The Boy Scouts of Bob's Hill Part 35

She stared around for a second or two, trying to understand where she was. Then she saw Skinny and seemed to remember.

"Mary!" said she. "Have you seen Mary? Oh, save my little girl!"

"Mary's all right," Skinny told her. "We haven't got her out yet, but we know just where she is. She sent us to find you."

"Thank G.o.d!" she whispered, and then she fainted again.

We left her there, lying among the stones on the river bottom, with her dress floating in the water.

"I wish Mr. Norton was here," groaned Skinny. "I don't know what to do.

Here comes Benny with the things."

There wasn't any time to talk. We hurried back to where we could see Mary's head sticking out of the wreck. She had her eyes closed, and I thought she had fainted, but she heard us come up and opened them.

"We've got your mother out," Skinny said. "Now we'll get you out."

Her eyes asked the question which her lips couldn't seem to do.

"Yes, she's alive," we told her. "She's got an ugly cut on her head, but she seems all right except that."

It was all we could do to get her out, the timbers were so heavy and so wedged in. They had fallen across each other and made sort of a roof over her. If it hadn't been for that she would have been killed. By all pulling on the rope and cutting some with the hatchet, we finally managed to get her loose.

When we started to lift her out she screamed with pain. We kept on lifting. There was no other way.

"It's my foot," she moaned. "It feels as if it was all broken to pieces."

Two of us made a chair with our hands and carried her carefully up on the river bank; then hurried back to the wreck.

"There is a man groaning somewhere," said Bill. "I think it must be the conductor."

We found him lying under some wreckage and in great pain.

"Where are you hurt?" we asked, when we had lifted the wreck off from him.

"My leg!" he groaned. "It's broken. I'm all in."

I took out my knife and ripped his trouser leg and underclothes to above the spot that hurt him, a little above the knee. Then, by putting one hand above the break and the other below it, just as Mr. Norton had made us practise doing a lot of times, and lifting very gently I could see the broken bone move. He ground his teeth together and great drops of sweat came out on his forehead, it hurt him so much, although I was trying to be careful.

"It's broken, all right," I told him. "We've sent for help. The only thing to do is to lie still and wait."

We straightened him out and piled some coats and things, which we found in the wreck, around his leg, to make him as comfortable as we could.

"How many are there?" I asked.

"I only had two pa.s.sengers, a woman and a little girl. They got on at Readsboro. Then there was the engineer, fireman, and brakeman, besides myself. We run only a small crew on this train."

The brakeman came up while he was speaking. He had been stunned at first and when he came to had managed to crawl out.

"Have you seen Jim or George?" he asked.

The conductor shook his head.

"Do you boys know anything about the engineer and fireman?"

We hadn't thought of them before. We had been too busy.

"Then they are under the engine," said he.

He ran through the river to the head of the train, we after him, almost crazy with the thought of those men at the bottom of that awful heap of iron and steel. We pulled and lifted at the great pieces, but we might just as well have tried to move the mountain.

"We can't do it, boys," the brakeman said, at last. "We'll have to wait for help. There isn't one chance in a hundred that they are alive, but they may be. Somebody will have to run to the station and make sure that they bring some jacks. I am 'most done up and don't feel equal to it.

Which one of you will go? Only one, now; the others will be needed here."

"I'll go," said Benny. "I'm the littlest one in the bunch and can be spared the easiest. What was that you said you wanted?"

"Jacks; to jack up the engine frame with. There are several in the baggage room. I saw them there."

Benny hated to leave, when there was so much going on, but before the brakeman had finished speaking he was climbing up on the river bank. In another second he had started down the track on a run.

"Now, fellers," Skinny told us, trying to keep his teeth from chattering, he was so excited, "our Scout book says for us to keep cool and we've got to do it. While we are waiting for help the thing for us to do is to be Scouts and to get busy with our bandages."

"And make some stretchers," added Bill. "We can't use our coats and hike sticks, like the book says, because we didn't bring 'em."

"That's easy. We can use car seats."

The "first-aid kits," which Benny had brought from camp, had everything that we needed. That was what they were put up for, only we didn't think we should need them. There were shears and tweezers, carbolized vaseline, sterilized dressings for wounds, to keep the germs out, all kinds of bandages and things like that. Say, we looked like a drug store when we had fairly started.

Skinny cut away the shoe from Mary's foot and Bill brought cold water from a nearby spring, to bathe it in. The foot was bruised and the ankle sprained, but no bones were broken. Soon they had her feeling better.

I went to help Mrs. Richmond, but all the time I was thinking of the men under the engine. She was sitting up on the car seat, trying to keep her feet out of the water.

"Are you hurt anywhere else, except your head?" I asked.

"No," she said. "I have had a bad shock and my head is cut, but I can move all my limbs; so I guess there are no broken bones."

Her head looked worse than it was, with a gash cut in it and her hair matted down with blood.

"I don't dare bathe the cut," I told her, "because the water may be full of germs, and besides I haven't anything to bathe it with. The book says to be careful about that."

"What does the book say about my was.h.i.+ng my face?" said she, and she didn't wait for an answer.

It didn't take long to put on a sterilized dressing and bandage her up in good shape. Then, with Skinny on one side and I on the other, she managed to walk to a low place on the river bank, where Mary was waiting, and climb up.

Mrs. Richmond said so much about how we had saved her and her little girl, it made us feel foolish.

"That ain't anything," Skinny told her. "That's what Scouts are for."

"It may be a long time before a doctor gets here," I said, after a little. "He will have to come from North Adams or Readsboro. And that conductor is getting worse every minute. If you will help me, Skinny, I'll try to put splints on his leg."