“What happened, Lieutenant?” demanded the driver as he sprinted up to them. “I heard the shootin’ and lit out for the wagon, which I couldn’t find hide nor hair of.”
“You have lost your wagon, Mr. Fairweather,” Grace informed him.
“What’s thet you say?”
“They have dumped the wagon down into the canyon, and a good part of our equipment is with it,” replied Grace.
Ike, for the moment, was unable to find words appropriate to express his emotion, then, recovering his voice, he launched into a torrent of threats as he stamped about, shaking his clenched fists.
“You will have to catch them before you carry out all those threats, Mr. Fairweather,” reminded Grace. “Lieutenant, the scoundrels have a wounded man with them, and cannot move rapidly. Shall we go after them?”
“Yes,” answered Hippy. “Ike and I will go. You go back and reassure the girls, Brown Eyes.”
“Very good. Yours is the better judgment.”
“I thought you would look at it that way,” observed Hippy.
The two men quickly were swallowed up in the mist, and Grace turned toward the camp, more disturbed in mind than she cared to admit to herself. Should their assailants persist in their attacks on the outfit, it was reasonably certain that one or more of the Overton party sooner or later would be wounded, or worse.