“If you will promise not to leave camp, and to fire a shot at the least suspicious sound or occurrence, I will go out,” he said. “One of you had better go to the rock and take station there until my return.”
Grace said she would do that. Matters were working out to her satisfaction, and, after telling Elfreda to take her rifle and post herself a short distance to the rear of the camp, and assigning Emma and Nora to the right and left ends of their camping place, Grace climbed the rock and sat down. After Ham White, following a survey of the camp and her arrangements, of which he approved with a nod and a wave of the hand, had left the camp, Grace got up and looked for the signal flag, which she found under a flat stone.
“Now! Having disposed of my companions I shall see what I shall and can see,” she told herself.
Securing the signal flag, the Overland girl took a survey of the landscape. A vast sea of dense forest lay all about her, broken here and there by a white-capped mountain. Nothing that looked as if it might be a fire-lookout station attracted her eyes. She had used her field glasses, but without result.
A moment of vigorous signalling on her part followed, after which Grace swept the landscape again. She discovered nothing at all. Another trial was made, and the word “answer” was spelled out by her.
Her eye caught a faint something far to the north of her, and Grace’s glasses were at her eyes in a twinkling. A little white flag was fluttering up and down against the background of forest green in the far distance.
“I’ve got him!” cried the girl exultingly. “I’ve got him!” Then, wigwagging, Grace Harlowe signalled the one word, “Report!”
“Who?” came the answer, almost before she could get the glasses to her eyes to read the message.
“For White,” she wigwagged. “Report!”
Holding the flag, now lowered to the rock, with one hand, the other holding the glasses to her eyes, Grace bent every faculty to watching that little fluttering, bobbing square of white, that, at her distance from it, looked little larger than a postage stamp.