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.