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CHAPTER XIII
THE CAMP AT THE “LAZY J”

Stacy sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“What did you wake me up for?” he demanded. “Hulloa, Tom!”

“I awakened you by transmigration of thought,” answered Emma. “Oh, girls, girls, wake up! Tom is here,” she cried.

The camp was instantly aroused. Tom was discovered sitting calmly by a little fire that he had built, waiting for the sleepers to awaken. Tom had done exactly what Grace said he would. When he lost his bearings in the darkness, he lay down to wait for daylight. When daylight came he found no difficulty in picking up his trail and returning to camp.

“Did you find water?” demanded Hippy.

“Not a drop. For that reason, we must take a quick breakfast and hurry on. I think we shall find water beyond the next low range, and it is necessary that we do so before the sun gets high and hot. We can stand it for some time longer, but the horses cannot.”

The start was made soon after that, Tom and Hippy packing their belongings while Woo and the girls were getting breakfast. The trail they followed took them up a gradual slope for several miles and then pitched giddily into a deep canyon, a canyon that covered all of fifty acres, from which the hills rose in great swells into the far distance. The climb down the side of the mountain was tiresome and difficult, but they forgot their discomfort when finally they came upon a stream of cold, sparkling water that came down from the snow-capped tips of the High Sierras.

“Oh, look!” cried Emma. “Cows! Now we can have some milk.”

“Cows!” groaned Stacy. “Those aren’t cows, they are cattle.”

There were loud exclamations of wonder when the Overlanders saw a lot of cattle, in charge of several herders, grazing less than a mile away. After permitting the horses to drink all that was good for them, and after the Overlanders themselves had drunk and filled their water bottles, they galloped on towards the herd. From the herders they learned that the cattle belonged to the “Lazy J” ranch. The animals were on their summer grazing grounds, having come up into the hills for the summer months.

The herders informed the Overlanders that the ranch-house was about five miles due east of there, and that the boss would be glad to see them.

“My horse has a loose shoe. Is there a blacksmith outfit over there?” asked Hippy.

“Sure,” answered a herder. “You’ll have to do your own smithing, though.”

“I reckon I can do that all right,” answered Lieutenant Wingate. “We can make camp there and have a rest before we undertake the next hard climb.”

After waving good-byes to the herders, the Overland Riders resumed their journey, arriving at the “Lazy J” ranch about mid-afternoon. They were warmly welcomed by Mr. Giddings, the foreman, who showed his amazement that a party of young women should have made the rough ride into the mountains.

“Help yourselves to anything in sight. It’s all yours,” he offered. “Glad to have you take pot luck with me in my shack. There isn’t much, but what there is you are welcome to.”

“No. You sit down with us and have a snack,” urged Grace.

Mr. Giddings did so, and after a late luncheon he conducted Hippy to the blacksmith shop, where Lieutenant Wingate removed the loose shoe from his pony and straightening it on the anvil proceeded to nail it back in place, observed interestedly by the Overlanders and several cowboys who were resting up at the ranch-house. Even the cowboys’ cook came out, frying-pan in hand, to see how the tenderfoot would go about it to shoe a horse.

The cowboys looked on with solemn visages, expressive of neither approval nor disapproval. Their interest quickened, however, when Stacy Brown announced that he was going to remove a loose shoe from the off hind foot of the white mare, Kitty, and set it properly in place.

Kitty was led in, and Chunky made his preparations with sundry flourishes to show the spectators that he knew what he was about. Kitty was not unobservant, and every move of the Overland boy was narrowly watched by her.

“I should advise you to watch her ears,” urged Grace.

“It isn’t her ears, it’s those hind feet that I am interested in,” replied Stacy. “Ears can’t hurt a fellow – feet can,” he said. “Whoa, you brute!” added Stacy, running a hand down one of the pony’s hind legs, then lifting the foot from the ground.

What followed was almost too swift for the human eye. Barely had the foot been lifted than Kitty kicked the boy clear out of the shop. In his flight, Chunky was catapulted against the cook, and both went down in a heap.

The faces of the cow-punchers relaxed. They howled, fired their revolvers into the air and went fairly wild with joy, while Grace and Elfreda disentangled Stacy and the cowboys’ cook and stood them on their feet.

“Are you hurt?” begged Grace solicitously.

“Of course I am. I’m killed, but the white mare is going to get worse than I did,” threatened the fat boy.

“Cool off. Don’t punish her now,” advised Elfreda.

“I don’t want to cool off. I want to shoe that beast.” Stacy strode belligerently to the now meek little animal. “I ought to break your miserable neck, but I haven’t time to do it to-day. Besides, the weather is too warm. If I did, this outfit would make me dig a hole and bury you. I always get the worst of it when trying to do a good turn for others. Now you stand still or I’ll surely forget myself.”

This time Kitty made no objection to having her loose shoe removed, but once off Stacy did not know how to put it on again, and Tom Gray had to finish the job to the great enjoyment of the cowboys. The job finally finished, Stacy and Hippy perspiring from their efforts, the Overlanders went out to watch the range men come in, uttering wild whoops as they discovered that there were women in camp.

Throwing themselves from their saddles, the range men soused their heads in the creek that flowed near the ranch-house, and were ready for the evening meal. After supper, all hands lounged out to the green in front of the bunkhouse, smoked their pipes and told thrilling stories of adventure in the Sierras – told them for the benefit of the tenderfeet who were their guests.

The Overland girls chatted with the rough but big-hearted cow punchers, who, that night, declared that they never had come up with such a likely bunch of young women.

When Mr. Giddings learned from Tom Gray that the party was bound for the High Sierras, he shook his head dubiously.

“No place for white folk, especially women,” he warned.

“Why not?” questioned Tom.

“Trouble! It’s the Devil’s country up there.”

“We are used to roughing it under all sorts of conditions,” replied Tom. “We learned how to do that during the Great War. All these young women were in the service, at or near the front in France; Mr. Wingate was an aviator, and I was a Captain of Engineers, so you see we aren’t afraid of trouble.”

“That’s all right. I take off my hat to you, especially to the young ladies. This country is another breed of cats, however, and they tell strange stories about men going up there and never being found afterwards, or, as is sometimes the case, found dead in the Crazy Lake section. Aerial Lake, they call it.”

“Where is this mysterious lake?” asked Miss Briggs.

“I don’t rightly know. I don’t know anything about it. I reckon I don’t want to know. Neither would you if you had been up here long and had heard as much about it as I have. Did you ever hear of the Jones gang?”

“I reckon we have. We had a little mix-up with them. At least, we understand that was the outfit,” Hippy informed them.

“Yes, and we drove them off and gave them a good walloping,” added Stacy.

“Let’s hear the yarn,” called a cowboy.

Hippy related the story of the hold-up and of the skirmish that followed, resulting in the driving off of the train robbers. The cowboys listened attentively, their expressions showing an increasing respect for the “tenderfeet” who had dropped in on them for a friendly call.

“Why should this band of outlaws have reason to interfere with us?” asked Tom.

“Why do they bother other folks?” answered Mr. Giddings. “For what they can get out of it, of course,” he said, answering his own question.

“They will not get much if they hold us up,” Grace Harlowe informed their hosts.

“No. I reckon that would not likely put you in peril, for the reason that they are after bigger game, like that treasure on the Red Limited. There’s another thing, though, that might make it equally bad for you people.”

“What is that, Mr. Giddings?” asked Elfreda.

“The railroad has had Pinkerton detectives after that gang for a long time, on account of an express robbery, which makes the gang rather touchy about strangers being in the mountains.”

“Where does this Jones crowd make its headquarters?” questioned Hippy.

“That’s just the point. Nobody seems to know, but they are supposed to hang out to the eastward of this place. We have never seen any of them since I have been on this range, which is going on five years.”

“Then we do not have to bother our heads about them at all,” announced Tom. “We are not going in that direction.”

“You’re going to the peak, aren’t you?” asked Giddings.

“Yes,” replied Grace.

“Hm-m-m-m-m! I’ll bet I know what you folks are after. You’re after golden trout. You’re not the first parties to come up here looking for those shiny fellows.”

“Eh? What’s that?” questioned Hippy, instantly on the alert.

“Where are they? I’m the boy that is looking for gold,” spoke up Stacy.

“Maybe there ain’t any such thing,” laughed Giddings. “But they do tell a story about a prospector coming across a stream up Farewell Gap way, where the golden trout were as thick as pollywogs in a mud puddle.”

Tom said he had never heard of them. Giddings replied that he reckoned no one else ever had in reality.

“They do say,” resumed the foreman, “that when the fisherman discovered those fellows basking in the sun at the bottom of the stream, he sure thought he had struck it rich. He believed that he had found sure-enough gold nuggets, but when he went to gather them, the nuggets just up and dusted.”

“That’s the way nuggets usually do,” answered Stacy wisely.

“I hope we find them,” said Hippy. “I have a rod and a book of flies with me.”

“It’s enough to give a fellow heart disease, anyway,” continued Giddings. “So, between the Joneses, the lake and the movable nuggets, you folks have plenty of entertainment ahead of you.”

“There is generally excitement and some trouble where we hang up our hats,” laughed Nora Wingate, “but we manage somehow to get along all right.”

“I wish you luck, pardner,” nodded Mr. Giddings. “I’ll have a bunk-house cleaned out for you folks to-night, so you can sleep indoors,” he offered.

Thanking him, but declaring that they preferred to sleep in the open, just as they had been doing for several seasons, the Overlanders made camp out of doors just beyond the corral. The night was hot and the flies very thick. The night’s rest was not at all satisfying for this reason, and for the added one that the cowpunchers’ ponies in the corral were restless. Hippy said it indicated that a storm was coming, but Stacy differed with him. He averred that the ponies were restless for the same reason that he was – because the flies bit them – and the Overlanders laughingly agreed that there might be something in the fat boy’s reasoning after all.

Next morning they were out with the earliest of the punchers. After breakfast, packs were made up and lashed with firm hitches thrown about them. Then bidding good-bye to their hosts and shaking hands all around, the Overland Riders set out for their long journey over the mountains – a journey that would occupy some weeks and be filled with exciting as well as enjoyable experiences.

CHAPTER XIV
WOO’S EYES ARE KEEN

The air was becoming chilly, the Overland Riders now being at an altitude of nearly eight thousand feet, and still upward bound.

A week had elapsed since they left the “Lazy J” ranch, and during all that time they had sighted no game except some grouse that they had shot at but failed to bring down. Provisions were at a low ebb and all knew that they were nearly face to face with a serious situation.

Hippy Wingate was pondering deeply when they pulled up for luncheon one noon. He was wondering what he was going to give his party for supper, for Hippy was the official game-hunter of the Overland party, and they had come to rely on his resourcefulness to provide food for them. Stacy Brown was even more deeply interested in this matter than was “Uncle Hip,” but for a somewhat different reason.

“What do we eat to-day?” he asked in a tone that he tried to make sound light-hearted.

Some one laughed.

“Oh, it’s not because I’m hungry,” hastily explained Chunky. “I just wanted to know so as not to have to open all the packs unless we are going to have a spread.”

“Ours is more likely to be a snack than a spread,” suggested Grace laughingly.

“What is it going to be, Hippy?” questioned Nora.

“Raisins and hard tack, my dear.”

“You don’t mean it?” gasped the fat boy.

“I reckon that will be about it if I don’t see some game to shoot at,” replied Hippy a little soberly.

“Raisins and hard tack for a man with an appetite like mine,” groaned Stacy. “You might as well feed a bricklayer on angel food and expect him to smack his lips and pat his stomach with heavenly satisfaction. This is too much, and too much is enough.”

“If you folks will camp here I will go out and see if I cannot scare up some game,” suggested Hippy.

“I do not believe you will find anything worth while at this altitude,” said Tom Gray. “It is a condition that I have feared we should meet. I – ”

“You no savvy game?” interjected the Chinaman.

“No, Smith,” replied Hippy. “We savvy plenty appetite, but we no savvy anything with which to satisfy it. If I could sight a deer – ”

“Me savvy deer. Me show buck in lelet,” cried Woo, gesticulating excitedly.

“What kind of heathen talk is that?” wondered Emma.

“‘Buck in lelet!’” mocked Stacy.

Hippy was eyeing the guide inquiringly, knowing very well that Woo had something in mind.

“Buck in lelet,” repeated the Chinaman, indicating the horns on a deer’s head, with his hands.

“I understand,” nodded Tom Gray. “What he is trying to say is, ‘buck in velvet.’”

“Ha, ha! The further they go the worse they are. First it was Emma Dean whose wheels went wrong; now it is my Uncle Hip and Captain Gray,” jeered Stacy. “Is it the altitude that has gone to your head?”

“No, it has not,” retorted Lieutenant Wingate. “Woo has more sense than all of us together. At this season of the year the bucks ‘carry their antlers in velvet.’”

“Oh, pooh! That is a fine fairy tale to feed hungry people with. Folks back east might swallow it, but not up here among the high and lofty peaks of the Sierras. Tell me something that I can swallow,” laughed Stacy.

“Stacy, if you will hold your horses I will try to explain,” rebuked Tom. “At this season of the year the antlers of the bucks are very tender, and that condition is called ‘carrying the antlers in velvet.’ In those circumstances the bucks frequent the high rocky peaks that their tender horns may not be torn off in contact with tough bushes and trees. Later on you will find the bucks on the lower ranges. Then, as the antlers become hard, almost as hard as iron, the bucks take to the dense thickets.”

Stacy Brown mopped his forehead.

“Emma, why don’t you transmigrate a little? Send a little thought wave out and see if you can’t get in touch with a nice fat buck all dressed up in velvet,” he suggested.

Emma Dean elevated her nose, but made no reply. She was at that moment more interested in the guide, who was running his yellow fingers about his wrists inside the wide sleeves, and chuckling to himself at a rapid-fire rate.

“Me savvy! Hi-lee, hi-lo; hi – ”

“What were you going to say?” urged Hippy.

“You savvy buck in lelet?”

Lieutenant Wingate shook his head.

“Me savvy buck.”

“You do? Where?”

The guide pointed his long, bony finger towards the rocks on the other side of a narrow pass in the mountains. The mountain there was covered with brownish grass and some spindling saplings. Lieutenant Wingate looked until his eyes ached, then turned to Smith.

“Woo, you must be mistaken,” he said.

The guide took the stick that he used to beat up the trail ahead on his march each day, laid it across a rock, and, after sighting it, beckoned to Lieutenant Wingate to look over it.

“You savvy?” he questioned eagerly.

“No, I don’t, Woo.”

“Mebby you savvy to-mollow,” replied the Chinaman disgustedly.

The Overland Riders snickered, and even Hippy grinned appreciatively.

“I reckon you are not far from right, Woo. I – ” Hippy paused abruptly. Out of that mass of brown something began to grow into his vision, to stand out until everything else appeared to have disappeared.

“You savvy nicee piecee buck?” chuckled the guide.

Hippy reached a cautious hand behind him.

“My rifle. Quick!” he whispered. “Woo is right. There lays a fine big fellow behind that bush over yonder. I don’t know whether he sees us or not. It is a dead sure shot, too. Don’t make a sound,” urged lieutenant Wingate as his rifle was cautiously laid in his outstretched hand.

Placing it across the rock where Woo had laid the stick for him to sight over, Hippy took careful aim a little below the base of the antlers of the buck. His automatic rifle belched forth a deafening roar that went rolling and echoing from peak to peak.

At the same instant, what appeared to be a dull brown and white ball leaped into the air and went bounding away in tremendous leaps. Hippy’s rifle went to his shoulder and he fired again, but the shot only served to hasten the speed of the fine large buck that Woo Smith had discovered. Hippy had missed a “sure shot” as well as a long shot.

“Uncle Hip never misses what he shoots at,” quoted Emma a little maliciously.

“Why don’t you use your pea-shooter?” scoffed Stacy. “Dead Shot Hip made a mess of it that time.”

“He did,” admitted Hippy, “and Stacy Brown missed a fine fat meal. Laugh at me all you like, folks. I deserve it, but I don’t understand how I could miss that shot.”

“Don’t wolly till to-mollow,” advised the guide wisely.

“May I look at your rifle?” asked Grace.

Lieutenant Wingate handed it to her and Grace gave it a critical inspection, then held it out to Hippy.

“Look it over carefully. I think you will discover why you missed,” she suggested.

Hippy intuitively glanced at the sights, and shot a quick look of inquiry at Chunky, but Chunky’s face was woodeny in its lack of expression. Without another word, Lieutenant Wingate set up a mark, placed his rifle on the rock, marking its exact position, and, taking careful aim, fired. The bullet shot under by more than a foot, whereas it should have shot over the mark, the rifle being originally sighted for a much longer distance. Several cartridges were expended in resighting the weapon and adjusting the open sight, which he found had been changed from its former position.

“There, now! Show me another deer. I don’t believe I shall miss the next one.”

“You savvy sight no good,” chuckled the Chinaman.

Lieutenant Wingate nodded.

“Stacy, come here. I would hold converse with thee,” he ordered.

Stacy complied, but with evident reluctance, and, obeying a gesture from Hippy, seated himself on a slab of granite beside his Uncle Hip.

“Why did you fool with the sights on my rifle?” demanded Lieutenant Wingate sharply.

“I – I – I – ”

“Don’t quibble. Whenever you put on a wooden face I know that you have been up to monkey-shines. Why did you do it?”

“I – I – I just wanted to get even with you, Uncle Hip,” stammered the fat boy.

“For what?”

“You – you pinked my pony with a peashooter and made me come a cropper in a rose bush. Don’t you deny it. You know you did,” added Chunky, adopting his most savage tone.

Hippy Wingate chuckled.

“That is it, eh?”

“Yes.”

“When did you change them – change the open sights?”

“I did it when you were after water last night.”

“Shake, pard!” cried Hippy, extending an impulsive hand. “We are quits now, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are dear friends. We’re more than that – we love each other most to death,” declared Stacy fervently.

“Oh, fiddlesticks!” exclaimed Emma Dean. “You make me weary.”

“But, Stacy, the next time you wish to get even with a fellow, please do not tamper with his weapons, especially in a country like this,” warned Lieutenant Wingate. “It is a dangerous thing to do. Suppose I had met up with a cinnamon bear at close range, for instance – what do you think would have happened?”

“I reckon there would have been a sprinting match between you and the cinnamon,” observed Stacy in a tone that brought a shout of laughter from the Overland girls.

“You are partly right,” agreed Hippy laughingly, “but don’t do anything like that again, will you?”

Stacy promised that he would not, but the probabilities are that he forgot the promise within five minutes after he had made it, for at that instant Woo Smith uttered a sudden exclamation that drew the instant attention of the Overland Riders.

“Me savvy buck! Me savvy buck in lelet,” chuckled the Chinaman excitedly.

Hippy was on his feet in an instant.

“Where, where?”

“You savvy him white lock?”

“Yes, I see the white rock. Sure enough; there he is!”

When the automatic roared a moment later, a brown ball was seen to leap into the air, but, instead of bounding away, it straightened out and took a long, curving leap, crashed into the dwarfed bushes, then whipped over on its back.

“I got him!” shouted Lieutenant Wingate triumphantly.

“Great shot!” cried Elfreda Briggs enthusiastically.

“Hi-lee, hi-lo; hi-lee, hi-lo!” sang the guide, hopping about delightedly, his queue wriggling in the air with serpent-like movements. This time no one appeared to be irritated by Woo’s singing, for Lieutenant Wingate’s shot meant food in plenty for the Overland Riders.