CHAPTER XXI
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 fromthe Overland Riders.
"How strange," murmured Emma. "What could a woman be doing in this awfulcountry?"
"Perhaps she lives here," suggested Elfreda. "I should not be surprisedat 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, theentire 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, butfound no trace, no footprints, nothing that would indicate that a personhad 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 haveleft footprints at least."
"Piecee woman go 'way," insisted Woo.
"Don't wolly till to-mollow," imitated Stacy Brown. "Woo, got anythingloose about the house? I've been living on pink snow for so long that Ifeel like a snowbird in distress. Food is what my system demands."
"A bird, did you say?" questioned Emma. "I agree with you that you aresomething of a bird, but not of the snowbird species."
Grace was the only one of the party who believed that their guide reallyhad seen a human being spying on the camp. The others, after somediscussion, dismissed the matter from mind, and devoted their attentionto the supper which Woo had prepared and served. A much more comfortablenight 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, whichhad sunk out of sight as if it had never existed, due to the fact thathuge granite shelves intervened between them and the mysterious water.They judged that the lake must lie at an elevation of close to eightthousand feet above sea level.
"I smell something," exclaimed Hippy as they were dismounting forluncheon and a rest that day.
"So do I," agreed Stacy Brown. "Someone is baking bread and using saltyeast. 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 thatwe need."
By proceeding against the gentle breeze that was blowing they wereenabled, after considerable searching about, to locate the deadcampfire.
"Here it is!" cried Tom, scraping aside a cover of leaves and grass thathad been spread over the ashes to hide the tell-tale evidence. "See! Theembers have been kicked aside and water poured over them. It is thewater 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, andreturning, announced that he had made a further discovery--the spot atwhich horses had been turned loose.
"There appears to have been four of them, though I cannot be positiveabout that," he said. "I merely saw the footprints of four animals asthey started on their way northward."
"But suppose they are looking for us?" exclaimed Miss Briggs. "If theyare headed north they are headed towards the place where we were firedupon, are they not?"
"Oh, don't worry," laughed Hippy. "They have a nice, long, rough journeyahead 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 sostirred up over what we have heard of the High Country that every littlething 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. "Ithink that perhaps it might be well for us to take an inventory of oursurroundings, as well as of what lies immediately ahead of us, before westart out," he added.
Hippy volunteered to do a little scouting, and Grace said she wouldaccompany him, as anything of that sort appealed to her, so they set outtogether, but soon separated and took different courses.
Grace first of all sought a high point from which she obtained a verygood view of the surrounding country, but saw nothing of a disturbingnature. A deer stood outlined on a shelf of rock a few hundred feetabove 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 ormountain-side. The fact that their front legs are shorter than the hindlegs makes going straight down a steep incline difficult, so, unlesspursued, they ordinarily follow the switchback principle, zigzaggingalong until they reach the bottom.
The Overland girl watched the ambling beast with interest until itfinally disappeared. She had no doubt that it was descending to thevalley in search of food, lured there, perhaps, by the scent of anabandoned camp. Except for these two animals, she was unable to discoverany sign of life, nor was there a wisp of smoke within her vision thatmight 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 unknownhorsemen to determine, as definitely as possible, the direction thatthey had taken. Their trail, which he followed for nearly a mile, stillcontinued towards the peak, and it was his belief that that was theirdestination, or at least some other near-by point where they might hopeto meet up with the Overland party.
Hippy pondered over this, and found himself wondering what the motive ofthe horsemen might be. Still pondering, he began retracing his steps tomeet Grace at a point decided upon before they started away on separatetrails.
Lieutenant Wingate was cautiously making his way through a thick growthof bushes, watching his step and listening for the familiar whirringwarning of a rattler, when a sudden interruption occurred, aninterruption that caused Hippy to throw himself on the ground, and liestill.
The interruption was a bullet, a bullet that clipped his hat, nipping apiece out of the brim, and giving the Overlander a scare. At first hethought the shot might have been fired by one of his own party, and wasabout to call out a warning, but changed his mind and began wrigglingaway from the scene. He had, by this time, forgotten all about the snakeperil, his one burning desire being to get as far away from thatlocality 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 thepurpose of confusing the author of that shot, should the fellow decideto follow him.
Suddenly Hippy thought of Grace. She, too, might be in peril. His firstinclination was to get up and run to their rendezvous, but upon secondthought he came to the conclusion that it would be wiser to make aneffort to discover the one who had shot at him. With this in view,Lieutenant Wingate began making a detour with the intention of coming upbehind the shooter, Hippy having a good general idea of the positionoccupied by the man at the time the shot was fired.
All his efforts came to naught. He had spent nearly an hour in stalkinghis man before he realized that he was wasting time.
While he was engaged in his quest Grace had sat listening. She had heardthe shot, and reasoned that it had been fired from somewhere in Hippy'sdirection. There being no answering shot, however, she forced herself tobelieve that her companion had shot at a snake, and decided to proceedon to the place where they were to meet before returning to ca
mp.
Grace took a different route to reach the spot, and this route took hernear 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 suitablefording place the Overland girl continued on further up-stream. Her wayled her under an overhang of granite rocks several feet higher than herhead. Beneath her was a pool, deeper than the stream below, and in thepool 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" ranchhad said about the golden trout in the High Sierras.
"Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if I had discovered a pool of those livenuggets!" she cried, throwing herself down and gazing into the pool, onwhich the sunlight shone, mirroring her own face and the rocks behindher on its surface.
"They aren't golden trout at all; they are mountain trout, and oh, whatbeauties! I must tell Hippy and have him get a mess for us. I reckonthat 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 thewater 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 theface of a woman. At first, Grace believed that some trick of nature wasshowing her a double of her own face, distorted and unrecognizable, butshe instantly realized that this could not be possible. The face thatshe was looking down into on the surface of the pool was as hideous acountenance as she had ever gazed upon, scarred, distorted and crownedby a head of matted hair that bristled at its top and hung in tangledskeins 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 tomeet on the face of the waters.
Grace whirled and sprang up, revolver in hand, for there was menace inthe eyes that she had been looking into.
Quick as the Overland girl was, Grace Harlowe found herself gazing up ata barren shelf of rock, unoccupied, silent as a tomb, with not a sign oflife to be seen, either there or anywhere about her.
It was inexplicable. A feeling of something akin to terror tookpossession 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 gettingaway from that which had given her such a fright.