“She is stalled on the grade, I guess,” Clay replied. “Anyway, she isn’t coming any nearer.”
“Oh, well,” Case grumbled, “I suppose we can stay out here until the railroad gets a new wrecking crew and a new machine made! Old Rip Van Winkle’s little mountain stunt was a summer night on a sleeping porch compared with this. If anybody should come along in the next hundred years, just wake me up, will you?”
“Going to bed?” asked Clay, with a laugh.
“You bet he isn’t!” shouted Alex. “He hasn’t had his supper yet. Catch him going to bed without pancakes and bacon!”
“And the pancakes are burning, too!” cried Case, entering the cabin and slamming the door after him.
“Come on, Case,” urged Alex. “Let’s go down the grade and see what’s the matter, and what sort of a train it is.”
“We’ll find out soon enough if we remain here,” Clay answered. “Besides, we ought to be getting things propped up in the cabin, so there will be a little furniture left when we get bumped out on the main track.”
“Oh, they’ll just pry the truck up with a jack, put in new wheels, and we’ll sail away like a ship on a summer sea!” Alex grinned. “If you won’t go. I’ll go alone.”
Before Clay could utter the remonstrance that was on his lips, the boy was away down the grade to the east, his cap bobbing along the ties ahead of his leaping feet, his hair flying in the gale.
Before he was well out of sight around an angle in the pass the rumble of a heavy train was heard again, and directly the round, red eye of a headlight met the ruddy illumination of the sun in the narrow pass. Clay could see the smutty face of the engineer peering out of the cab window as the engine toiled, panting, upward, and then he saw the fireman looking over his shoulder.