"Oh, the train's gone!" shrieked Vi, when she first looked down.
"And the workmen are gone too," gasped Laddie.
There was nobody left in the cut, and both the train and the handcar on which the section hands had traveled, were out of sight. It was the loneliest place that the twins had ever seen!
"Now, see what we've done," complained Vi, between her sobs. "We ran away and lost mother and daddy and the others. They've gone on to Cowboy Jack's and left us here."
"Then we didn't run away from them," Laddie said more sturdily. "They ran away from us."
"That doesn't make any difference," complained his sister. "We--we're lost and can't be found."
"Say!" cried Laddie suddenly, "how do you s'pose that train hopped over that rock?"
This point interested Vi at once. It was a most astonishing thing. If the train had gone on to Cowboy Jack's, it surely had got over that big rock in a most wonderful way.
"How did it get over the rock?" Vi began. "Did it fly over? I never saw the wings on that engine, did you? And if the engine _did_ fly over, it couldn't have dragged the cars with it, could it?"
"Oh, don't, Vi!" begged Laddie, much puzzled. "I couldn't tell you all that. Maybe they had some way of lifting the train around the rock. Anyway, it's gone."
"And--and--and what shall _we_ do?" began Vi, almost ready to cry again.
"We have just got to follow on behind it. I guess daddy will miss us and get off and come back to look for us after a while."
"Yes," said Laddie with more confidence, as he thought of his kind and thoughtful father. "I am sure he will, Vi. Daddy wouldn't leave us alone on the railroad with no place to go and nothing to eat."
At this Vi was reminded that they had not eaten since breakfast, and although it was not yet noon, she declared that she was starving!
"You can't be starving yet," Laddie told her, with scorn. "We haven't been lost from the train long enough for you to be starving, Violet Bunker."
"Well, Laddie, I just know we will starve here if the train doesn't come back for us."
"Maybe another train will come along and we can buy something from the candy boy. You 'member the candy boy on our train? I've got ten cents in my pocket."
"Oh, have you? That will buy four lollipops--two for you and two for me. I guess I wouldn't starve so soon if I had two lollipops," admitted Vi.