Westy only looked straight ahead of him, his abstracted gaze fixed upon the wild, lonesome mountains. A great bird was soaring above them, and he watched it till it became a mere speck. And meanwhile the locomotive steamed at steady intervals like an impatient beast. Then, suddenly, its voice changed, there were strain and effort in its steaming. “Guess we’re going to go,” said Warde, winking at Ed in silent comment on Westy’s mood. “Now for the little old Yellowstone, hey, Westy, old scout?” “Scout!” sneered Westy. “Wake up, come out of that, you old grouch,” laughed Ed. “Don’t you know a scout is supposed to smile and look pleasant? Who cares about Stove Polish, or Shining Sun, or whatever his name is? I should bother my young life about Mr. Madison C. Wilde.” “If we never did anything _real_ and _big_ it’s because there weren’t any of those things for us to do,” said Warde. Westy did not answer, only arose in a rather disgruntled way and stepped off the platform. He strolled forward, as perhaps you who have followed his adventures will remember, till he reached the other end of the car. He was kicking a stone as he went. When he raised his eyes from the stone he saw that the car stood quite alone; it was on a siding, as he noticed now. The train, bearing that loquacious stranger, Mr. Madison C. Wilde, was rushing away among the mountains. So, after all, Westy Martin had his wish (if that were really desirable) and was certainly face to face with something _real_ and _big_ and with a predicament rather chilling. He and his two companions, all three of them just nice boy scouts, were quite alone in the Rocky Mountains. CHAPTER V THE SHADOW OF MR. WILDE Westy’s first supposition was that the coupling had given way, but an inspection of this by the three boys convinced them that the dropping of this last car had been intentional. They recalled now the significant fact that it had been empty save for themselves. It was a dilapidated old car and it seemed likely that it had been left there perhaps to be used as a temporary station. They had no other surmise. One sobering reflection dominated their minds and that was that they had been left without baggage or provisions in a wild, apparently uninhabited country, thirty odd miles from the Gardiner entrance of Yellowstone Park. As they looked about them there was no sign of human life or habitation anywhere, no hint of man’s work save the steel rails which disappeared around a bend southward, and a rough road. Even as they looked, they could see in the distance little flickers of smoke floating against a rock-ribbed mountainside. Warde was the first to speak: “I don’t believe this is Emigrant at all,” he said. “I think the train just stopped to leave the car here; maybe they’re going to make a station here. Anyway this is no village; it isn’t even a station.”