This happened after eleven o'clock and while they were between stations. It was a lonely and rugged country, and even farm-houses were far apart. The train was about midway between stations, the distance from one to the other being some twenty miles. The weight of the snow had already broken down long stretches of telegraph and telephone wires. No aid for the snow-bound train and passengers could be obtained.
Before this, however, the porter had insisted upon making up the girls' berths and, like most of the other passengers in the Pullman, Nan and Bess were asleep. While the passengers slept the snow continued to sift down, building the drifts higher and higher, and causing the train-crew increasing worriment of mind.
The locomotive could no longer pierce the drifts. The train had been too heavy for her from the first. Fuel supply had been renewed at the Junction, as well as water; but the coal was now needed to keep up steam for the cars—and it would not last long for that purpose.
If the storm continued until morning without change, it might be several days before the road could be opened from either end of the division. Food and fuel would be very hard to obtain in this waste of snow, and so far from human habitation.
The two conductors and the engineer spent most of the night discussing ways and means. Meanwhile the snow continued to fall and the passengers, for the most part, rested in ignorance of the peril that threatened.
CHAPTER IV
CAST AWAY IN THE SNOW
It was Bess who came back from the ladies' room on the Pullman and startled Nan Sherwood by shaking her by the shoulder as she lay in the upper berth, demanding:
"Have you any idea what time it is, Nan? Say! have you?"
"No-o—ouch!" yawned her chum. "Goodness! That was my elbow. There's not much room on these shelves, is there?"