CHAPTER IV
AN IMITATION HOLD-UP
It was all over. The bustling days of preparation for the long trip,during which the girls had hardly had time to give vent to theirexcitement, had passed, and here they were actually finding their placesin the puffing, western bound train.
"Here's number five," Grace said, as she slid into a velvet-covered seatwith a sigh of thankfulness. "Who is coming in here with me?"
"Guess I'm elected," laughed Betty. "And here's number seven for Mollieand Amy, and mother and dad are in six right across the way. Thatcompletes the family party."
They were hardly settled when there was a last warning cry of "Allaboard" and the train began to move ever so slowly from the station.
The girls peered out to wave good-by to the boys and some of their otherfriends who had come to see them off. The young fellows looked rathergloomy--all except Allen. The latter shouted something that they took tobe "See you later!" and then the train swept around a curve, hiding thestation from view.
"Well," said Grace, with a sigh, as she opened her grip to fish for theinevitable candy box, "the boys seemed to take our flitting pretty hard.They looked as if we were already dead and buried."
"Far from it," murmured Betty happily, her eyes on the ever changingview from the window. "I feel as if we were just beginning to live."
The hours of the morning passed like minutes to the girls, and they weresurprised when the porter came through with his "Foist call fo' dinnah!"
The afternoon passed uneventfully, and they amused themselves by makingup stories about their fellow passengers. There was the quaint littleman in number four who reminded them of Professor Arnold Dempsey and whomight very easily have been a professor, judging from the number ofbooks he carried.
Then there was the freckled-faced small boy in number three whose anticskept his mother in a continual state of "nerves." Once when he bouncedone of those implements commonly known as "spit balls" off of thebookish little man's bald head, the girls thought they would die tryingto stifle their merriment.
Then there was the very pretty, but much be-powdered and rouged girlbehind them in number nine. Grace embarrassed Betty very much by turningaround to look at her every five minutes or so.
"She's a moving picture actress or something, I'm sure of it," Graceconfided in Betty's unsympathetic ear. "I wonder if I could fix my hairthe way she does. She fascinates me."
"She seems to," Betty retorted dryly, adding with a twinkle. "You may beable to fix your hair like hers--though I doubt it--but please rememberthat your mother doesn't want you to use rouge."
"Well, you know I wouldn't do that," said Grace in a huff, addingmaliciously, "I guess you are just jealous, that's all."
"Uh-huh, that must be it," said Betty, with an unruffled good-naturethat made Grace secretly ashamed of herself.
"I'm sorry, Betty," she said after a rather long pause, addinggenerously: "You don't need to be jealous of anybody."
"Thanks," Betty answered, with a smile. "I knew you didn't mean it,dear."
And so the long hours of the afternoon wore away, dusk came, shroudingthe swiftly moving landscape in a veil of mystery. So engrossed werethe girls in contemplation of the changing beauty of nature that itseemed almost sacrilege when the blatant lights of the train flashedforth, bringing them violently back to a realization of time and place.
"Don't you want any supper?" Mr. Nelson was asking, in his pleasantvoice. "It isn't like the Outdoor Girls to overlook meal time."
"Far be it from us to spoil our good reputation," cried Molliebuoyantly, and away they rushed to the dressing room to wash for supper.Though dining on a train was no novelty to the girls, they never lostthe keenness of their first delight in the experience.
"It's fascinating," Mollie remarked once, spearing desperately at anelusive potato as the train jerked and jolted over the rails at sixtymiles an hour, "to see how often you can raise your coffee cup withoutspilling the coffee all over your food!"
On this night at supper Mollie was so screamingly funny that the girlshad all they could do to keep their hilarity from making themconspicuous.
Mr. and Mrs. Nelson at a table for two across the aisle smiledindulgently at their charges, and once Mrs. Nelson met her husband'sglance and chuckled fondly.
"Pretty nice set of girls?" she said softly.
"Pretty nice!" Mr. Nelson agreed.
"I'm beginning to wish we were at Gold Run now," confided Mollie, afterdining. She and Amy had slipped into the seat opposite Betty and Grace.
"Oh, I think it's all fun," cried Betty, for she was always the last ofthe Outdoor Girls to feel tired. "We change at Chicago to-morrowafternoon," she added. "And then two more nights on the train, and thenGold Run!"
"Oh, that sounds good," cried Mollie, adding eagerly: "Tell me, Betty,shall we be able to choose any horse we want for our own particularmount?"
"Oh, yes," said Betty, adding with a smile: "It will be interesting tosee the kind of horse each one of you will choose. Amy will like thegentle one, Grace will choose hers for its looks and yours will be themost vicious one in the pack, Mollie."
"Well, I like that!" said Mollie unperturbed. "She wants to kill me offeven before I get there."
"Pack?" murmured Amy. "Is a 'pack' of horses right?" But no one answeredher.
"I wonder," mused Grace dreamily, "if there will be a tan one--all tan,you know, without even a spot of any other color----"
"Oh, of course," laughed Betty. "If we haven't an all tan one in thecorrals at Gold Run, we'll send to the nearest ranch and have oneimported for you. Don't worry your little head about that."
A little while after that they stopped at a water station, and most ofthe passengers got off to stretch their cramped limbs. And, as theconductor informed them that they would be there for fifteen minutes atleast, the girls followed the general example.
However, in their enthusiasm at finding the good old solid earth undertheir feet once more, they wandered too far, and the warning toot of thestarting train found them quite a distance from the platform.
They had not earned the title of Outdoor Girls for nothing, however, andby sprinting for all they were worth they were able to make the last carjust in the nick of time.
"Whew, that was a close call," said Betty as they made their way,panting, through to their own car, where Mr. and Mrs. Nelson werelooking frantically for them. "No more water stations for us."
Darkness fell, and the porters moved about, making up berths andanswering the hundred and one insistent calls of the passengers.
The girls went to bed with no protest whatever and were soon sleepingthe sleep of healthy youth. It was toward midnight that they were ratherrudely jerked out of this beautiful sleep by a sudden and almost violentstopping of the train.
Betty, who was sleeping in a lower berth, she and Grace having decidedto take turns, sat up and peered out of the grimed window into thegloom. No station lights greeted her, as she expected confidently theywould. Nothing but inky, startling blackness.
That she was not the only one roused was proved by the subdued sound ofvoices raised in sleepy protest.
"They ought to put that engineer in prison for stopping like that," saida man's voice.
"Gee! I thought it was a wreck, sure," came another surly voice.
At this moment a couple of legs dangled themselves over the side ofBetty's berth and in another minute the owner of them slid down besideBetty. Betty giggled nervously, but Grace clutched her arm and shook it.
"Listen!" she said. "There's nothing to laugh about. This is a hold-up,that's what it is! You know what your father said about there being alot of them around this place."
That this conclusion had been reached by some one else in the car wasproved by a woman's voice that rose shrilly above the rest.
"It's a hold-up, that's what it is!" she cried, adding, with what seemedto Betty ridiculous panic: "Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do?"
"Better stop making a fuss
, first off," growled another masculine voice,and again Betty giggled nervously.
"Goodness, I hope I don't have to get out in my nightie," she said, andpoked her head out through the curtains.
"Look out," warned Grace, pulling her back. "You may get shot orsomething."
"Don't be silly," retorted Betty, not altogether decided whether to befrightened or amused by the situation. "There isn't anything out therebut a lot of funny looking heads sticking through the curtains."
"I don't see how you can laugh about it," said Grace, through chatteringteeth. "I don't think it would be any j-joke to have all our m-moneytaken from us----"
"Sh-h--be quiet," warned Betty, peeping again through the slit in thecurtain. "Somebody's coming. Listen!"
Grace listened, and so, evidently, did every one else in the car. Nowonder that, scared though she undoubtedly was, Betty found humor inthe situation. Heads of every kind and description stuck through thecurtains, women's, some in boudoir caps, some without, men's heads,either bald or with hair grotesquely ruffled by sleep, and on every facedepicted every one of the varied emotions which have disturbed the humanrace since time began. And there they were, all frozen to immobility bythe sound of two men's voices raised in heated discussion.
Then the owners of the voices came into view, and the expression on allthe faces changed to bewildered amazement. Instead of the masked banditwhich they had half expected to see there was a very portly and veryexcited gentleman and with him was a conductor, not so portly but justas excited.
"I tell you," the conductor was saying, his face red with wrath, "youare violating the rules of the company by flagging this train for apersonal matter----"
"You have told me that before," roared the portly gentleman, waxingalmost apoplectic. "And I've told you I don't care a hang for the rulesof the company. What I want to find is my daughter and that young scampshe ran away with. And if you don't help me, I'll wring your neck!"
"I tell you there is no couple answering your description on thistrain," rasped the conductor, as the two made their way, shouting andgesticulating, through the two rows of amazed heads and so on into thenext car.
"Well, I'll be blowed," commented the voice belonging to one of theheads; and as if that were a signal, all the other heads promptlywithdrew to the accompaniment of exclamations and laughter.
In the darkness of the berth Betty chuckled.
"Oh, they did look so funny, Gracie," she said. "All those people withtheir heads stuck out into the aisle. You should have taken a peek."
"Humph," grunted Grace, unsympathetically, as she prepared to climb intoher berth again. Then she said: "I hope if that man's daughter takes anotion to run away again, she won't do it on our train, that's all!"