Bobby Blake on the School Nine: or, The Champions of the Monatook Lake League

“Oh, don’t do that,” cried Fred in mock alarm. “Pee Wee might fall on one of us, and then there’d be nothing left but a grease spot.”

“Might as well have a ton of brick on top of you,” confirmed Bobby.

“I’ll tell you what,” grinned Pee Wee. “We’ll draw straws for it and the fellows that get the two longest straws get the best seats.”

“That would be all right and I’d be glad to do it,” said Fred with an air of candor. “Only there aren’t any straws handy. So we’ll have to let things stay as they are.”

“You don’t get out of it that way, you old fox,” cried Mouser. “Here’s an old letter and we’ll make strips of paper take the place of the straws.”

“All right,” agreed Fred, driven into the open. “Give me the letter and I’ll make the strips and you fellows can draw.”

“Will you play fair?” asked Mouser suspiciously.

Fred put on an air of offended virtue.

“Do you think I’m a crook?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” retorted Mouser in a most unflattering way. “A fellow that will pour water down my back when I’m trying to do him a favor will do anything.”

Fred looked at him sadly as though lamenting his lack of faith, but proceeded briskly to tear the strips. The boys drew and Bobby had the luck to retain his seat, but Fred had to exchange with Mouser.

“It’s a shame to have to sit with Pee Wee,” said Fred as he squeezed in beside the fat boy. “He takes up two-thirds of the seat.”

“The conductor ought to charge him double fare,” grinned Mouser.

Pee Wee only smiled lazily.

“Look at him,” jeered Bobby. “He looks just like the cat that’s swallowed the canary.”

“It would take more than that to make Pee Wee happy,” put in Fred. “A canary would be a mighty slim meal for him.”

“You’d think so if you’d seen how he piled into the buckwheat cakes this morning,” chuckled Bobby. “Honestly, fellows, I thought that Meena would have heart failure trying to cook them fast enough.”

“I noticed that you did your part all right,” laughed Pee Wee. “I had all I could do to get my share of the maple syrup.”

“Buckwheats and maple syrup!” groaned Mouser. “Say, fellows! stop talking about them or you’ll make me so hungry I’ll have to bite the woodwork.”

“We can do better than that,” said Fred. “Here comes the train boy. Let’s get some candy and peanuts.”

The boys bought lavishly and munched away contentedly.

“Look at the way the snow’s coming down!” exclaimed Fred, gazing out of the window.

“It is for a fact,” agreed Bobby.

“Looks as though it had settled in for a regular storm,” commented Mouser.

“Maybe it will be a blizzard,” suggested Pee Wee.

As a matter of fact, it appeared to be that already. The snow was falling heavily and shutting out the view so that the boys could scarcely see the telegraph poles at the side of the track. A fierce wind was blowing, and in many places the fence rails were almost covered where the snow had drifted.

“Hope we won’t have any trouble in getting to Rockledge,” remarked Fred rather apprehensively.

“Not so bad as that I guess,” said Bobby. “There’s one place though, a little further on, where the track runs through a gulch and that may be pretty well filled up if the storm keeps on.”

“I wonder if there’s anything to eat on the train if we should get snowbound,” ventured Pee Wee.

“Trust Pee Wee to think of his stomach the first thing,” gibed Fred.

“There isn’t any dining car on the train,” said Mouser. “And we’re still a good way from the station where it usually stops for lunch.”

“We’re all right anyway as long as the candy and peanuts hold out,” laughed Bobby.

“Yes,” mourned Pee Wee, “but there isn’t much nourishment in them when a fellow’s really hungry.”

The storm continued without abatement, and the few passengers that got on at the way stations looked like so many polar bears as they shook the clinging flakes from their clothes and shoes.

“Oh well, what do we care,” concluded Pee Wee, settling back in his seat. “There’s no use borrowing trouble. It always comes soon enough if it comes at all.”

“We ought to be used to snow by this time,” remarked Mouser. “After what we went through up in the Big Woods this doesn’t seem anything at all.”

“Listen to the north pole explorer,” mocked Fred. “You’d think, to hear him talk, that he’d been up with Cook or Peary.”

“Well, I’ve got it all over those fellows in one way,” maintained Mouser. “I’ll bet they never had a snowslide come down and cover the shack they were living in.”

“That was a close shave all right,” said Bobby a little soberly, as he thought of what had been almost a tragedy during their recent holiday at Snowtop Camp. “I thought once we were never going to get out of that scrape alive.”

“It was almost as bad when we were chased by the bear,” put in Fred. “We did some good little running that day all right. I thought my breath would never come back.”

“And the running wouldn’t have done us any good if it hadn’t been for good old Don,” added Mouser. “How that old dog did stand up to the bear.”

“He got some fierce old digs from the bear’s claws while he was doing it,” said Bobby.

“He got over them all right,” affirmed Mouser. “I got a letter from my uncle a couple of days ago, and he says that Don is as good as he ever was.”

The train for some time past had been going more and more slowly. Suddenly it came to a halt, although there was no station in sight. It backed up for perhaps three hundred feet, put on all steam and again rushed forward only to come to an abrupt stop with a jerk that almost threw the boys out of their seats.

They looked at each other in consternation.

CHAPTER IV

HELD UP

Once more, as though unwilling to admit that it was conquered, the train backed up and then made a forward dash. But the result was the same. The snorting monster seemed to give up the struggle, and stood puffing and wheezing, with the steam hissing and great volumes of smoke rising from the stack.

“We’re blocked,” cried Bobby.

“It must be that we’ve got to the gulch,” observed Fred.