OUT OF A DUSTPAN
Prince was certainly a frisky horse that morning. In spite of all Uncle
Tad could do by pulling on the reins and calling soothingly to the
animal, he raced with the sleigh over the railroad tracks. And the train
was coming nearer and nearer. Bunny and Sue well knew what would happen
if it hit them.
"Whoa there, Prince! Be a good horse!" called Uncle Tad. He pulled
harder on the reins, and when he saw that unless turned, the animal
might dash across the tracks right in front of the rushing train, the
old soldier gave such a pull that he swung the head of the runaway horse
around and guided him alongside of the tracks instead of across them.
"Look out, Uncle Tad! You're going into a big drift!" cried Bunny.
"That's just where I want to go!" said the soldier. "If I head Prince
into the drift he can't run any more."
And this is just what Uncle Tad did. By a hard pull on the reins he
swung the horse to one side, and not any too soon, either. For as Prince
dragged the sled along the tracks and into a big drift that was almost
as high as the head of the animal himself, the train dashed by--the
train with the locomotive that had whistled and set Prince to running
away.
"Whoa, there now! Quiet! Steady, old fellow!" called Uncle Tad
soothingly, as Prince saw the big drift in front of him and seemed to
know that he could neither go through it nor jump over it, especially
when harnessed to the sleigh.
[Illustration: WITH A WHIZZ AND A ROAR THE TRAIN SPED PAST.
_Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South._ _Page 44_]
With a whizz and a roar the train sped past Bunny and Sue in the sleigh.
They were quite near it, being alongside the tracks.
Prince stamped and reared a little, but he seemed to have gotten over
his first fright, and was more like himself. Usually he was not skittish
nor afraid of trains or engines. But not having been out of the stable
for some time and having had no exercise, he was, like many other
horses, ready to run away at the first loud noise. But Uncle Tad had
pulled him down to a walk and guided him into the snowdrift just in
time.
"My, that train was going fast!" exclaimed Sue, as it roared on its way.
"If it had hit us it would--it would have busted us all to pieces,
wouldn't it, Uncle Tad?" asked Bunny, who, being a little older than his
sister, knew more about the danger they had been in.
"Yes, indeed!" exclaimed the soldier, as he again spoke soothingly to
Prince. "Getting in the way of railroad trains is dangerous. But we're
all right now."
"Then let's go on," begged Sue. "I don't like it here. Let's get daddy's
boxes and go for a nice ride where there aren't any trains, Uncle Tad."
"All right, we will," promised the old gentleman. But as he looked up
and down the track, to make sure all was clear, he heard the whistle of
another engine and the roar of an approaching train.
"We'll wait until this one goes past," he said, little guessing what a
strange thing was to happen.
Prince pranced a little as he heard another locomotive coming toward
him, but he did not try to run away again nor jump through the
snowdrift.
With a roar the second train approached, gliding swiftly past Bunny,
Sue, and Uncle Tad seated in the sleigh alongside of the tracks. And as
the children watched for the last car they saw the rear door of it open,
and a colored porter, with his white jacket on, stood on the platform.
It was a chair car, and the porter had evidently been doing some
sweeping, for he held in his hands a dustpan. This dustpan he had taken
to the back door to empty, and, just as his car came near the sleigh in
the snowdrift, the porter threw the dust, dirt, and other things from
the pan into the air.
The train was going so fast that it made quite a breeze, and this wind
carried the stuff from the dustpan into the very faces of Uncle Tad and
Sue. Bunny, being on the outside of the seat, did not get any dust in
his face.
"Oh!" cried Sue, as she felt the swirling wind and dust.
"That porter certainly was a careless fellow!" exclaimed Uncle Tad.
"That dust nearly blinded me!" The old soldier held the reins in one
hand, for Prince seemed ready to bolt again, and with the other hand
Uncle Tad wiped the dust from the porter's pan out of his eyes.
Bunny had a glimpse of torn papers and other refuse from the car falling
into the snowdrift near the sleigh.
"I guess he didn't mean to do it, Uncle Tad," the little boy said. "He
wasn't looking this way when he emptied that dustpan."
"I wish he had been!" exclaimed the old soldier. "Did you get a lot of
dust in your eyes, Sue?"
"Yes," answered the little girl. "But it's most gone now."
"How about you, Bunny?" asked Uncle Tad.
"Oh, I'm all right," Sue's brother answered. "Look, Uncle Tad, there
are some papers the porter threw out, too," and he pointed to the heap
of refuse on the snow.
"All trash, I suppose," said the soldier. "People in parlor cars throw
on the floor things they don't want, and the porter has to sweep it up.
Well, we'll get along now."
"Wait a minute, Uncle Tad!" cried Bunny, as the soldier was about to
swing Prince around to go on to the freight depot.
"Eh? What's that, Bunny? What's the matter?" asked Uncle Tad.
"There's a nice green and gold piece of paper down there," Bunny
answered. "Maybe it's some good."
"No, I don't believe so, else the porter wouldn't have thrown it out,"
Uncle Tad answered, as he looked at the train now a mile or more away
down the track.
"Maybe it's some good," Bunny insisted. "Please let me get it, Uncle
Tad. Maybe it's some old railroad ticket and Sue and I can play
conductor on the train when we go to Florida."
"Well, all right, get it if you want to," agreed the old soldier.
"Whoa, Prince! Whoa!"
He steadied the horse while Bunny got down out of the sled, and ran to
the scattered refuse from the porter's dustpan. Bunny picked up the
paper. It was printed in green and gold, as he had said, and was not
torn as were the other scraps of paper that had come from the chair car.
"Look, Uncle Tad!" called Bunny, holding up what he had found. "Is this
a railroad ticket?"
The old soldier put on his glasses and looked carefully at the paper.
"Why, Bunny boy!" he exclaimed, "you've found something worth a lot of
money--a whole lot of money. I must put this away in my pocket and show
it to your father. Whoa there! Steady, Prince! Bunny has just found,
what may be worth a lot of money!"