“You are a fine hero, aren’t you?” observed Emma sarcastically, when Stacy, having finally reached the protection of the rocks, got up and brushed the dirt from his clothes.
“No. All the heroes are dead. I don’t want to be a hero. What’s the news from the front?”
“Impossible!” muttered Tom, laughing in spite of himself. Tom had been pondering, wondering, trying to account satisfactorily to himself for this attempt on their lives.
“What do you make of it?” asked Elfreda, nodding at him.
“It may have been accidental,” he replied.
Grace shook her head.
“No, they were shooting at us,” declared Hippy.
“I have been wondering, thinking about what Mr. Giddings told us at the ‘Lazy J’ ranch,” said Miss Briggs. “You remember what he said about the mysterious Aerial Lake, don’t you?”
“It is my opinion that we have been bombarding that very same lake,” declared Grace. “That, however, does not explain the shots.”
“Perhaps not,” returned Elfreda, “but it does go a long way towards proving that there is something in what the foreman of the ‘Lazy J’ told us. I, for one, am in favor of giving that lake a wide berth.”