Ruth Fielding In the Saddle; College Girls in the Land of Gold

It was really amazing that Edith was not discovered before they reached Chicago. After that her reservation was in another car. Then on the fifth night of their journey came something that quite put the sophomore out of Ruth Fielding’s mind, and out of Tom Cameron’s as well.

They had changed trains and were on the trans-continental line when the startling incident happened. The porter had already begun arranging the berths when the train suddenly came to a jarring stop.

“What is the matter?” asked Miss Cullam of the porter. She already had her hair in “curlers” and was longing for bed.

“I done s’pect we broke in two, Ma’am,” said the darkey, rolling his eyes. “Das’ jes’ wot it seems to me,” and he darted out of the car.

There was a long wait; then some confusion arose outside the train. Tom came in from the rear. “Here’s a pretty kettle of fish,” he said.

“What is it, Tommy?” demanded his sister.

“The train broke in two and the front end got over a bridge here, and, being on a down grade, the engineer could not bring his engine to a stop at once. And now the bridge is afire. Come on out, girls. You might as well see the show.”

CHAPTER VI – SOMEBODY AHEAD OF THEM

Even Miss Cullam – in her dressing gown – trailed out of the car after Tom. The sky was alight from the blazing bridge. It was a wooden structure, and burned like a pine knot.

Beyond the rolling cloud of smoke they could see dimly the lamps of the forward half of the train. The coupling having broken between two Pullmans, the engine had attached to it only the baggage and mail coaches, the dining car and one sleeping car.

The other Pullmans and the observation coach were stalled on the east side of the river.

“And no more chance of getting over to-night than there is of flying,” a brakeman confided to Tom and the girls. “That bridge will be a charred wreck before midnight.”

“Oh, goodness me! What shall we do?” was the cry. “Can’t we get over in boats?”

“Where will you get the boats?” sniffed Miss Cullam.

“And the water’s low in the river at this season,” said the brakeman. “Couldn’t use anything but a skiff.”

“What then?” Tom asked, feeling responsibility roweling him. “We’re not destined to remain here till they rebuild the bridge, I hope?”

“The conductor is wiring back for another engine. We’ll pull back to Janesburg and from there take the cross-over line and go on by the Northern Route. It will put us back fully twelve hours, I reckon.”

“Good-night!” exploded Tom.

“Why, what does it matter?” asked Helen, wonderingly. “We have all the time there is, haven’t we?”

“Presumably,” Miss Cullam said drily.

“But I telegraphed ahead to Yucca for rooms at the hotel,” Tom explained, slowly, “and sent a long message to that guide Mr. Hammond told you about, Ruth.”

“Oh!” cried Helen, giggling. “Flapjack Peters – such a romantic name. Mr. Hammond wrote Ruth that he was a ‘character.’”

“‘H. J. Peters,’” Tom read, from his memorandum. “Yes. I told him just when we would arrive and told him that after one night’s sleep at the hotel we’d want to be on our way. But if we don’t get there – ”

“Oh, Tom, there’s Ann, too!” Ruth exclaimed. “She will be at Yucca too early if we are delayed so.”

“I’ll send some more telegrams when we get to Janesburg,” Tom promised Ruth and his sister. “One to Ann Hicks, too.”

“Those people in the forward Pullman will get through on time,” Jennie Stone said. “I’m always losing something. ‘’Twas ever thus, since childhood’s hour, my fondest hopes I’ve seen decay,’ and so forth!”

Tom whispered to Ruth: “That sophomore from Ardmore will get ahead of us. She’s in the forward Pullman.”

“Oh, Edith!” murmured Ruth. “She was in that car, wasn’t she?”

They were all in bed, as were the other tourists in the delayed Pullmans, before the extra locomotive the conductor had sent for arrived. It was coupled to the stalled half of the train and started back for Janesburg without one of the party bound for Yucca being the wiser.

Tom Cameron meant to send the supplementary telegrams from that junction as he had said. Indeed, he had written out several – one to his father to relieve any anxiety in the merchant’s mind should he hear of the accident to their train; one to the guide, Peters; one to Ann Hicks to supplement the one already awaiting her at Yucca; and a fourth to the hotel.

But as he wished to put these messages on the wire himself, Tom did not entrust them to the negro porter. Instead he lay down in his berth with only his shoes removed – and he awoke in the morning with the sun flooding the opposite side of the car where the porter had already folded up the berths!

“Good gracious, Agnes!” gasped Tom, appearing in the corridor with his shoes in his hand. “What time is it? Eight-thirty? Is my watch right?”

“Ah reckon so, boss,” grinned the porter. “‘Most ev’rybody’s up an’ dressin’.”

“And I wanted to send those telegrams from Janesburg.”

“Oh Lawsy-massy! Janesburg’s a good ways behint us, boss,” said the porter. “Ef yo’ wants to send ’em pertic’lar from dere, yo’ll have to wait till our trip East, Ah reckon.”

Tom did not feel much like laughing. In fact, he felt a good deal of annoyance. He made some further enquiries and discovered that it would be an hour yet before the train would linger long enough at any station for him to file telegrams.

They spent one more night “sleeping on shelves,” as Jennie Stone expressed it, than they had counted upon. Miss Cullam went to her berth with a groan.

“Believe me, my dears,” she announced, “I shall welcome even a saddle as a relief from these cars. You are all nice girls, if I do say it, who perhaps shouldn’t. I flatter myself I have had something to do with molding your more or less plastic minds and dispositions. But I must love you a great deal to ever attempt another such long journey as this for you or with you.”

“Oh, Miss Cullam!” cried Trix Davenport, “we will erect a statue to you on Bliss Island – right near the Stone Face. And on it shall be engraved: ‘Nor granite is more enduring than Miss Cullam.’”

“I wonder,” murmured the teacher, “if that is complimentary or otherwise?”

But they all loved her. Miss Cullam developed very human qualities indeed, take her away from mathematics!

The party was held up for two hours at Kingman, waiting for a local train to steam on with them to their destination. And there Tom learned something which rather troubled him.

Telegrams were never received direct at Yucca. The railroad business was done by telephone, and all the messages sent to Yucca were telephoned through to the station agent – if that individual chanced to be on hand. Otherwise they were entrusted to the rural mail carrier. One could almost count the inhabitants of Yucca on one’s fingers and toes!

“Jiminy!” gasped Tom, when he learned these particulars. “I bet I’ve made a mess of it.”

He tried to find out at the Kingman station what had become of the final messages he had sent. The operator on duty when they arrived was now off duty, and he lived out of town.

“If they were mailed, son,” observed the man then at the telegraph table, “you will get to Yucca about two hours before the mail gets there. Here comes your train now.”

Had the girls not been so gaily engaged in chattering, they must have noticed Tom’s solemn face. He was disturbed, for he felt that the comfort of the party, as well as the arrangements for the trip into the hills, was his own particular responsibility.

It was late afternoon when the combination local (half baggage and freight, and half passenger) hobbled to a stop at Yucca. Besides a dusty looking individual in a cap who served the railroad as station agent, there was not a human being in sight.

“What a jolly place!” cried Jennie Stone, turning to all points of the compass to gaze. “So much life! We’re going to have a gay time in Yucca, I can see.”

“Sh!” begged Trix. “Don’t wake them up.”

“Awaken whom, my dear?” drawled Sally Blanchard.

“The dead, I think,” said Helen. “This place must be the understudy for a graveyard.”

At that moment a gray muzzle was thrust between the rails of a corral beside the track and an awful screech rent the air, drowning the sound of the locomotive whistle as the train rolled away.

“For goodness’ sake! what is that?” begged Rebecca, quite startled.

“Mountain canary,” laughed Helen. “That is what will arouse you at dawn – and other times – while we are on the march to Freezeout.”

“You don’t mean to say,” demanded Trix, “that all that sound came out of that little creature?” And she ran over to the corral fence the better to see the burro.

“And he didn’t need any help,” drawled Jennie. “Oh! you’ll get used to little things like that.”

“Never to that little thing,” said Miss Cullam, tartly. “Can’t he be muzzled?”

Meanwhile Tom had seized upon the station agent. He was a long, lean, “drawly” man, with seemingly a very languid interest in life.

“What telegrams?” he drawled.

Tom explained more fully and the man referred to a memorandum book he carried in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.

“Yep. Three messages received over the ’phone from Kingman station. All delivered.”

“Good!” Tom exclaimed, with vast relief.

“Four days ago,” added the station agent.

That was a dash of cold water. “Didn’t you receive other telegrams in the same way yesterday?”

“Not a one.”

“Where have they gone, then?”

“I wouldn’t be here ’twixt eight and ‘leven. They’d come over the wire to Kingman, and the op’rator there would mail ’em. Mail man’s due any time now.”

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