While Grace was making a general observation of the landscape, Lieutenant Wingate was endeavoring to follow the trail of the unknown horsemen to determine, as definitely as possible, the direction that they had taken. Their trail, which he followed for nearly a mile, still continued towards the peak, and it was his belief that that was their destination, or at least some other near-by point where they might hope to meet up with the Overland party.
Hippy pondered over this, and found himself wondering what the motive of the horsemen might be. Still pondering, he began retracing his steps to meet Grace at a point decided upon before they started away on separate trails.
Lieutenant Wingate was cautiously making his way through a thick growth of bushes, watching his step and listening for the familiar whirring warning of a rattler, when a sudden interruption occurred, an interruption that caused Hippy to throw himself on the ground, and lie still.
The interruption was a bullet, a bullet that clipped his hat, nipping a piece out of the brim, and giving the Overlander a scare. At first he thought the shot might have been fired by one of his own party, and was about to call out a warning, but changed his mind and began wriggling away from the scene. He had, by this time, forgotten all about the snake peril, his one burning desire being to get as far away from that locality as possible in the shortest possible time.
Hippy found it slow going, because he twisted and turned so much, following as crooked a trail as he could lay out for himself, for the purpose of confusing the author of that shot, should the fellow decide to follow him.
Suddenly Hippy thought of Grace. She, too, might be in peril. His first inclination was to get up and run to their rendezvous, but upon second thought he came to the conclusion that it would be wiser to make an effort to discover the one who had shot at him. With this in view, Lieutenant Wingate began making a detour with the intention of coming up behind the shooter, Hippy having a good general idea of the position occupied by the man at the time the shot was fired.
All his efforts came to naught. He had spent nearly an hour in stalking his man before he realized that he was wasting time.
While he was engaged in his quest Grace had sat listening. She had heard the shot, and reasoned that it had been fired from somewhere in Hippy’s direction. There being no answering shot, however, she forced herself to believe that her companion had shot at a snake, and decided to proceed on to the place where they were to meet before returning to camp.
Grace took a different route to reach the spot, and this route took her near a swiftly moving stream of water that flowed down into the lake. The stream was wide where she came upon it, and to find a suitable fording place the Overland girl continued on further up-stream. Her way led her under an overhang of granite rocks several feet higher than her head. Beneath her was a pool, deeper than the stream below, and in the pool she saw fish darting. The pool seemed to be fairly alive with them.
Grace’s mind instantly turned to what the foreman of the “Lazy J” ranch had said about the golden trout in the High Sierras.