Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the High Sierras

“Hurt? Of course not. I always fall off before dinner. It puts a keen edge on my appetite. Hulloa, folks! Glad to meet ye. Hey, Bismarck! Come here,” he ordered.

His dusty gray pony trotted to him and nosed Stacy’s cheek affectionately.

“Got anything loose around the house? I’m half starved,” urged Chunky. “Uncle Hip, introduce me to these beautiful young ladies. I’ve heard of you folks, and so has Bismarck. You’ll find him right friendly, especially the front end of him, but I shouldn’t advise you to get too close to the tail end. He is very light there. Let him browse in the yard while I feed the inner man.”

“Indeed not,” objected Grace. “I am not going to have my flowers trampled down after all my hard work on them this spring. Tom, please lead Stacy’s pony around to the stables. I will put something on the table for you at once, Stacy. Come right in. We were just finishing dinner when you arrived so violently. Oh! Pardon me. You haven’t yet been introduced to the girls.”

“Thanks!” bowed Stacy. “Thanks for the invitation, but come to think of it don’t introduce me until after dinner. I never like to meet strangers on an empty stomach.”

“This is Miss Elfreda Briggs, a rising young lawyeress, and here is the life of our Overland party, Miss Emma Dean. We address each other by our first names, so you may call her Emma. Come now, Stacy.”

“You’re a funny fellow, aren’t you?” said Emma, surveying the newcomer curiously as they walked towards the house.

“Then we are a pair of ’em, eh?” chuckled the fat boy.

“I am not a boy, thank my lucky stars and all the saints,” objected Emma. “I’ll have you understand that, sir.”

“Let the dove of peace rest over your touchy spirit, Emma,” laughed Grace chidingly.

“It isn’t a dove. It’s a crow,” corrected Chunky. “A thousand pardons, Emma dear. I – ”

“I’m not your dear,” answered Emma with considerable heat.

“Yes, you are, but you don’t know it. To realize it you will have to emerge from the unconscious state in which you now so sweetly repose,” teased Stacy, amid the laughter of the others.

“I should prefer to be unconscious all the time,” flung back Emma.

“Ah! The food does smell good. Food always has a strange effect on me, and really, I haven’t smelled any in almost a thousand years – not since breakfast this morning. By the way, where do we go and when do we start?”

“To the Sierras,” answered Tom Gray. “How are you, Chunky?” he added, extending a hand.

“Starved. How’s yourself?”

“I think after we go back to the dining room and after I have my dessert that I shall feel fit as a fiddle,” replied Tom. “To answer the rest of your question, we expect to start tomorrow forenoon. The ponies will be shipped in a car that is now on the siding at Oakdale.”

“Girls, what do you think of my nephew?” cried Hippy jovially, as they again seated themselves at the table.

“So far as I am concerned, I think that he is another of those bungalow fellows just like yourself, Hippy,” answered Emma. “Mr. Brown, may I ask if you ever have had any experience with mental transmigration?” she asked, turning to Chunky.

Chunky, his mouth full of food, surveyed her solemnly.

“Uh-huh!” he replied thickly. “I met one of those animals once in the Rocky Mountains. You see it was this way. We had been riding far into the night to find a suitable camping place, when we were suddenly halted by a savage growl just ahead of us. I went on ahead, with my trusty rifle ready, to slay the beast whatever it might be. Suddenly I saw him. He was the most terrible looking object that I’ve ever come up with in all my mountain experience. I threw up my rifle and shot the beast dead in his tracks.”

“Wonderful!” breathed Emma. “But what has that to do with mental transmigration?”

“I’m coming to that. It is wonderful – I mean it was. Will you believe it, that terrible beast came to life. Yes, sir, he rose right up and made for us. My pony bolted, and I fell off – just as I ordinarily do before meal time. My feet at the moment chanced to be out of the stirrups and I fell off. Well, I might have been killed – I surely would have been killed, but I wasn’t, just because of that stunt that you mentioned. I transmigrated myself out of that vicinity with a speed that left that terrible object so far behind that he just lay down and died again,” finished Stacy Brown solemnly, amid shouts of laughter, in which all but Emma Dean joined.

Stacy gave her a quick sidelong glance, and Hippy Wingate, observing the look, knew that war had been declared between Stacy Brown and Emma Dean.

CHAPTER II

AN INTERRUPTED SLEEP

“Right at this point,” said the traveling salesman impressively, “a train left the track and plunged into that ravine down there.”

“Any loss of life?” questioned Tom Gray.

“A great many. I was in that wreck myself. I was shaken up a bit, that’s all. You see I know how to take care of myself. We commercial travelers have to or we should soon be out of business. Nearly the whole train went into that ravine, and the car in which I was riding stood on end. I clung to the air-brake cord and thus was miraculously saved.”

“Humph!” muttered Stacy, hunching his fat shoulders forward. “You don’t look to be light enough to perch on an air-brake cord.”

The Overland girls glanced amusedly at Chunky and the traveling salesman. The entire party was enjoying the late afternoon mountain air from the rear platform of the observation car on the transcontinental train known as the Red Limited. Just inside the door sat other passengers, who had been enjoying the frequent passages-at-arms between Stacy Brown and Emma Dean. The train had been rumbling over bridges and lurching through narrow cuts, affording the passengers brief views of a swiftly moving scenic panorama of interest and attractiveness.

“As I was saying, the rope, in all probability, saved my life, as I was the only person in the car that came out alive,” continued the traveling salesman. “I’m in ladies’ fine shoes, you know.”

Stacy and Emma regarded the speaker’s large feet, glanced at each other and grinned.

“I’ll bet you couldn’t transmigrate them,” whispered the fat boy.

Emma elevated her nose, but made no reply to the trivial remark.

“I mean that I am selling ladies’ fine shoes, young man,” added the salesman, he having observed the fat boy’s grin. “My card.” He passed business cards to those nearest to him, and from them the Overlanders learned that he was William Sylvester Holmes, traveling for a Denver shoe firm. “My trade call me ‘Bill,’” he explained.

“Hello, Bill!” muttered Hippy, nudging Nora.

“May I ask what car you were in?” questioned a tall, bronzed passenger in a mild, apologetic voice.

“The same as this one.”

“Hm-m-m! That’s odd. I do not recall having seen you. However, I was in the other end of the car, which perhaps accounts for it,” said the stranger in a more humble voice.

William Sylvester flushed. Instead of being overcome, however, he shifted his conversation to another train wreck that he said had occurred a few miles further on at a place called Summit.

The faces of the Overland Riders expanded into discreet smiles at the mild way in which the tall man had rebuked the loquacious traveler. Grace and Elfreda, in particular, found themselves much interested in this big man. Grace asked a fellow passenger who the man was, and learned that he was Bill Ford, for some years sheriff of Sonora County. Ford had been observing the traveling salesman through mild blue eyes in which there appeared an expression of more than casual interest.

“It was that Summit wreck that nearly did me up,” resumed Holmes. “We went over an embankment there. Being in a berth in a sleeping car I was unable to grab hold of anything. The car played football with me, but I came off with nothing more serious than a broken arm. Oh, I have had my experiences! Were you in that wreck, too?” he asked, turning quickly to the sheriff.

“Never heard of it,” answered Ford carelessly.

“All that saved us was the fact that the cars were made of steel. We’ll pass Summit within the hour, and I’ll show you where we went off the rails that time.”

“Tell us about something that happened when the train didn’t leave the rails,” urged Stacy.

“With pleasure. I remember, some two years ago – it was this very train, I do believe – when a party of bandits held up a train on this line. That occurred between Summit and Gardner. They uncoupled the express car and, after compelling the engineer to haul it up the track a short distance, dynamited the car and robbed it of the treasure it was carrying.”

“They’ve been cutting up that same kind of caper quite lately,” nodded the sheriff.

“Di – id they rob the passengers?” stammered Emma Dean.