A THRILLING HALT
“Hi, up there! Cut the gun!” bellowed the voice of Hippy Wingate, using
an aviator’s term for shutting off the power. “Stop it, I say! You will
have us all in the ditch!”
Grace grinned at Ike and Ike grinned at his team. Neither made any
reply to Hippy’s wail of distress. Grace’s hat was now off, her hair
was blowing in the wind, and her eyes were snapping.
“Oh, that _was_ glorious, Mr. Fairweather,” she cried as the stagecoach
reached the bottom of the grade and lurched around a sharp curve on two
wheels, a proceeding that brought another series of shrieks from the
occupants of the coach.
Hippy was still protesting and threatening, then suddenly Grace and
Ike were startled at hearing the lieutenant’s voice close behind them,
right at their ears, it seemed.
Grace turned and found herself looking into the flushed face of Hippy
Wingate whose head and shoulders were above the top of the coach. He
was standing on the window sill of the door and clinging to the edge of
the roof of the stagecoach.
“Get down, Hippy! You will be thrown off and hurt,” begged Grace.
“I can’t be any worse injured than I am now after being played football
with inside of this old box. What’s the matter? Isn’t there a brake on
this bundle of junk?”
“I don’t know. Sorry, but I thought you might enjoy a few sideslips to
remind you of France. Please stop, Mr. Fairweather. He will break his
neck if he tries to get down while we are in motion.”
Ike applied the brake and pulled up the horses, whereupon Hippy sprang
down to the trail and swung aboard again.
“If you do that again I’ll walk,” was his parting threat.
“How’d you like it, Miss?” grinned the driver.
“Splendid! I have not had such an exciting ride since one time when I
was racing with my ambulance in France to clear a cross-roads ahead of
a shell that was on the way there,” declared Grace.
“I was goin’ to ask you ’bout the war. You must have seen some big
ones--big shells?”
“Many of them.”
“Never got hit, did you!”
“I was wounded three times.”
“You don’t say!” Ike gazed at her with new interest. “Was he in the
war, too?” referring to Hippy.
“Yes, as an aviator, and fought many battles in the air. All the young
women who are with us on this drive also saw service in the war zone in
France. They were a part of the Overton College Unit that went overseas
for the Red Cross.”
“Must have been purty bad business, thet.”
“It was, but I would not have missed it for anything. Did many men from
your city go to the war?”
Ike nodded.
“Some didn’t come back, neither. S’pose your ambulance got hit once,
anyway?”
“I lost four cars during the time I was driving. Two were blown up and
the others were wrecked in accidents,” Grace informed her companion on
the driver’s seat. “My husband is still in the service. He is now in
Russia where he was sent after the armistice was signed.”
“Your husband? You don’t say! I wouldn’t think it. Why, you don’t look
like more’n a school girl. I’ll bet he’d like to be here right this
minute.”
“And I’ll bet I should like to have him here, too,” answered Grace
smilingly. “Do you think we shall be able to stir up any excitement on
the trail? We propose to do the entire journey on our ponies, you know,
starting the day after to-morrow.”
“Mebby, mebby,” reflected Ike.
“Are there any Apaches left in the mountains?” questioned Grace.
“Yes. Too many of ’em.”
“Friendly?”
“Sometimes when they want to beg or steal somethin’ from you. Don’t
trust ’em, Miss. An Indian’s an Indian, ’specially when he’s an Apache.
They’d do a heap lot more than they do if they dared. Can you shoot?”
“Some,” admitted Grace.
“I’ll bet you’re a dead shot. If them eyes was behind a gun thet was
pinted at me, I’d put up my hands without bein’ asked a second time.”
“Were you ever held up by bandits?” asked Grace, eager to get the old
stagecoach driver started talking of his experiences.
“Regular thing in the old days.”
“What did you do in those emergencies?”
“Ginerally put up my paws when I was invited to. Such fellows can shoot
and most always does.”
“But, Mr. Fairweather, did your passengers never venture to defend
themselves!”
“Once a man did. He’s down there now, near where we’re goin’ to stop
for chuck--in Squaw Valley.”
“He was not quick enough! Is that it, sir!”
“You said it. Was the Germans quick on the trigger?”
“Their sharpshooters were very quick. Good shots, too, all of them, but
our sharpshooters could beat them at stalking. You know our boys like
to fight Indian style, while the German fights by rule and orders.”
The driver nodded his understanding, and began admonishing the
off-wheel horse who was using his heels rather too freely.
“Thet critter would run away if I give him half a show,” grinned Ike.
“Of course if he were to do that and turn the coach over, you could not
help yourself, could you, Mr. Fairweather?” questioned Grace innocently.
Ike gave her a quick sidelong glance, but Grace Harlowe’s face was
guileless.
“I b’lieve you’d like to have him run away,” he chuckled.
“Oh, no, nothing like that, sir. My friends might get hurt. Otherwise,
I should not mind it at all.”
“You shore are a queer one,” muttered Ike. “Over beyond the rise you
see ahead is Squaw Valley. Good water there and fine place to have
chuck. How much further do you reckon on goin’?”
“I was about to suggest that you decide that. If we ride until ten
o’clock it will be late enough. I imagine, too, that our friends in the
coach will have had enough of it by then. After leaving the Valley, if
we decide to go further, I will go inside, giving Lieutenant Wingate an
opportunity to ride outside with you. Perhaps you may be able to induce
him to tell you how he fought the Huns above the clouds. I know you
will enjoy hearing of it from a man who has fought that way.”
“Shore, I would. Never was a prisoner over there, was you?” asked Ike.
“Yes, the Boches got me once and sent me to a prison camp, but I made
my escape. They came near getting me twice after that.”
“Huh! Got a family?” Ike was determined to get all the information he
could. He had been doing it for years from the passengers who rode with
him on top of the stage.
“If you mean children, I have a daughter, an adopted French girl. I
found her in a deserted French village one night, the village at the
time being under heavy artillery fire. I adopted the little one later,
and she is now at school back east. Isn’t that Squaw Valley?” asked
Grace, pointing.
“Thet’s her.”
A few moments later the stagecoach drew out to one side of the trail
and stopped.
“All out for mess,” cried Grace, springing to the ground. “How do you
folks feel after that delightful ride?”
“Ride, did you call it?” demanded Hippy Wingate, getting out
laboriously and limping about to take the kinks out of his legs. “It’s
worse than hitting one of those bumpy white clouds with an airplane.”
“Grace Harlowe, I believe you gave us that shaking up on purpose,”
accused Elfreda Briggs.
The others voiced their protests in no uncertain manner.
“You will forget all about it after we have made tea and cooked our
bacon,” comforted Grace, neither admitting nor denying the accusation.
“There is nothing like a good shaking up to accelerate one’s appetite.”
Under Grace Harlowe’s skillful hands a little fire was soon flickering
beside the trail, the driver eyeing the blaze with approval; then the
Overton girls got briskly to work preparing the supper.
“Where’d you learn to make an Indian cook-fire?” demanded Ike.
“My husband taught me. He is a forester, you know,” replied Grace.
“Know how to make a lean-to?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“You’ll do. No tenderfoot ’bout you. Reckon I’ll fetch water for the
folks and horses now.”
The party ate sitting on the ground, Ike’s interest during the meal
being divided between Grace Harlowe and Lieutenant Wingate. They were
the first real heroes that he had ever known, and he proposed to make
the most of his opportunity.
“Well, Mr. Fairweather, shall we go on?” asked Grace after they had
finished the meal.
“Reckon so. Better camping ground further on.”
Equipment was quickly packed away and Ike hooked up for the start, but
before leaving, Hippy Wingate and Elfreda issued a solemn warning that
there was to be no more speeding.
The night, now upon them, was moonless, but the stars shed a faint
light on the trail causing it to stand out dimly for a short distance
ahead of them, save here and there, where overhanging rocks threw it
into a deep shadow. It was an ideal night for traveling, cool but
invigorating, with the breath of mountain and canyon heavy on the
still evening air.
Lieutenant Wingate was riding with the driver, Grace now being inside
the coach with the other girls. To protect themselves from the chill
mountain air, Elfreda, Anne, Emma and Nora had wrapped themselves in
blankets and were dozing off to sleep.
Grace was not sleepy, though the slow movement of the stagecoach as
the horses climbed the steep grade was monotonous. She was too keenly
alive to the wonders of the mountains to think of sleep, anyway. Grace
leaned well out, with head down, watching the white trail that had
echoed to the scuff of the moccasin of the savage redmen so many times
in the past, and that was slipping slowly from under her, now and then
gazing ahead along the narrow way with wondering eyes. The distant
conversation of Lieutenant Wingate and Ike Fairweather drifted down in
undistinguishable murmurs.
“Hippy is filling Ike with war stories, and he is drawing the long bow
too, I’ll venture to say. What’s that?” Grace drew a sharp breath and
her heart gave a thump.
The Overton girl thought she had seen a figure dart to the side of the
road and into the shadow of the rocks as the coach swung around a sharp
bend on the mountain trail.
“Yes, there is another! Something is going on here!”
Grace opened the coach door on the opposite side. There was a long,
sloping bank on that side, the right side, leading down, she did not
know how far, for the bottom was in deep shadow.
“Perhaps there are Indians on the trail,” muttered Grace, slipping out
to the trail, and closing the coach door behind her as she trotted
along beside the slowly moving stagecoach. She then hopped to the step
where she crouched, clinging to the door frame with one hand. Grace
could still hear Hippy and Ike Fairweather speaking, and so interested
were they in their conversation that they failed to see what Grace
Harlowe’s keen eyes had discovered.
“After all, what I saw may be simply prowlers,” reflected Grace, though
her intuition told her that the figures she had discovered on the trail
ahead meant something more than mere prowling.
Grace Harlowe’s intuition, in this instance, was not at fault.
Two rifle reports close at hand broke the mountain stillness, and the
coach stopped with a sudden jolt as Ike Fairweather brought his horses
to their haunches, so quickly did he pull them up.
A cry, which Grace recognized as having been uttered by Emma Dean, was
heard in the coach.
“Flat down on the floor, every one of you, and not another sound!”
commanded Grace in a low voice, dropping on all fours to the trail, and
in that position crawling under the coach on hands and feet.
Before ducking under, a quick upward glance had shown Grace that
Lieutenant Wingate’s hands were thrust above his head, and that Ike
Fairweather was holding his as high as possible.
“All out, and keep your hands above your heads!” commanded a stern
voice on the mountain side of the coach. “Quick!”
Grace Harlowe unlimbered her little automatic revolver from its holster
under her blouse, the weapon that she had carried through the war.
Four frightened girls, crouching on the floor of the Deadwood coach,
had not uttered a sound since the command to step out was uttered, nor
had they made a movement to obey that command.
“Come out of that on the jump!” ordered the same stern voice that Grace
had first heard, but this time in a new and more menacing tone.
A pair of booted legs appeared before Grace at the side of the coach,
and she heard the coach door jerked open, followed by a scream from
Emma.
Without an instant’s hesitation, Grace thrust her revolver forward
until its muzzle was close to one of the booted legs, and pulled the
trigger.