OVERLANDERS GET A SHOCK

“Here we are again,” cried Lieutenant Hippy Wingate. “Cinnabar! All out for Cinnabar, the gateway to the great Yellowstone National Park. Get busy, you Overlanders, or you’ll be left.”

“Cinnabar! It sounds like something good to eat,” declared Stacy Brown. “The town doesn’t look as if it could furnish much food worthwhile,” he added, peering from the car window as he munched an apple.

“Perhaps not for an appetite such as yours,” retorted Emma Dean. “Why don’t you try absent treatment? Just imagine that you have had a most satisfying meal, and in a few moments you will forget all about your hunger.”

“We had to do that many times in France, did we not?” laughed Grace Harlowe, turning to her companion, Elfreda Briggs.

“Not ‘many times,’ but most of the time,” agreed Elfreda. “Alors! Let’s go!”

Gathering up their belongings, the Overland Riders moved towards the exit of their Pullman car just as the North Coast Limited roared up to the station at Cinnabar, the point at which thousands of tourists stop off during the summer season to visit the Yellowstone National Park, now the destination of the Overlanders themselves. A throng of tourists stepped down from the train to the long low platform in front of the little station.

Among the first to leave the train were the Overland Riders—Grace Harlowe Gray and her husband, Tom Gray, in the lead. A few moments later the train was rumbling away, enveloped in a black cloud of smoke.

Four-in-hand Concord coaches, old-fashioned but in good repair, to which handsome black horses were hitched, were drawn up to the platform to carry away the tourists. There was bustle and laughter and shouting and excitement among the tourists, in which the khaki-clad Overland Riders took no part, for they were experienced travelers now just starting out on their regular summer outing in the saddle. The Overlanders, however, were interested in the busy scene at the little station. The quaint little town with its wooden buildings built in irregular formation, like many other far western towns, sat in a vast amphitheater formed by surrounding mountain ranges.

“Come, girls,” urged Grace Harlowe. “We must busy ourselves, for we have much to do. Tom, please inquire if our guide, Jake Coville, is here.”

“What concerns me most at the moment is where we are to eat,” spoke up Nora Wingate.

“I was about to ask the same question,” nodded Stacy Brown, more familiarly known to his companions as “Chunky,” whose appetite had never been known to be fully appeased.

“There is a hotel sign just across the way,” volunteered Miss Briggs.

“It takes more than a sign to make a hotel,” observed Grace laughingly. “That is especially true in this far western country, as we Riders have had ample evidence.”

“Let’s go! No food is worse than poor food,” urged Stacy.

“Yes. Let’s do,” agreed Emma.

“No breakfast until we have unloaded and fed the ponies,” called Hippy Wingate. “The animals need more attention than we do. Come along.”

“They don’t need it so much as this animal does,” declared Chunky.

“Feed the ponies; then we will think of food for ourselves,” was Hippy’s reply. “Tom, what about the guide?”

“I’ll find out.” Stepping over to the station agent, who was busy with a pile of trunks that had been unloaded from the Limited, Tom asked: “Do you know where we may find Jake Coville?” The agent, before replying, surveyed Tom from head to foot.

“I reckon you’ll find him at home.”

“Where is that, please?”

“Next to the last house down the street, after you have turned to your left, first turn.”

“It is strange that he is not here to meet us,” observed Tom, turning away.

“Perhaps he is one of the independent kind that has to be asked,” suggested Nora.

“So are we,” interjected Stacy.

“Why doesn’t some one go fetch him?” demanded Emma.

“Tom will do so after we get the ponies out,” answered Grace.

“No, you folks take care of the ponies and leave Mr. Coville to me,” urged Stacy. “I know how to handle these wild westerners.”

“After we have taken the animals out,” nodded Tom.

The party hurried down the platform to the stock car that the station agent pointed out to them, and that had been shunted over on the siding by an earlier train. In the freight house end of the station they found a plank gangway intended for use in unloading stock. The runway was not more than three feet wide, but this did not worry the Overlanders. Their ponies were used to traveling over narrow places and would walk over the narrow bridge as confidently as would the Overlanders themselves.

While Tom, Hippy and Stacy were dragging the heavy planking over to the stock car a crowd of curious villagers gathered to witness the unloading of the ponies.

“Troopers?” questioned a native.

“Not exactly,” answered Tom Gray.

“Thought mebby you was a new cavalry company come to do patrol work in the Park. Heard there was a gang coming. Most of the regulars that was on duty in the Park went to France, and some of ’em ain’t come back.”

“Say, do we look like a gang?” demanded Stacy Brown, turning on the speaker.

“Wall, I reckon you might.”

“Then again we might not,” retorted the fat boy.

“Come, Stacy! You aren’t lifting a pound,” rebuked Lieutenant Wingate.

“He never has,” reminded Emma Dean.

“And never will if he can get out of it,” laughed Elfreda Briggs.

“Mebby he’s got all he kin do to lug himself around,” suggested one of the villagers.

Stacy eyed him narrowly.

“That never will bother you because your head is too light to overbalance you,” retorted the fat boy.

“Can you and Tom lift the gangway up?” called Hippy, clinging to the closed car door.

“We can, but we won’t,” answered Stacy.

“Huh! I suppose I shall have to get down and help you,” grunted Lieutenant Wingate.

“You will if you wish to use the gangway to-day,” retorted Stacy. “Don’t you reckon I’d better go look for Jake Coville?”

“Yes, yes, go on,” begged Tom Gray disgustedly.

“All right, I’ll go. Say, it’s a pity some of you lazy village folks wouldn’t turn to and give us a hand. Never saw such an indifferent lot in my life.”

“Why should they, Stacy? They do not belong to our party,” answered Nora Wingate.

“Oh, there isn’t any reason, of course,” grumbled the fat boy.

“Did you ever help anyone out?” questioned Emma.

“Oh, lots of times. I have been doing that all my life,” answered Stacy, sauntering away to go in search of the guide who had failed to meet them.

The girls offered to help put the gangway in place, but the two men would not permit them to do so. At this juncture the agent came out and offered his services, and a moment later the gangway was in place. The station agent then opened the car door.

“There. Now you can get your stock out,” he said.

Hippy took one amazed look at the interior of the car and uttered an exclamation.

“Here, here! What’s this?” he cried.

The Overlanders ran up the gangway and peered in.

“For mercy’s sake!” cried Nora Wingate. “Those are not our ponies.”

The car, instead of holding the slim-limbed, sleek ponies of the Overland outfit, was filled with huge draft horses, such as one sees exhibited at county fairs in the east.

“Mr. Agent, they have dropped the wrong car here. These are not our animals,” declared Hippy.

“I can’t help that,” replied the agent.

“Young man, you march right back to your office and send out a general alarm for one car of ponies missing, and tell your superiors that we shall hold them responsible for the delivery of our animals before night to-day,” warned Hippy. “Get busy.”

The agent said he could do nothing, but Hippy was of a different opinion, and led the agent to the telegraph office where the Overlander sent a peremptory message to the general superintendent.

This done the Overland Riders began looking about for a place to eat and to spend the day and night. They finally found quarters at a hotel, but, after looking the place over, they decided to go into camp. Fortunately, all their equipment had been shipped as baggage, so, hiring a man and a wagon, they had the equipment drawn to the edge of the little town where they pitched their tents and began preparing camp, not knowing how long it might be before they got their ponies.

Many of the villagers followed the party out and observed the process of camp-making with keen interest.

“Government party?” questioned the postmaster.

“No,” answered Lieutenant Wingate shortly.

“We are out for a pleasure trip through the Park,” Grace informed him.

“Oh! Been out before, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir. A great many times. There comes Stacy. He looks disturbed about something,” said Grace.

“That is because he thinks he has missed his breakfast,” chuckled Emma Dean.

“What’s the matter, Stacy?” called Nora. “We thought you were lost.”

“I was. Nobody seemed to know where you folks had gone. I’ve had an awful experience, worst I ever had in my life, and—”

“Did you find Coville?” interrupted Tom Gray as he drove home a tent peg.

“Find him? I should say I did. Most distressing thing you ever heard of. I know I shall never get over the shock that I got this day.” Stacy plainly was laboring under a severe nerve strain, as his companions discerned, and therefore no one attempted to tease him.

“Tell us about it,” urged Grace gently.

“What’s the matter now?” demanded Hippy Wingate, returning from the station. “Didn’t you find Coville?”

“Yes, I found him.” Stacy mopped the perspiration from his face with, a sleeve.

“Then why is he not here attending to his business?” demanded Hippy with some irritation.

“I’ll tell you the story, then you’ll understand,” answered Stacy soberly. “I found the place where Coville lived and I was met at the door by a red-eyed woman who looked as if she had been crying. I asked her if Jake was there and she said ‘yes’ and burst into tears. Well, would you believe me, folks—”

“Oh, we will believe anything after this horse-car mystery,” returned Hippy Wingate impatiently.

“I told her who I was and that Jake was to be our guide, and, what do you think—”

“Don’t stall. Get to the point,” urged Tom.

“She said, ‘He ain’t nobody’s guide now. Jake’s dead!’”

The Overland Riders gasped.

“Who—what—” exclaimed Nora.

“Uh-huh. He passed out suddenly.”

“Oh, that is too bad,” cried the girls, their voices full of sympathy.

“We hadn’t even heard that he was ill,” added Elfreda.

“He wasn’t—that is, not until yesterday when he got kicked in the head by a horse, and that was the last of him. But never so long as I live will I get over the shock,” muttered Stacy. “Don’t talk to me. I guess I want to get away by myself and think,” added Stacy, sobered, deeply affected for the first time in his life.

“We must do something for the family, provided they need it,” suggested Grace. “Any news from our missing horses, Hippy?”

“Not a word. The railroad officials profess to know nothing about them and insist that the car we have is the car that went out with us when we left Denver.”

“Oh, I hope we do not lose our wonderful ponies,” cried Elfreda.

“There’s no possibility of that,” replied Lieutenant Wingate, “We may be delayed here for a few days waiting for the railroad people to straighten out the tangle, so let’s make the best of a bad situation and enjoy ourselves.”

As later events proved, Hippy Wingate was not a true prophet, for the Overlanders were face to face with a mystery that would not be solved in many a day. Their summer’s outing had begun under the most unfavorable conditions of any summer journey they had ever undertaken.