“Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had discovered a pool of those live nuggets!” she cried, throwing herself down and gazing into the pool, on which the sunlight shone, mirroring her own face and the rocks behind her on its surface.
“They aren’t golden trout at all; they are mountain trout, and oh, what beauties! I must tell Hippy and have him get a mess for us. I reckon that golden trout story is a myth. However, golden or speckled beauties, it is all the same to the Overlanders. A mess of fish is what they need. I—”
The Overland girl paused suddenly. The smile on the face she saw in the water faded and a catch interrupted her breath.
“Wha—at is it?” she gasped.
In the water, beside her own, another face was reflected. It was the face of a woman. At first, Grace believed that some trick of nature was showing her a double of her own face, distorted and unrecognizable, but she instantly realized that this could not be possible. The face that she was looking down into on the surface of the pool was as hideous a countenance as she had ever gazed upon, scarred, distorted and crowned by a head of matted hair that bristled at its top and hung in tangled skeins over the ears. The face was all that she could see.
For an instant the eyes of the girl and the woman above her seemed to meet on the face of the waters.
Grace whirled and sprang up, revolver in hand, for there was menace in the eyes that she had been looking into.
Quick as the Overland girl was, Grace Harlowe found herself gazing up at a barren shelf of rock, unoccupied, silent as a tomb, with not a sign of life to be seen, either there or anywhere about her.
It was inexplicable. A feeling of something akin to terror took possession of Grace Harlowe, then all at once, panic seized her, and, uttering a little cry, she fled on fleet foot back down the stream, unheeding where it might lead her, hoping and thinking only of getting away from that which had given her such a fright.