A BOLD THING TO DO!
The threatening peril—which looked so sure to Dorothy Dale if to nobody
else—inspired her to act, not to remain stunned and helpless. She
jerked her hand from Tavia’s clutch and sprang to her feet. She had
been reaching for her bag on first observing the boys coasting down
the long hill beside the railroad tracks; and her umbrella was in the
rack, too. She seized this. Its handle was a shepherd’s crook. Reaching
with it, and without a word to Tavia, she hooked the handle into the
emergency cord that ran overhead the length of the car, and pulled down
sharply. Instantly there was a shriek from the engine whistle and the
brakes were sharply applied.
The brake shoes so suddenly applied to the wheels on this downgrade
did much harm to the wheels themselves. Little cared Dorothy for this
well-known fact. If every wheel under the train had to go to the repair
shop she would have made this bold attempt to stop the train or retard
its speed, so that Joe and Roger could cross the tracks ahead of it.
Glancing through the window she saw the boys’ “scooter” dart swiftly
and safely into the fork-road and disappear some rods ahead of the
pilot of the engine. The boys were across before the brakeman and the
Pullman conductor opened the car door and rushed in.
“Who pulled that emergency cord? Anybody here?” shouted the conductor.
“Oh! don’t tell him!” breathed Tavia.
But her friend, if physically afraid, was never a moral coward. She
looked straight into the angry conductor’s face and said:
“I did.”
“What for?” he demanded.
“To stop the train. My brothers were in danger——”
“Say! What’s that?” demanded the Pullman conductor of Tavia. “Where are
her brothers?”
The brakeman, who had long run over this road, pulled at the
conductor’s sleeve.
“That’s Major Dale’s girl,” he whispered, and Tavia heard if Dorothy
did not.
“Who’s Major Dale?” asked the conductor, in a low voice, turning aside.
“Somebody on the road?”
“Owns stock in it all right. And a bigwig around North Birchland. Go
easy, I say,” advised the brakeman, immediately turning back to the
door.
The train, meanwhile, had started on again, for undoubtedly the other
conductor had given the engineer the signal to go ahead. Through the
window across the car Dorothy could see out upon the road beyond the
tracks. There was the little “scooter” at a standstill. Joe and Roger
were standing up and waving their caps at the train.
“They’re safe!” Dorothy cried to Tavia.
“I see they are; but you’re not—yet,” returned her chum.
“Who’s that is safe?” asked the conductor, still in doubt.
“My brothers—there,” answered Dorothy, pointing. “They had to cross in
front of the train because the bridge is open. They couldn’t stop at
the bottom of the hill.”
The Pullman conductor understood at last. “But I’ll have to make a
report of this, Miss Dale,” he said, complainingly.
Dorothy had seated herself and she was very pale. The fright for her at
least had been serious.
“Make a dozen reports if you like—help yourself,” said Tavia, tartly,
bending over her friend. “If there is anything to pay send the bill to
Major Dale.”
The conductor grumbled something and went out, notebook in hand. In
a few moments the train came to a standstill at the North Birchland
station. The girls had to bestir themselves to get out in season, and
that helped rouse Dorothy.
“Those rascals!” said Tavia, once they were on the platform. “Joe and
Roger should be spanked.”
“I’m afraid Joe is too big for that,” sighed Dorothy. “And who would
spank them? It is something they didn’t get when they were little——”
“And see the result!”
“Your brothers were whipped sufficiently, I am sure,” Dorothy said,
smiling at length. “They are not one whit better than Joe and Roger.”
“Dear me! that’s so,” admitted Tavia. “But just the same, I belieev in
whippings—for boys.”
“And no whippings for girls?”
“I should say not!” cried Tavia. “There never _was_ a girl who deserved
corporal punishment.”
“Not even Nita Brandt?” suggested Dorothy, naming a girl who had ever
been a thorn in the flesh for Tavia during their days at Glenwood.
“Well—perhaps _she_. But Nita’s about the only one, I guess.”
The next moment Tavia started to run down the long platform, dropping
her bag and screaming:
“Jennie Hapgood! Jennie Jane Jemina Jerusha Happiness—_good_! How ever
came you here?”
Dorothy was excited, too, when she saw the pretty girl whom Tavia
greeted with such ebullition; but she looked beyond Jennie Hapgood, the
expected guest from Pennsylvania.
There was the boys’ new car beside the station platform and Ned was
under the steering-wheel while Nat was just getting out after Jennie.
Of course, the two girls just back from New York were warmly kissed by
Jennie. Then Nat came next and before Tavia realized what was being
done to her, she was soundly kissed, too!
“Bold, bad thing!” she cried, raising a gloved hand toward the laughing
Nat. But it never reached him. Then Dorothy had to submit—as she always
did—to the bearlike hugs of both her cousins, for Ned quickly joined
them on the platform. Tavia escaped Ned—if, indeed, he had intended to
follow his brother’s example.
“What is the use of having a pretty cousin,” the White boys always
said, “if we can’t kiss her? Keeps our hands in, you know. And if she
has pretty friends, why shouldn’t we kiss them, too?”
“Did you boys kiss Jennie when she arrived this morning?” Tavia
demanded, repairing the ruffled hair that had fallen over her ears.
“Certainly!” declared Nat, boldly. “Both of us.”
“They never!” cried Jennie, turning very red. “You know I wouldn’t let
these boys kiss me.”
“I bet a boy kissed you the last thing before you started up here from
home,” teased Nat.
“I _never_ let boys kiss me,” repeated Jennie.
“Oh, no!” drawled Ned, joining in with his brother. “How about Jack?”
“Oh, well, _Jack_!”
“Jack isn’t a boy, I suppose?” hooted Nat. “I guess that girl he’s
going to marry about Christmas time thinks he’s a pretty nice boy.”
“But he’s only my brother,” announced Jennie Hapgood, tossing her head.
“Is he really?” cried Tavia, clasping her hands eagerly.
“Is he really my brother?” demanded Jennie, in amazement. “Why, you
_know_ he is, Tavia Travers!”
“Oh, no! I mean are they going to be married at Christmas?”
“Yes. That is the plan now. And you’ve all got to come to Sunnyside to
the wedding. Nothing less would suit Jack—or father and mother,” Jennie
said happily. “So prepare accordingly.”
Nat raced with Tavia for the bag she had dropped. He got it and clung
to it all the way in the car to The Cedars, threatening to open it and
examine its contents.
“For I know very well that Tavia’s got oodles of new face powder and
rouge, and a rabbit’s foot to put it on with—or else a kalsomine
brush,” Nat declared. “Joe and Roger want to paint the old pigeon
house, anyway, and this stuff Tavia’s got in here will be just the
thing.”
In fact, the two big fellows were so glad to see their cousin and Tavia
again that they teased worse than ever. A queer way to show their
affection, but a boy’s way, after all. And, of course, everybody else
at the Cedars was delighted to greet Dorothy and Tavia. It was some
time before the returned travelers could run upstairs to change their
dresses for dinner. Jennie had gone into her room to change, too, and
Tavia came to Dorothy’s open door.
“Oh, that letter!” she exclaimed, seeing Dorothy standing very gravely
with a letter in her hand. “Haven’t you sent it?”
“You see I haven’t,” Dorothy said seriously.
“But why not?”
“It seems such a bold thing to do,” confessed her friend. “We know so
little about him. And it might encourage him to write in return——”
“Of course it will!” laughed Tavia.
“There! that’s what I mean. It is bold.”
“But, you silly!” cried Tavia. “You only write Mr. Knapp to do him a
good turn. And he did us a good turn—at least, he did _me_ one that I
shall never forget.”
“True,” Dorothy said thoughtfully. “And I have only repeated to him in
this note what I heard that man, Stiffbold, say about the purchase of
Mr. Knapp’s ranch.”
“Oh, help the poor fellow out. Those men will rob him,” Tavia advised.
“Why didn’t you send it at once, when you had written it?”
“I—I thought I’d wait and consult Aunt Winnie,” stammered Dorothy.
“Then consult her.”
“But—but _now_ I don’t want to.”
Tavia looked at her with certainty in her own gaze. “I know what is the
matter with you,” she said.
Dorothy flushed quickly and Tavia shook her head, saying nothing more.
But when the girls went downstairs to dinner, Tavia saw Dorothy drop
the stamped letter addressed to “Mr. Garford Knapp, Desert City,” into
the mail bag in the hall.