“Trout! Me for them,” cried Hippy. “You come along, Tom, and perhaps, between us, we may be able to find the beautiful creature that gave Grace the first real scare of her life. I’m glad you have found something that frightens you,” chuckled Hippy. “Me for the fish now.”
Tom accompanied Lieutenant Wingate, leaving Stacy with the girls, and with instructions to stay in camp. The two men returned two hours later with a mess of trout sufficient to last the party several days. Stacy was asked to assist in cleaning them, then the fish were broiled, and a delicious trout meal was enjoyed. Not since they started had they sat down to such dainty food.
The Overland Riders were on the trail early next morning. This trail eventually led them up the side of a mountain, over places where they were obliged to hitch ropes to the ponies to assist them over particularly troublesome spots, yet it was all great fun.
As the party went on, game become more plentiful. Quail scuttled away at their approach, with heads ducked low, and here and there a flash of brown and white told of a frightened deer fleeing to safety. No one ventured a shot. The party had sufficient provisions for present needs, and further, it was understood that, unless absolutely necessary, there was to be no shooting. Tom, however, killed a rattler that lay coiled on a shelf of granite buzzing away like an alarm clock, but that was the only exciting incident of the morning’s ride. By noon they had worked their way up to an apparently impassable ridge. Tom went on ahead, soon returning with the welcome information that there appeared to be a break in the ridge about a mile to the south of them, and that he thought they could get through it.
The Overlanders made camp late that afternoon, and on the following morning, now thoroughly rested, they followed rough and rugged trails, surmounting difficulties almost as great as the worst they had met above timber line. Their reward came later in the morning when they discovered that they had unerringly followed the right course.
“There’s the lake!” shouted Nora.
Before them, framed in a rim of black forest and rock, lay a lake of the deepest emerald green they had ever gazed upon. About the shore, and extending down to the water, white pebbles formed a mat for the picture.
“It is our Aerial Lake,” declared Grace. “It is the same lake that we saw several days ago and that we bombarded with rocks.” From somewhere in that vicinity the shots that had disturbed them undoubtedly had been fired. It was quite a large body of water, just how large they could not see, on account of a sharp bend in the lake, and intervening mountains.
“Aren’t we going down to make camp now?” asked Elfreda Briggs.
“Yes, for I’m just dying to know what the secret, the great dark secret, of Aerial Lake really is,” bubbled Emma.