"We can't do it, boys," the brakeman said, at last. "We'll have to wait for help. There isn't one chance in a hundred that they are alive, but they may be. Somebody will have to run to the station and make sure that they bring some jacks. I am 'most done up and don't feel equal to it. Which one of you will go? Only one, now; the others will be needed here."
"I'll go," said Benny. "I'm the littlest one in the bunch and can be spared the easiest. What was that you said you wanted?"
"Jacks; to jack up the engine frame with. There are several in the baggage room. I saw them there."
Benny hated to leave, when there was so much going on, but before the brakeman had finished speaking he was climbing up on the river bank. In another second he had started down the track on a run.
"Now, fellers," Skinny told us, trying to keep his teeth from chattering, he was so excited, "our Scout book says for us to keep cool and we've got to do it. While we are waiting for help the thing for us to do is to be Scouts and to get busy with our bandages."
"And make some stretchers," added Bill. "We can't use our coats and hike sticks, like the book says, because we didn't bring 'em."
"That's easy. We can use car seats."
The "first-aid kits," which Benny had brought from camp, had everything that we needed. That was what they were put up for, only we didn't think we should need them. There were shears and tweezers, carbolized vaseline, sterilized dressings for wounds, to keep the germs out, all kinds of bandages and things like that. Say, we looked like a drug store when we had fairly started.
Skinny cut away the shoe from Mary's foot and Bill brought cold water from a nearby spring, to bathe it in. The foot was bruised and the ankle sprained, but no bones were broken. Soon they had her feeling better.
I went to help Mrs. Richmond, but all the time I was thinking of the men under the engine. She was sitting up on the car seat, trying to keep her feet out of the water.