DOWN THE SLOPE
Nobody seemed to have noticed the strange actions of the Mexican
girl save Nan--least of all Rhoda herself. There was no time to
speak of the incident while they remained in the shop, even had Nan
decided that it was best to do so.
The Mexican girl did not reappear from the rear of the shop. The
girls all bought something--perhaps not wisely in every case. Nan
Sherwood saw a queer smile on Rhoda Hammond's face as she noted
some of the trinkets the other girls purchased. Of course, the girl
from Rose Ranch could have advised them about the real value of
these articles. But who would ask her?
It really was too bad. Most of the crowd ignored Rhoda Hammond
altogether. They did not even speak to her when they brushed her
furs in passing.
Rhoda was beautifully dressed, and Bess audibly wondered who had
purchased Rhoda's clothes, as her mother's affliction made it
impossible for her to have selected them.
The Western girl left the store before the others had finished
shopping and Nan fancied Rhoda intended to catch an earlier car
back to Freeling than the one Miss March and her party were to
take. Nan said nothing to Bess or to Grace regarding the peculiar
actions of the Mexican girl who had evidently recognized Rhoda, and
knew where she came from. Nan was enormously interested in the
mystery; but she did not think it was right to make common property
of what she had seen or heard. She was the more tempted to go to
Rhoda herself and ask about it.
Perhaps it was something that Rhoda really ought to know. The
Mexican girl had looked at the unnoticing Rhoda in a very angry
way. And she had spoken very strangely.
"The treasure of the Ranchio Rose buy those dresses."
That was a very peculiar way to have spoken, to say the least. What
was "the treasure of Rose Ranch?" Nan was very desirous of asking
Rhoda Hammond to explain.
Of course she could not make the inquiry without telling Rhoda
about the Mexican girl. Nan wondered if that would be a wise thing
to do. Rhoda had not appeared to notice the strange girl. Had she
done so, would she have recognized the Mexican as the latter had
her?
All the time these thoughts and queries were rioting in Nan
Sherwood's mind she had to give her open attention to the buying of
certain articles and to the questions and observations of the other
girls. She and Bess purchased several things for their room; but
Nan would have been better satisfied if they had been intimate
enough with Rhoda to have asked her advice about the purchases.
They all trooped out with their bundles at last.
"My goodness!" laughed Bess, "we look like a gang of Italian
immigrants being taken by a padrone into the woods. Only we should
wear shawls over our heads instead of hats."
They went merrily along the streets to the point from which the car
for Freeling started, and lo! there was Rhoda Hammond. She had
evidently missed the previous car.
"Is that girl going to tag us wherever we go?" Bess asked, with
some vexation.
"Sh!" warned Grace. "She has a perfect right to come over here to
Adminster, of course."
"My goodness! I should say she has," Lillie Nevins said, laughing.
"After telegraphing to her father for permission."
When the car came along Rhoda got in at the front and took the
corner seat again, while the others crowded in through the rear
door. The old man who acted as motorman was well known to some of
the girls, and they hailed him, as well as the conductor, gayly.
But the motorman seemed in no pleasant mood, for he scarcely
answered their sallies.
He shut himself into the forward platform before the conductor gave
the signal for starting, and dropped the latch on the double doors
so that the girls should not disturb him. When the conductor took
up the fares he said, on being questioned by Laura Polk:
"Oh, John is not feeling well, I guess. He hasn't acted like
himself all day. But it's as much as my life's worth to ask him how
he feels. He's got the temper of a wolf when he's under the
weather--poor old John has."
Of course, the girls gave the motorman little attention--unless
Rhoda did from her situation up front. The rest of them only
noticed him when he started or stopped the car with more than
ordinary abruptness.
"I do wish he wouldn't jerk the car so," complained Laura Polk.
"He's made me almost swallow my gum twice."
"Gracious, Laura!" gasped Lillie Nevins, looking alarmed, "if you
really have any gum you had better swallow it before Miss March
sees you."
At this Laura merely chuckled delightedly.
"I really don't like the way this man is running the car," Miss
March said finally to the conductor. "Tell him to have a care. He
will have us off the track."
The interurban line was not a smooth, straight-ahead road. They
swung around turns that were somewhat sharp. John stormed along as
though he were running on a perfectly straight track.
"I'll see what I can do," said the conductor doubtfully, and he
went forward and tapped on the glass of the front door. But the
motorman only gave him an angry glance and would not even reach
around and lift the latch.
"He's running away with us!" exclaimed Lillie Nevins, who was
always easily frightened.
"Oh, my dear!" laughed another girl. "What an elopement!"
"I hate to do it," said the conductor, when he came back to Miss
March. "But I'll report him to the inspector when we get to the end
of the route."
The car topped the heights of the ridge of hills that lay between
Adminster and Freeling. On the Freeling side of the ridge the slope
to the valley was almost continuous. But near the bottom was a
sharp curve. Here was a low stone wall along the edge of the road,
beyond which was a sheer drop of thirty or more feet into a rocky
gorge. It was a perilous spot. More than one accident had happened
there; but never an electric car accident.
The rapidity with which the motorman ran the car, and the jerky way
in which he stopped and started it, did not bother Nan Sherwood
much, for she was not nervous. Miss March, however, began to stare
ahead apprehensively, and the way in which she twisted her
pocket-handkerchief in her hands as the car started down the long
slope betrayed her feelings. Nan was really sorry for Miss March.
The wheels pounded over the rail-joints and the car began to rock
threateningly. A small obstruction on the track would very likely
have thrown the car off the rails.
"I do wish that man would have a care," sighed Miss March.
Nan jumped up. She feared that the teacher would soon become
hysterical. Also, Grace and Lillie began to betray fear and more of
the girls were anxious. Nan stumbled forward to the end of the car.
Rhoda sat there, looking ahead, and betraying no emotion at all.
Nan could see the shoulders of the motorman, who was sitting on the
one-legged stool on which he had a right to rest when the car was
out of town. The rules of the company did not force him to stand
all the time. His head seemed to sag forward on his breast. The car
was running so fast that he pitched from side to side on his seat--
Or was it from some other reason that his body swayed so? The
question shocked Nan Sherwood.
"Oh, Rhoda!" she exclaimed, turning to the Western girl, "what is
the matter with him?"
Rhoda Hammond sprang up. Her face was pale but her lips were firmly
compressed. She clung to the handle of the door. Nan was holding
herself upright by clinging to the other handle.
"There is something the matter with that man!" cried the girl from
Tillbury.
They shook the door handles. Of course they could not open the
door, nor did the motorman heed them in any way.
Nan screamed aloud then. She saw the hands of the man slip from the
handle of the brake and from the controller. The car seemed to leap
ahead, gaining additional speed. The man slipped sideways from his
stool and crumpled on the platform of the car.
The other girls did not see this. Even the conductor on the rear
platform did not know what had happened. Only Nan and Rhoda
realized fully the trouble.
"My dear!" gasped Nan, "we cannot get to him. And nobody can stop
the car!"
She felt almost a sensation of nausea at the pit of her stomach.
She did not weep or lose control of herself. But she felt
frightfully helpless.
There seemed nothing to do but to stand there, clinging to the door
handle, and watch the car reeling down the slope at a speed that
promised disaster at the curve, if not before. Never in her life,
in any time of emergency, had Nan Sherwood felt so utterly
helpless.
The girl from the West said not a word. She, too, clung to the
handle and stared through the pane at the crumpled figure of the
motorman on the platform. But she remained thus only for a moment.
Suddenly she swung sideways and pushed Nan away from the door. The
latter tumbled into the nearest seat. Hanging by her left hand to
the door handle, Rhoda Hammond doubled her gloved right and smashed
one of the glass panes in the door.
At the crash of glass Nan sprang to Rhoda's side, and everybody
screamed. The conductor burst open the rear door and started
forward. Rhoda paid no attention to the shouts behind her.
She reached through the broken pane and lifted the latch which held
the two halves of the door together. She flung them apart and
leaped down the single step to the enclosed front platform of the
car, Nan close at her side.
The conductor arrived. But it was the girl from Rose Ranch who did
it all. She seized the controller and turned off the current. Her
right hand wound up the brake as though she had practiced the work.
Fast as the car was speeding, the pressure on the wheels made
itself felt almost at once. Nan wished to help, but realized that
in her ignorance she might blunder, so held herself in.
"What's happened to John?" demanded the conductor. "My goodness!"
he added to Rhoda, "you're a smart girl."
But he took her place at the brake. The car did not halt at once.
It ran down almost to the turn in the road before it came to a
jarring halt.
Some of the frightened girls had gathered around Miss March. The
others crowded forward. Nan was holding Rhoda Hammond tight about
the neck, and she kissed her warmly.
"You are a splendid girl, Rhoda!" Nan cried. "You stopped the car."
"I didn't see that you showed any white feather, Nan," urged Bess
Harley.
"Ah, but Rhoda was more than brave. She knew what to do. We'd have
gone off the track and pitched over that wall probably, if it had
depended on me to stop this old car," declared Nan generously.