“Sure! Huh!”
“But they’re not! That’s where the mystery of it comes in. They must be terribly poor or they wouldn’t be living that way. Lola talks well—but then her grandmother educated her most likely. I can’t get it out of my head that there’s a nigger in the woodpile somewhere. Gee, I’d like to get up the courage to ask her what else she knows, wouldn’t you?”
There was a protracted silence and when Rip did answer it seemed to come from afar.
“Sh-sh-ure!”
“Can’t you say anything but sure?”
“Sure! Good-night!”
CHAPTER XVII—A LAKE BEWITCHED
The next morning early, the Educational Film squad set out early to meet Lola, who had promised to show them some of the beauties of Raton Range that no one but a native of the mountains would be cognizant of.
Lola, Westy and Rip walked ahead chatting gayly. Up narrow paths they went single file. Paths that were partially hidden with underbrush and had felt the tread of many generations of mankind, both red and white, were now overgrown from disuse.
Above them the barren-coned peaks rose high into the cloudless blue, and the weird-shaped forms stood like sentinels guarding the miles of untracked mountain wilderness.