“Huh! Got a family?” Ike was determined to get all the information he could. He had been doing it for years from the passengers who rode with him on top of the stage.
“If you mean children, I have a daughter, an adopted French girl. I found her in a deserted French village one night, the village at the time being under heavy artillery fire. I adopted the little one later, and she is now at school back east. Isn’t that Squaw Valley?” asked Grace, pointing.
“Thet’s her.”
A few moments later the stagecoach drew out to one side of the trail and stopped.
“All out for mess,” cried Grace, springing to the ground. “How do you folks feel after that delightful ride?”
“Ride, did you call it?” demanded Hippy Wingate, getting out laboriously and limping about to take the kinks out of his legs. “It’s worse than hitting one of those bumpy white clouds with an airplane.”
“Grace Harlowe, I believe you gave us that shaking up on purpose,” accused Elfreda Briggs.
The others voiced their protests in no uncertain manner.
“You will forget all about it after we have made tea and cooked our bacon,” comforted Grace, neither admitting nor denying the accusation. “There is nothing like a good shaking up to accelerate one’s appetite.”
Under Grace Harlowe’s skillful hands a little fire was soon flickering beside the trail, the driver eyeing the blaze with approval; then the Overton girls got briskly to work preparing the supper.