hippy lifted his head and inhaled a long breath.
“Fog! We are rapidly being enveloped in it,” exclaimed Anne who had observed the lieutenant’s action.
“That is what you call it. I call it a cloud. I ought to know, for many is the time that I have smelled clouds,” declared Hippy.
“Yep, them’s clouds,” confirmed the old coach driver.
The Overland Riders uttered exclamations of amazement, for being above the clouds was a new experience to all except Grace Harlowe, who had once made a thrilling flight with Lieutenant Wingate on the French front. Emma Dean, however, declared that she could see nothing about fog to rave over, and it was difficult to convince her that they really were enveloped in clouds such as she had seen drifting above the mountain tops all that afternoon.
Grace proposed that they turn in early that night in order to be up with the sun and get the benefit of the early morning view, which Ike Fairweather said was well worth seeing.
“Going to bed in the clouds! How romantic,” murmured Anne.
“Yes, but why get sentimental over it?” grinned Hippy.
“Wouldn’t it be awful were we to fall out of bed?” suggested Emma.
Ike Fairweather and Lieutenant Wingate took more than ordinary pains in staking down the horses for the night, even though the animals were tethered so close to the camp that their every move might be heard by the campers. Ike distinctly objected to making a second trip to Globe for a bunch of runaway ponies.
While the men were engaged with the ponies, the Overton girls were chatting in Grace Harlowe’s tent, and Elfreda Briggs was dressing the wound on Grace’s head.
“It is really wonderful how rapidly a wound heals with you,” marvelled Miss Briggs.
“I am well and strong, so why should it not be so?” replied Grace. “I hope you take the bandage from my wound soon, because I wish to look nice when we reach the hotel at Roosevelt Lake.”
“All is secure, sir,” announced Hippy from without.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” acknowledged Grace. “You will find food in the tin box in the store-tent, provided you get hungry in the night.”
“Pleasant dreams, and do not fall out of bed,” piped Emma.
“If I do, you will hear me,” retorted Hippy.
“Yes, we surely shall feel the mountain shake when you land,” chuckled Anne.
“Good-night, all,” called Hippy, and strode off laughing to himself, a chorus of good-nights following him. For an hour or more intermittent chattering was heard in the girls’ tents. Through the open tent flaps they could see the cloud fog swirling about, and the damp, musty odor of the sky-mist was strong in their nostrils.
“The glory of the mountains! How I should love to spend all summer right on this wonderful spot,” murmured Grace, and, turning over, went quickly to sleep.
Shortly after midnight Grace awakened, and lay gazing out at the drifting gray fog.
“What was that?” Grace sat up suddenly, listening for a repetition of the sound that had disturbed her.
What Grace had heard sounded to her like the rattle of a wagon, followed by a loud squeak, but the sound was not repeated.
The Overton girl sprang up, dressed hurriedly and buckled on her revolver holster. She then ran over to Lieutenant Wingate’s tent and softly called his name. There was no reply from within, nor could Grace hear breathing there.
Thrusting a flash lamp through the tent opening, she swept the interior with a brief ray of light. The tent was unoccupied, and the blankets lay on the ground in a confused heap, indicating to her that Lieutenant Wingate had taken a hurried departure.
“Something surely is going on, and Hippy has gone to investigate,” muttered Grace. “That young man surely is improving.”
Without an instant’s hesitation, Grace ran out and down the tote path, proceeding cautiously as she neared the trail, her step giving off no sound that could be heard a few yards away.
