"Yer headin' fer it," answered the man.

"If Laundry gives the mule a free rein, we probably shall reach our destination sooner than if the boy tries to guide the animal," suggested Elfreda Briggs.

As they neared the schoolhouse they heard the music of the "band," as Julie had been pleased to call it. Hearing, Washington Washington played his own musical instrument with renewed vigor.

Many others, bound toward the schoolhouse, laughed and made remarks, or greeted the Overlanders pleasantly as they pa.s.sed.

The ponies and the mule were tethered to trees hard by the schoolhouse, after which the party filed into the building, with Washington trailing along after them, rolling his eyes and wagging his head in rhythm with the music of violin and banjo.

The music proved too much for Washington to endure in silence, and the Overland Riders were amazed when he clapped the harmonica to his lips and began to play with the two musicians.

Grace started for the boy, but another got to him ahead of her. A young mountaineer picked up the colored boy and tossed him out through a window. It was not so roughly done that the Overlanders could make a protest, and the young fellow who had performed the feat turned from the window laughing over the neat way he had checked Washington's musical interference.

The dance already was under full headway. The floor swayed and groaned, and the building fairly rocked under the rhythmic a.s.sault of more than twenty pairs of stamping, shuffling feet. A smoking oil lamp supplied a dull, smoky haze so that it was difficult for friends to recognize each other from opposite ends of the room. All eyes, including those of the dancers, had been turned to the newcomers as the Overlanders filed in and took seats on benches at one side of the room.

It was but a few moments later when Hippy and Nora swung out on the floor and Hippy was soon raising the dust with the best of them.

He then danced with each of the girls of his party in turn. Grace, watching the unusual scene with keen interest, observed that there was little or no change of partners. Each young mountaineer danced with the same girl most of the time, and she concluded that this was the custom up there in the mountains.

At the end of the first dance after their arrival, Grace called Emma over to her.

"I brought two boxes of candy with me, Emma," she whispered. "There is one box left at the camp and I wish to give that to the Thompson children. Do you wish to pa.s.s these two boxes around to the mountain girls?"

Emma was delighted. It gave her an opportunity to place herself in a more prominent position than she had occupied on a bench at the side of the schoolroom.

At first the mountain girls were shy, but they soon overcame their diffidence and helped themselves liberally--by the handful--to sweets such as few of them ever had tasted.

"This is Mrs. Gray's treat," explained Emma to each girl.

"Don't Ah git any?" teased the young mountaineer who had a.s.sisted Washington through the window.

"Yes. You get left," came back Emma spiritedly.

"Ah never gits left," he retorted, springing up and grabbing the little Overland girl.

In a few seconds they were swinging around the room in a waltz, Emma's face flushed and triumphant, the face of the partner of the man she was dancing with growing blacker with the moments. The mountaineer would not release Emma until she had danced two dances with him, and by that time the girl he had brought to the party refused even to look at him.

Emma made her unsought partner introduce her to other boys, and with smiles and teasing she won many partners, until the room was bordered with a ring of blazing and snapping eyes, all resentful at her success in winning their escorts.

Grace tried to catch her eye to warn her, but Emma studiously refrained from permitting that very thing. Soon the mountain girls allowed themselves to be led to the dancing floor by others than their own escorts.

The atmosphere was becoming highly charged. Even Hippy had swung a mountain miss out to the floor and was dancing with her, but the Overland girls, with the exception of Emma, had smilingly declined when invited by mountain boys to dance.

Men, under the scornful smiles on the faces of their regular partners, were growing sullen. The laughter was dying from the faces of the dancers, and it was quite evident that trouble was brewing.

"Call Hippy to you and tell him to sit down by you, Nora," whispered Grace Harlowe. "I will catch Emma at the end of this dance, if I can.

That child is going to start a riot if she is allowed to go on much longer."

Hippy got his summons a few moments thereafter. He obeyed it as gracefully as he could, but rather against his inclinations, for he was having a jolly time of it, forgetting for the moment that he was "a marked man."

Grace explained the situation briefly to Hippy, and told him that between himself and Emma they had created a situation that bade fair to end in trouble.

"What's the odds? I am a marked man anyway," answered Hippy, shrugging his shoulders.

"You will be marked in reality if those husky young mountaineers get after you. Please keep your seat and fade out of the picture," urged Grace. "You see--"

A voice to one side of her arrested Grace Harlowe's attention. She recognized it as the voice of Julie Thompson, whom she had not seen at the dance up to that time, though she had been looking for her.

"Oh, Mr. Hipp," Julie was saying. "Ah wants t' give you-all a knockdown to mah feller. Oh, here's Miss Gray, too. Folks, this is my feller, Lum Bangs."

"Sounds like a pain in the back," muttered Hippy.

"Lum, shake paws with Mister Hipp an' Miss Gray. They're the folks that air campin' down by Paw's cornfield."

"Glad to meet you, Lum, for we all think Julie is a mighty fine--"

Hippy's voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur as he gazed up into the face of Julie's stalwart escort. He heard Grace give utterance to a scarcely audible laugh, but at that moment Hippy Wingate did not feel like laughter, for in Lum Bangs he recognized the "constable" whom he had knocked down and driven from the Overland camp by the cornfield.

CHAPTER XVIII

AN INTERRUPTED PARTY

"Oh! It's you, is it?" muttered Lieutenant Wingate, rising slowly, his eyes fixed on the face of the man before him.

"Ah reckons as it's me," agreed Lum, permitting a hand to slip carelessly inside his coat across the chest, where Lieutenant Wingate had reason to believe that a revolver hung suspended from a shoulder holster. This being the case, he considered it inadvisable to reach for his own weapon.

As yet the drama being played by the two men had not attracted the attention of those in the schoolroom, with the exception of the Overland girls who had recognized Lum instantly, and Julie Thompson, who was gazing open-mouthed from one to the other of them.

"Ah told ye t' git out, didn't Ah?" demanded the mountaineer in a strained voice.

"And I put you out," retorted Hippy. "This is no place for a fight. If you wish to see me, come around to our camp in the morning."

"Be careful, Hippy," warned Anne in a low tone.

"Ah'm goin' t' say it agin, once more. You git out o' this right smart or Ah'll put er hole through yer miserable carca.s.s!"

Hippy suddenly found himself facing a revolver in the hands of Lum Bangs.

The dancers stopped dancing, a couple at a time, and quickly got out of range of Lum Bangs' weapon; the music died away, and a heavy silence, tense with possibilities, settled over the hot, smoky room.

"Are ye goin'?"

"On one condition--that you put down your gun and come outside with me.

We'll have it out man to man. These gentlemen will give us fair play, and the fellow who is whipped takes his medicine and goes. Are you man enough to come out and stand up to me?" Hippy thrust out his chin, and there was a set expression on his face, such as Grace Harlowe recalled having seen there immediately after he had shot down three German airplanes on the French fighting front.

"No, no!" begged Nora, not much above a whisper.