Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the High Sierras

“I don’t understand how you could stand it to stay away at meal time,” wondered Emma.

“Oh, that was all right. I had some biscuit, then I found some dried venison in a cache in a cave up there. Somebody had been there. It was fine food, I tell you, but all the time I kept my eyes on the camp. I didn’t think you would go away and leave me, but I wasn’t taking chances. It was lots of fun watching you folks searching for Stacy Brown’s body, and I laughed when I saw Uncle Hip swimming out to look under the canoe. Say, you can swim some, can’t you?”

Hippy bristled. Stacy’s last words were the crowning ones. Lieutenant Wingate nodded to Tom.

“Come, Stacy. We wish you to go down by the lake with us. Fetch your paddle,” directed Hippy.

“Wha – at are you going to do?” stammered the boy.

“We three are going paddling, my beloved nephew,” answered Lieutenant Wingate.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” whispered Grace as the three were about to depart, Stacy going reluctantly, but not daring to offer further objections.

“Give me that paddle,” ordered Hippy when they had reached a point well out of sight of the camp. “Stacy Brown, you have done about the most unforgivable thing that a boy could do. You led us to believe that you had been drowned; you have caused us much mental anguish, and it is no more than right that we ‘transmigrate’ a little of it to you. Lie down on your stomach!”

“I don’t want to. Wha – at are you going to do?”

“I am going to paddle you, young man. Tom, how many do you think would be about right?”

“I should say that a paddle, one paddle, for each member of the Overland party would be about right,” suggested Tom Gray. “There are six of us.”

A moment more and Hippy Wingate was delivering the punishment, not too hard, but just enough so as to make his plump nephew writhe.

“Six! There!” announced Hippy.

“You forgot to give him one for Woo Smith,” suggested Tom.

“You’re right.” Hippy remedied the oversight at once. “Get up! You made me swim in the cold lake, so I think I will give you a dose of the same medicine. I’m going to throw you in the lake.”

“Oh, wow!” howled Chunky.

“No, no,” protested Tom Gray. “Don’t do that, Hippy. He might catch cold and be sick on our hands,” grinned Tom.

“I’ll be even with you for this, Uncle Hip,” threatened Stacy.

“He hasn’t had enough yet, Tom. Help me throw him in.”

“Yes, I have. I’ve had enough. I’ll never play such a trick on you again. It was a low-down trick to play. Next time I’ll do it in some other way, but if you let me alone I’ll let you alone.”

“Don’t make threats,” warned Lieutenant Wingate.

“I can tell you something you want to know, too. I know something that you don’t know,” answered Stacy.

“First you had better come back to camp and apologize to the girls,” suggested Tom.

Stacy went along, rather timidly at first; then, as the thought of what he had discovered occurred to him, he swelled out his chest and began to boast.

“Suppose you tell us what it is that you have discovered,” suggested Grace after Tom had repeated to the girls what Stacy said.

“Yes. I’ll tell you. When I was trying to get where you folks wouldn’t see me, I dodged behind some bushes and discovered that I was right in front of an opening in the rocks. At first I thought it was a bear den. Then I stumbled against a big bear trap that closed with a crash, but it didn’t frighten me at all. You see I am not a bear.”

Emma said there might be a difference of opinion on that subject.

“I lighted a match and found a lantern, just like the train conductors use. I looked about and found myself in a cave. I found a lot of stuff there, including some boxes of crackers and venison, that was cached to keep it away from the bears if they got past the trap.”

The Overlanders were keenly interested. Elfreda asked what else he had found in the cave.

“Mostly things to eat and to eat with. I didn’t bother about much of anything else. I reckon maybe it was the bad men’s cave that I discovered. When it comes to making discoveries I don’t suppose there is a human being who can equal myself. The only thing that I can’t lay claim to having discovered is Emma Dean.”

“That is because your ideals and your instincts lack elevation,” retorted Emma.

Tom and Hippy glanced at each other and nodded. Both were of the same mind with reference to Stacy’s discovery. Perhaps there lay the real secret of the Aerial Lake.

“Let us go over and investigate,” suggested Tom.

“I’m with you,” agreed Hippy. “Stacy, you will please lead the way to this bandit retreat, or whatever it may be, but if you fool us again, it’s the lake for yours.”

All hands started for the cave, with Stacy Brown in the lead, full of importance. It was quite a rough climb to the scene of Stacy’s discovery, and the boy took the worst course he could find to reach it, which the others of the party suspected ere they had gone far on their way.

“Look out for bear traps!” warned Chunky. “You know I haven’t looked about much on the inside. There! Look at that, will you?” he demanded, parting the bushes and revealing a small dark opening in the rocks.

“You aren’t going into that hole, are you?” cried Emma.

“I went in, didn’t I?” returned Stacy. “I didn’t have a crowd of women with me, though.”

Hippy entered first, using his pocket lamp to light the way, followed by Stacy and Tom, then the others filed in, leaving Woo Smith on the outside to see that they were not surprised by the former occupants of the place.

Once inside, the Overlanders found that the roof of the cave was high enough to permit them to stand erect, but beyond them the darkness was so deep that they could not see the end of the hole in the mountain.

“Br-r-r! I’m afraid,” cried Emma.

“That’s because you aren’t a man,” answered Stacy. “Hulloa! There’s some stuff that I didn’t see.”

“Pullman car blankets!” exclaimed Tom Gray. “This looks as if we had made a real discovery.”

“You mean I have,” corrected Stacy.

“Yes. It is plunder. No mistake about that,” agreed Lieutenant Wingate. “Stacy, did you look around farther back in the cave?”

“No. I didn’t have time.”

“I think you were afraid of the dark,” teased Elfreda.

“Stacy is afraid of nothing at all, you know, Elfreda,” reminded Grace laughingly, whereupon Stacy’s chest swelled perceptibly.

“I am not,” he made reply.

A systematic search of all parts of the cave failed to reveal anything of great value, but they decided that it might be wise to remove some of the blankets as proof of what they had found.