This point interested Vi at once. It was a most astonishing thing. If the train had gone on to Cowboy Jack's, it surely had got over that big rock in a most wonderful way.
"How did it get over the rock?" Vi began. "Did it fly over? I never saw the wings on that engine, did you? And if the engine did fly over, it couldn't have dragged the cars with it, could it?"
"Oh, don't, Vi!" begged Laddie, much puzzled. "I couldn't tell you all that. Maybe they had some way of lifting the train around the rock. Anyway, it's gone."
"And—and—and what shall we do?" began Vi, almost ready to cry again.
"We have just got to follow on behind it. I guess daddy will miss us and get off and come back to look for us after a while."
"Do you suppose he will?"
"Yes," said Laddie with more confidence, as he thought of his kind and thoughtful father. "I am sure he will, Vi. Daddy wouldn't leave us alone on the railroad with no place to go and nothing to eat."
At this Vi was reminded that they had not eaten since breakfast, and although it was not yet noon, she declared that she was starving!
"You can't be starving yet," Laddie told her, with scorn. "We haven't been lost from the train long enough for you to be starving, Violet Bunker."
"Well, Laddie, I just know we will starve here if the train doesn't come back for us."