Kitabı oku: «Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the High Sierras», sayfa 10

CHAPTER XXI
THE FACE IN THE WATERS

“A woman!” breathed Miss Briggs.

“You must be mistaken,” differed Nora.

“What did she look like?” questioned Grace.

“Me savvy no good,” answered Woo with an emphasis that drew a laugh from the Overland Riders.

“How strange,” murmured Emma. “What could a woman be doing in this awful country?”

“Perhaps she lives here,” suggested Elfreda. “I should not be surprised at anything in the High Sierras.”

“Show me where she was when you saw her,” requested Tom Gray.

Woo led him to a huge boulder, about a hundred yards from the camp.

“Me savvy piecee woman peek ovel locks,” said the guide.

“A woman peeked over the rocks there. Is that it?” asked Elfreda, the entire party having followed Woo out to the scene of his discovery.

“Les.”

“What did she do then?” persisted Tom.

“Him go ’way plenty quick.”

Grace and Hippy hurried forward and began examining the ground, but found no trace, no footprints, nothing that would indicate that a person had been there.

“Woo, it is my opinion that you went to sleep and had nightmare,” declared Hippy laughingly. “No one has been here. See! She would have left footprints at least.”

“Piecee woman go ’way,” insisted Woo.

“Don’t wolly till to-mollow,” imitated Stacy Brown. “Woo, got anything loose about the house? I’ve been living on pink snow for so long that I feel like a snowbird in distress. Food is what my system demands.”

“A bird, did you say?” questioned Emma. “I agree with you that you are something of a bird, but not of the snowbird species.”

Grace was the only one of the party who believed that their guide really had seen a human being spying on the camp. The others, after some discussion, dismissed the matter from mind, and devoted their attention to the supper which Woo had prepared and served. A much more comfortable night was spent in this lower altitude, and, with the rising of the sun, the Overlanders prepared to resume their journey.

The party was still at a considerable elevation above the lake, which had sunk out of sight as if it had never existed, due to the fact that huge granite shelves intervened between them and the mysterious water. They judged that the lake must lie at an elevation of close to eight thousand feet above sea level.

“I smell something,” exclaimed Hippy as they were dismounting for luncheon and a rest that day.

“So do I,” agreed Stacy Brown. “Someone is baking bread and using salt yeast. Lead me to it, quick!”

“What you smell is a dead campfire,” Tom Gray informed the fat boy. “Unless I am greatly mistaken, the fire has not been out long, either. Come on, folks, help me to find it. It may give us some information that we need.”

By proceeding against the gentle breeze that was blowing they were enabled, after considerable searching about, to locate the dead campfire.

“Here it is!” cried Tom, scraping aside a cover of leaves and grass that had been spread over the ashes to hide the tell-tale evidence. “See! The embers have been kicked aside and water poured over them. It is the water poured on the fire that produces the strong odor that we smell.”

“How long ago was that done, do you think?” asked Hippy.

“Several hours ago, I should say.”

Hippy made a circuit of the camp site that they had come upon, and returning, announced that he had made a further discovery – the spot at which horses had been turned loose.

“There appears to have been four of them, though I cannot be positive about that,” he said. “I merely saw the footprints of four animals as they started on their way northward.”

“But suppose they are looking for us?” exclaimed Miss Briggs. “If they are headed north they are headed towards the place where we were fired upon, are they not?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” laughed Hippy. “They have a nice, long, rough journey ahead of them. We seem to have missed each other very cleverly. However, they may be nothing more than an exploring party, and we have been so stirred up over what we have heard of the High Country that every little thing takes on an importance that doesn’t belong to it.”

“I wish I could make a long speech like that and get away with it,” observed Stacy admiringly.

“Young man, you say altogether too much as it is,” retorted Tom Gray. “I think that perhaps it might be well for us to take an inventory of our surroundings, as well as of what lies immediately ahead of us, before we start out,” he added.

Hippy volunteered to do a little scouting, and Grace said she would accompany him, as anything of that sort appealed to her, so they set out together, but soon separated and took different courses.

Grace first of all sought a high point from which she obtained a very good view of the surrounding country, but saw nothing of a disturbing nature. A deer stood outlined on a shelf of rock a few hundred feet above and to the south of her; a bear ambled across an open space, zigzagging his way down. Bears do not like to go straight down a hill or mountain-side. The fact that their front legs are shorter than the hind legs makes going straight down a steep incline difficult, so, unless pursued, they ordinarily follow the switchback principle, zigzagging along until they reach the bottom.

The Overland girl watched the ambling beast with interest until it finally disappeared. She had no doubt that it was descending to the valley in search of food, lured there, perhaps, by the scent of an abandoned camp. Except for these two animals, she was unable to discover any sign of life, nor was there a wisp of smoke within her vision that might indicate the presence of human beings.

While Grace was making a general observation of the landscape, Lieutenant Wingate was endeavoring to follow the trail of the unknown horsemen to determine, as definitely as possible, the direction that they had taken. Their trail, which he followed for nearly a mile, still continued towards the peak, and it was his belief that that was their destination, or at least some other near-by point where they might hope to meet up with the Overland party.

Hippy pondered over this, and found himself wondering what the motive of the horsemen might be. Still pondering, he began retracing his steps to meet Grace at a point decided upon before they started away on separate trails.

Lieutenant Wingate was cautiously making his way through a thick growth of bushes, watching his step and listening for the familiar whirring warning of a rattler, when a sudden interruption occurred, an interruption that caused Hippy to throw himself on the ground, and lie still.

The interruption was a bullet, a bullet that clipped his hat, nipping a piece out of the brim, and giving the Overlander a scare. At first he thought the shot might have been fired by one of his own party, and was about to call out a warning, but changed his mind and began wriggling away from the scene. He had, by this time, forgotten all about the snake peril, his one burning desire being to get as far away from that locality as possible in the shortest possible time.

Hippy found it slow going, because he twisted and turned so much, following as crooked a trail as he could lay out for himself, for the purpose of confusing the author of that shot, should the fellow decide to follow him.

Suddenly Hippy thought of Grace. She, too, might be in peril. His first inclination was to get up and run to their rendezvous, but upon second thought he came to the conclusion that it would be wiser to make an effort to discover the one who had shot at him. With this in view, Lieutenant Wingate began making a detour with the intention of coming up behind the shooter, Hippy having a good general idea of the position occupied by the man at the time the shot was fired.

All his efforts came to naught. He had spent nearly an hour in stalking his man before he realized that he was wasting time.

While he was engaged in his quest Grace had sat listening. She had heard the shot, and reasoned that it had been fired from somewhere in Hippy’s direction. There being no answering shot, however, she forced herself to believe that her companion had shot at a snake, and decided to proceed on to the place where they were to meet before returning to camp.

Grace took a different route to reach the spot, and this route took her near a swiftly moving stream of water that flowed down into the lake. The stream was wide where she came upon it, and to find a suitable fording place the Overland girl continued on further up-stream. Her way led her under an overhang of granite rocks several feet higher than her head. Beneath her was a pool, deeper than the stream below, and in the pool she saw fish darting. The pool seemed to be fairly alive with them.

Grace’s mind instantly turned to what the foreman of the “Lazy J” ranch had said about the golden trout in the High Sierras.

“Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had discovered a pool of those live nuggets!” she cried, throwing herself down and gazing into the pool, on which the sunlight shone, mirroring her own face and the rocks behind her on its surface.

“They aren’t golden trout at all; they are mountain trout, and oh, what beauties! I must tell Hippy and have him get a mess for us. I reckon that golden trout story is a myth. However, golden or speckled beauties, it is all the same to the Overlanders. A mess of fish is what they need. I – ”

The Overland girl paused suddenly. The smile on the face she saw in the water faded and a catch interrupted her breath.

“Wha – at is it?” she gasped.

In the water, beside her own, another face was reflected. It was the face of a woman. At first, Grace believed that some trick of nature was showing her a double of her own face, distorted and unrecognizable, but she instantly realized that this could not be possible. The face that she was looking down into on the surface of the pool was as hideous a countenance as she had ever gazed upon, scarred, distorted and crowned by a head of matted hair that bristled at its top and hung in tangled skeins over the ears. The face was all that she could see.

For an instant the eyes of the girl and the woman above her seemed to meet on the face of the waters.

Grace whirled and sprang up, revolver in hand, for there was menace in the eyes that she had been looking into.

Quick as the Overland girl was, Grace Harlowe found herself gazing up at a barren shelf of rock, unoccupied, silent as a tomb, with not a sign of life to be seen, either there or anywhere about her.

It was inexplicable. A feeling of something akin to terror took possession of Grace Harlowe, then all at once, panic seized her, and, uttering a little cry, she fled on fleet foot back down the stream, unheeding where it might lead her, hoping and thinking only of getting away from that which had given her such a fright.

CHAPTER XXII
THE MYSTERY OF AERIAL LAKE

Grace ran on until suddenly halted by a shout from Hippy Wingate.

“Whither away, my pretty maid?” cried Hippy.

“Oh! You gave me a start,” answered Grace breathlessly. “I’ve had such a fright, Hippy. I have seen the most awful face that I ever looked upon.”

“In the words of the guide, ‘don’t wolly till to-mollow.’ What did it look like? Tell me about it.”

Grace told him what had occurred and described as best she could the face that she had seen mirrored in the pool.

“That sounds like the woman Woo saw watching the camp,” he nodded. “I think we ought to go back to camp and tell the folks what you have discovered.”

“You mean it sounds like Woo’s description of her,” answered Grace laughingly.

“You know what I mean. Come on!”

The Overlanders listened breathlessly to Grace Harlowe’s story of her experience, but no one had an explanation to offer. They asked her if she had gone up to the rock to see if anyone were hiding there, but Grace said she had not done so because she was too frightened.

“I’ve never lost my head before, but I surely did this time,” she added, smiling in an embarrassed sort of way. “I found a pool full of mountain trout – no, not golden trout – and I would suggest that one of you men go out and see if you can’t catch a mess. Trout would be relished by all, including even myself, scared as I am.”

“Trout! Me for them,” cried Hippy. “You come along, Tom, and perhaps, between us, we may be able to find the beautiful creature that gave Grace the first real scare of her life. I’m glad you have found something that frightens you,” chuckled Hippy. “Me for the fish now.”

Tom accompanied Lieutenant Wingate, leaving Stacy with the girls, and with instructions to stay in camp. The two men returned two hours later with a mess of trout sufficient to last the party several days. Stacy was asked to assist in cleaning them, then the fish were broiled, and a delicious trout meal was enjoyed. Not since they started had they sat down to such dainty food.

The Overland Riders were on the trail early next morning. This trail eventually led them up the side of a mountain, over places where they were obliged to hitch ropes to the ponies to assist them over particularly troublesome spots, yet it was all great fun.

As the party went on, game become more plentiful. Quail scuttled away at their approach, with heads ducked low, and here and there a flash of brown and white told of a frightened deer fleeing to safety. No one ventured a shot. The party had sufficient provisions for present needs, and further, it was understood that, unless absolutely necessary, there was to be no shooting. Tom, however, killed a rattler that lay coiled on a shelf of granite buzzing away like an alarm clock, but that was the only exciting incident of the morning’s ride. By noon they had worked their way up to an apparently impassable ridge. Tom went on ahead, soon returning with the welcome information that there appeared to be a break in the ridge about a mile to the south of them, and that he thought they could get through it.

The Overlanders made camp late that afternoon, and on the following morning, now thoroughly rested, they followed rough and rugged trails, surmounting difficulties almost as great as the worst they had met above timber line. Their reward came later in the morning when they discovered that they had unerringly followed the right course.

“There’s the lake!” shouted Nora.

Before them, framed in a rim of black forest and rock, lay a lake of the deepest emerald green they had ever gazed upon. About the shore, and extending down to the water, white pebbles formed a mat for the picture.

“It is our Aerial Lake,” declared Grace. “It is the same lake that we saw several days ago and that we bombarded with rocks.” From somewhere in that vicinity the shots that had disturbed them undoubtedly had been fired. It was quite a large body of water, just how large they could not see, on account of a sharp bend in the lake, and intervening mountains.

“Aren’t we going down to make camp now?” asked Elfreda Briggs.

“Yes, for I’m just dying to know what the secret, the great dark secret, of Aerial Lake really is,” bubbled Emma.

“From all accounts it’s a homely woman,” laughed Nora.

“Oh, there are others,” reminded Stacy.

“That was not a nice thing to say, Stacy,” rebuked Grace, laughing in spite of her efforts to be stern. “It was decidedly ungracious.”

“So are the kind I mean,” retorted Stacy. “Hark!”

A rifle shot echoed through the canyons, but, though ears were strained to catch the sound, no second shot was heard.

“I wonder at whom they are shooting this time?” muttered Tom. “We are again reminded that we are not the only persons in the High Sierras, so let us be cautious.”

“Watch your step, ladies and gentlemen,” warned Stacy as the party started on.

The Overlanders chose a camp site back among the trees a few rods from the shore of the lake. This site was not only well screened from observation, but afforded an excellent view of the lake as far as the bend. Camp was quickly made, after which Stacy and Hippy shouldered their rifles and started out to get acquainted with their surroundings, as the party intended to remain at the lake for several days. The two had gone but a short distance from camp ere the Overlanders heard Chunky utter a shout.

“I’ve found an ark,” he cried, pointing triumphantly to a dugout canoe that lay on the shore.

The dugout had been hewn from a solid log and bore indications of recent use. Stacy searched for a paddle but could not find one. While the Overlanders, who had hurried out to him, were discussing Stacy’s find, Hippy was nosing about on the beach, closely observing the ground. He found boot tracks there, but they did not appear to have been recently made, so he decided that some days had elapsed since anyone had been on that particular spot.

Stacy promptly forgot that he was out reconnoitering, and, cutting down a small tree with his hatchet, he proceeded to fashion a crude paddle from it. He then announced that he was going paddling. Tom said no, but Stacy said yes, whereupon Hippy read his nephew a sharp lecture on “respect to one’s elders.”

To all this, Stacy made no reply, as he considered that he would gain nothing were he to protest too strenuously.

“That’s all,” finished Hippy.

“Thanks, Uncle Hip. But if anything should happen to me, you’ll be sorry that you were so cruel.”

“Oh, take your old dugout and go on,” exclaimed Hippy. “If you drown, don’t blame me. If it were not that you are a good swimmer I shouldn’t trust you in that cranky craft.”

“That is very kind of your Uncle Hippy,” reminded Grace. “I hope you appreciate it.”

Stacy failed to answer. Still tinkering with the paddle, he watched his companions out of the corner of one eye, as they walked slowly back towards their camp. Lieutenant Wingate, rifle in the crook of one arm, continued on. An hour and a half later, as Hippy was returning, he saw his nephew paddling slowly down the lake. Hippy waved his hat and “hoo-hooed,” to which Stacy paid no attention whatever.

“Better keep in close. The wind is coming up,” called Lieutenant Wingate.

Stacy Brown was still silent, and Hippy, chuckling to himself, went on to camp, where he told his companions of things he had discovered on his jaunt, none of which were of importance, except that he had found further evidence of the presence of human beings and horses.

At luncheon time, Stacy was still absent, but his absence excited no comment, because the boy was very fond of the water and probably in his enjoyment of it he had forgotten all about the passage of time. But when it came four o’clock in the afternoon and still no Stacy, someone suggested that they go out and look for him. Hippy was the one who went. He soon came running back, waving his hat to attract the attention of his companions.

“Something has happened to Stacy!” he shouted.

“What is it – what has become of him?” called Tom Gray.

“Stacy’s dugout is floating bottomside up on the lake, but he is nowhere in sight,” answered Lieutenant Wingate.

The Overlanders started at a run for the lake.

“There it is! I see it,” cried Emma.

“Oh, Hippy, can’t you do something?” begged Nora. “What is that floating out there?”

“It’s a log,” answered Hippy. Despite the fact that the whitecaps were rolling up the lake, this log remained in one position all the time, but no one of the Overland party observed that fact.

“I can swim out to the canoe. Who knows but that Stacy may be under it?” offered Grace.

“No, no,” protested the Overlanders in one voice.

“Grace, the water is icy cold. To swim out in that water would be the death of you. If anyone does it, either Hippy or myself will,” announced Tom. “Is that a hat I see floating there?”

“It’s Stacy’s hat,” cried Elfreda. “Oh, this is too bad. Cannot something be done?”

“There he goes! He will be drowned. Somebody stop him!” begged Emma as Lieutenant Wingate plunged into the lake and began beating his way towards the overturned canoe. Hippy had not even paused to remove any part of his clothing.

“Come back!” shouted Grace shrilly.

“Come back!” urged Tom. “Even if he is there you can’t help him now.”

“Don’t worry. I am all right,” came back Lieutenant Wingate’s voice, sounding far away.

“Me savvy plenty cold watel,” piped Woo Smith, but no one gave heed to his words, and it is doubtful if any of the Overlanders even heard him.

“I don’t believe Stacy is drowned at all,” declared Emma. “You will laugh at me, but I have a thought message that he isn’t.”

“This is no time for nonsense, my dear,” rebuked Elfreda.

“It isn’t nonsense, it’s transmigration,” protested Emma.

About this time they observed that Hippy was close to the dugout, and all eyes were fixed anxiously on him. They saw him grasp the turned-over boat, then dive under it. Hippy was out of sight but a few moments when his head was seen bobbing up on the opposite side of the dugout.

The Overlanders shouted to him, but the wind was against them and Hippy did not even know that they were calling.

“Someone run to camp and fetch a bath towel,” urged Grace. “Never mind, I’ll go,” she added, starting away at a run for the camp. Grace was back ere Lieutenant Wingate reached the shore. Tom was there to meet him, and assisted Hippy, dripping, and blue of face and lips, to his feet.

“Here, Tom. Take the towel and give Hippy a brisk rub-down.”

“How – where?” gasped Tom.

“Anywhere. Go out in the bushes, do it anywhere, but for goodness sake don’t delay. What did you find?”

“Nothing – not a single thing to indicate anything,” answered Lieutenant Wingate dully.

“Please hurry! Don’t you see that Hippy has a chill, Tom?”

Tom Gray hustled his companion out of sight, then stripped him and gave him a brisk rubdown, so brisk in fact that Hippy finally begged him to stop.

“I shan’t have any skin left if you go one rub further,” he complained.

“Here is Hippy’s other suit,” called Nora. “How is he?”

“Skinned alive,” answered Hippy with a groan.

Tom ran out and snatched up the suit, which he immediately assisted Hippy to put on.

“Are you still chilly?” questioned Captain Gray after his companion had gotten fully into dry clothes.

“I should say not, after what you have done to me. I don’t care anything about my own condition. What I am half crazy about is Stacy. I don’t, for the life of me, understand how a fellow who can swim as well as he, could drown. Tom, help me out. What do you think I had better do?”

“Do? I think you have done enough – all that can be done. My advice is that we get back to camp. The girls have a good fire going, and my suggestion is that you sit by the fire and dry out your shoes while we decide what we should do next.”

“I don’t suppose there is need for hurry. If he is drowned he’s drowned, and that’s all there is about it, and if he isn’t, he isn’t. Yes, we will go back.”

When Tom and Hippy emerged from Nature’s dressing room, Tom carrying his chum’s wet clothing, they found the Overland girls awaiting them a short distance away. Nora embraced Hippy and wept on his shoulder, and, as a matter of fact, the other three girls of the party had difficulty in keeping their own tears back.

“Oh, this is terrible!” moaned Nora.

Emma pulled herself together.

“I have a mental message that Stacy is all right, and that he will be back to-night,” comforted Miss Dean.

“False hopes, I am afraid,” answered Tom.

“Woo, how deep is that lake?”

Woo consulted the skies.

“No savvy. Mebby fish can tell.”

No more was said. It was a sober Overland party that slowly retraced its steps to the camp, but, as they stepped in among the trees and came in sight of the little camp, the Overlanders halted abruptly and gazed astounded.

On a blanket that he had spread out sat Stacy Brown, his clothing wrinkled and dirty. Before him stood two cans of beans, open, and a plate of trout, while both cheeks protruded unnaturally as Stacy gazed soulfully at his companions.