“I sentence the prisoner to ten years’ hard labor,” she announced.
Shouts of laughter, and a cry from Emma that he should be sent up for life, put the Overlanders in a merry mood. Even Ike Fairweather, whose eyes had grown large under the spell of Hippy’s oratory, permitted himself to indulge in a loud guffaw.
After a rather hurried breakfast, the outfit began packing up for the start. It was not an easy task to pack the tents and equipment on the backs of the horses, in view of the fact that each animal, except the wagon horses, must also carry a rider. The work was finally accomplished, however, each rider placing a pack of small stuff on her own back, in addition to the pack already lashed to the back of her pony.
Before starting out, Grace induced Elfreda to remove the bandage from her head. The wound was found to be healed, much to the relief of both.
Ike had made an early start, and two hours later the Overlanders galloped away, and then began the downward ride that would take them to the great artificial waterway, where both entertainment and adventure awaited them.
CHAPTER XIX
HEROINES OF THE TRAIL
ON the way to Roosevelt, before the Overland girls caught up with him, Ike Fairweather had met a deputy sheriff and posse, who had been in the mountains looking for a horse thief, but were now returning to the place for which the Overlanders were headed.
From Ike the deputy learned of the attacks on the Overland girls, and of their plucky defense. Ike, furthermore, became loquacious, told the officer all he knew about Grace Harlowe and her friends, not forgetting the redoubtable Hippy Wingate who had “shot down more German airplanes than any other man in the Allied armies.”
When the deputy reached Roosevelt, he repeated Ike’s story at the Lodge, as the hotel at Roosevelt Lake was called, so, without their knowledge, the Overlanders’ praises were sung there some hours in advance of their arrival. When the girls came up with Ike just before noon that day, and took luncheon with him, Mr. Fairweather discreetly neglected to mention what he had told the deputy sheriff about them.