ADVENTURE NUMBER ELEVEN

"JUST FOR FUN"

The twins missed Chance Carter during the next few weeks. The boy had been a regular nuisance in some ways, for he was always getting into sc.r.a.pes; but he was a clever lad and had a way of making up games that n.o.body else seemed able to think of.

"It does seem lonesome without Chance," Bob told Sure Pop when the broken leg had kept their friend tied up indoors for a week or more.

"And yet we don't get into half as much trouble when he isn't round."

Sure Pop looked wise. "Perhaps it's because Chance hasn't learned that he must play according to the rules," he said. "The fellow who is always taking chances isn't playing up to the rules of the game."

"Anyhow," said Betty, "Chance has had his lesson now. By the time he's able to run around again, he will be ready to quit taking chances."

Sure Pop changed the subject, though a shrewd twinkle seemed to say that it would take more than one lesson to teach Chance how to play life's game according to the rules. "How'd you like to take a trip with me today?"

"Fine!" exclaimed Bob and Betty. "Where?"

"To a kind of moving picture show," answered Colonel Sure Pop. "Let's start right away, then. And be sure you wear your Safety First b.u.t.tons."

The twins couldn't help smiling at the idea of going anywhere without their magic b.u.t.tons. They boarded the crowded street car with Sure Pop and stood beside the motorman all the way to the railroad yards. It seemed as if somebody tried to get run over every block or two, and the way people crossed the crowded streets in the middle of blocks was enough to turn a motorman's hair gray.

"How'd you like to be the motorman, Bob?"

"Well, I tell _you_, Sure Pop, I don't believe it's as much fun as it looks from the outside. If fellows like Chance and George would ride beside the motorman for just one day, seeing what he has to see right along, they'd be Safety workers forever after. Look at that, now! Those chaps have no business to cross in the middle of the block."

"n.o.body has," agreed Sure Pop, with a keen glance at Bob. The boy flushed as he remembered what he himself had been doing when he first felt the warning touch of the Safety Scout's hand.

He and Betty noticed, too, how carefully Sure Pop looked all around him before leaving the car, and they did likewise. Two short blocks more and they were in sight of the railroad roundhouse. The Safety Scout stuck his head inside the great doorway and peered around at the smoking engines that impatiently awaited their turn. "There she is!" he exclaimed. "There's old Seven-Double-Seven!" And he waved his hand at the engineer up in the cab.

The three climbed into the engine cab, where the fireman stood waiting with his eye on the steam gauge. From the way the engineer shook hands with Sure Pop, the twins decided they must be old friends.

"Got my orders?" asked the engineer. He ripped open the envelope Sure Pop handed him, glanced at the message, nodded to the fireman, and gently pulled open the throttle. The big, powerful engine answered his touch like a race horse. With a warning clang of the bell, they slipped down the shining track, through the crowded yards, and toward the city limits.

"Bob, what are you looking for?" asked Sure Pop.

Bob went on looking in all the corners of the cab as if greatly puzzled.

"Looking for the moving picture machine," he said with a grin. "I thought I heard you promise us a moving picture show."

"You just wait. Be ready to rub your magic b.u.t.tons when I say the word, both of you, and you'll see some moving pictures you'll never forget--pictures of what _might_ happen to boys and girls like yourselves. The pity of it is, it does happen, every day of the year."

Sure Pop paused to call their attention to some little blurry patches of blue scattered along the track. "Wild flowers," he said. "Pretty things, aren't they? If we weren't going so fast, we'd stop and get some."

The engineer scowled. "Pretty? They don't look pretty to me any more.

Look there, now!"

The brakes jarred as he spoke, and the shriek of the whistle scattered a group ahead. Several young couples, going home from town by way of the railroad track, had stopped to gather wild flowers. One couple were walking hand in hand over the railroad bridge, deaf at first to whistle and bell and everything else. Suddenly they heard, looked up, and turned first one way and then another, uncertain whether to jump off the bridge or stand their ground.

"Is it any wonder that I don't like the flower season?" grunted the engineer in disgust. "It's the worst time of all, seems to me. Now you'd think those young fellows and girls were old enough and would have sense enough to keep off the railroad's right of way, wouldn't you? But look at 'em!"

He mopped his forehead and glared ahead at the frightened couple, holding the panting engine at a standstill till they could scramble off the bridge.

"They act as if we had nothing to do but just watch out for 'em," he went on, getting under way again. "They got off scot-free this time, but imagine what old Seven-Double-Seven would have done to 'em if this had been my regular run! Forty miles an hour on schedule--and where would they be now?

"It's the same old story, day after day--boys riding bicycles down the tracks, when the road's ten times smoother and a million times as safe!

Boys playing on the turntables and getting crippled for life, one by one!

"They'll run like mad to get across the track ahead of a fast train--and then stand and watch it go through! I ought to know--I did it myself when I was a boy, but little I knew then of the way it wrecks an engineer's nerves!

"They flip the cars and try to imitate the brakemen without the least idea of how many thousands of brakemen have lost their lives just that way. They crawl under cars, instead of waiting or going around. Why, Colonel, the railroads kill thousands and thousands of people every year--you know the figures--dozens every day, week in and week out. And somebody's badly hurt on the railroads every three minutes or less--_and a third of them are boys and girls and little children_! That's what I can't stand--the little folks getting hurt and getting killed, when just a bit of common sense would save them! Oh, if their fathers and mothers had any idea--"

The big engineer choked up for a moment. "Even on the trains," he added, "when they're safe inside the cars, they get hurt. I'm not the only one that worries on my run--ask the conductor. He'll tell you how they run up and down the aisle, till a sudden jar of the brakes throws 'em against a seat iron or into the other pa.s.sengers. They get out into the vestibules, which is against the rules, and when the train takes a sudden curve they get smashed up."

Three minutes later he slowed down for the twins to watch the fast mail thunder past. It was near a village crossing, and a little group of boys stood waiting. As No. 777 came to a stop, the twins saw that most of the boys had stones in their hands.

On came the fast mail, tearing past the little village as if it were not even on the map. The mail cars--the smoker--the long rows of gla.s.s windows, a head beside each--

Smash! The flying splinters of gla.s.s told of one stone that had found its mark. The boys ran like scared cats around the corner into a lumber yard.

"Little cowards!" The fireman glared angrily after them. "They may have killed somebody on that train--_they_ don't know!"

"Rub your b.u.t.tons!" whispered Sure Pop, whose eyes were still fixed on the fast mail, now disappearing in a cloud of smoke and dust.

Bob and Betty rubbed. At their first touch of the magic b.u.t.tons the disappearing train took on a queer, unreal look, like a film at the "movies."

They seemed to be inside one of the cars. They seemed to be watching a sweet-faced old lady--somebody's grandmother--snowy haired, kind, gentle, not used to traveling, as even the twins could see. She kept looking first at the time-table and then at an old key-winding silver watch she wore on a quaint little chain around her neck.

Her lips were moving, smiling. "Only two stops more," she seemed to be saying, "and then I shall see little Jim." She took a kodak picture out of her handbag and looked at it long and lovingly. She glanced out of the window and saw a group of boys standing by the village crossing "to watch the fast mail go through." She liked boys. She smiled at them--she did not see the stones in their hands.

Smash! The other pa.s.sengers sprang to their feet as one of the stones, thrown at random, shivered the car window into bits and struck the kind old face, full between the eyes. A quick, startled cry--a pitiful fumbling of kind old hands before shattered spectacles and eyes suddenly blinded--and the moving picture seemed to fade away. The twins were left with the sickening fear that perhaps little Jim's grandmother might never see him after all.

"Oh! oh!" gasped Betty, rubbing her eyes. "How terrible!" Bob caught Sure Pop by the arm.

"Did we imagine it, Sure Pop--or was it true?"

"Too true," said Sure Pop, sadly. "It happens almost every day somewhere--where boys throw stones at the cars 'just for fun'!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

ADVENTURE NUMBER TWELVE

GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS