The boys and their vehicle, surrounded by a little halo of dust, were now far ahead of the chair car in which their sister and Tavia rode. The girls, clinging to each other, craned their necks to see ahead. There were not many other passengers in the car and nobody chanced to notice the horror-stricken girls.
It was a race between the boys and the train, and the boys would never be able to halt their vehicle on the level at the bottom of the hill before crashing into the fence that guarded the open bridge.
Were the barrier not there, the little cart would dart over the edge of the masonry wall of the bridge and all be dashed into the deep and rock-strewn bed of the creek.
There was but one escape for the boys in any event. Perhaps their vehicle could be guided to the left, into the branch road and so across the railroad track. But if Joe undertook that would not the train be upon them?
“Heart disease,” indeed! It seemed to Dorothy Dale as though her own heart pounded so that she could no longer breathe. Her eyes strained to see the imperiled boys down in the road.
The “scooter” ran faster and faster or was the train itself slowing down?
“For sure and certain they are beating us!” murmured Tavia.
She could appreciate the sporting chance in the race; but to Dorothy there loomed up nothing but the peril facing her brothers.
The railroad tracks pitched rather sharply here. It was quite a descent into the valley where North Birchland lay. When the engineers of the passenger trains had any time to make up running west they could always regain schedule on this slope.
Dorothy knew this. She realized that the engineer, watching the track ahead and not the roadway where the boys were, might be tempted to release his brakes when half way down the slope and increase his speed.