The three sat in a row on the lowest step of the deserted car, and for a few moments no one spoke. Looking northward they could see the tracks in a bee-line until the two rails seemed to come to a point in the direction whence the train had come. Far back in that direction, thirty miles or more, lay Livingston where they had breakfasted. There had been no stop between this spot and Livingston, though they had whizzed past an apparently deserted little way station named Pray. Southward the tracks disappeared in their skirting course around a mountain. The road went in that direction too, but they could not follow it far with their eyes. It was a narrow, ill-kept dirt road and was certainly not a highway. The country was very still and lonesome. They had not realized this in the rushing, rattling train. But they realized it now as they sat, a forlorn little group, on the step and looked about them. To Westy, always thoughtful and impressionable, the derisive spirit of Mr. Wilde made their predicament the more bearable. The spirit of that genial Philistine haunted him and made him grateful for the opportunity to do something “big.” To reach the park without assistance would not, he thought, be so very big. It would be nothing in the eyes of Shining Sun. But at least it would be doing something. It would be more than playing hide-and-seek, which Mr. Wilde seemed to think about the wildest adventure in the program of scouting. It would, at the least, be better than coming along a day late on another train, even supposing they could stop a train or reach the stopping place of one. “It’s just whatever you say, Westy, old boy,” Warde said musingly, as he twirled his scout knife into the soil again and again in a kind of solitaire mumbly peg. “Just—whatever—you—say. Maybe we’re not——” “You needn’t say that again,” said Westy; “we—you _are_ scouts. You just proved it, so you might as well shut up because—but——” “All right, we are then,” said Warde. “You ought to know; gee whiz, it’s blamed seldom I ever knew you to be mistaken. Now what’s the big idea? Hey, Ed?” “After you, my dear Sir Hollister,” said Ed. “Well, the first thing,” said Westy, “is not to tell me you’re not scouts.” “We’ll do that little thing,” said Warde. “New conundrum,” said Ed. “What is a scout?” “You are,” said Westy. “I wish I’d never met that Mr. Wilde.” “Forget it,” said Warde. “All right, now we know the first thing,” said Ed. “How about the second? Where do we go from here?” Westy glanced at him quickly and there was just the least suggestion of something glistening in his eyes. “Are you willing to hike it?” he asked. “You tell ’em I am,” said Ed Carlyle. CHAPTER VI STRANDED “Well, we know which direction to start in, and that’s something,” said Westy.