Read Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp; Or, The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne Page 12

  CHAPTER XII

  THE TUNNEL

  The baby was screaming, the little boy of four or five looked miserablyunhappy, and the worn and meager-looking mother was plainly frightened outof her wits. She let the baby scream on the seat beside her while she heldthe little girl in her lap.

  That youngster seemed to be the least disturbed of any of the party. Shewas a pretty child, and robust. She kicked vigorously against being heldalmost upside down by her mother (as though by that means the dose ofpoison could be coaxed out of the child) but she did not cry.

  "The little dear!" cooed Betty, pushing through the ring of otherpassengers. "What has happened to her?"

  "She'll be dead in five minutes," croaked a sour visaged woman who bentover the back of the seat to stare at the crying baby without making aneffort to relieve the mother in any way.

  "What is the poison?" demanded Betty excitedly.

  "It--it's----I don't know what the doctor called it," wailed the poormother. "I had it in my handbag with other drops. Nellie here is alwaysplaying with bottles. She will drink out of bottles, much as I can do orsay."

  Betty was sniffing--that may not be an elegant expression, but it isexactly what she did--and looking all about on the floor.

  "Something's been spilled here," she said. "It's a funny odor. Seems to meI remember smelling it before."

  "That's the poison," groaned the woman over the back of the seat. "Her maknocked it out of the young one's hand. Too bad. She's a goner!"

  This seemed to Betty very dreadful. She darted an angry glance at thewoman. "A regular Mrs. Job's comforter, she is!" thought Betty.

  But all the time she was looking about the floor of the car for thebottle. Finally she dropped to her knees and scrambled about among theboots of the passengers. She came up like a diver, with an object heldhigh in one hand.

  "Is this it?" she asked.

  "That is the bottle, Miss," sobbed the mother. "My poor little Nellie!Isn't there a doctor, anywhere? They say milk is good for some kinds ofpoison, but I haven't any milk for baby even. That is what makes him cryso. Poor little Nellie!"

  Betty had been staring at the label on the bottle. Now she smelled hardat the mouth of it She held the bottle before the woman's eyes.

  "Are you sure this is the bottle the child drank out of?" she demanded.

  "Yes, Miss. That is it. Poor little Nellie!"

  "Why! can't you smell?" demanded Betty. "And can't you see? There is noskull and cross-bones on this label. And all that was in the bottle wassweet spirits of niter. I'm sure that won't do your Nellie any lastingharm."

  The mother was thunderstruck for a moment--and speechless. The gloomywoman looking over the back of the seat drawled:

  "Then it wasn't poison at all?"

  "No," said Betty. "And I should think among you, you should have found itout!"

  She was quite scornful of the near-by passengers. The mother let thestruggling little girl slip out of her lap, fortunately feet first ratherthan head first, and grabbed up the screaming baby.

  "Dear me! You naughty little thing, Nellie! You are always scaring me todeath," she said scoldingly. "And if we don't come to some place where Ican buy milk pretty soon and get it warmed, this child will burst hislungs crying."

  Betty, however, considered that the baby was much too strong and vigorousto be in a starving state as yet. She wondered how the poor women expectedto get milk with the train stalled in the snow. She had in her pocketsome chocolate wafers and she pacified the two older children with theseand then ran back to the sleeping car.

  She was in season to head off a procession of excited Pullman passengersin all stages of undress starting for the day coach with everything in theline of antidote for poison that could be imagined and which they haddiscovered in their traveling bags.

  "Baby's better. She wasn't poisoned at all," Betty told them. "But thosechildren are going to be awfully hungry before long if we have to stayhere. Do you know we're snowbound, girls?"

  This last she confided to the three Littell girls.

  "Won't they dig us out?" asked the practical Louise.

  "What a lark!" exclaimed Bobby, clapping her hands.

  "Just think! Buried in the snow! How wonderful!" murmured Libbie.

  "Cheese!" exclaimed Tommy Tucker, overhearing this. "You'll think it'swonderful. The brakeman told me that the drivers were clogged at sixo'clock and the wheels haven't turned since. We're completely buried insnow and it's still snowing. Head engine's an oil-burner and there isplenty of fuel; but there isn't a chance of our being dug out for days."

  "How brutal you are," giggled Bobby, who could not be frightened by anymisadventure. "How shall we live?"

  "After we eat up the bread and ham we will draw lots and eat up eachother," Bob observed soberly.

  "But those little children can't eat each other," Betty declared withconviction. "Come on Bobby. You're dressed. Let's see what we can do forthat poor mother and the babies."

  The two girls had to confer with Uncle Dick first of all. He had charge ofthe supplies. Betty knew there was some way of mixing condensed milk withwater and heating the mixture so that it would do very well at apinch--the pinch of hunger!--for a nursing child. Uncle Dick supplied thecanned milk and some other food for the older children, and Betty andBobby carried these into the day coach where the little family had spentsuch an uncomfortable night and were likely to spend a very uncomfortableday as well.

  For there was no chance of escaping from their present predicament--allthe train crew said so--until plows and shovelers came to dig the trainout of the cut.

  Of course the conductors and the rest of the crew knew just where theywere. Behind them about three miles was a small hamlet at which the trainhad not been scheduled to stop, and had not stopped. Had the train pulleddown there the situation of the crew and passengers would have been muchbetter. They would not have been stalled in this drifted cut.

  Cliffdale, to which Uncle Dick and his party were bound, was twenty milesand more ahead. The roadbed was so blocked that it might be several daysbefore the way would be opened to Cliffdale.

  "The roads will be opened by the farmers and teams will get through themountains before the railroad will be dug out," Mr. Gordon told the boys."If we could get back to that station in the rear we might findconveyances that would take us on to Mountain Camp. If I had a pair ofsnowshoes I certainly could make it over the hills myself in a shorttime."

  "You go ahead, Mr. Gordon," said Tommy Tucker, "and tell 'em we'recoming."

  "I'll have to dig out of here and get the webs on my feet first," repliedUncle Dick, laughing.

  His speech put an idea in the head of the ingenious Tommy Tucker. Whilethe girls were attending to the children in the car ahead, the twins andBob and Timothy Derby went through the train to the very end. Theobservation platform was banked with snow, and the snow was packed prettyhard. But there were some tools at hand and the boys set to work with thetwo porters and a brakeman to punch a hole through the snowbank to thesurface.

  It was great sport, although the quartette from Salsette Academy enjoyedit more than the men did. It was fun for the boys and work for the men,and the latter would have given it up in despair if the younger diggershad not been so eagerly interested in the task.

  They sloped the tunnel so that it was several yards long before it reachedthe surface. The snow underneath, they tramped hard; they battered theirway through by pressing a good deal of the snow into solid walls on eitherside. When the roof at the end finally fell in on them, they found that itwas still snowing steadily and the wind was pouring great sheets of itinto the cut and heaping it yard upon yard over the roofs of the cars.They could barely see the top of the smokestack of the pusher a few feetaway.

  That locomotive had been abandoned by its crew when the train was stalled.Keeping the boiler of the head engine hot was sufficient to supply thecars with heat and hot water.

  "Cricky!" cried Bob. "We've found the way out; but I guess even Uncl
e Dickwouldn't care to start out in this storm, snowshoes or not. Fellows, we'rein a bad fix, just as sure as you live."

  "All right," said Teddy Tucker. "Let's go back and get something to eatbefore somebody else gets ahead of us. I suppose those girls have givenall the milk to those kids up front, and maybe the ham sandwiches too."

  "Dear me!" sighed Timothy, "it is like being cast away on a desert island.We are Robinson Crusoes."

  "And haven't got even a goat!" chuckled Tommy Tucker.