Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp by Alice B. Emerson

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"Not a chance," replied Uncle Dick, laughing heartily. "But it does look
as though we may have to lay by for a night, or perhaps a night and a day,
before we can get on to Cliffdale, which is our station."

"In a hotel!" cried Betty. "Won't that be fun?"

"Perhaps not so much fun. Some of these country-town hotels up here in the
woods are run in a more haphazard way than a lumber camp. And what you get
to eat will come out of a can in all probability."

The boys groaned in unison at this, and even Betty looked woebegone.

"I wish you wouldn't talk about eating, Uncle Dick. Do you suppose we will
catch up with that dining car?"

"I do not think we shall. But there is an eating room at the junction we
are coming to. We can buy it out. I only hope there will be milk to be had
for the little folks. There is at least one baby aboard. It's in the next
car."

"But we'll get to this place we're going to by morning, shan't we?" cried
Bobby, very much excited.

"We're two hours late already I understand," said Mr. Gordon. "We have
little to fear, however I fancy if the storm does not hold up they will
not try to push past the junction until morning. We've got to sleep in the
car anyway; and if we are on short rations for a few hours it certainly
will do you boys and girls little harm. At Cliffdale----"

"Oh, Uncle Dick!" suddenly exclaimed Betty, "that is where Mr. Bolter has
sent that beautiful black horse that he bought in England."

"Oh, indeed? I heard of that mare. To Cliffdale? I believe there is a
stockfarm there. It is some distance from my friend Canary's camp,
however."

"Do you suppose that girl got there?" whispered Bobby to Betty.

"Even if she did, how disappointed she must be," Betty rejoined. "I am
awfully sorry for Ida Bellethorne."

"I don't know," said Bobby slowly. "I've been thinking. Suppose she did
find your beautiful locket and--and appropriate it for her own use,"
finished Bobby rather primly.

"You mean steal it," said Betty promptly. "No. I don't think she did. She
didn't seem to be that sort of person. Do you know, the more I think of
her the more I consider that Mrs. Staples would be capable of doing that."

"Oh, Betty! Finding and keeping your locket?"

Betty nodded with her lips pursed soberly. "I didn't like that woman," she
said.

"Neither did I," cried Bobby, easily influenced by her friend's opinion.
"I didn't like her a bit."

"But, of course, we don't know a thing about it," sighed Betty. "I do not
suppose we should blame either of them, or anybody else. We have no
evidence. I guess, Bobby, I am the only one to blame, after all."

"Well, don't mind, Betty dear," Bobby said comfortingly. "I believe the
locket will turn up. I told Daddy and he will telephone to the stores once
in a while and see if it has been found. And, of course, we have no
particular reason to think that you dropped it in Mrs. Staples' shop."

"None at all," admitted Betty more cheerfully. "So I'll stop worrying
right now. But I would like to know where Ida Bellethorne is in this
blizzard."

"Girl or horse?" chuckled Bobby.

"Girl. I fancy that little cockney hostler, or whatever he is, will look
out carefully for the mare. But who is there to care anything about poor
Ida?"

Gradually even Betty and Bobby were convinced that there were several
other matters to worry about that were connected with neither Ida
Bellethorne the girl nor Ida Bellethorne the horse. The belated train
finally got to the junction where there was an eating place. But another
train had passed, going south, less than an hour before and the lunch
counter had been swept almost bare.

Uncle Dick and Major Pater were old travelers, however; and they were
first out of the train and bought up most of the food in sight. Others of
the passengers purchased sandwiches and coffee and tea to consume at once.
Uncle Dick and the military man swept the shelves of canned milk and
fruit, prepared cocoa and other similar drinks, as well as all the loaves
of bread in sight, a boiled ham complete, and several yards of
frankfurters, or, as the Fairfields folks called them, "wienies."

"We know what Mrs. Eustice and Miss Prettyman would say to such
provender," said Louise when the party, the boys helping, returned with
the spoils of the lunch-room. "How about calories and dietetics, and all
that?"

"We may be hungry enough before we see a regular meal in a dining-car or a
hotel to forget all about such things," Uncle Dick said seriously. "There!
We are starting already. And we're pushing straight into a blizzard that
looks to me as though it would continue all night."

"Well, Uncle Dick," Betty said cheerfully, "we can go to bed and sleep and
forget it. It will be all over by morning of course."

Uncle Dick made no rejoinder to this. They had a jolly lunch, getting hot
water from the porter for their drink. Bob and the Tucker twins pretty
nearly bought out the candy supply on the train, and the girls felt
assured that they were completely safe from starvation as long as the
caramels and marshmallows held out.

By nine o'clock, with the train pushing slowly on, the head locomotive
aided by a pusher picked up at the junction, the berths were made up and
everybody in the Pullman coach had retired.

Betty, as she lay in her upper berth with Libbie, heard the snow, or
sleet, swishing against the side and roof of the car, and the sound lulled
her to sleep. She slept like any other healthy girl and knew nothing of
the night that passed. The lights were still burning when she awoke. Not a
gleam of daylight came through the narrow ground-glass window at her head.
And two other things impressed her unfavorably: The train was standing
still and not a sound penetrated to the car from without.

Libbie was sound asleep and Betty crept out of the berth without awakening
the plump girl. She got into her wrapper and slippers and stole along the
aisle to the ladies' room. Nobody as yet seemed to have come from the
berths.

She could not hear the wind or snow when she got into the dressing room.
This convinced her at first that the storm was over. But she dropped one
of the narrow windows at the top to see out, and found that a wall of
hard-pack snow shrouded the window. She tried to break through this drift
with her arm wrapped in a towel. But although she stood on a stool and
thrust her arm out to her shoulder, her hand did not reach the open air!

"My goodness me!" gasped Betty Gordon. "We're stalled! We're snowbound!
What shall we ever do if the snow doesn't melt pretty soon, or they don't
come and dig us out?"

She washed in haste, and having brought her clothes with her, she dressed
promptly. All the time she was considering what was to be done if, as it
seemed, the train could not go on.

Just as she opened the door of the dressing room excited voices sounded at
the end of the car. The conductor and the porter were talking loudly. The
former suddenly shouted:

"Ladies and gentlemen! is there a doctor in this coach? We want a doctor
right away! Day coach ahead! Child taken poison and must have a doctor."

A breathless gabble of voices assured him that there was no physician in
the coach. He had already searched the other cars. There was no doctor on
the train.

"And we're stalled here in this cut for nobody knows how long!" groaned
the conductor. "That woman is crazy in the next car. Her two year old
child got hold of some kind of poison and swallowed some of it. The child
will die for sure!"

Betty was terribly shocked at this speech. She wriggled past the conductor
and the troubled porter, and ran into the car ahead. At first glance she
spied the little group of mother and children that was the center of
excitement.

CHAPTER XII

THE TUNNEL

The baby was screaming, the little boy of four or five looked miserably
unhappy, and the worn and meager-looking mother was plainly frightened out
of her wits. She let the baby scream on the seat beside her while she held
the little girl in her lap.

That youngster seemed to be the least disturbed of any of the party. She
was a pretty child, and robust. She kicked vigorously against being held
almost upside down by her mother (as though by that means the dose of
poison could be coaxed out of the child) but she did not cry.

"The little dear!" cooed Betty, pushing through the ring of other
passengers. "What has happened to her?"

"She'll be dead in five minutes," croaked a sour visaged woman who bent
over the back of the seat to stare at the crying baby without making an
effort to relieve the mother in any way.

"What is the poison?" demanded Betty excitedly.

"It--it's----I don't know what the doctor called it," wailed the poor
mother. "I had it in my handbag with other drops. Nellie here is always
playing with bottles. She will drink out of bottles, much as I can do or
say."

Betty was sniffing--that may not be an elegant expression, but it is
exactly what she did--and looking all about on the floor.

"Something's been spilled here," she said. "It's a funny odor. Seems to me
I remember smelling it before."

"That's the poison," groaned the woman over the back of the seat. "Her ma
knocked it out of the young one's hand. Too bad. She's a goner!"

This seemed to Betty very dreadful. She darted an angry glance at the
woman. "A regular Mrs. Job's comforter, she is!" thought Betty.

But all the time she was looking about the floor of the car for the
bottle. Finally she dropped to her knees and scrambled about among the
boots of the passengers. She came up like a diver, with an object held
high in one hand.

"Is this it?" she asked.

"That is the bottle, Miss," sobbed the mother. "My poor little Nellie!
Isn't there a doctor, anywhere? They say milk is good for some kinds of
poison, but I haven't any milk for baby even. That is what makes him cry
so. Poor little Nellie!"

Betty had been staring at the label on the bottle. Now she smelled hard
at the mouth of it She held the bottle before the woman's eyes.

"Are you sure this is the bottle the child drank out of?" she demanded.

"Yes, Miss. That is it. Poor little Nellie!"

"Why! can't you smell?" demanded Betty. "And can't you see? There is no
skull and cross-bones on this label. And all that was in the bottle was
sweet spirits of niter. I'm sure that won't do your Nellie any lasting
harm."

The mother was thunderstruck for a moment--and speechless. The gloomy
woman looking over the back of the seat drawled:

"Then it wasn't poison at all?"

"No," said Betty. "And I should think among you, you should have found it
out!"

She was quite scornful of the near-by passengers. The mother let the
struggling little girl slip out of her lap, fortunately feet first rather
than head first, and grabbed up the screaming baby.

"Dear me! You naughty little thing, Nellie! You are always scaring me to
death," she said scoldingly. "And if we don't come to some place where I
can buy milk pretty soon and get it warmed, this child will burst his
lungs crying."

Betty, however, considered that the baby was much too strong and vigorous
to be in a starving state as yet. She wondered how the poor women expected
to get milk with the train stalled in the snow. She had in her pocket
some chocolate wafers and she pacified the two older children with these
and then ran back to the sleeping car.

She was in season to head off a procession of excited Pullman passengers
in all stages of undress starting for the day coach with everything in the
line of antidote for poison that could be imagined and which they had
discovered in their traveling bags.

"Baby's better. She wasn't poisoned at all," Betty told them. "But those
children are going to be awfully hungry before long if we have to stay
here. Do you know we're snowbound, girls?"

This last she confided to the three Littell girls.

"Won't they dig us out?" asked the practical Louise.

"What a lark!" exclaimed Bobby, clapping her hands.

"Just think! Buried in the snow! How wonderful!" murmured Libbie.

"Cheese!" exclaimed Tommy Tucker, overhearing this. "You'll think it's
wonderful. The brakeman told me that the drivers were clogged at six
o'clock and the wheels haven't turned since. We're completely buried in
snow and it's still snowing. Head engine's an oil-burner and there is
plenty of fuel; but there isn't a chance of our being dug out for days."

"How brutal you are," giggled Bobby, who could not be frightened by any
misadventure. "How shall we live?"

"After we eat up the bread and ham we will draw lots and eat up each
other," Bob observed soberly.

"But those little children can't eat each other," Betty declared with
conviction. "Come on Bobby. You're dressed. Let's see what we can do for
that poor mother and the babies."

The two girls had to confer with Uncle Dick first of all. He had charge of
the supplies. Betty knew there was some way of mixing condensed milk with
water and heating the mixture so that it would do very well at a
pinch--the pinch of hunger!--for a nursing child. Uncle Dick supplied the
canned milk and some other food for the older children, and Betty and
Bobby carried these into the day coach where the little family had spent
such an uncomfortable night and were likely to spend a very uncomfortable
day as well.

For there was no chance of escaping from their present predicament--all
the train crew said so--until plows and shovelers came to dig the train
out of the cut.

Of course the conductors and the rest of the crew knew just where they
were. Behind them about three miles was a small hamlet at which the train
had not been scheduled to stop, and had not stopped. Had the train pulled
down there the situation of the crew and passengers would have been much
better. They would not have been stalled in this drifted cut.

Cliffdale, to which Uncle Dick and his party were bound, was twenty miles
and more ahead. The roadbed was so blocked that it might be several days
before the way would be opened to Cliffdale.

"The roads will be opened by the farmers and teams will get through the
mountains before the railroad will be dug out," Mr. Gordon told the boys.
"If we could get back to that station in the rear we might find
conveyances that would take us on to Mountain Camp. If I had a pair of
snowshoes I certainly could make it over the hills myself in a short
time."

"You go ahead, Mr. Gordon," said Tommy Tucker, "and tell 'em we're
coming."

"I'll have to dig out of here and get the webs on my feet first," replied
Uncle Dick, laughing.

His speech put an idea in the head of the ingenious Tommy Tucker. While
the girls were attending to the children in the car ahead, the twins and
Bob and Timothy Derby went through the train to the very end. The
observation platform was banked with snow, and the snow was packed pretty
hard. But there were some tools at hand and the boys set to work with the
two porters and a brakeman to punch a hole through the snowbank to the
surface.

It was great sport, although the quartette from Salsette Academy enjoyed
it more than the men did. It was fun for the boys and work for the men,
and the latter would have given it up in despair if the younger diggers
had not been so eagerly interested in the task.

They sloped the tunnel so that it was several yards long before it reached
the surface. The snow underneath, they tramped hard; they battered their
way through by pressing a good deal of the snow into solid walls on either
side. When the roof at the end finally fell in on them, they found that it
was still snowing steadily and the wind was pouring great sheets of it
into the cut and heaping it yard upon yard over the roofs of the cars.
They could barely see the top of the smokestack of the pusher a few feet
away.

That locomotive had been abandoned by its crew when the train was stalled.
Keeping the boiler of the head engine hot was sufficient to supply the
cars with heat and hot water.

"Cricky!" cried Bob. "We've found the way out; but I guess even Uncle Dick
wouldn't care to start out in this storm, snowshoes or not. Fellows, we're
in a bad fix, just as sure as you live."

"All right," said Teddy Tucker. "Let's go back and get something to eat
before somebody else gets ahead of us. I suppose those girls have given
all the milk to those kids up front, and maybe the ham sandwiches too."

"Dear me!" sighed Timothy, "it is like being cast away on a desert island.
We are Robinson Crusoes."

"And haven't got even a goat!" chuckled Tommy Tucker.

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 trainmen 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 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 snow-laden 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.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MOUNTAIN HUT

If Bobby had not gone first and had not stuck half way down the hole with
her feet kicking madly just at the mouth of the tunnel, without doubt
Betty Gordon would have been driven by her own fears back into the Pullman
coach.

That shaggy beast diving from the top of the embankment, plunging, yelping
and whining, through the softer drifts of snow, frightened Betty just as
much as it had Bobby Littell. The latter had got away with a flying start,
however, and her writhing body plugged the only means of escape. So Betty
really had to face the approaching terror.

"Oh! Oh!" cried Betty, turning from the approaching beast in despair.
"Hurry! Hurry, Bobby Littell! Do you want me to be eaten up?"

But Bobby had somehow cramped herself in the winding passage through the
snow, and her voice was muffled as she too cried for help.

However, Bobby's demands for assistance were much more likely to bring it
than the cries of the girl outside. The porter heard Bobby first, and
when he opened the door of the coach several men who were near heard the
girl.

"Help! Help! A wolf is eating her!" shrieked the frightened Bobby.

"Ma soul an' body! He must be a-chawin' her legs off!" cried the darkey
and he seized Bobby by the wrists, threw himself backward, and the girl
came out of the tunnel like an aggravating cork out of a bottle.

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