Bobby Blake on the School Nine: or, The Champions of the Monatook Lake League. Warner Frank A.
track. A fierce wind was blowing, and in many places the fence rails were almost covered where the snow had drifted.
“Hope we won’t have any trouble in getting to Rockledge,” remarked Fred rather apprehensively.
“Not so bad as that I guess,” said Bobby. “There’s one place though, a little further on, where the track runs through a gulch and that may be pretty well filled up if the storm keeps on.”
“I wonder if there’s anything to eat on the train if we should get snowbound,” ventured Pee Wee.
“Trust Pee Wee to think of his stomach the first thing,” gibed Fred.
“There isn’t any dining car on the train,” said Mouser. “And we’re still a good way from the station where it usually stops for lunch.”
“We’re all right anyway as long as the candy and peanuts hold out,” laughed Bobby.
“Yes,” mourned Pee Wee, “but there isn’t much nourishment in them when a fellow’s really hungry.”
The storm continued without abatement, and the few passengers that got on at the way stations looked like so many polar bears as they shook the clinging flakes from their clothes and shoes.
“Oh well, what do we care,” concluded Pee Wee, settling back in his seat. “There’s no use borrowing trouble. It always comes soon enough if it comes at all.”
“We ought to be used to snow by this time,” remarked Mouser. “After what we went through up in the Big Woods this doesn’t seem anything at all.”
“Listen to the north pole explorer,” mocked Fred. “You’d think, to hear him talk, that he’d been up with Cook or Peary.”
“Well, I’ve got it all over those fellows in one way,” maintained Mouser. “I’ll bet they never had a snowslide come down and cover the shack they were living in.”
“That was a close shave all right,” said Bobby a little soberly, as he thought of what had been almost a tragedy during their recent holiday at Snowtop Camp. “I thought once we were never going to get out of that scrape alive.”
“It was almost as bad when we were chased by the bear,” put in Fred. “We did some good little running that day all right. I thought my breath would never come back.”
“And the running wouldn’t have done us any good if it hadn’t been for good old Don,” added Mouser. “How that old dog did stand up to the bear.”
“He got some fierce old digs from the bear’s claws while he was doing it,” said Bobby.
“He got over them all right,” affirmed Mouser. “I got a letter from my uncle a couple of days ago, and he says that Don is as good as he ever was.”
The train for some time past had been going more and more slowly. Suddenly it came to a halt, although there was no station in sight. It backed up for perhaps three hundred feet, put on all steam and again rushed forward only to come to an abrupt stop with a jerk that almost threw the boys out of their seats.
They looked at each other in consternation.
CHAPTER IV
HELD UP
Once more, as though unwilling to admit that it was conquered, the train backed up and then made a forward dash. But the result was the same. The snorting monster seemed to give up the struggle, and stood puffing and wheezing, with the steam hissing and great volumes of smoke rising from the stack.
“We’re blocked,” cried Bobby.
“It must be that we’ve got to the gulch,” observed Fred.
“A pretty kettle of fish,” grumbled Pee Wee.
“We’re up against it for fair, I guess,” admitted Mouser. “But let’s get out and see how bad the trouble is.”
The boys joined the procession of passengers going down the aisle and jumped off the steps of the car into a pile of snow beside the track that came up to their knees. Pee Wee, who as usual was last, lost his balance as he sprang, and went head over heels into a drift. His laughing comrades helped him to his feet.
“Wallowing like a porpoise,” grinned Fred.
“You went into that snow as if you liked it,” chuckled Bobby.
“Lots of sympathy from you boobs,” grumbled Pee Wee, as he brushed the snow from his face and hair.
“Lots of that in the dictionary,” sang out Mouser. “But come ahead, fellows, and see what’s doing.”
The others waded after Mouser until they stood abreast of the locomotive.
It was a scene of wintry desolation that lay stretched before their eyes. As far as they could see, they could make out little but the white blanket of snow, above which the trees tossed their black and leafless branches. Paths and fences were blotted out, and except for the thin column of smoke that rose from a farmhouse half a mile away, they might have been in an uninhabited world of white.
“Looks like Snowtop, sure enough,” muttered Mouser, as he looked around.
The conductor and the engineer, together with the trainmen, had gathered in a little group near the engine, and the boys edged closer in order to hear what they were saying.
“It’s no use,” the grizzled old engineer was remarking. “The jig’s up as far as Seventy-three is concerned. I tried to get the old girl to buck the drifts, but she couldn’t do it.”
The boys thought it was no wonder that Seventy-three had gone on strike, as they noted that her cowcatcher was buried while the drift rose higher than her stack.
“It’s too bad,” rejoined the conductor, shaking his head in a perplexed fashion. “I’ve been worrying about the gulch ever since it came on to snow so hard. It wouldn’t have mattered so much if it hadn’t been for the wind. That’s slacked up some now, but the damage is done already.”
“What are you going to do, boss?” asked one of the trainmen.
“You’ll have to go back to the last station and wire up to the Junction for them to send the snow-plough down and clear the track,” responded the conductor. “Get a hustle on now and ask them to send it along in a hurry.”
The trainman started back at as fast a pace as the snow permitted, and the engineer climbed back into his cab to get out of the wind while waiting for help. The conductor started back for the smoking car, and as he went past, Bobby ventured to speak to him.
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait here?” he inquired.
“No telling, sonny,” the conductor answered. “Perhaps a couple of hours, maybe longer. It all depends on how soon they can get that snow-plough down to us.”
He passed on and Mouser gave a low whistle.
“Scubbity-yow!” cried Fred, giving vent to his favorite exclamation. “Two long hours in this neck of the woods!”
“And nothing to eat in sight,” groaned Pee Wee.
“I wish I’d let Meena put up that lunch for us this morning,” said Bobby regretfully. “My mother wanted me to bring one along, but I was in a hurry and counted on getting something to eat at the railroad lunch station.”
“What are we going to do?” moaned Pee Wee.
“Fill up on snowballs,” suggested Mouser heartlessly.
Pee Wee glared at him.
“I’m almost as bad as Pee Wee,” said Fred. “I feel as empty as though I hadn’t had anything to eat for a week. I could eat the bark off a tree.”
“I tell you what, fellows,” suggested Bobby, who was usually the leader when it came to action; “what do you say to going over to that farmhouse and trying to buy something to eat? I don’t think they’d let us go away hungry.”
They followed the direction of his pointing finger, and new hope sprang