“It sure was!” agreed Frank emphatically, feeling doubtfully of his neck. “It nearly snapped my head off! And then Arn landed on me like a ton of bricks.”
“Let’s go see,” said Toby. “What’s this?” He raised a foot from which dangled Arnold’s hat. “I’m sorry. Sort of mussed, I’m afraid.”
Arnold took it, viewed it ruefully and put it on. “It’s all Frank’s fault,” he grumbled as he joined the exodus through the nearer door. “He insisted that something was going to happen, and it did!”
How near that something had come to being a catastrophe was revealed to them when they pushed their way through the throng at the head of the train. Not eighty feet distant from the pilot of the throbbing locomotive stood a lone box-car, its forward truck lodged against its rear. It was loaded and sealed and marked “Greenburg.” A curve in the track behind had hidden it from the fireman’s sight until there had remained just space in which to avert a collision.
“How do you suppose it got here?” asked Frank.
“Front truck got loose and the car broke its coupling, so they say,” volunteered a boy beside him.
“Hello, Billy,” greeted Frank. “You on the train? I didn’t see you. I suppose this will hold us up awhile, eh?”
“I thought they always had a caboose on the tail-end of a freight,” objected Arnold.
“I believe they do,” agreed Billy Temple, “but this car and some more were on a siding about a mile back and they were sort of switching ’em into the Greenburg yard. Hello, Tucker. What car were you fellows in?”