Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Old Apache Trail

“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.

CHAPTER IV

THE BATTLE WITH THE BANDITS

THE highwayman uttered a yell, and leaped clear of the ground, dropping his rifle, which clattered to the trail within easy reach of the Overton girl’s hand.

Bang!Bang!

Two rifle bullets ripped through the roof of the old stagecoach.

“The cowards!” fumed Grace under her breath.

Snatching up the rifle that the highwayman had dropped, she crawled out from under the coach, and ran around behind it just as two more bandit shots rang out.

Grace threw the rifle to her shoulder and fired at a shadowy figure that she could barely see, and, in the next second, Lieutenant Wingate’s heavy army revolver cracked spitefully from the front seat of the coach. With Grace Harlowe’s first shot Hippy had unlimbered, and his revolver was now banging away to good purpose, as Grace realized when she heard another yell of pain.

“Look out, Grace, I’m coming!” warned Hippy as he leaped from the top of the coach to the trail.