Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert Part 30

Grace walked to the waterfall with Elfreda.

"Grace Harlowe Gray, I've been studying that map," Elfreda said.

"Look here. I think this is the very place meant."

"Oh, Elfreda, I believe you're right!" cried Grace after studying the map, which Elfreda put before her, for a moment. "There's the pyramid rock and the waterfall. Yonder are the three rocks designated as 'the three bears,' and there's the trunk of what was a yucca tree, and the stream disappears just a few yards beyond us--'stream's end,' as it says on the map! Elfreda---"

"Grace, look! A rag doll over there on that boulder!" interrupted Elfreda.

The two girls went over. The doll was soiled, but had evidently not lain out in the weather.

"Shall we take it in?" asked Elfreda.

"No; leave it where the child put it. But we'd better keep watch on the place. It's queer to find a child's toy here, and while it may mean little, it may mean much."

When the two girls returned to camp they found that Hi was just back with the bear.

"Oh, girls! Hippy! Mr. Lang!" and the two in chorus fairly spilled out the story of the face seen by Grace back of the waterfall and the doll and their belief that the map was of the place on which they now camped.

Hi Lang took the map and studied it intently.

"It surely is," he finally announced.

"What does the map mean?" questioned Anne.

"Oh, I guess there'd been rumors of gold or silver, and some one, believing the stories, made a map, maybe by hearsay, maybe at first hand. Maybe he talked too much, and some other fellow knocked him on the head and took it."

"Don't you think there's anything in it?" inquired Emma Dean disappointedly.

"Oh, maybe so, maybe not. Can't say."

After lunch Grace donned hip boots and went down toward the fall.

Seeing Elfreda there intent on the map, she announced:

"I'm going wading, Elfreda. Want to come?"

"Emphatically not. Do your boots leak?"

"I'll tell you in a moment," laughed Grace, stepping into the water. "All right, so far," she called, wading toward the fall.

Grace thrust her bare arms through the sheet of water pouring from above, groping for the rocks behind.

Sharp screams, at first loud and piercing, an instant later m.u.f.fled and seeming far away, brought Elfreda to her feet. Grace was nowhere to be seen.

"Help! Grace has gone in!" shouted Elfreda, plunging into the cold water.

CHAPTER XX

CONCLUSION

Hippy heard. Hi, farther away, heard. Both ran through the bushes.

Anne, Nora, and Emma sped to the stream.

Hippy and Elfreda were searching the bottom of the stream, which was not more than three feet deep. Hi stopped them and asked Elfreda to tell what she knew.

"Both hands were thrust through the fall like this," and Elfreda thrust her own hands through the sheet of water. "I was looking at the map when I heard her scream. Looking up, she had disappeared."

Lang nodded and plunged through the waterfall. Those on the outside heard a shot, followed almost instantly by a second one.

At the sound Elfreda and Hippy plunged through the fall. Near the base of the fall was no wall of rock behind the water. Instead, a tunnel-like cave led into the mountain. Elfreda gasped and Hippy looked in amazement. Grace lay on the floor of the cave and Hi Lang had a man flown and was beating him, while a little girl was trying to aid the man by striking Hi over the head and shoulders with a stick.

Wingate s.n.a.t.c.hed the stick from her. The child shrank back, and Hi, realizing that he was going too far, ceased beating the man.

"The fellow struck Mrs. Gray with the b.u.t.t of a revolver, I reckon, then shot at me. I put a bullet through his shoulder and we clinched. How's Mrs. Gray, Miss Briggs?"

"I'll have her around in a few minutes," answered Elfreda confidently. "Who's the man and what is he?"

"Some crazy loon. Strong as a giant, too. Here, you!" to the child reaching toward the man's revolver that lay on the floor. "I'll take that. Is this man your father?"

The child nodded.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Lindy Silver."

"He grabbed my hands and jerked me into the cave. Then he struck me," explained Grace, who had opened her eyes and now sat up.

"The scoundrel!" exclaimed Hi, jerking the man to his feet.

At Hi Lang's suggestion, Hippy and the two girls went up to the camp. It was an hour later when the guide joined them.

"The fellow's name is not Silver. He's Steve Carver," Hi informed his hearers. "He's loony. He didn't say so, but he thinks he has a claim that's valuable. He declared, too, that we're here to rob him and threatened to get us if we didn't move on at once."

"Was it he who put the paper on the yucca tree?" questioned Elfreda.

"No, he didn't do that."

"Then we have other foes," said Grace slowly.

"What a shame to let Lindy live like a wild animal," broke in Elfreda.

"Perhaps we can do something for her," responded Grace.

Just then a revolver, fired close at hand, sent a bullet a few inches from Nora's head. Then came a rattling fire of rifle shots.

The rifle bullets were going high, possibly due to the fact that they were being fired from a point higher than the camp.

The men, armed only with revolvers, had gone from the camp at the revolver shot.