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.