“I’m caught,” she said simply. “How is the little girl?”
Mabel bent over, and examined her chum’s predicament. Then she laid hold of the wheel and attempted to lift it.
“I can’t move it,” she said, and continued to tug desperately at the wheel and heavy axle.
“You had better call some one to help you,” said Shirley calmly.
Mabel gave up her attempt to lift the wheel and hurried to the opposite side of the tangled wreckage, where she could hear men at work trying to pull other victims from beneath the heap.
The heat from the flames that now almost enveloped the wreck was becoming more intense. It was almost unbearable, and Shirley, imprisoned as she was, stretched as far as possible from the fire.
At Mabel’s call for aid, one of the men gave up his position with the others and followed her to where Shirley lay. It was but the work of a moment for him to lift the wheel sufficiently for Mabel to help Shirley from beneath it.
Shirley arose and tried her foot. It pained her, but hasty examination showed that it was simply bruised. Painfully, assisted by Mabel, she limped after the man, who had raised the wheel, to the opposite side of the wreck, where rescuers were even at that moment pulling the last of the victims from under the cars, away from the tongues of flame.
CHAPTER V.—HOME AGAIN.
As she walked along, the pain in Shirley’s foot became less and less, until finally she was not conscious of it. The girls soon sat down upon the grass, where they watched the men fighting the flames, that the cars might not be entirely consumed.