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."
"Well," groaned Tom, "let's go up to the hotel and see if they've
reserved the rooms for us, if we are late."
"And where's Jane Ann Hicks?" queried Ruth, in some puzzlement. "_She_
ought to be here to greet us."
"What about that guide--the Flapjack person?" added Helen. "Didn't you
telegraph him, Tommy?"
"Who d'you mean--Flapjack Peters?" asked the station agent, interested.
"Why, he lit out for some place in the Hualapai this forenoon, beauin' a
party of these here tourists--or, so I heard tell."
There were blank faces among the newly arrived visitors from the East.
But only Tom Cameron really felt disturbed. It looked to him as though
somebody had got ahead of them!