Pee-wee Harris in Luck

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

“The train’s late,” Pee-wee said. “Do you mean to tell me scout signs aren’t better than the Drerie Railroad?”

If, indeed, this telegraphic voice heralded the approach of the train, why then the train was almost late enough to meet itself coming back the next morning. Anything was possible on the Drerie Railroad.

For a few moments Simon was perplexed. He was not even sure that the road was the one which passed the farm. The fog was so thick that he could not see ten feet about him. It seemed almost as if he could scoop a handful of the thick stuff and leave a hole where he had taken it from. By a careful exploration of the locality, however, he made certain that the road was indeed the one which crossed the main road as well as the farm. But such was his confusion that he did not know whether they were headed for the farm or away from it. It was odd how he could be so completely bewildered with the tracks right there before him. But that is an invariable feature of being lost in a fog.

“Which way is the train coming?” he asked Pee-wee.

“From that way,” Pee-wee said. But since they did not know whether, “that way” was north or south, they were no wiser than before. Yet it was not quite so bad as that either, for in a moment Simon realized that if the train came from the direction Pee-wee said it was coming from, then they were headed in the right direction. They had only to proceed away from the tracks on the left-hand side of the train and their troubles would soon be over.

Pee-wee wished to do this at once. But it was very good that they did not. He afterwards said that he was lucky—in not having his own way. Simon insisted on waiting for the train and seeing with his eyes which direction it came from. On he supposition that Pee-wee was right, however, he did consent to drive the oxen across the tracks so as to be ready to set forth as soon as the train had passed. The oxen beguiled the time of waiting by eating grass along the roadside and thus pulled the festive caravan to a diagonal position on the road.

CHAPTER XXIII

EN ROUTE

Along the lonely Snailsdale branch of the Drerie Railroad crawled the five forty-two, three hours and fifty-seven minutes late. It rumbled and jerked along, unashamed. The smoke which poured out of the funny old bulging smoke-stack was instantly swallowed in the thicker fog; it could be seen only as a kind of restless mass at its point of issuance from the stack.

The old kerosene headlight, standing out before the boiler on its primitive bracket, broke the compact whiteness for only a yard or two and even to that distance the engineer’s concentrated, searching gaze was embarrassed by the mist which seemed waiting, eager to condense again. It must have seemed odd to the cautious engineer that his locomotive could be forever moving into this solid mass without any noise of the collision. He was a substitute that night, and he hoped never, never again to be given a run in that region which wore a snowy death shroud.