“I’ve got it! I’ve got it, Lieutenant!” cried Ike, springing up. “It’s a cold trail.”
“A trail with snow or something on it?” questioned Hippy innocently. “I haven’t seen snow in these mountains, but I presume there is plenty of it.”
“No, no, Lieutenant. A cold trail’s a fixed trail—doctored so as to mislead a trailer, or covered up altogether so he can’t find it. I reckon Ike Fairweather ain’t goin’ to be fooled by no cheap mountain trick like thet. Lieutenant, you work to the right, while I go to the left. Take a wide circle along the top of the mountain an’ come up with me by thet monument you can see the top of over to the north’ard. Watch the ground like sixty, an’ watch out for broken twigs an’ crushed clumps of grass. If you find any, sit still an’ wait for me.”
Hippy Wingate wheeled his pony and trotted off to the right, peering at the ground, a puzzled expression in his eyes.
“I shouldn’t know a frozen trail, or whatever you call it, if I saw one,” he muttered helplessly.
CHAPTER XII
AN INTERRUPTED INTERVIEW
“YOU come with me, Mrs. Gray!” commanded the woman who had lured Grace to capture. “I reckon you and me got somethin’ to settle.”
“I do not know what you mean, but I am ready,” announced Grace, rising. “Come, Emma!”
“You set where you be!” ordered Belle savagely.