CHAPTER XVIII

THE HARDEST BLOW OF ALL

Reaching the trail, Grace crept toward the point where the equipment wagon had been parked.

She now understood the meaning of the sound that she had heard from her tent. The wagon was being turned, and again she heard what she recognized now as the squeal of a wagon’s king-bolt, accompanied by a low, guttural grunt.

“Look out!” The command was low, but incisive.

A jar and a crash followed, then something went thundering down the mountainside.

“Some one has run the wagon off the trail into the canyon!” gasped Grace Harlowe.

_Bang!_ A revolver shot caused Grace to duck. She had faintly seen the flash in the fog-cloud ahead of her, and the flash seemed to indicate that the weapon had been fired at her.

_Bang!_ _Bang!_ came two answering shots.

“Hippy fired the first shot! I must get in,” cried Grace, pressing close to the rocks on the upper side of the trail, and creeping forward.

The firing on both sides was increasing in rapidity, and it was apparent that a hot fight was in progress.

Four men suddenly ran past her, one being supported by a companion on either side, but she could barely discern the figures in the fog.

“Halt!” commanded Grace sternly, bringing her weapon up in readiness to enforce her command.

The answer to her challenge was a shot, which Grace answered with a bullet from her bandit revolver, but in the mist all objects were distorted and her aim was bad.

Another bullet, this time from the right, whistled over Grace Harlowe’s head, fired from Lieutenant Wingate’s weapon. Hippy had seen, and was firing at her.

“Overland!” shouted the girl.

“Grace!”

“Yes. Hurry! We can get them. Don’t shoot till you catch up with me. Hurry, hurry!”

“I winged one,” gloated Hippy. “Give it to ’em, Grace! They’ve dumped the wagon.”

“Don’t talk. Run, and keep your eyes open!” she admonished. “Take the outside of the trail. I’ll hug the bank.”

The two started on at a fast, but cautious sprint. Ahead, they could hear voices.

“We have you! Surrender!” shouted Lieutenant Wingate.

Grace grinned as she ducked. She had ducked in good time, too, for two bullets answered Hippy’s challenge. Both Hippy and Grace then opened up on their adversaries.

The revolver reports had awakened the entire camp. Ike Fairweather had tumbled out of bed and sprang to Lieutenant Wingate’s tent. Finding it unoccupied, he reasoned that Hippy was in trouble down on the trail. The girls, by this time, had run from their tents, calling out to know what was wrong.

“Don’t know. Stay here an’ look out for yerselves,” flung back Ike as he dashed down the slope toward the Apache Trail.

“Awaken Grace,” called Anne excitedly.

“I venture to say that Grace Harlowe is already very much awake and down there in the thick of it,” replied Miss Briggs calmly.

“She’s gone!” wailed Emma, who had run to Grace’s tent to give the alarm. “Oh, I am so afraid something will happen to her.”

“My Hippy has gone, too,” cried Nora Wingate. “They’ll be killed, both of them! I wish I never had come to this terrible place.”

“Did you stew like that when your husband was fighting Boches in France?” rebuked Elfreda.

“No, but he isn’t fighting Boches now.”

“There they go at it again!” cried Anne. “This is almost as exciting as France. All one needs to make her believe she is back on the battle front is the explosion of a Hun shell.”

Down on the Apache Trail the battle was being waged with honors a little in favor of the Overlanders. Hippy had hit at least one of the prowlers. That he knew, but, so far, he and Grace had escaped without a bullet coming close enough to endanger them. One man was still working his revolver somewhere ahead of Hippy and Grace.

“Let them have it before they get away,” she urged, whereupon Hippy began shooting into the fog with renewed vigor.

“There they go!” cried Grace. “I heard them sliding down the bank. Come on! We may yet catch them.”

Hippy turned his revolver in the direction that Grace was pointing, and blazed away.

“Overland!” shouted a voice behind them in the new rallying cry of the outfit.

“Here!” answered Hippy. “You are too late, Ike. The fun is all over.”

“What happened, Lieutenant?” demanded the driver as he sprinted up to them. “I heard the shootin’ and lit out for the wagon, which I couldn’t find hide nor hair of.”

“You have lost your wagon, Mr. Fairweather,” Grace informed him.

“What’s thet you say?”

“They have dumped the wagon down into the canyon, and a good part of our equipment is with it,” replied Grace.

Ike, for the moment, was unable to find words appropriate to express his emotion, then, recovering his voice, he launched into a torrent of threats as he stamped about, shaking his clenched fists.

“You will have to catch them before you carry out all those threats, Mr. Fairweather,” reminded Grace. “Lieutenant, the scoundrels have a wounded man with them, and cannot move rapidly. Shall we go after them?”

“Yes,” answered Hippy. “Ike and I will go. You go back and reassure the girls, Brown Eyes.”

“Very good. Yours is the better judgment.”

“I thought you would look at it that way,” observed Hippy.

The two men quickly were swallowed up in the mist, and Grace turned toward the camp, more disturbed in mind than she cared to admit to herself. Should their assailants persist in their attacks on the outfit, it was reasonably certain that one or more of the Overton party sooner or later would be wounded, or worse.

“Overland!” called Grace. The call was promptly answered from the camp, and Grace was met at the upper end of the tote path by a group of worried girls. She explained that Hippy, who had gone out to intercept the work of the night prowlers, had continued on with Ike Fairweather in pursuit of them.

“What were those ruffians trying to do this time?” questioned Miss Briggs.

“They not only tried, but they did,” answered Grace. “Girls, those rascals ran our equipment wagon off the trail and into the canyon.”

A chorus of “ohs” greeted the announcement.

“Does this mean that we shall have to abandon our trip?” anxiously asked Elfreda.

“It does not, J. Elfreda. Did you ever know of an Overton girl to confess herself beaten?”

“No. That is the last thing I should look for you to do.”

“Your question is answered. We are going to get that band of ruffians before the end of the Apache Trail is reached, or they will get us,” declared Grace. “Please stir the fire and make coffee for our men. I am going down the tote trail to see that we are not surprised.”

Crouching beside the trail, Grace finally heard Hippy and Ike returning.

“They got away, but we exchanged shots with them,” called Hippy in reply to Grace’s hail. “They went down into the canyon, but Ike said there was no use wasting time following them, for they know the ground better than we do. Sorry, but we did the best we could.”

“You surely did all that any one could have done,” agreed Grace. “We might as well go back to camp, as Nora probably is worrying about you. The girls will have coffee for you when you get in.”

“I smell it, an’ it smells mighty good,” exclaimed Ike.

The coffee was ready for them when they arrived, and Anne was down on her knees toasting bread before a bed of coals. All hands immediately sat down before the fire to take refreshment and to discuss their situation.

“Right here, I wish to say to you, my friends, that we should recompense Mr. Fairweather for the loss of his wagon,” declared Grace.

“Don’t want no recompense,” growled the old stagecoach driver.

“Yes!” shouted the girls, and Hippy came along with a deep bass “yes.”

Sudden concern appeared in the face of Emma Dean at this juncture.

“Where is my black silk dress that was in the wagon?” she asked, half fearfully.

“Deep, deep down at the bottom of the canyon,” rumbled Lieutenant Wingate.

Emma uttered a dismal wail.

“Who’s going to pay me for my black silk? Who, I ask you, Grace Harlowe? Who is going to recompense _me_?”

The Overton girls burst out laughing.

“Each of us has lost clothing, Emma,” comforted Grace. “We have two changes right here with us, however, so why worry? Mr. Fairweather, is there a possibility of getting to the bottom of the canyon to salvage our clothing?”

“No use tryin’ it. Apaches will have it before you can get it.”

“Apaches?” questioned Lieutenant Wingate. “We haven’t seen one since we started, Mr. Fairweather.”

“Mebby not, but the Redskins have seen you folks.”

“Kiss your belongings good-bye, girls,” advised Elfreda Briggs. “When next you see your raiment it perhaps will be beautifying some dusky maiden of the mountains.”

“Don’t s’pose you’ll need me any more now thet the wagon’s gone,” suggested Ike gloomily.

“On the contrary, we wish you to continue through with us, Mr. Fairweather,” said Grace. “When we settle with you at Phœnix, we shall make up to you any loss that you may have sustained.”

Ike’s face brightened, not because of the promise to pay, but because the outfit did not intend to send him home.

“Thank you, folks. You make me right happy, you shore do. What do you reckon on doin’?”

“Let me see. We must be about thirty miles from Roosevelt Lake now,” reflected Grace.

“’Bout three mile short of thet,” nodded Ike.

“Do you think we can pack what stuff we have left on your wagon horses and our ponies?” questioned Grace.

“Reckon so.”

“Of course we don’t care to carry much extra weight on the saddle animals, just light equipment, and if you cannot get through to Roosevelt to-day, we will make camp to-night and ride in to-morrow morning.”

Ike shook his head.

“Nope. I can’t make it in a day, but you folks better ride right on in an’ stay at the Lodge. It’s a good tavern for these parts and it ain’t ever too full to hold some more. I’ll be ’long ’bout eleven o’clock in the mornin’ the day after, an’ make camp for you all there.”

“Thank you. That difficulty is overcome. I propose that we now turn in. Girls, we have time for a beauty sleep before the rising of the sun, when I hope each of you will come out and enjoy the scene with me,” nodded Grace smilingly.

The rest of the night passed without incident, and Ike sounded the getting-up call a few minutes before sun-up. There followed a hurried dressing, some grumbling, and finally much laughter because Emma Dean, in her attempt at haste, got all tangled up in her garments.

The Overland Riders, however, found themselves well paid for their early rising. A scene, such as they had never dreamed existed, lay before them. A sea of clouds hid the valley and the lake, white, billowy, lazy clouds that were drifting slowly under the warmth of the rising sun.

Above this white sea loomed the Four Peaks of the Apache Range, turned to red and gold by the morning sun, and, on beyond the Peaks, here and there a sapphire rock thrust its sharp point through the white billows.

“How beautiful!” murmured Elfreda Briggs.

“Beyond the power of words to express,” replied Grace Harlowe, barely above a whisper.

Anne linked arms with Grace and patted her hand, but spoke no word. Even the bare-headed, irrepressible Hippy seemed lost in silent admiration. Perhaps it was the beauty of the scene, or perhaps it was that those billowing clouds carried him back in memory to the bitter days when Lieutenant Wingate was fighting for life above just such clouds as these, high over the German lines in France.

Grace finally sat down, chin in hand, lost in wonder, her whole being filled with an exultation that she had known but once before, and then in a far different environment, when caught in a barrage at Chateau Thierry, when all the tremendous elements of the universe seemed to have joined in a mad medley. That was war, bitter, soul-racking war. This was peace, and she wondered that each should arouse in her emotions that were so much alike.

“Ahem!” began Hippy Wingate impressively, and the spell was broken. “We are now standing--”

“You are mistaken. Some of us are sitting,” corrected Emma Dean.

“On the pinnacle of the Apache Trail, the most ancient trail on our continent. Well may this be called Oldest America, for men have traversed this route since remotest time, where the silence of eternity broods over the mesas and the canyons and the peaks. And where, with this wonderful scene that comes with the dawning of the day, all the mystery of the world seems brought together. Ahem!”

A painful silence of several seconds was broken by the judicial voice of Elfreda Briggs.

“I sentence the prisoner to ten years’ hard labor,” she announced.

Shouts of laughter, and a cry from Emma that he should be sent up for life, put the Overlanders in a merry mood. Even Ike Fairweather, whose eyes had grown large under the spell of Hippy’s oratory, permitted himself to indulge in a loud guffaw.

After a rather hurried breakfast, the outfit began packing up for the start. It was not an easy task to pack the tents and equipment on the backs of the horses, in view of the fact that each animal, except the wagon horses, must also carry a rider. The work was finally accomplished, however, each rider placing a pack of small stuff on her own back, in addition to the pack already lashed to the back of her pony.

Before starting out, Grace induced Elfreda to remove the bandage from her head. The wound was found to be healed, much to the relief of both.

Ike had made an early start, and two hours later the Overlanders galloped away, and then began the downward ride that would take them to the great artificial waterway, where both entertainment and adventure awaited them.