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CHAPTER IV
BLOCKED TRAFFIC
All was uproar and confusion in the coaches through which Bob had to pass to reach the car where he knew Betty was. Distracted mothers with frightened, crying children charged up and down the aisles, excited men ran through, and the wildest guesses flew about. The consensus of opinion was that they had hit something!
“Oh, Bob!” Betty greeted him with evident relief when he at last reached her. “What has happened? Is any one hurt? Will another train come up behind us and run into us?”
This last was a cheerful topic broached by the fussy little man whose capacity for going ahead and meeting trouble was boundless.
“Of course not!” Bob’s scorn was more reassuring than the gentlest answer. “As soon as a train stops they set signals to warn traffic. What a horrible racket every one is making! They’re all screeching at once. Get your hat, Betty, and we’ll go and find out something definite. I don’t know any more than you do, but I can’t stand this noise.”
Betty was glad to get away from the babble of sound, and they went down the first set of steps and joined the procession that was picking its way over the ties toward the engine.
“Express due in three minutes,” said a brakeman warningly, hurrying past them. “Stand well back from the tracks.”
He went on, cautioning every one he passed, and a majority of the passengers swerved over to the wide cinder path on the other side of the second track. A few persisted in walking the ties.
“Here she comes! Look out!” Bob shouted, as a trail of smoke became visible far up the track.
He had insisted that Betty stand well away from the track, and now the few persistent ones who had remained on the cleared track scrambled madly to reach safety. A woman who walked with a cane, and who had overridden her young-woman attendant’s advice that she stay in the coach until news of the accident, whatever it was, could be brought to her, was almost paralyzed with nervous fright. Bob went to her distressed attendant’s aid, and between them they half-carried, half-dragged the stubborn old person from the shining rails.
“Toto!” she gasped.
Bob stared, but Betty’s quick eye had seen. There, in the middle of the track, sat a fluffy little dog, its eyes so thickly screened with hair that it is doubtful if it could see three inches before its shining black nose. This was Toto, and the rush of events had completely bewildered him. The dog was accustomed to being held on its mistress’ lap or carried about in a covered basket, but she had decided that a short walk would give the little beast needed exercise, and it had pantingly tagged along after her, obedient, as usual, to her whims. Now she had suddenly disappeared. Well, Toto must sit down and wait for her to come back. Perhaps she might miss him and come after him right away.
The thundering noise of the train was clearly audible when Betty swooped down on the patient Toto, grabbed him by his fluffy neck, and sprang back. Bob, turning from his charge, had caught a glimpse of the girl as she dashed toward something on the track, and now as she jumped he grasped her arm and pulled her toward him. He succeeded in dragging her back several rods, but they both stumbled and fell. There was a yelp of protest from Toto, drowned in the mighty shriek and roar of the train. The great Eastern Limited swept past them, rocking the ground, sending out a cloud of black smoke shot with sparks, and letting fall a rain of gritty cinders.
“Don’t you ever let me catch you doing anything like that again!” scolded Bob, getting to his feet and helping Betty up. “Of all the foolish acts! Why, you would have been struck if you’d made a misstep. What possessed you, Betty?”
“Toto,” answered Betty, dimpling, brushing the dirt from her skirts and daintily shaking out the fluffy dog. “See what a darling he is, Bob. Do you suppose I could let a train run over him?”
Bob admitted, grudgingly, for he was still nervous and shaken, that Toto was a “cute mutt,” and then, when they had restored him to his grateful mistress, they went on to their goal. No one had noticed Betty’s narrow escape, for all had been concerned with their own safety. Betty herself was inclined to minimize the danger, but Bob knew that she might easily have been drawn under the wheels by the suction, if not actually overtaken on the track.
There was a crowd about the engine, and the grimy-faced engineer leaned from his cab, inspecting them impassively. His general attitude was one of boredom, tinged with disgust.
“Guess they’ve all been telling him what to do,” whispered Bob, who, while only a lad, had a trick of correctly estimating situations.
Pressing their way close in, he and Betty were at last able to see what had stopped the train. The high wind, which was still blowing with undiminished force, had blown down a huge tree. It lay directly across the track, and barely missed the east-bound rails.
“Another foot, and she’d have tied up traffic both ways,” said the brakeman who had warned the passengers of the approach of the express. “What you going to do, Jim?”
The engineer sighed heavily.
“Got to wait till it’s sawed in pieces small enough for a gang to handle,” he answered. “We’ve sent to Tippewa for a cross-cut saw. Take us from now till the first o’ the month to saw that trunk with the emergency saws.”
“Where’s Tippewa?” called out an inquisitive passenger. “Any souvenirs there?”
“Sure. Indian baskets and that kind of truck,” volunteered the young brakeman affably, as the engineer did not deign to answer. “’Bout a mile, maybe a mile and a half, straight up the track. We don’t stop there. You’ll have plenty of time, won’t he, Jim?”
“We’ll be here a matter of three hours or more,” admitted the engineer.
“Let’s walk to the town, Betty,” suggested Bob. “We don’t want to hang around here for three hours. All this country looks alike.”
Apparently half the passengers had decided that a trip to the town promised a break in the monotony of a long train trip, and the track resembled the main street of Pineville on a holiday. Every one walked on the track occupied by the stalled train, and so felt secure.
“Bob,” whispered Betty presently, “look. Aren’t those the two men you followed this morning? Just ahead of us – see the gray suits? And did you hear anything to report?”
“Why, I haven’t told you, have I?” said Bob contritely. “The train stopping put it out of my mind. What do you think, Betty, they were talking about the Saunders place! Can you imagine that?”
“The Saunders place?” echoed Betty, stopping short. “Why, Bob, do you suppose – do you think – ”
“Sure! It must be the farm my aunts live on,” nodded Bob. “Saunders isn’t such a common name, you know. Besides, the one they call Dan Carson – he isn’t with them, guess he is too fat to enjoy walking – said it was owned by a couple of old maids. Oh, it is the right place, I’m sure of it. And I count on your Uncle Dick’s knowing where it is, since they spoke of the farm being in the heart of the oil section.”
“Where do you suppose they’re going now?” speculated Betty.
“Oh, I judge they want to see the sights, same as we do,” replied Bob carelessly. “Perhaps they count on fleecing some confiding Tippewa citizen out of his hard-earned wealth. They can’t do much in three hours, though, and I think they’re booked to go right on through to Oklahoma. Of course I don’t know how crooks work their schemes, but it seems to me if you want to make money, honestly or dishonestly, in oil, you go where oil is.”
Betty Gordon was not given to long speeches, but when she did speak it was usually to the point.
“I don’t think they’re going back to the train,” she announced quietly. “They’re carrying their suitcases.”
“Well, what do you know about that!” Bob addressed a telegraph pole. “Here I am making wild guesses, and she takes one look at the men themselves and tells their plans. Do I need glasses? I begin to think I do.”
“I don’t guess their plans,” protested Betty. “Anyway, perhaps they were afraid to leave their bags in the car.”
“No, it looks very much to me as though they had said farewell to the Western Limited,” said Bob. “They wouldn’t carry those heavy cases a mile unless they meant to leave for good. Let’s keep an eye on them, because if they are going to ‘work’ the Saunders place, I’d like to see how they intend to go about it.”
For some time the boy and girl tramped in silence, keeping Blosser and Fluss in view. A large billboard, blown flat, was the first sign that they were approaching Tippewa.
“I hope there is a soda fountain,” said Betty thirstily. “The wind’s worse now we’re out of the woods, isn’t it? Do you suppose those sharpers think they can get another train from here?”
“Tippewa doesn’t look like a town with many trains,” opined Bob. “I confess I don’t see what they expect to do, or where they can go. Here comes an automobile, though. Can’t be such an out-of-date town after all.”
The automobile was driven by a man in blue-striped overalls, and, to the surprise of Bob and Betty, Blosser and Fluss hailed him from the road. There was a minute’s parley, the suitcases were tossed in, and the two men followed. The automobile turned sharply and went back along the route it had just come over.
CHAPTER V
BETWEEN TRAINS
Bob looked at Betty, and Betty stared at Bob.
“What do you know about that!” gasped the boy. “They couldn’t have arranged for the car to meet them, because the tree blowing down was an accident pure and simple. Where can they be going?”
“I don’t know,” said Betty practically. “But here’s a drug store and I must have something cold to drink. My throat feels dried with dust. Why don’t you ask the drug clerk whose car that was?”
Bob acted upon this excellent suggestion, and while Betty was recovering from her disappointment in finding no ice-cream for sale and doing her best to quench her thirst with a bottle of lukewarm lemon soda, Bob interviewed the grizzled proprietor of the store.
“A small car painted a dull red you say?” this individual repeated Bob’s question. “Must ’a’ been Fred Griggs. He hires out whenever he can get anybody to tote round.”
“But where does anybody go?” asked Bob, feeling that his query was not couched in the most complimentary terms, but unable to amend it quickly.
The drug store owner was not critical.
“Oh, folks go over to Xville,” he said indifferently. “That’s a new town fifteen miles back. They say oil was discovered there some twenty years ago, but others claim nothing but water ever flowed. That’s how it came to be called Xville. I guess if the truth was known, the wells wasn’t oil – we’re a little out of the belt here.”
That was as far as Bob was able to follow the sharpers. He had no way of knowing certainly whether they had gone to Xville, or whether they had hired the car to take them to some other place nearer or further on. Betty finished her soda and they strolled about the single street for a half hour, buying three collapsible Indian baskets for the Littell girls, since they would easily pack into Betty’s bag.
They reached the train to find the last section of the big tree being lifted from the track, and half an hour later, all passengers aboard, the train resumed its journey. Bob and Betty had eaten lunch in the town, and they spent the afternoon on the observation platform, Betty tatting and Bob trying to write a letter to Mr. Littell. They were glad to have their berths made up early that night, for both planned to be up at six o’clock the next morning when the train, the conductor told them, crossed the line into Oklahoma. Betty cherished an idea that the State in which she was so much interested would be “different” in some way from the country through which they had been passing.
The good-natured conductor was on hand the next morning to point out to them the State line, and Betty, under his direct challenge, had to admit that she could see nothing distinguishing about the scenery.
“Wait till you see the oil wells,” said the conductor cheerfully. “You’ll know you’re in Oklahoma then, little lady.”
Bob and Betty were to change at Chassada to make connections for Flame City, where Betty’s Uncle Dick was stationed, and soon after breakfast the brakeman called the name of the station and they descended from the train. As it rolled on they both were conscious of a momentary feeling of loneliness, for in the long journey from Washington they had grown accustomed to their comfortable quarters and to the kindly train crew.
They had an hour to wait in Chassada, and Bob suggested that they leave their bags at the station and walk around the town.
“I believe they have oil wells near here,” he said. “Some one on the train – oh, I know who it was, that lanky chap from Texas – was telling me that from the outskirts of the place you can see oil wells. Or perhaps we can get a bus to take us out to the fields and bring us back.”
“Oh, no,” protested Betty. “I know Uncle Dick is counting on showing us the wells and explaining them to us, Bob. Don’t let us bother about going up close to a well – we can see enough from the town limits. Look, there’s one now!”
They had reached the edge of the narrow, straggling group of streets that was all of Chassada, and now Betty pointed toward the west where tall iron framework rose in the air. There were six of these structures, and, even at that distance, the boy and girl could see men working busily about at the base of the frames.
“Looks just like the postcards your uncle sent, doesn’t it?” said Bob delightedly. “Gee! I’d like to see just how they drive them. Well, I suppose before we’re a week older we’ll know how to drive a well and what to do with the oil when it finally flows. You’ll be talking oil as madly as any of them then, Betty.”
“I suppose I shall,” admitted Betty. “Do you know, I’m hungry. I wonder if there is any place we can eat?”
“Must be,” said the optimistic Bob. “Come on, we’ll go up this street. Perhaps there will be some kind of a restaurant. Never heard of a town without a place to eat.”
But Bob began to think presently that perhaps Chassada differed in more ways than one from the towns to which he was accustomed. In the first place, though every one seemed to have plenty of money – there was a neat and attractive jewelry store conspicuous between a barber shop and a grain store – no one seemed to have to work. The streets were unpaved, the sidewalks of rough boards in many places, in others no walks at all were attempted. Many of the buildings were mere shacks incongruously painted in brilliant colors, and there were more dogs than were ever before gathered into one place. Of that Bob was sure.
“Do you suppose they’ve all made fortunes in oil?” Betty ventured, scanning the groups of men and boys that filled every doorway and lounged at the corners. “No one is working, Bob. Who runs the wells?”
“Different shifts, I suppose,” answered Bob. “I declare, Betty, I’m not so sure that you’ll get anything to eat after all. We’ll go back to the station; they may have sandwiches or cake or something like that on sale there.”
They turned down another street that led to the station, Bob in the lead. He heard a little cry from Betty, and turned to find that she had disappeared.
“The lady fell down that hole!” shouted a man, hurrying across the street. “There go the barrels! I told Zinker he ought to have braced that dirt!”
Bob, still not understanding, saw four large barrels that had stood on the sidewalk slowly topple over the side of an excavation and roll out of sight.
“She went in, too,” cried the man, scrambling over the edge. “Are you hurt, lady?” he called.
“Betty!” shouted Bob. “Betty, are you hurt?” He took a flying leap to the edge of the hole, and, having miscalculated the distance, slid over after the barrels.
Over and over he rolled, bringing up breathless against something soft.
“I knew you’d come to get me,” giggled Betty, “but you needn’t have hurried. Are there any more barrels coming?”
Bob was immensely relieved to find that she was unhurt. The barrels had luckily been empty and had rolled over and into her harmlessly.
“Well, looks like you’re all right,” grinned the Chassada citizen who had followed Bob more leisurely. “Let me help you up this grade. There now, you’re fine and dandy, barring a little dirt that will wash off. George Zinker excavated last winter for a house, and then didn’t build. I always told him the walk was shifty. You’re strangers in town, aren’t you?”
Bob explained that they were only waiting over between trains.
“So you’re going to Flame City!” exclaimed their new friend with interest when Bob mentioned their destination. “I hear they’ve struck it rich in the fields. Buying up everything in sight, they say. We had a well come in last week. Hope you have a place to stay, though; Flame City isn’t much more than a store and a post-office.”
Betty looked up from rubbing her skirt with her clean handkerchief in an endeavor to remove some of the gravel stains.
“Isn’t Flame City larger than Chassada?” she demanded.
“Larger? Why, Chassada is four or five years ahead,” explained the Chassada man. “We’ve got a hotel and three boarding houses, and next month they’re fixing to put up a movie theater. Flame City wasn’t on the map six months ago. That’s why I say I hope you have a place to go – you’ll have to rough it, anyway, but accommodations is mighty scarce.”
Bob assured him that some one was to meet them, and then asked about a restaurant.
“If you can stand Jake Hill’s cooking, turn in at that white door down the street,” was the advice, emphasized by a graphic forefinger. “Lay off the custard pie, ’cause he generally makes it with sour milk. Apple pie is fair, and his doughnuts is good. No thanks at all – glad to accommodate a stranger.”
The white door indicated opened into a little low, dark room that smelled of all the pies ever baked and several dishes besides. There were several oilcloth-topped tables scattered about, and one or two patrons were eating. As Bob and Betty entered a great gust of laughter came from a corner table where a group of men were gathered.
“Guess that was good advice about the custard pie,” whispered Bob mischievously. “Think you can stand it, Betty?”
“I’m so hungry, I could stand anything,” declared Betty with vigor. “I’d like a couple of sandwiches and a glass of milk. I guess you have to go up to that counter and bring your orders back with you – I don’t see any waiters.”
Bob went up to the counter, and Betty sat down at a vacant table and looked about her.
CHAPTER VI
QUICK ACTION
A dirty-faced clock on the wall told Betty that it was within twenty minutes of the time their train was due. However, they were within sight of the station, so, provided Bob was quickly waited upon, there was no reason to worry about missing the connection.
Bob came back, balancing the sandwiches and milk precariously, and they proceeded to make a hearty lunch, their appetites sharpened by the clear Western air, in a measure compensating for the sawdust bread and the extreme blueness of the milk.
“What are those men laughing about, I wonder,” commented Betty idly, as a fresh burst of laughter came from the table in the corner of the room. “What a noise they make! Bob, do I imagine it, or does this bread taste of oil?”
Bob laughed, and glanced over his shoulder to make sure the counter-man could not hear.
“Do you know, I thought that very thing,” he confessed. “I wasn’t going to mention it, for fear you’d think I was obsessed with the notion of oil. To tell you the truth, Betsey, I think this bread has been near the kerosene oil can, not an oil well.”
“Well, we can drink the milk,” said Betty philosophically. “It’s lucky one sandwich apiece was good. Oh, won’t it be fine to get to Flame City and see Uncle Dick! I want to get where we are going, Bob!”
“Sure you do,” responded Bob sympathetically, frowning with annoyance as another hoarse burst of laughter came from the corner table. “But I’m afraid Flame City isn’t going to be much of a place after all.”
“I don’t care what kind of place it is,” declared Betty firmly. “All I want is to see Uncle Dick and be with him. And I want you to find your aunts. And I’d like to go to school with the Littell girls next fall. And that’s all.”
Bob smiled, then grew serious.
“I’d like to go to school myself,” he said soberly. “Precious little schooling I’ve had, Betty. I’ve read all I could, but you can’t get anywhere without a good, solid foundation. Well, there’ll be time enough to worry about that when school time comes. Just now it is vacation.”
“Bob!” – Betty spoke swiftly – “look what those men are doing – teasing that poor Chinaman. How can they be so mean!”
Sure enough, one of the group had slouched forward in his chair, and over his bent shoulders Bob and Betty could see an unhappy Chinaman, clutching his knife and fork tightly and looking with a hunted expression in his slant eyes from one to another of his tormentors. They were evidently harassing him as he ate, for while they watched he took a forkful of the macaroni on the plate before him, and attempted to convey it to his mouth. Instantly one of the men surrounding him struck his arm sharply, and the food flew into the air. Then the crowd laughed uproariously.
“Isn’t that perfectly disgusting!” scolded Betty. “How any one can see anything funny in doing that is beyond me. Oh, now look – they’ve got his slippers.”
The unfortunate Chinaman’s loose flat slippers hurtled through the air, narrowly missing Betty’s head.
“Come on, we’re going to get out of this,” said Bob determinedly, rising from his seat. “Those chaps once start rough-housing, no telling where they’ll bring up. We want to escape the dishes, and besides we haven’t any too much time to make our train.”
He had paid for their food when he ordered it, so there was nothing to hinder their going out. Bob started for the door, supposing that Betty was following. But she had seen something that roused her anger afresh.
The poor Celestial was essaying an ineffectual protest at the treatment of his slippers, when a man opposite him reached over and snatched his plate of food.
“China for Chinamen!” he shouted, and with that clapped the plate down on the unfortunate victim’s head with so much force that it shivered into several pieces.
Betty could never bear to see a person or an animal unfairly treated, and when, as now, the odds were all against one, she became a veritable little fury. As Bob had once said in a mixture of admiration and despair she wasn’t old enough to be afraid of anything or anybody.
“How dare you treat him like that!” she cried, running to the table where the Chinaman sat in a daze. “You ought to be arrested! If you must torment some one, why don’t you get somebody who can fight back?”
The men stared at her open-mouthed, bewildered by her unexpected championship of their bait. Then a great, coarse, blowzy-faced man, with enormous grease spots on his clothes, winked at the others.
“My eye, we’ve a visitor,” he drawled. “Sit down, my dear, and John Chinaman shall bring you chop suey for lunch.”
Betty drew back as he put out a huge hand.
“You leave her alone!” Bob had come after Betty and stood glaring at the greasy individual. “Anybody who’ll treat a foreigner as you’ve treated that Chinaman isn’t fit to speak to a girl!”
A concerted growl greeted this statement.
“If you’re looking for a fight,” snarled a younger man, “you’ve struck the right place. Come on, or eat your words.”
Now Bob was no coward, but there were five men arrayed against him with a probable sixth in the form of the counter-man who was watching the turn of affairs with great interest from the safe vantage-point of his high counter. It was too much to expect that any men who had dealt with a defenceless and handicapped stranger as these had dealt with the Chinaman would fight fair. Besides, Bob was further hampered by the terrified Betty who clung tightly to his arm and implored him not to fight. It seemed to the lad that the better part of valor would be to take to his heels.
“You cut for the station,” he muttered swiftly to Betty. “Get the bags – train’s almost due. I’ll run up the street and lose ’em somewhere on the way. They won’t touch you.”
He said this hardly moving his lips, and Betty did not catch every word. But she heard enough to understand what was expected of her and what Bob planned to do. She loosened her hold on his arm.
Like a shot, Bob made for the door, banged the screen open wide (Betty heard it hit the side of the building), and fled up the straggling, uneven street. Instantly the five toughs were in pursuit.
Betty heard the counter-man calling to her, but she ran from the place and sped toward the station. It was completely deserted, and a written sign proclaimed that the 1:52 train was ten minutes late. Betty judged that the ticket agent, with whom they had left their bags, would return in time to check them out, and she sat down on one of the dusty seats in the fly-specked waiting-room to wait for the arrival of Bob.
That young man, as he ran, was racking his brains for a way to elude his pursuers. There were no telegraph poles to climb, and even if there had been, he wanted to get to Betty and the station, not be marooned indefinitely. He glanced back. The hoodlums, for such they were, were gaining on him. They were out of training, but their familiarity with the walks gave them a decided advantage. Bob had to watch out for holes and sidewalk obstructions.
He doubled down a street, and then the solution opened out before him. There was a grocery store, evidently a large shop, for he had noticed the front door on the street where the restaurant was situated. Now he was approaching the rear entrance and a number of packing cases cluttered the walk, and excelsior was lying about. A backward glance showed him that the enemy had not yet rounded the corner. Bob dived into the store.
“Hide me!” he gasped, running plump into a white-haired man in overalls who was whistling “Ben Bolt” and opening cases of canned peaches with pleasant dexterity. “Hide me quick. There’s a gang after me – five of ’em!”
“Under the counter, Sonny,” said the groceryman, hardly looking at Bob. “Just lay low, and trust Micah Davis to ’tend to the scamps.”
Bob crawled under the nearest counter and in a few minutes he heard the men at the door.
“’Lo, Davis,” said one conciliatingly. “Seen anything of a fresh kid – freckled, good clothes, right out of the East? He tried to pass some bad money at Jake Hill’s. Seen him?”
Bob nearly denounced this lie, but common sense saved him. Small use in seeking protection and then refusing it.
“Haven’t seen anybody like that,” said the groceryman positively. “Quit bruising those tomatoes, Bud.”
“Well, he won’t get out of town,” stated Bud sourly. “There’s a girl with him, and they’re figuring on taking the one-fifty-two. We’re going down and picket the station. If Mr. Smarty gets on that train at all, his face won’t look so pretty.”
They tramped off, and Bob came out from his hiding place.
“They’re a nice bunch!” he declared bitterly. “I got into a row with ’em because they were teasing a poor Chinaman and Betty Gordon landed on them for that. Then I tried to get her away from the place, and of course that started a fight. But I suppose they can dust the station with me if they’re set on it – only I’ll register a few protests.”
“Now, now, we ain’t a-going to have no battle,” announced the genial Mr. Davis. “I knew Bud was lying soon as I looked at him. Why? ’Cause I never knew him to tell the truth. As for picketing the station, well, there’s more ways than one to skin a cat.”
