"This is Tom's tent. Oh, I am so glad," cried Grace.
"Yes. But where is Tom?"
"It is all right. He may be away from here for days, sleeping in the open, living as only a woodsman knows how to live. You know he is making a survey of this tract, and, I presume, doesn't find it convenient to take his equipment with him. Now I am content to settle down and wait for him. In the meantime we can do some exploring on our own account. I wonder who Tom has with him?"
"What do you mean?"
"Tracks of two different persons right there," answered Grace, pointing to the ground. "Where are your eyes, J. Elfreda?"
"Let's go back," suggested Miss Briggs, sighing deeply. "We must let the girls know at once."
All the Overlanders, except Nora Wingate, were quickly rounded up and told the good news. Nora was nowhere in sight, but Hippy said she was picking mountain berries about a quarter of a mile to the south of the camp, and that she had probably forgotten what she had been sent out for. He said, however, that he would go out and look for her.
In the meantime, Nora had been sitting eating the hatful of berries that she had gathered, gazing off over the rugged landscape and enjoying the mountain scenery bathed in the early morning sunlight. The mountains, in that softening light, lost their hideousness and were really beautiful to look upon. Nora's eyes, slowly absorbing the scene before her, suddenly paused in their roving and fixed their gaze on a point some twenty yards below her. Nora was looking down on the crown of a sombrero. Below it, the figure that the hat belonged to was invisible in the dense growth of vine and bush.
"Faith, and what's that?" murmured Nora, half humorously. "I know. It's that husband of mine wanting to give me a scare. Wait! I'll make the rascal jump."
Nora Wingate groped for and found a small piece of rock, chuckling softly to herself. Rising cautiously she aimed the rock to fall several feet to one side of the man below her, then reaching her hand far back she let fly, just as she had seen bombers do in France when practicing bomb-throwing.