you. Watch your step."

He lay on the platform so as to be able to reach down and look down
where the coupling was, and find out just what had happened.

"Hold the light down," he said.

Gee, I can't tell you just how it happened. Westy says he was to blame
and I say I was to blame. He said he knocked the lantern out of my hand,
but, gee whiz, I should have kept it out of his way. Anyway, it went
tumbling down and it went so far that it looked like just a little red
speck. It stayed lighted till it crashed away down in the bottom of
that place. And the light turned yellow and spread a little bit, then
went out. I guess the oil spilled on a rock down there. Anyway, it
looked like miles.

Westy was breathing hard and I guess I was, too. He said, "Have you got
that time table? What time did our conductor say that train from Buffalo
comes through?"

I said, "About midnight. We're in a pretty bad fix. I guess I'd better
wake the fellows up, hey?"

We were both pretty serious.

CHAPTER XXV

IN THE DARK

I guess you know that was an old out-of-date car, because anyone would
know that the railroad people wouldn't use a good car to stand on a side
track for a makeshift station. Gee whiz, we didn't care about that, we
even liked it, because it was old-fashioned and kind of ramshackle; it
made it seem like a good place for camping. And if it hadn't been for
that old stove in the corner of it, we could never have bunked in it and
cooked our meals. Crinkums, I like old things, but not old worn-out
couplings. Nay, nay!

Another thing, the only lights in that car were three lamps along the
top, but they weren't exactly lights, because the lamps were broken.
Just the brass things were there. There was just one good lamp in a side
bracket in the ticket agent's place, and when we started away from
Brewster's Centre that was full of oil. But we used it all up on
Saturday night in Ridgeboro and we couldn't get any at the store the
next day, on account of it being Sunday. We were going to get some on
Monday morning, but you see we were picked up Sunday night. So now the
only light we had was a little flashlight belonging to Connie Bennett.

I said, "Westy, this is the worst fix we were ever in. I never thought
about anything like this when I said it was a lot of fun being pulled
all over the country in this car. Feel how the bridge shakes in the
wind; it's kind of spooky like, hey? If it only wasn't so dark. That
make