Westy’s first supposition was that the coupling had given way, but an inspection of this by the three boys convinced them that the dropping of this last car had been intentional. They recalled now the significant fact that it had been empty save for themselves. It was a dilapidated old car and it seemed likely that it had been left there perhaps to be used as a temporary station. They had no other surmise. One sobering reflection dominated their minds and that was that they had been left without baggage or provisions in a wild, apparently uninhabited country, thirty odd miles from the Gardiner entrance of Yellowstone Park.
As they looked about them there was no sign of human life or habitation anywhere, no hint of man’s work save the steel rails which disappeared around a bend southward, and a rough road. Even as they looked, they could see in the distance little flickers of smoke floating against a rock-ribbed mountainside.
Warde was the first to speak: “I don’t believe this is Emigrant at all,” he said. “I think the train just stopped to leave the car here; maybe they’re going to make a station here. Anyway this is no village; it isn’t even a station.”
“Well, whatever it is, we’re here,” said Ed. “What are we going to do? That’s a nice way to do, not lock the door of the car or anything.”
“Maybe they’ll back up,” said Westy.
“They might,” said Warde, “if they knew we were here, but who’s going to tell the conductor?”
It seemed quite unlikely that the train would return. Even as they indulged this forlorn hope the distant flickers of smoke appeared farther and farther away against the background of the mountain. Then they could not be seen at all.
The three honor boys sat down on the lowest step of the old car platform and considered their predicament. One thing they knew, there was no other train that day. They had not a morsel of food, no camping equipment, no compass. For all that they could see they were in an uninhabited wilderness save for the savage life that lurked in the surrounding fastnesses.
“What are we going to do?” Warde asked, his voice ill concealing the concern he felt.
Ed Carlyle looked about scanning the vast panorama and shook his head.
“What would Shining Sun do?” Westy asked quietly. “All I know is we’re going to Yellowstone Park. We know the railroad goes there, so we can’t get lost. Thirty miles isn’t so much to hike; we can do it in two days. I wouldn’t get on a train now if one came along and stopped.”
“Mr. Wilde has got you started,” laughed Ed.
“That’s what he has,” said Westy, “and I’m going to keep going till I get to the park. I’m not going to face that man again and tell him I waited for somebody to come and get me.”
“How about food?” Warde asked, not altogether captivated by Westy’s proposal.
“What we have to get, we get,” said Westy.
“Well, I think we’ll get good and tired,” said Ed.
“I’m sorry I haven’t got a baby carriage to wheel you in,” said Westy.
“Thanks,” laughed Ed, “a scout is always thoughtful.”
“He has to be more than thoughtful,” said Westy. “If it comes to that, if we had been thoughtful we wouldn’t have come into this car at all. It’s all filled up with railroad junk and it wasn’t intended for passengers.”
“They should have locked the door or put a sign on it,” said Warde.
“Well, anyway, here we are,” Westy said.
“Absolutely,” said Warde, who was always inclined to take a humorous view of Westy’s susceptibility. “And I’ll do anything you say. I’ll tell you something right now that I didn’t tell you before. Ed and I agreed that we’d do whatever you wanted to do on this trip; we said we’d follow you and let you be the leader. So now’s our chance. We agreed that you did the big stunt and we voted that we’d just sort of let you lead. I don’t know what Shining Sun would do, but that’s what we agreed to do. So it’s up to you, Westy, old boy. You’re the boss and we’ll even admit that we’re not scouts if you say so. How about that, Ed?”
“That’s me,” said Ed.
“We’re just dubs if you say so,” Warde concluded.
The three sat in a row on the lowest step of the deserted car, and for a few moments no one spoke. Looking northward they could see the tracks in a bee-line until the two rails seemed to come to a point in the direction whence the train had come. Far back in that direction, thirty miles or more, lay Livingston where they had breakfasted. There had been no stop between this spot and Livingston, though they had whizzed past an apparently deserted little way station named Pray.
Southward the tracks disappeared in their skirting course around a mountain. The road went in that direction too, but they could not follow it far with their eyes. It was a narrow, ill-kept dirt road and was certainly not a highway. The country was very still and lonesome. They had not realized this in the rushing, rattling train. But they realized it now as they sat, a forlorn little group, on the step and looked about them.
To Westy, always thoughtful and impressionable, the derisive spirit of Mr. Wilde made their predicament the more bearable. The spirit of that genial Philistine haunted him and made him grateful for the opportunity to do something “big.” To reach the park without assistance would not, he thought, be so very big. It would be nothing in the eyes of Shining Sun. But at least it would be doing something. It would be more than playing hide-and-seek, which Mr. Wilde seemed to think about the wildest adventure in the program of scouting. It would, at the least, be better than coming along a day late on another train, even supposing they could stop a train or reach the stopping place of one.
“It’s just whatever you say, Westy, old boy,” Warde said musingly, as he twirled his scout knife into the soil again and again in a kind of solitaire mumbly peg. “Just—whatever—you—say. Maybe we’re not——”
“You needn’t say that again,” said Westy; “we—you are scouts. You just proved it, so you might as well shut up because—but——”
“All right, we are then,” said Warde. “You ought to know; gee whiz, it’s blamed seldom I ever knew you to be mistaken. Now what’s the big idea? Hey, Ed?”
“After you, my dear Sir Hollister,” said Ed.
“Well, the first thing,” said Westy, “is not to tell me you’re not scouts.”
“We’ll do that little thing,” said Warde.
“New conundrum,” said Ed. “What is a scout?”
“You are,” said Westy. “I wish I’d never met that Mr. Wilde.”
“Forget it,” said Warde.
“All right, now we know the first thing,” said Ed. “How about the second? Where do we go from here?”
Westy glanced at him quickly and there was just the least suggestion of something glistening in his eyes. “Are you willing to hike it?” he asked.
“You tell ’em I am,” said Ed Carlyle.