A long straight stretch of track, steeply pitched, loomed ahead. They were out of the fire zone now. Bushes and small trees became a weaving wall of green on either side. The dinky plunged into a cut. Jack breathed easier.
“Cross th’ highway just ahead,” yelled the lumberjack. “State road ’round th’ lake.”
Jack had a flash of the road. It wound up alongside the track on one side before it crossed. On the other it disappeared abruptly behind the wall of the cut. Jack thought of his whistle, but the steam was down. The whistle made no sound.
The automobile roadster that shot from behind the wall of the cut almost cleared the rails ahead of the rushing dinky. Jack thought it had, until, in a brief backward glance, he saw the little car turning over and over down the steep bluff below the highway. That same flashing view revealed another car coming down the highway and then the dinky shot around a curve and the scene was shut off.
“God!” cried Jack, “I hope nobody’s killed.”
“Musta heard th’ dinky,” said the lumberjack. “Can’t be helped now—only a mile to go—’round that next bend—I’m goin’ back—we’ll try an’ stop ’er.”
The dinky and the flats, with brakes grinding, stopped on the long level stretch of the transfer tracks. Nick was among the first to reach the dinky. Jack felt strangely light and a confused blur of faces danced before him.
“Jack! Oh, Jack!”
He opened his eyes with warm, moist lips on his own. Nellie? It couldn’t be Nellie down here. She was camping up at Priest Lake.
But it was. She had been with the party that had gone for the trip up Round Top mountain. She was one of the party that had been under the canvas on that last flat.