CHAPTER XIII
AN ALARM
Mr. Richard Gordon was not minded to allow the young folks to portion out the little store of food as they pleased. He and Major Pater, who had now joined the party from Fairfields quite as a matter of course, had considered the use of the supplies to the best advantage. There was not much else to eat on the train, for even the crew had devoured their lunches, and most train-men when obliged to carry food at all are supplied with huge tin buckets that hold at least three "square meals."
"Though why meals should be 'square' I can't for the life of me see," Betty observed. "Why not 'round' meals? I am sure we manage to get around them when we eat them."
"Quite a philosopheress, aren't you?" joked Bob.
"These rations are not to be considered with philosophy," complained Bobby. "They are too frugal."
In truth, when the bread and meat and crackers and hot drink had been portioned to those who needed food most, the amount each received was nothing to gorge upon.
"If it stops snowing—or as soon as it does," Bob declared, "we've got to get out and make our way back to that station the brakeman says is only three miles away."
"Uncle Dick won't let us try it, I am sure," sighed Betty. "How could we wade through such deep snow?"
"If you had helped dig that tunnel," said Teddy Tucker confidently, "you'd know that the snow is packed so hard you wouldn't sink in very deep in walking."
"But of course, you girls can't go," Tommy said. "We fellows will have to go for supplies."
The girls did not much like this statement. Betty and Bobby at least considered that they were quite as well able to endure the hardships of a tramp through the snow as the boys.
"I'd just like to see that tunnel, and see how hard it is snowing outside," said Betty privately to her chum.
"Let's go look," exclaimed Bobby, equally curious.
Libbie and Timothy had their heads together over a book. Louise and the boys were engaged socially with some of the other passengers in their coach. So Betty and Bobby were able to slip away, with their coats and caps, without being observed.
There were two Pullman coaches and but one day coach besides the express and baggage and mail cars to the train. The passengers in the day coach were confined to that or to the smoker's end of the baggage car ahead. The occupants of the Pullman coaches could roam through both as they pleased; and had the weather been fine it is certain that the young folks from Fairfields would have occupied the observation platform at the rear of the train a good part of the daytime.
They had been shut in by the storm the afternoon before, and now they were doubly shut in by the snow. The doors of the vestibules between the cars could not be opened, for the snow was banked up on both sides to the roofs. That tunnel the boys and train hands had made from the rear platform was the only means of egress for the passengers from the submerged train.
Betty and Bobby passed through the rear car and out upon the snow-banked platform. They saw that several people must have thrust themselves through the tunnel since the boys had made it. Probably these explorers had wished, like the two girls, to discover for themselves just what state the weather was in.
"Dear me!" gasped Bobby, "dare we poke through that hole? What do you think, Betty?"
"The snow is hard packed, just as the boys say. I guess we can risk it," declared the more daring Betty. "Anyway, I can go anywhere Bob Henderson can, my dear. I will not take a back seat for any boy."
"Hear! Hear!" chuckled Bobby. "Isn't that what they cry at political meetings? You have made a good speech, Bettykins. Now go ahead and do it."
"Go ahead and do what?"
"Lead the way through that chimney. My! I believe it has stopped snowing and the boys don't know it."
"Come on then and make sure," Betty cried, and began to scramble up the sloping tunnel on hands and knees.
Both girls were warmly dressed, booted, and mittened. A little snow would not hurt them—not even a great deal of snow. And that a great deal had fallen and blown into this railroad cut, Betty and Bobby soon realized when they had scrambled out through what the latter had called "the chimney."
Only a few big flakes drifted in the air, which was keen and biting. But the wind had ceased—at least, it did not blow here in the cut between the hills—and it seemed only an ordinary winter day to the two girls from the other side of the Potomac.
Forward they saw a thin stream of smoke rising into the air from the stack of the front locomotive. The fires in the pusher were banked. It was not an oil-burner, nor was it anywhere near as large a locomotive as the one that pulled the train.
Rearward they could scarcely mark the roadbed, so drifted over was it. Fences and other landmarks were completely buried. The bending telegraph poles, weighted by the pull of snowladen wires, was all that marked the right of way through the glen.
"What a sight!" gasped Betty. "Oh, Bobby! did you ever see anything so glorious?"
"I never saw so much snow, if that is what you mean," admitted the Virginia girl. "And I am not sure that I really approve of it."
But Bobby laughed. She had to admit it was a great sight. It was now mid-afternoon and all they could see of the sun was a round, hazy ball behind the misty clouds, well down toward the western horizon which they could see through the mouth of this cut, or valley between the hills. At first they beheld not a moving object on the white waste.
"It is almost solemn," pursued Betty, who possessed a keen delight in all manifestations of nature.
"It looks mighty solemn, I admit," agreed Bobby. "Especially when you remember that anything to eat is three miles away and the drifts are nobody knows how many feet deep."
Betty laughed. She was about to say something cheerful in reply when a sudden sound smote upon their ears—a sound that startled the two girls. Somewhere from over the verge of the high bank of the cut on their left hand sounded a long-drawn and perfectly blood-curdling howl!
"For goodness' sake!" gasped Bobby, grabbing her friend by the arm. "What sort of creature is that? Hear it?"
"Of course I hear it," replied Betty, rather sharply. "Do you think I am deaf?"
Only a very deaf person could have missed hearing that mournful howl. It drew nearer.
"Is it a dog?" asked Bobby, almost in a whisper, as for a third time the howl sounded.
"A dog barks, doesn't it? That doesn't sound like a dog, Bobby," said Betty. "I heard one out West. I do believe it is one!"
"One what?" cried Bobby, almost shaking her in alarm and impatience.
"A wolf. It sounds just like a wolf. Oh, Bobby! suppose there should be a pack of wolves in these hills and that they should attack this train?"
"Wolves!" shrieked Bobby. "Wolves! Then me for in-doors! I am not going to stay here and be eaten up by wolves."
As she turned to dive into the tunnel there was a sharper and more eager yelp, and a shaggy animal came to the edge of the bluff to their left and, without stopping an instant, plunged down through the drifts toward the two girls where they stood on the hard-packed snow at the mouth of the tunnel.
"It is a wolf!" wailed Bobby, and immediately disappeared, head first, down the hole in the snow drift.