Dorothy Dale's engagement

After one passes the railroad station at The Beeches, and before reaching the town limits of North Birchland, the traveler sees a gray road following closely the railway tracks, sometimes divided from them by rail-fences, sometimes by a ditch, and sometimes the railway roadbed is high on a bank overlooking the highway.

For several miles the road grades downward—not a sharp grade, but a steady one—and so does the railroad. At the foot of the slope the highway keeps straight on over a bridge that spans the deep and boisterous creek; but a fork of the road turns abruptly and crosses the railroad at grade.

There is no flagman at this grade crossing, nor is there a drop-gate. Just a “Stop, Look, Listen” sign—two words of which are unnecessary, as some philosopher has pointed out. There had been some serious accidents at this crossing; but thus far the railroad company had found it cheaper to pay court damages than to pay a flagman and the upkeep of a proper gate on both sides of its right-of-way.

When they came in sight of the down-hill part of the road Dorothy Dale and Tavia Travers knew it was time to begin to put on their wraps and take down their bags. The North Birchland station would soon be in sight.

It was Dorothy who first stood up to reach for her bag. As she did so she glanced through the broad window, out upon the highway.

“Oh, Tavia!” she gasped.

“What’s the matter, dear? You don’t see Garry Knapp, do you? Maybe his buying those flowers—that ‘parting blessing’—‘busted’ him and he’s got to walk home clear to Desert City.”

“Don’t be a goose!” half laughed Dorothy. “Look out. See if you see what I see.”

“Why, Doro! it’s Joe and Roger I do believe!”

“I was sure it was,” returned her friend. “What can those boys be doing now?”

“Well, what they are doing seems plain enough,” said Tavia. “What they are going to do is the moot question, my dear. You never know what a boy will do next, or what he did last; you’re only sure of what he is doing just now.”

What the young brothers of Dorothy Dale were doing at that moment was easily explained. They were riding down the long slope of the gray road toward North Birchland, racing with the train Dorothy and Tavia were on. The vehicle upon which the boys were riding was a nondescript thing composed of a long plank, four wheels, a steering arrangement of more or less dependence, and a soap box.

In the soap box was a bag, and unless the girls were greatly mistaken Joe and Roger Dale had been nutting over toward The Beeches, and the bag was filled with hickory nuts and chestnuts in their shells and burrs.

Roger, who was the youngest, and whom Dorothy continued to look upon as a baby, occupied the box with the nuts. Joe, who was fifteen, straddled the plank with his feet on the rests and steered. The boys’ vehicle was going like the wind. It looked as though a small stone in the road, or an uncertain jerk by Joe on the steering lines, would throw the contraption on which they rode sideways and dump out the boys.

“Enough to give one heart disease,” said Tavia. “I declare! small brothers are a nuisance. When I’m at home in Dalton I have to wear blinders so as not to see my kid brothers at their antics.”

“If something should happen, Tavia!” murmured Dorothy.

“Something is always happening. But not often is it something bad,” said Tavia, coolly. “‘There’s a swate little cherub that sits up aloft, and kapes out an eye for poor Jack,’ as the Irish tar says. And there is a similar cherub looking out for small boys—or a special providence.”

The train was now high on the embankment over the roadway. The two boys sliding down the hill looked very small, indeed, below the car windows.

“Suppose a wagon should start up the hill,” murmured Dorothy.

“There’s none in sight. I never saw the road more deserted—oh, Doro!”

Tavia uttered this cry before she thought. She had looked far ahead to the foot of the hill and had seen something that her friend had not yet observed.

“What is it?” gasped Dorothy, whose gaze was still fixed upon her brothers.

“My dear! The bridge!”

The words burst from Tavia involuntarily. She could not keep them in.

At the foot of the hill the road forked as has before been shown. To the left it crossed the railroad tracks at grade. Of course, these reckless boys had not intended to try for the crossing ahead of the train. But the main road, which kept straight on beside the tracks, crossed the creek on a wooden bridge. Tavia, looking ahead, saw that the bridge boards were up and there was a rough fence built across the main road!

“They’ll be killed!” screamed Dorothy Dale, and sank back into her chair.

The train was now pitching down the grade. It was still a mile to the foot of the slope where railroad and highway were on a level again. The boys in their little “scooter” were traveling faster than the train itself, for the brakes had been applied when the descent was begun.

The boys and their vehicle, surrounded by a little halo of dust, were now far ahead of the chair car in which their sister and Tavia rode. The girls, clinging to each other, craned their necks to see ahead. There were not many other passengers in the car and nobody chanced to notice the horror-stricken girls.

It was a race between the boys and the train, and the boys would never be able to halt their vehicle on the level at the bottom of the hill before crashing into the fence that guarded the open bridge.

Were the barrier not there, the little cart would dart over the edge of the masonry wall of the bridge and all be dashed into the deep and rock-strewn bed of the creek.

There was but one escape for the boys in any event. Perhaps their vehicle could be guided to the left, into the branch road and so across the railroad track. But if Joe undertook that would not the train be upon them?

“Heart disease,” indeed! It seemed to Dorothy Dale as though her own heart pounded so that she could no longer breathe. Her eyes strained to see the imperiled boys down in the road.

The “scooter” ran faster and faster or was the train itself slowing down?

“For sure and certain they are beating us!” murmured Tavia.

She could appreciate the sporting chance in the race; but to Dorothy there loomed up nothing but the peril facing her brothers.

The railroad tracks pitched rather sharply here. It was quite a descent into the valley where North Birchland lay. When the engineers of the passenger trains had any time to make up running west they could always regain schedule on this slope.

Dorothy knew this. She realized that the engineer, watching the track ahead and not the roadway where the boys were, might be tempted to release his brakes when half way down the slope and increase his speed.

If he did so and the boys, Joe and Roger, turned to cross the rails, the train must crash into the “scooter.”