If he did so and the boys, Joe and Roger, turned to cross the rails, the train must crash into the “scooter.”
CHAPTER XI
A BOLD THING TO DO!
The threatening peril—which looked so sure to Dorothy Dale if to nobody else—inspired her to act, not to remain stunned and helpless. She jerked her hand from Tavia’s clutch and sprang to her feet. She had been reaching for her bag on first observing the boys coasting down the long hill beside the railroad tracks; and her umbrella was in the rack, too. She seized this. Its handle was a shepherd’s crook. Reaching with it, and without a word to Tavia, she hooked the handle into the emergency cord that ran overhead the length of the car, and pulled down sharply. Instantly there was a shriek from the engine whistle and the brakes were sharply applied.
The brake shoes so suddenly applied to the wheels on this downgrade did much harm to the wheels themselves. Little cared Dorothy for this well-known fact. If every wheel under the train had to go to the repair shop she would have made this bold attempt to stop the train or retard its speed, so that Joe and Roger could cross the tracks ahead of it.
Glancing through the window she saw the boys’ “scooter” dart swiftly and safely into the fork-road and disappear some rods ahead of the pilot of the engine. The boys were across before the brakeman and the Pullman conductor opened the car door and rushed in.
“Who pulled that emergency cord? Anybody here?” shouted the conductor.
“Oh! don’t tell him!” breathed Tavia.
But her friend, if physically afraid, was never a moral coward. She looked straight into the angry conductor’s face and said:
“I did.”
“What for?” he demanded.