Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the High Sierras

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.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE LAIR OF THE BAD MEN

“Hulloa, folks!” greeted Stacy thickly.

“Stacy!” cried Nora, running to him and throwing impulsive arms about the neck of her nephew.

Lieutenant Wingate drew Nora away and stood gazing down sternly at the munching Chunky. No one said a word, except Woo Smith, who hummed his “Hi-lee, hi-lo!”

“Where have you been?” finally demanded Hippy sternly.

“I – I’ve been up there,” pointing to the side of the mountain, at the same time getting to his feet.

“Sit down! Now out with it. The whole story, sir!”

“I was mad with you. I – I – I thought it would be fun to fool you all. There wasn’t anybody in sight, so I tipped over and – ”

“Accidentally?” interrupted Hippy.

“No. On purpose. Then I shoved the canoe out and threw my hat into the water, climbed up the side of the mountain and watched you all hunting for me,” chuckled Stacy. “You all had been so hard on me that I didn’t care if I never came back.”

“I don’t understand how you could stand it to stay away at meal time,” wondered Emma.

“Oh, that was all right. I had some biscuit, then I found some dried venison in a cache in a cave up there. Somebody had been there. It was fine food, I tell you, but all the time I kept my eyes on the camp. I didn’t think you would go away and leave me, but I wasn’t taking chances. It was lots of fun watching you folks searching for Stacy Brown’s body, and I laughed when I saw Uncle Hip swimming out to look under the canoe. Say, you can swim some, can’t you?”

Hippy bristled. Stacy’s last words were the crowning ones. Lieutenant Wingate nodded to Tom.

“Come, Stacy. We wish you to go down by the lake with us. Fetch your paddle,” directed Hippy.

“Wha – at are you going to do?” stammered the boy.

“We three are going paddling, my beloved nephew,” answered Lieutenant Wingate.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” whispered Grace as the three were about to depart, Stacy going reluctantly, but not daring to offer further objections.

“Give me that paddle,” ordered Hippy when they had reached a point well out of sight of the camp. “Stacy Brown, you have done about the most unforgivable thing that a boy could do. You led us to believe that you had been drowned; you have caused us much mental anguish, and it is no more than right that we ‘transmigrate’ a little of it to you. Lie down on your stomach!”

“I don’t want to. Wha – at are you going to do?”

“I am going to paddle you, young man. Tom, how many do you think would be about right?”

“I should say that a paddle, one paddle, for each member of the Overland party would be about right,” suggested Tom Gray. “There are six of us.”

A moment more and Hippy Wingate was delivering the punishment, not too hard, but just enough so as to make his plump nephew writhe.

“Six! There!” announced Hippy.

“You forgot to give him one for Woo Smith,” suggested Tom.

“You’re right.” Hippy remedied the oversight at once. “Get up! You made me swim in the cold lake, so I think I will give you a dose of the same medicine. I’m going to throw you in the lake.”

“Oh, wow!” howled Chunky.

“No, no,” protested Tom Gray. “Don’t do that, Hippy. He might catch cold and be sick on our hands,” grinned Tom.

“I’ll be even with you for this, Uncle Hip,” threatened Stacy.

“He hasn’t had enough yet, Tom. Help me throw him in.”

“Yes, I have. I’ve had enough. I’ll never play such a trick on you again. It was a low-down trick to play. Next time I’ll do it in some other way, but if you let me alone I’ll let you alone.”

“Don’t make threats,” warned Lieutenant Wingate.

“I can tell you something you want to know, too. I know something that you don’t know,” answered Stacy.

“First you had better come back to camp and apologize to the girls,” suggested Tom.

Stacy went along, rather timidly at first; then, as the thought of what he had discovered occurred to him, he swelled out his chest and began to boast.

“Suppose you tell us what it is that you have discovered,” suggested Grace after Tom had repeated to the girls what Stacy said.

“Yes. I’ll tell you. When I was trying to get where you folks wouldn’t see me, I dodged behind some bushes and discovered that I was right in front of an opening in the rocks. At first I thought it was a bear den. Then I stumbled against a big bear trap that closed with a crash, but it didn’t frighten me at all. You see I am not a bear.”

Emma said there might be a difference of opinion on that subject.

“I lighted a match and found a lantern, just like the train conductors use. I looked about and found myself in a cave. I found a lot of stuff there, including some boxes of crackers and venison, that was cached to keep it away from the bears if they got past the trap.”

The Overlanders were keenly interested. Elfreda asked what else he had found in the cave.

“Mostly things to eat and to eat with. I didn’t bother about much of anything else. I reckon maybe it was the bad men’s cave that I discovered. When it comes to making discoveries I don’t suppose there is a human being who can equal myself. The only thing that I can’t lay claim to having discovered is Emma Dean.”

“That is because your ideals and your instincts lack elevation,” retorted Emma.

Tom and Hippy glanced at each other and nodded. Both were of the same mind with reference to Stacy’s discovery. Perhaps there lay the real secret of the Aerial Lake.

“Let us go over and investigate,” suggested Tom.

“I’m with you,” agreed Hippy. “Stacy, you will please lead the way to this bandit retreat, or whatever it may be, but if you fool us again, it’s the lake for yours.”

All hands started for the cave, with Stacy Brown in the lead, full of importance. It was quite a rough climb to the scene of Stacy’s discovery, and the boy took the worst course he could find to reach it, which the others of the party suspected ere they had gone far on their way.

“Look out for bear traps!” warned Chunky. “You know I haven’t looked about much on the inside. There! Look at that, will you?” he demanded, parting the bushes and revealing a small dark opening in the rocks.

“You aren’t going into that hole, are you?” cried Emma.

“I went in, didn’t I?” returned Stacy. “I didn’t have a crowd of women with me, though.”

Hippy entered first, using his pocket lamp to light the way, followed by Stacy and Tom, then the others filed in, leaving Woo Smith on the outside to see that they were not surprised by the former occupants of the place.

Once inside, the Overlanders found that the roof of the cave was high enough to permit them to stand erect, but beyond them the darkness was so deep that they could not see the end of the hole in the mountain.

“Br-r-r! I’m afraid,” cried Emma.

“That’s because you aren’t a man,” answered Stacy. “Hulloa! There’s some stuff that I didn’t see.”

“Pullman car blankets!” exclaimed Tom Gray. “This looks as if we had made a real discovery.”

“You mean I have,” corrected Stacy.

“Yes. It is plunder. No mistake about that,” agreed Lieutenant Wingate. “Stacy, did you look around farther back in the cave?”

“No. I didn’t have time.”

“I think you were afraid of the dark,” teased Elfreda.

“Stacy is afraid of nothing at all, you know, Elfreda,” reminded Grace laughingly, whereupon Stacy’s chest swelled perceptibly.

“I am not,” he made reply.

A systematic search of all parts of the cave failed to reveal anything of great value, but they decided that it might be wise to remove some of the blankets as proof of what they had found.

“I know something else, too,” spoke up Stacy Brown.

“Well?” demanded Hippy, eyeing Stacy suspiciously.

“The log is chained down.”

“What log?” questioned Grace quickly.

“That log out in the lake,” Stacy informed them. “It’s funny that you folks haven’t noticed that it has been in the same position ever since we got here. There’s something queer about that log, too. I observed it the first time I walked along the shore, but it didn’t make much of an impression on me at the moment, and – ”