Mother, of course, took Mun Bun and Margy back to Pineville by train. It was much too long a journey for them in an automobile. Mr. Bunker, with the four bigger little Bunkers (doesn't that sound funny?) drove in a motor-car and spent one night's sleep on the way at a very pleasant country inn.
They did not have quite so much excitement here as they had at the farmhouse on their way down to the shore. But Rose and Vi had a room all to themselves, and felt themselves quite grown-up travelers. Russ and Laddie were in a second bed in Mr. Bunker's room, and in the night Laddie must have had a very exciting dream because he began to kick about and thrash with his arms and woke up Russ very suddenly.
"Get off me!" cried Russ. "Stop!"
Then he became wide awake, sat up, and saw that it was not a dog jumping all over him, as he had supposed, but his brother.
"Why, Laddie!" he exclaimed, shaking the younger boy. "If you don't stop I'll have to get out and sleep on the floor."
"Oh!" gasped Laddie. "Am I sleeping?"
"Well, you're not now, I guess. But you were sleeping—and kicking, too."
"Oh!" said Laddie again. "I thought that old calf was pulling me down into the mud to take a bath. That—that must be a riddle, Russ."
"What's a riddle?" asked his brother, yawning.
"When is a dream not a dream?" asked Laddie promptly.
"I—ow!—don't know," yawned Russ.
"When you wake up," declared Laddie with conviction.
But Russ did not answer. He had snuggled down into his pillow and was asleep again.
"Well—anyway," muttered Laddie, "I guess that wasn't a very good riddle after all."
They got home to Pineville the next day, and as the automobile rolled into the Bunkeryard mother and Norah, the cook, besides Mun Bun and Margy, were in the doorway. The two little folks at once ran screaming into the yard.
"There's a strike!" cried out Margy.
"You tan't go to school!" added Mun Bun.
"What do you mean—strike?" asked Russ wonderingly.
"That old thunder struck us. That's enough," said Rose, harking back to their exciting time in the old house at the seashore.
"Who got struck?" asked Violet. "Did it hurt them—like it did Mun Bun and me when the tree fell on us?"
"It's a coal strike," said Margy. "And the school can't have any coal."
Neither Rose nor Russ just understood this. What had a coal strike to do with their going to school?
But they found out all about it after a time. Something quite exciting had happened in Pineville while they had been down at Grand View. Of course, it happened in quite a number of other places at the same time; but only as the coal strike affected their home town did it matter at all to the six little Bunkers.
Daddy Bunker had plenty of coal in the cellar against the coming of cold weather when the furnace should be started. But everybody was not as fortunate—or as wise—as Daddy Bunker.
And in the school bins no coal had been placed early in the season. Suddenly the delivery of coal in cars to Pineville was stopped. The coal dealers in the town had no coal to deliver, although they had sold a great deal of it for delivery.
Frost had come. Indeed, the flowers and plants in the gardens were already blackened by the touch of Jack Frost's scepter. That meant that soon it would be so cold that little boys and girls could not sit in the big rooms of the schoolhouse unless there were warm fires to send the steam humming through the pipes and radiators.
"Here we are, three weeks late for school already, and no likelihood of coal coming into the town for another month. Of course there will be no school," Mother Bunker said decidedly. "I should not dare let the children go in any case unless the fires were built."
"Quite right," said Daddy Bunker. "And Ipresume the other people will feel the same about their children. School must be postponed again."
"Oh, bully!" cried Russ.
He shouted it out so loud that the older folks, as well as the children, looked at him in some amazement.
"What is bully?" asked Vi. "Do you mean a coal strike is bully? Why can't we have coal to burn? Who has got our coal?"
Nobody gave her questions much attention, which of course was not unusual. But Daddy Bunker began to laugh.
"I can see what is working in Russ's mind," he said. "You reason from the cause of a lack of coal, to an effect that you need not go to school?"
"I—I don't mind going to school," Rose said, a little doubtfully but looking at her elder brother.
"And I don't mind, either," said Russ promptly. "Only daddy is going to that Cowboy Jack's. And if we can't go to school for a month, why can't we go with daddy? We might as well."
"Oh! Oh!" cried the other children inchorus, seeing very plainly now what Russ had meant by saying the coal strike was "bully."
"Perhaps you are taking too much for granted," Mother Bunker said soberly. "Still, Charles, maybe I had better not unpack our trunks quite yet?"
"I'll see what the outlook is to-morrow morning," said Daddy Bunker quite soberly. "Anyway, I shall not start for the Southwest until day after to-morrow. Will that give you time, if——?"
"Oh, yes," said Mother Bunker, who had become by this time an expert in making quick preparations for leaving home. "Norah and Jerry will get on quite well here."
This was enough to set the six little Bunkers in a ferment. At least, to put their minds in a ferment. They were so excited and so much interested in the possibility of going away again that they could not "settle," as Norah said, to their ordinary pursuits.
Even Rose had by this time decided that she would be able perhaps to pronounce the name of the man Daddy Bunker was going to see—Mr. John Scarbontiskil.
"And, anyway," she told Russ, "maybe I won't have to talk to him much."
"You needn't mind that," said Russ kindly. "Daddy says everybody calls him Cowboy Jack. Daddy has met him and likes him, and he told me that Cowboy Jack likes children, although he has none of his own."
"Why hasn't he?" demanded Vi. "Don't they have little boys and girls down there on the ranch where he lives?"
"He hasn't got any," said Russ. "So he likes other people's children."
RUSS AND LADDIE GOT OUT THEIR COWBOY AND INDIAN SUITS.RUSS AND LADDIE GOT OUT THEIR COWBOY AND INDIAN SUITS.
Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's.(Page 54)
Russ and Laddie were very busy getting out their cowboy and Indian suits and having Norah mend them. Of course they would want to dress like other people did in the Southwest.
The coal strike in western Pennsylvania really did send the six little Bunkers off to the Southwest almost as soon as they had returned from the seashore and their visit to Captain Ben.
Daddy came home the next noon and said that coal enough to supply the Pineville school might not arrive before November. At least, there would be four full weeks before school could safely open.
"We might as well make a long holiday of it, Charles," said Mother Bunker, quite complacently.
For she, too, liked to travel, and had, by now, got used to journeying about with the children. Russ and Rose were so helpful, too, that a trip to Cavallo did not seem such a huge undertaking after all.
"Shall we take our bathing suits, Mother?" asked Rose.
"No bathing suits this time, for we are not going to the seashore," declared Mother Bunker.
But in repacking what few things had been unpacked there were two things forgotten. The children really did not have time to "count up" and see if they had all their most precious possessions with them.
It was after they were on the train the following morning, and Pineville station, with Norah and Jerry waving good-bye on the platform, was out of sight, that Rose suddenly discovered a lack that made her cry out in earnest.
"Oh! Oh! I've lost it!" she said.
"What you lost?" asked Vi.
"My watch!" gasped Rose.
"Oh, dear me! Your nice new wrist watch?" asked Mother Bunker admonishingly.
"Yes, ma'am," sighed Rose. "I—I haven't got it."
"Oh, my!" cried Laddie suddenly.
He was fumbling at his scarf and trying to look at it by pulling it out to its full length and squinting down his nose at its pretty pattern.
"And what's the matter with you, Laddie?" asked Daddy Bunker. "What have you lost?"
"Oh, my!" said Laddie, quite as dolefully as Rose had spoken. "I—I don't see my new stick-pin. It isn't here. I—I just guess I have lost it, too."
Rose was almost in tears when she found that her watch was lost. But although Laddie felt very bad about his missing stick-pin, he would not cry. Just the same, he did not feel as though he could make a riddle out of it.
"Now, Rose, and you, Laddie," said Mother Bunker admonishingly, as she seated them before her in one of the double seats of the Pullman car in which they had their reservations, "I want to know all about how you came to forget the watch and the pin—and just where you forgot them?"
Although Mother Bunker was usually very cheerful and patient with the children, this was a serious matter. Carelessness and inattention were faults that Mother Bunker was always trying to correct. For those two faults, as she pointed out so frequently, led often to muchtrouble, as in this case. The loss of the wrist watch and the stick-pin could not be passed over lightly.
Laddie shook his head very sorrowfully. "Thatisa riddle, Mother," he said. "I can forget things so easy that I forget how I forget them."
But Rose was thinking very hard, and she broke out with:
"Maybe I never had it there at all!"
"Where?" asked Mrs. Bunker, while the other children stood in the aisle or knelt on the seat behind to listen at the conference. "Where didn't you have it?"
"At home, Mother. I—I guess I haven't seen that watch since we were at Captain Ben's."
"Oh!" shouted Laddie. "That is just it! I left my stick-pin at the bungalow. I left it sticking in that cushion on the bureau in that room where Russ and Mun Bun and I slept. Of course I did."
"Are you sure, Laddie?" asked Mrs. Bunker. "I remember that I did not go into that room to see if anything was left. I should have done so, but we were in such a hurry."
"My rememberer is all right now," declared Laddie, with conviction. "That is where I left the pin."
"And you, Rose?" asked their mother.
"I—I don't know for sure," admitted Rose. "I can't remember where I had the watch last—or when I wore it last. But I do not believe I had it at all when we came home to Pineville."
"Well, Laddie is positive, and I suspect that you were quite as careless as he was," Mrs. Bunker said. "You should not be, Rose, for you are older."
"Oh, Mother! I am so sorry," cried Rose. "Don't you suppose we'll ever see my watch and Laddie's pin again?"
"We will write a letter to Captain Ben at once," said Mrs. Bunker, getting the writing pad and fountain pen out of her bag. "He has not left Grand View, and he may have already found them both. But, of course, we cannot be sure."
"He would know they belonged to Rose and Laddie, if he found them," said Russ, trying to comfort the others.
"Yes. If he cleans up the house he mightfind them. But it is likely that he will hire somebody to do that, and we cannot be sure that the person cleaning up is honest."
"Oh, how mean! To steal Rose's watch and Laddie's pin!" cried Russ.
"What makes them steal, Mother?" queried Vi.
"Because they have not been taught that other people's possessions are sacred," said Mrs. Bunker gravely. "You know, I tell all you children not to touch each other's toys or other things without permission."
"Well!" ejaculated Vi, "Laddie took my book."
"I didn't mean to keep it," cried her twin at once. "And, anyway, it wasn't a sacred book. It was just a story book."
"Stealing is an intention to defraud," explained their mother, smiling a little. "But Vi's book was just as sacred, or set apart, to her possession as anything could be."
"I—I thought sacred books were like the Bible and the hymn book," murmured Laddie wonderingly.
Which was of course quite so. It took Laddie some time, he being such a little boy, tounderstand that it was the fact of possession that was "sacred" rather than the article possessed.
However, Mother Bunker wrote the letter to Captain Ben, asking him to hunt all about the bungalow for both the wrist watch Rose had lost and the stick-pin Laddie was so confident now that he had left sticking in the cushion on the bureau in the bedroom. She also wrote a letter to Norah asking the cook to look for the lost articles.
"Now what will you do with them?" asked Vi, referring to the letters.
"Mail them," replied Mother Bunker.
"How will you mail them? Is there a post-box in the car?"
"No. But we will find a way of getting them into the mails," her mother assured the inquisitive Violet.
"I know!" cried Russ. "I saw the mailsack hanging on the hook at the railroad station down on the coast, and the train came along and grabbed it off with another hook."
"That is getting the mail on to the train," said Vi promptly. "But how do they get it off?"
When Mrs. Bunker had finished writing the letters and had sealed and addressed the envelopes she satisfied Vi's curiosity, as well as that of the other children, by giving the letters and a dime to the colored porter, who promised to mail them at the first station at which the train stopped.
Then they all trooped into the dining car for dinner, where daddy had already secured two tables for his party. They had a waiter all to themselves, and the children thought that he was a very funny man. In the first place, he was very black, and when he smiled (which was almost all the time) he displayed so many and such very white teeth that Mun Bun and Margy could scarcely eat their dinner properly, they looked so often at the waiter.
He was a colored man who liked children too. He said he did, and he laughed loudly when Vi asked him questions, although he couldn't answer all her questions any better than other people could.
"Why is he called a waiter?" Vi wanted to know. "For he doesn't wait at all. He is running back and forth to the kitchen at the end of the car all the time."
"That's a riddle," declared her twin soberly. "'When is a waiter not a waiter?'"
"You'll have to answer that one yourself, Laddie," said Daddy Bunker, laughing.
"When he's a runner," Laddie said promptly. "Isn't that a good riddle?"
"And he juggles dishes almost as good as that juggler we saw at the show," Russ declared.
"He must have almost as much skill as a juggler to serve his customers in this car," said Mrs. Bunker, watching the man coming down the aisle as the train sped around a sharp curve.
"Oh! Look there!" cried Rose, who was likewise facing the right way to see the waiter's approach.
The smiling black man was coming with a soup toureen balanced on one hand while he had other dishes on a tray balanced on his other hand. The car swayed so that the waiter began to stagger as though he were on the deck of a ship in a heavy sea.
"Oh! He's going!" sang out Russ.
The waiter jerked to one side, and almost dropped the soup toureen. Then he pitchedthe other way and his tray hit against one of the diners at another table.
"Look out what you're doing!" cried the man whom the tray had struck.
"Yes, sah! Yes, sah!" panted the waiter, and he tried to balance his tray.
But there was the soup toureen slipping from his other hand. He had either to drop the tray or the soup. Each needed the grasp of both his hands to secure it, and the waiter, losing his smile at last and uttering a frightened shout, made a last desperate attempt to retain both burdens.
"There he goes!" gasped Russ again.
"I guess heisa soup juggler," declared Laddie, staring with all his might. "He's got it!"
After all, the waiter showed wisdom in making his choice as long as a choice had to be made. Even Daddy Bunker, when he could stop laughing, voiced his approval. The tray and the viands on it flew every-which-way. But the waiter caught the hot soup toureen in both hands. It was so hot that he could only balance it first in one hand and then the other while the train finished rounding that curve.
"My head an' body!" gasped the poor waiter."I done circulated de celery an' yo' watah glasses, suah 'nough. But I done save mos' of de soup," and he set the toureen down with a thump in front of Daddy Bunker.
The steward came running with a very angry countenance, and the people who had been spattered by the water sputtered a good deal. But Daddy Bunker, when he could recover from his laughter, interceded for the "soup juggler," and the incident was passed off as an accident.
When daddy paid his bill and tipped the very much subdued waiter, Laddie tugged at his father's sleeve and whispered:
"What is it, Son?" asked Mr. Bunker, stooping down to hear what the little boy whispered.
"Ask him if he will juggle the soup again if we come in here to eat?"
But Mr. Bunker only laughed and herded his flock back into the other car. The children, however, thought the incident very funny indeed, and they hoped to see the juggling waiter again when they ate their next meal in the dining car.
Mother Bunker had brought a nicely packed basket for supper (Nora O'Grady had madethe sandwiches and the cookies) and she sent daddy into the buffet car for milk and tea.
"The children get just as hungry on the train as they do when they are playing all day long out-of-doors," she told daddy. "But they must not eat too much while we are traveling. And I have to shoo the candy boy away every half hour."
The boy who sold magazines and candy interested Russ and Laddie very much. Russ thought that he might become a "candy butcher" when he grew up,althoughat first he had decided to be a locomotive engineer.
"It must be lots nicer to sell candy than to work an engine," Laddie said. "You get your hands all oil in an engine."
"Where does the oil come from?" asked Vi, who had not asked a question since she had seen the waiter "juggle" the soup toureen. "What does an engine have oil for? Do they keep it in a cruet, like that cruet on the table in the hotel we stopped at coming up from Grand View?"
And perhaps she asked even more questions, but these are all we have time to repeat right now. For evening had come, and soon the littleBunkers would be put to bed. Although they had two sections of the sleeping car, there was none too much room when the porter let down the berths and hung the curtains for them.
Besides, even after the little folks had all got quiet, peace did not reign for long in that sleeping car. The very strangest thing happened. Even Russ couldn't have invented it.
But I will have to tell you about it in the next chapter.
Of course, the six little Bunkers were just ordinary children, although they sometimes had extraordinary adventures. And confinement for only a few hours in a Pullman car had made them very restless. It was impossible for them always to keep quiet, and their running up and down the aisles, and their exclamations about what they saw, sometimes annoyed other passengers just a little.
Most of the passengers in this car were people, fortunately, who liked children and could appreciate how difficult it was for the six to be always on their best behavior. And the passengers could not but admire the way in which Daddy and Mother Bunker controlled the exuberance of the six.
But there was one man who had scowled at the little Bunkers almost from the very momentthey had boarded the train at Pineville. That man seemed to say to himself:
"Oh, dear! here is a crowd of children and they are going to annoy me dreadfully."
And, of course, as he expected to be annoyed, there was scarcely anything the Bunkers did or said but what did annoy him. He was a very fat man, and the car was sometimes too warm for him, and he was always complaining to the porter about something or other, and altogether he was a very miserable man indeed on that particular journey.
Maybe he was a nice man at home. But it is doubtful if he had any children of his own, and probably nobody's children would have suited him at all! Mun Bun and Margy made friends with almost everybody in the car but the fat man. He would not even look at Mun Bun when the little fellow staggered along the car, from seat to seat, and looked smilingly up into the fat man's red face.
"Go away!" said the fat man to Mun Bun.
Mun Bun's eyes grew round with wonder at the man's cross speech. He could not understand it at all. He looked at the fat man in avery puzzled way, and then went back to Mother Bunker's seat.
"Muvver," he said soberly, "do you got pep'mint?"
"I think you have eaten all the candy that is good for you now, Mun Bun," said Mother Bunker.
"No," said Mun Bun earnestly. "Not tandy. Pep'mint for ache," and he rubbed himself about midway of his body very suggestively.
"Mun Bun! are you ill?" demanded his mother anxiously. "Are you in pain, you poor baby?"
He explained then that he did not need the "pep'mint"; but knowing that Mother Bunker sometimes gave it to him when he had pain, he said he thought the man up the aisle would like some for the same reason.
"Better ask him," suggested Daddy Bunker, who had noted the unhappy face of the fat man.
Mun Bun did this. He asked the man very politely if he needed "pep'mint." But all the cross passenger said was:
"Go on away! You are a nuisance!"
So Mun Bun went back to daddy and motherin rather a subdued way, for he was not used to being treated so. Mun Bun liked to make friends wherever he went.
Perhaps the fat man was the only person in the car who was glad when the Bunker children went to bed. He went into the smoking room while his own berth was being made up, and when he came back to the berths, daddy and mother, as well as most of the other passengers, had retired. The car was soon after that pretty quiet.
Russ and Laddie were in the upper berth over daddy and Mun Bun. The boys in the upper berth had been asleep for some little time when Russ woke up—oh, quite wide awake!
There was something going on that he could not understand. Whether this mysterious something had awakened him or not, Russ lay straining his ears to catch a repetition of the sound. Then it came—a sound that made the boy "creep" all over it was so shuddery!
"Laddie! Laddie!" he whispered, nudging the boy next to him. "Don't you hear it?"
Laddie was not easily awakened. When Laddie went to sleep it was, as the children say,"for keeps." Russ had to punch him with his elbow more than once before the smaller boy awakened.
"Oh, oh! Is it morning?" murmured Laddie.
"Listen!" hissed Russ right in his ear. "That man's being mur—murdered!"
"Mur—murdered?" quavered Laddie in response. "You—you tell daddy about it, Russ Bunker. Don't you tell me. I don't believe he is, anyway. Who's mur—murderin' him?"
"I don't know who's doing it," admitted Russ, shaking as much as Laddie was.
"How do you know it's—it's being done?" repeated Laddie, his doubt growing as he became more fully awake.
"He says so. He says so himself. And if he says he's being murdered, he ought to know—Oh!"
Again the doleful sound reached their ears, this time Laddie hearing as well as Russ the moaning of a voice which uttered a muffled cry of "Mur-r-rder!"
"There! What did I tell you?" gasped Russ. "I'm—I'm going to tell daddy."
"Wait for me! Wait, Russ Bunker! I'mgoing with you," Laddie cried. "I don't want to stay here and be mur—murdered, too!"
That was an awful word, anyway. Russ crept over the edge of the berth at the foot and dropped down behind the curtain. Laddie was right behind him, and in fact came down first upon Russ's shoulders and then slipped to the floor of the car.
Before they could get inside daddy's curtain—a place which spelled safety to their disturbed imaginations—they heard the moaning voice again groan:
"Mur-r-rder!"
It was an awful choking cry—just like a hen squawked when Jerry Simms grabbed it by the neck and had his hand on the hen's windpipe!
"He's mur—murderin' him all right," chattered Laddie, tugging at Russ's pajama jacket. "Are—are you going to stop it, Russ?"
Russ had no idea of going himself to the rescue of the victim; he had only thought of waking daddy. But now he put his head outside the curtain and looked into the narrow aisle of the sleeping car. The first thing he saw was the colored porter, his cap on awry, his eyes rolling so that their whites were veryprominent, stalking up the aisle in a crouching attitude with the little stool he sometimes sat on in the vestibule gripped by one leg as a weapon.
"It's the porter!" whispered Russ huskily.
"Is—is he being mur—murdered?" stuttered Laddie.
"He—he looks more as though he was going to do the mur-murdering," confessed Russ.
Laddie would not look; but Russ could not take his eyes off the approaching porter. The colored man crept nearer, nearer—and then suddenly he snatched away the curtain almost directly across the aisle from where the two little Bunkers stood.
There was nobody in that lower berth but the fat man before mentioned! He lay on his back with his knees up, his face very red, his eyes tightly closed. Again there issued from his lips the stifled cry of "Mur-r-rder!"
"Fo' de lan's sake!" exclaimed the porter, dropping his stool and grabbing the fat passenger by the shoulder. "I suah 'nough thunk somebody was bein' choked to deaf. Wake up, Mistah White Man! Ain't nobody a-murderin' of yo' but yo'self."
The fat man's eyes opened wide at that and he glared around. He saw the face of the porter at last and blinked his eyes for a moment. Then he sighed.
"I—I guess I was asleep. Must have been dreaming," he stammered gruffly.
"Say, Mistah!" the porter replied, "if yo' sleep like dat always, you bettah have a car by yo'self. For yo' ain't goin' to let nobody else sleep in peace. Turn over! Yo's on your back."
Russ and Laddie could only stare, and some of the other passengers began to open their curtains and ask questions of the porter. The fat man grabbed his own curtain away from the colored man and quickly shut himself in again.
"All right! All right!" said the porter, picking up his stool and going back to his place. "Ain't nobody killed yet. Guess we goin' to have peace now fo' a while."
Daddy Bunker awoke too and sent his little folks back to bed, and Russ and Laddie did not wake up again till broad daylight. They had to tell the other little Bunkers before breakfast about what had happened; but they neversaw the fat man again, for he left the train at a station quite early.
There were other things to interest the little Bunkers. In the first place, it began to rain soon after they got up. A rainy day at home was no great cross for the children to bear. There was always the attic to play in. But on the train, with the rain beating against the windows and not much to see as the train hurried on, the children began to grow restless.
It was reported that the heavy rains ahead of them had done some damage to the railroad, and the speed of the train was reduced until, by the middle of the forenoon, it seemed only to creep along. The conductor, who came through the car once in a while, told them that there were "washouts" on the road.
"What's washouts?" demanded Vi. "Is it clothes on clotheslines, like Norah's washlines? Why don't they take the wash in when it rains so?"
She really had to be told what "washout" meant, or she would have given daddy and mother no peace at all. And the other children were interested in the possibility that the trainmight be halted by a big hole in the ground where the tracks ought to be.
Every time the train slowed down they were eagerly on tiptoe to see if the "washout" had come. They were finally steaming through a deep cut in the wooded hills when, of a sudden, the brakes were applied and the train came to a stop with such a shock that the little Bunkers were all tumbled together—although none of them was hurt.
"Here's the washout! Here's the washout!" cried Laddie eagerly.
"Can we go look out of the door, Mother?" asked Rose.
For some of the passengers were standing in the vestibule and the door was open. Daddy got up and went with the children, all clamorous to see the hole in the ground that had halted the train.
But it was not a hole at all. It was something so different from a hole, or a washout as the children had imagined that to be, that when they saw it they were very much excited and surprised.
"Where is it? Let me see it!" was Vi's cry, as she rushed out into the vestibule ahead of Daddy Bunker and her brothers and sisters.
Vi was so curious that she thought she just had to be first. Daddy Bunker tried to restrain her, for he was afraid she would fall down the car steps and out upon the cinder path beside the rails. And although it had now ceased raining, she might easily have been hurt, if not made thoroughly wet.
"Oh, Vi's going to see the washout first!" cried Laddie, who did not like to play second when his twin wanted to be first.
"Now, wait!" commanded daddy. "You shall all see what there is to see——"
"I want to see the wash up on the clotheslines," said Mun Bun, breaking into his father's speech.
"Well, if you will be patient," Mr. Bunker said, smiling, "I think we'll all have a fair view of the wonder. But the 'washup' isn't going to be just what you think it is, Mun Bun."
Nor was it just what any of the six little Bunkers thought it would be—as I said before. Daddy went down the steps first and then turned and "hopped" the children down to the cinder path, one after the other. Only Russ, who came last, jumped down without any assistance.
It was still very wet and all about were shallow puddles. But the rain itself had ceased. In places, especially in the ditches alongside the railroad bed, the water had torn its way through the earth, leaving it red and raw. And big stones had been unearthed in the banks of the ditches and in some cases carried some distance away from where they had formerly lain.
"Why, that isn't a hole in the ground at all!" cried Laddie, first to realize that what had made the train stop was something different from what they had all expected.
"Oh!" shouted Violet. "It's a great, big rock that's fallen down the hill."
"Well," said Russ, soberly, "I guess it's awashout at that. For the rain must have washed it out of the hillside. See! There is the hole up there in the bank."
"You are right, Russ," said Daddy Bunker. "It is a washout, and it will take a long time to get that big rock off of the track so that the train can go on."
The rock that had fallen completely blocked the west-bound track, as daddy said. And a good deal of earth and gravel had fallen with it so that the rails of the east-bound track were likewise buried. There was already a gang of trackmen clearing away this gravel; but, as the children's father had told them, it would take many hours to remove the great boulder.
"Suppose our train had been going by when the rock fell?" suggested Russ to Rose.
"What would the rock have done to us?" asked Vi, who heard her brother say this.
"I guess it would have done something," replied Russ solemnly.
"It would have pushed us right off the track," declared Rose, nodding her head.
"And what would it have done then?" demanded Vi.
"I wish you wouldn't, Vi," complained her twin suddenly.
"Wish I wouldn't what?"
"Ask so many questions."
"Why not?"
"Why, I was just thinking of a riddle about that big rock; and now it's all gone," sighed Laddie.
"No, it isn't gone at all," Vi said wonderingly. "Daddy says it will take hours to move it."
"Oh! That old rock!" said Laddie. "I meant my riddle. That's all gone."
"I guess it wasn't a very good riddle, then, if it went so easy," said the critical Vi. "Oh, look there!"
"At what?" exclaimed her twin, following Vi to the fence beside the railroad bed.
"See that path, Laddie? I guess we could climb right up that hill and see down into that hole where the big rock washed out."
"So we could," agreed the boy. "Let's."
Daddy and the other children were some yards away, but in plain sight. Indeed, they would be in sight if Vi and Laddie climbed to the very top of the bank. It did not seem toeither of the twins that they needed to ask permission to climb the path when daddy was so near and could see them by just looking up. So they hopped over the low fence and began to climb.
It was an easy path, almost all of stone, and the rain had washed it clean. It was great fun to be so high above the railroad and look down upon the crowd of passengers from the stalled train and upon the workmen. The two explorers could see into the hole washed in the hillside, and it was much deeper than it had looked to be when they stood below. There was a puddle of muddy water in it, too.
"Guess we don't want to fall into that," said Laddie, and Vi did not even ask why not. "Let's go on to the top. We can see farther."
Vi was quite willing to go as far as her twin did. And there really seemed to be no reason why they should not go. It would be hours before that rock could be moved, and of course the train could not go on until that was done.
They reached the top of the bank. Here was a great pasture which sloped away to a piece of woods. Although the ground was wet,it had stopped raining some time before and a strong wind was blowing. This wind had dried the grass and weeds and the twins did not wet their feet. And——
"Oh!" squealed Vi, starting away from the edge of the bank on a run. "See the flowers! Oh, see the flowers, Laddie!"
Laddie saw the flowers quite as soon as she did, but he did not shout about it. He followed his sister, however, with much promptness, and both of them began to pick the flowering weeds that dotted the pasture.
"We'll get a big bunch for mother. Won't she be glad?" went on Vi.
Mother Bunker was supposed to have a broad taste in flowers, and every blossom the children found was brought for her approval. In a minute the twins were so busy gathering the blossoms of wild carrots and other weeds that they forgot the train, and the big rock that had fallen, and even the fact that they had climbed the bank without permission.
At length Laddie stood up to look abroad over the great field. Perhaps he had pulled the blossoms faster than Vi. At any rate, he had already a big handful. Suddenly he caughtsight of something that interested him much more than the flowers did.
There was a stone fence near by which divided the fields. And on the fence something flashed into view and ran along a few yards—something that interested the boy immensely.
"Oh, look, Vi!" cried Laddie. "There's a chippy!"
"What chippy? Who's chippy?" demanded Vi excitedly.
"There he goes!" shouted Laddie. "A chipmunk!"
He dropped his bunch of blossoms and started for the stone fence. Vi caught a glimpse of the whisking chipmunk, and she dropped her flowers and ran after her brother.
"Oh, let me catch him! Let me catch him!"
The chipmunk ran along the stone fence a little way, and then looked back at the excited children. He did not seem much frightened. Perhaps he had been chased by children before and knew that he was more than their match in running.
At any rate, that chipmunk drew Laddie and Vi on to the very edge of the woods, and then,with a flirt of its tail, it disappeared into a hole and they could not find him.
Laddie and Vi were breathless by that time, and they had to sit down and rest. They looked back over the field. It was a long way to the brink of the bank from which they could see the train and the passengers.
"I—I guess we'd better go back," said Laddie.
"And mother's flowers!" exclaimed Vi. "Do you know where you dropped them?"
"I dropped mine just where you dropped yours, I guess," returned her brother.
"We'll go pick them up. Come on."
They were both tired when they started to trudge back up the hill. And just as they started they heard a long blast of a whistle, and then two short blasts.
"What do you suppose that is?" asked Vi.
"It's the engine. Oh, Vi! maybe it's going to start without us," and Laddie began to run, tired as he was.
"Wait for me, Laddie! It can't go—you know it can't. The big rock is in the way."
But they were both rather frightened, and they did not stop to find their flowers. The possibility that the train might go off and leave them filled the two children with alarm. They ran on as hard as they could, and Vi fell down and soiled her hands and her dress.
She was beginning to cry a little when Laddie came back for her and took her hand. He was frightened, too; but he would not show it by crying—not then, anyway.
"Come on, Vi," he urged. "If that old train goes on with daddy and mother and the rest, I don't know what weshalldo!"
The wrecking crew with their big derrick and other tools had not yet arrived in the cut where the stalled west-bound train, on which rode the Bunker family, had stopped. But the section gang had shoveled away the dirt and gravel from the east-bound track.
Russ and Rose and Margy and Mun Bun had found plenty to interest them in watching the shovelers and in listening to the men passengers talking with daddy and some of the train crew. Finally Mun Bun expressed a desire to go back into the car, and Rose went with him. As they were climbing the steps into the vestibule a brakeman came running forward along the cinder path beside the tracks.
"All aboard! Back into the cars, people!" he shouted. "We're going to steam back. Get aboard!"
Russ and Margy being the only Bunker children in sight, Mr. Bunker "shooed" them back to the Pullman car. He saw Rose and Mun Bun disappearing up the high steps, and he presumed Laddie and Violet were ahead. The train had started and the four children and daddy came to mother's seat before it was discovered that there were two little Bunkers missing.
"Oh, Charles!" gasped Mrs. Bunker. "Where are they?" The train began to move more rapidly. "They are left behind!"
"No, Amy, I don't think so," Mr. Bunker told her soothingly. "I looked all about before I got aboard and there wasn't a chick nor child in sight. I was one of the last passengers to get aboard. The section men had even got upon their handcar and were pumping away up the east-bound track. There is not a soul left at that place."
"Then where are they?" cried Mother Bunker, without being relieved in the least by his statement.
"I think they are aboard the train—somewhere. They got into the wrong car by mistake. We will look for them," said Mr. Bunker.
So he went forward, while Russ started back through the rear cars, both looking and asking for the twins. As we quite well know, Vi and Laddie were not aboard the train at all, and the others found this to be a fact within a very few minutes. Back daddy and Russ came to the rest of the family.
"I knew they were left behind!" Mother Bunker declared again, and this time nobody tried to reassure her.
Her alarm was shared by daddy and the older children. Even Margy began to cry a little, although, ordinarily, she wasn't much of a cry-baby. She wanted to know if they had to go on to Cowboy Jack's and leave Vi and Laddie behind them—and if they would never find them again.
"Of course we'll find them," Rose assured the little girl. "They aren't really lost. They just missed the train."
Daddy hurried to find their conductor and talk with him. He came back with the news that the train was only going to run back a few miles to where there was a cross-over switch, and then the train would steam back again into the cut on the east-bound track. Theconductor promised to stop there so Mr. Bunker could look for the lost children.
But Mother Bunker was much alarmed, and the children kept very quiet and talked in whispers. Although Russ and Rose spoke cheerfully about it to the other children, they were old enough to know that something really dreadful might have happened to the twins.
"I guess nobody could have run off with them," whispered Russ to his sister.
"Oh, no! There were no Gypsies or tramps anywhere about. Anyway, we didn't see any."
"They weren't carried off. They walked off," said Russ decidedly. "Maybe they will be back again waiting for the train."
They all hoped this would be the fact. The train finally stopped and then steamed ahead again and ran on to the east-bound track that had been cleared of all other traffic so that the passenger train could get around the landslide. Mr. Bunker and Russ went out into the vestibule so as to jump off the train the moment it stopped in the cut. The conductor and one of the brakemen got off too, but other passengers were warned to remain aboard. The train could not halt here for long.
Russ ran around the big rock that had fallen on the other track, and up the road a way. But there was no sign of Vi and Laddie. Mr. Bunker saw the path up the bank, and he climbed just as the twins had and reached the top.
The big pasture was then revealed to the anxious father; but Vi and Laddie were nowhere in view. Why! Daddy Bunker didn't even see the chipmunk Laddie and his sister had chased. Daddy Bunker shouted and shouted. If the twins had been within sound of his voice they surely would have answered. But no answer came.
"You'll have to come down from there, Mr. Bunker!" called the conductor of the train. "We can't wait any longer. We're holding up traffic as it is."
So Mr. Bunker came down to the railroad bed, very much worried and hating dreadfully to go back and tell Mother Bunker and the rest of the little Bunkers that the twins were not to be found.
There was nothing else to be done. Where the twins could have disappeared to was a mystery. And just what he should do to traceVi and Laddie their father could not at that moment imagine.
The train started again, but ran slowly. Mrs. Bunker did not weep as Margy did, and as Rose herself was inclined to do. But she was very pale and she looked at her husband anxiously.
"My poor babies!" she said. "I think we will all have to get off the train at the next station, Charles, and wait until Vi and Laddie are found."
Daddy Bunker could not say "no" to this, for he did not see any better plan. Of course they could not go on to Cowboy Jack's ranch and leave Vi and Laddie behind.
The other passengers in the car took much interest in the Bunkers' trouble. Most of the men and women had grown fond of Violet, in spite of her inquisitiveness, and all admired Laddie Bunker. It seemed a really terrible thing that the two should have become separated from their parents and the other children.
"Something is always happening to us Bunkers," confessed Russ. "But what happens isn't often as bad as this. I don't see what Vi and Laddie could have been thinking of."
We know, however, that the twins had been thinking of nothing but gathering flowers and chasing a chipmunk until that train whistle had sounded. How the twins did run then across the pasture and up to the very verge of the high bank overlooking the railroad cut!
"Oh, the train's gone!" shrieked Vi, when she first looked down.
"And the workmen are gone too," gasped Laddie.
There was nobody left in the cut, and both the train and the handcar on which the section hands had traveled, were out of sight. It was the loneliest place that the twins had ever seen!
"Now, see what we've done," complained Vi, between her sobs. "We ran away and lost mother and daddy and the others. They've gone on to Cowboy Jack's and left us here."
"Then we didn't run away from them," Laddie said more sturdily. "They ran away from us."
"That doesn't make any difference," complained his sister. "We—we're lost and can't be found."
"Say!" cried Laddie suddenly, "how do you s'pose that train hopped over that rock?"
This point interested Vi at once. It was a most astonishing thing. If the train had gone on to Cowboy Jack's, it surely had got over that big rock in a most wonderful way.
"How did it get over the rock?" Vi began. "Did it fly over? I never saw the wings on that engine, did you? And if the enginedidfly over, it couldn't have dragged the cars with it, could it?"
"Oh, don't, Vi!" begged Laddie, much puzzled. "I couldn't tell you all that. Maybe they had some way of lifting the train around the rock. Anyway, it's gone."
"And—and—and what shallwedo?" began Vi, almost ready to cry again.
"We have just got to follow on behind it. I guess daddy will miss us and get off and come back to look for us after a while."
"Do you suppose he will?"
"Yes," said Laddie with more confidence, as he thought of his kind and thoughtful father. "I am sure he will, Vi. Daddy wouldn't leave us alone on the railroad with no place to go and nothing to eat."
At this Vi was reminded that they had not eaten since breakfast, and although it was notyet noon, she declared that she was starving!
"You can't be starving yet," Laddie told her, with scorn. "We haven't been lost from the train long enough for you to be starving, Violet Bunker."
"Well, Laddie, I just know we will starve here if the train doesn't come back for us."
"Maybe another train will come along and we can buy something from the candy boy. You 'member the candy boy on our train? I've got ten cents in my pocket."
"Oh, have you? That will buy four lollipops—two for you and two for me. I guess I wouldn't starve so soon if I had two lollipops," admitted Vi.
"I guess you won't starve," Laddie told her without much sympathy. "Now we must climb down to the tracks and start after daddy's train."
"Do you suppose we can catch it? Will it stop and wait when daddy finds out we're not on it? And are yousurehe'll come back looking for us? Shall we get supper, do you s'pose, Laddie, just as soon as we get on the train? For I'm awfully hungry!"
Her twin could not answer. Like the otherBunkers, he wasnonplussedby some of Vi's questions. Nor did he have much idea of how Daddy Bunker was going to stop the train, which he supposed had gone ahead, and return to meet Vi and him trudging along the railroad tracks.
The twins got out of the cut between the two hills after a time, and then itwaslong past noon and Laddie was hungry as well as Vi. It seemed terrible to the Bunker twins to have money to spend and no way to spend it. They might just as well have been on a desert island, like that man Robinson Crusoe about whom Rose read to them.
"I know a riddle about that Robinson Crusoe man. Yes, I do!" suddenly exclaimed Laddie.
"What is the riddle, Laddie? Do I know it?"
"You can try to guess it, Vi," said the eager little boy. "Now listen! 'How do we know Robinson Crusoe had plenty of fish to eat?'"
"'Cause the island was in the water," said Vi promptly. "Of course there were fish."
"Well, that isn't the answer," Laddie said slowly.
"Why isn't it?"
"Because—because the answer is something about Friday. You fry fish, you know—And anyway, Crusoe's man was namedFriday."
"Pooh!" scoffed Vi. "You fry bacon and eggs and lots of other things, besides those nice pancakes Norah makes for breakfast when we're at home. I don't think much of that riddle, Laddie Bunker, so now!"
"I guess it is a good riddle if I only knew how to ask it," complained her twin. "But somehow I've got it mixed up."
"Don't ask any more riddles like that. They make me hungry," declared Vi. "And there isn't a candy shop or anything around here."
She came very near to speaking the exact truth that time. On both sides of the railroad track where they now walked so wearily there seemed to be almost a desert. There were neither houses nor trees, and although the country was rolling, it was not at all pleasant in appearance.
And how tired their feet did become! If you have ever walked the railroad tracks(which you certainly must never do unless grown people are with you, for it is a dangerous practise) you know that stepping from tie to tie between the rails is a very uncomfortable way to travel, because the ties are not laid at equal distances apart. First Vi and Laddie had to take a short step and then a long step. And if they missed the tie in stepping, their shoes crunched right down into the wet cinders, for the ground by no means was all dried up since the heavy rain.
"Oh, me, I'm so tired!" complained Vi, after a while.
"So'm I," confessed her twin brother.
"And I don't see daddy coming for us," added Vi, her voice tremulous with tears again.