"I will start practicing again to-morrow," promised Miss Briggs.
"You need it. I don't believe you could even catch cold with a rope," teased Lieutenant Wingate.
"Yes I could—I—" Elfreda's following remark was lost in the laughter of her companions. "What I said, but which you folks were too impolite to listen to, was that I will show you whether I can throw a rope or not. Let me have it, Grace."
"You will find it just inside of my tent, on the left-hand side. What are you going to do?"
"I am going out, as soon as it is light enough to see, and practice until breakfast time."
This Miss Briggs did with the graying of the dawn, after a night of peaceful rest, while Grace and Hippy kept guard over the camp. They teased her at breakfast, and Hippy suggested that Elfreda ask Emma Dean to "con-centrate" on her during Miss Briggs' future practice with the lasso.
"To change the subject, I am going to look up the Thompsons and try to make peace with them, provided they are like most of the mountaineers that we have come into intimate contact with," announced Grace. "I suggest that you and I ride out on a tour of investigation this morning, leaving Hippy here to protect the camp, Elfreda. You may take your rope along and practice on me, if you wish," smiled Grace.
"You will be perfectly safe," murmured Emma.
Immediately after breakfast the two girls mounted and rode out along the trail they had been following, now bordered on one side by a field of rustling corn. Reaching the end of the cornfield they discovered, just ahead, a cabin located in an open space of several acres of rugged mountain land.
"That must be the place. We will ride up and find out," announced Grace, clucking to her pony.