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They were still licking their fingers when the engine whistled long and loud. Then the car went more slowly, and slowly the backs of shanties went backward outside it. All the people began to gather their things together and put on their hats, and then there was an awful jolting crash, and the train stopped. It was noon, and they had reached Tracy.
“I hope you girls haven’t spoiled your dinners with that candy,” Ma said.
“We didn’t bring any dinner, Ma,” Carrie reminded her.
Absently Ma replied, “We’re going to eat dinner in the hotel. Come, Laura. You and Mary be careful.”
Chapter 4
End of the Rails
Pa was not there at that strange depot. The brakeman set down the satchels on the platform and said, “If you’ll wait a minute, ma’am, I’ll take you to the hotel. I’m going there myself.”
“Thank you,” Ma said gratefully.
The brakeman helped unfasten the engine from the train. The fireman, all red and smeared with soot, leaned out of the engine to watch. Then he yanked a bell rope. The engine went on by itself, puffing and chuffing under the bell’s clanging. It went only a little way, then it stopped, and Laura could not believe what she saw. The steel rails under the engine, and the wooden ties between them, turned right around. They turned around in a circle there on the ground till the ends of the rails fitted together again, and the engine was facing backwards.
Laura was so amazed that she could not tell Mary what was happening. The engine went clanging and puffing on another track beside the train. It passed the train and went a little way beyond. The bell clanged, men shouted and made motions with their arms, and the engine came backing, bump! into the rear end of the train. All the cars slam-banged against each other. And there stood the train and the engine, facing back toward the east.
Carrie’s mouth was open in amazement. The brakeman laughed at her in a friendly way. “That’s the turntable,” he told her. “This is the end of the rails, and we have to turn the engine around so it can take the train back down the line.”
Of course, they would have to do that, but Laura had never thought of it before. She knew now what Pa meant when he spoke of the wonderful times they were living in. There had never been such wonders in the whole history of the world, Pa said. Now, in one morning they had actually traveled a whole week’s journey, and Laura had seen the Iron Horse turn around, to go back the whole way in one afternoon.
For just one little minute she almost wished that Pa was a railroad man. There was nothing so wonderful as railroads, and railroad men were great men, able to drive the big iron engines and the fa
st, dangerous trains. But of course not even railroad men were bigger or better than Pa, and she did not really want him to be anything but what he was.
There was a long line of freight cars on another track beyond the depot. Men were unloading the cars into wagons. But they all stopped suddenly and jumped down from the wagons. Some of them yelled, and one big young man began to sing Ma’s favorite hymn. Only he did not sing its words. He sang:
“There is a boarding house
Not far away
Where they have fried ham and eggs
Three times a day.
“Wow! How the boarders yell
When they hear that dinner bell!
Whoop! How those eggs do smell!
Three times—”
He was singing out these shocking words, and some other men were too, when they saw Ma and stopped. Ma walked on quietly, carrying Grace and holding Carrie’s hand. The brakeman was embarrassed. He said quickly, “We better hurry, ma’am, that’s the dinner bell.”
The hotel was down a short street beyond a few stores and vacant lots. A sign over the sidewalk said, “Hotel,” and under it a man stood swinging a hand bell. It kept on clanging, and all the men’s boots made a beating sound on the dusty street and the board sidewalk.
“Oh, Laura, does it look like it sounds?” Mary asked trembling.
“No,” Laura said. “It looks all right. It’s just a town, and they’re just men.”
“It sounds so rough,” Mary said.
“This is the hotel door now,” Laura told her.
The brakeman led the way in, and set down the satchels. The floor needed sweeping. There was brown paper on the walls, and a calendar with a big shiny picture of a pretty girl in a bright yellow wheatfield. All the men went hustling through an open door into a big room beyond, where a long table was covered with a white cloth and set for dinner.
