“I TELL you I heard Grace’s signal shots!” protested Elfreda Briggs, in reply to Hippy’s declaration that he had heard no shots except the three fired by Elfreda.
“Listening, as I was, I surely would have heard the signal had she given it,” averred the lieutenant. “It’s too dark to see anything, but of course, if you girls have anything to suggest, I am ready to act.”
“Hippy Wingate! You don’t mean that you’re going to sit down and leave Grace and Emma in that terrible canyon all night?” protested Nora, indignantly.
“No, not without an effort to find them. I didn’t mean that I should sit by the campfire and wait for daylight. I’m going now.” Hippy slung his rifle under his arm and strode off toward the creek. “Should anything break loose, shoot,” he called back.
Reaching the creek, the lieutenant trudged along it to the canyon, Elfreda having told him that Grace had gone in that direction. He examined the bank of the creek with a pocket lamp that Anne had handed to him, as Grace had done before him, but failed to find footprints. When he arrived at the point from which other canyons radiated, the lieutenant took the wrong one and wandered along its course for half a mile. Finding nothing of what he sought, he returned to the creek and searched along a second canyon, and so on until finally reaching the dark ravine through which Grace really had gone in search of Emma. Hippy, on the contrary, failed to find a trail.
It was long past midnight when finally he gave up his search and started back to the camp. As he neared it, he discovered, by the light of the campfire, that a string of ponies was being led down from the Apache Trail.
“There comes Ike! Now we’ll see what can be done,” cried the lieutenant in a relieved tone. Hippy started on a run for the camp. By the time he reached there Ike had arrived and the Overton girls were gathered about him, all speaking at once, trying to tell him of the disaster that had befallen them.
“Them critters got Miss Dean and Mrs. Gray?” demanded Ike.
“We do not know. We know that they are missing,” replied Elfreda. “Hippy, did you discover anything?”
“Not a thing.”