No one was in her tent when finally Grace opened her eyes. After a few minutes of blissful resting, the Overton girl got up and dressed. She was a little dizzy at first, but the sensation quickly passed, and she walked out just as luncheon was being prepared.
There was a shout of welcome as Grace appeared, and the girls of the party ran to her, fairly overwhelming her with their joyous embraces. Emma, who had awakened and dressed, came out a few minutes after Grace.
“We are famished. Please give us something to eat,” begged Grace. “While we are eating you may tell us what has been going on here.”
“I reckon we’d like to hear ’bout you first,” spoke up Ike.
Grace thereupon related the story of the experiences of herself and Emma, touching briefly on her own part in it.
“I reckon the woman thet got shot is goin’ to die,” observed Ike.
“How do you know?” questioned Grace, bending a keen glance on the driver.
“Heard the bandits talkin’ about it up in the mountains.”
Ike then told of the search that Hippy and himself had made for the missing girls, of their losing the trail and not finding it again, and finally of having discovered the bandits, spied on them, and from their conversation learned that Grace Harlowe and Emma Dean had escaped.
Ike said he learned, too, that the bandits were about to start for the Overton camp, at the direction of Belle Bates, “and shoot the place up for keeps,” as Ike put it. Hearing that, and knowing that the two girls had escaped, Ike and Hippy started for home as fast as their horses could travel, fully expecting to find Grace and Emma at the camp. They had arrived at camp about an hour before the bandits.