What a Trip! (8 page)

The
General Grant
sure did its part, rolling swiftly over the waves. The ship, by the way, was a large paddle-wheel steamer but was also rigged with three masts and lots of sails. It was definitely the kind of boat to make it over lots and lots of ocean.

One thing I find cool is how authors can make days pass with just a few words on the page. To pass the time, I snuggled in a deck chair and did some reading. Within two or three pages, it was already November 23, our ninth day out from Yokohama. We all happened to be on deck when Mr. Fogg informed us that we were exactly halfway around the world.

“But we've already used up more than half of our eighty days,” said Frankie, showing me her watch. Over forty minutes had ticked by since we had left the library. “Does this mean we're behind schedule?”

The man shook his head slightly. “The traveling will be straighter and swifter from here on. Across the ocean, straight across America, then a steamer to Liverpool, and a train to London. It's quite quick from here on to the joyful conclusion of our journey.”

“The joyful conclusion,” said Aouda. But when she looked at the coolness of Mr. Fogg, I saw in her amazing eyes something not so joyful at all. She was sad.

Me, too, sort of. I really liked Aouda.

Meanwhile, somebody I didn't like—Detective Fix—hadn't given up his evil quest to arrest Mr. Fogg.

“Yes, yes, I know you don't like me,” Fix said, when Passepartout sneered at him one morning. “I still believe Mr. Fogg to be a bank robber, but, for whatever reason, he seems intent on getting back to London. Fine. I will help all I can to ensure he gets to London.”

“Why would you help?” asked Frankie.

“I will help him,” Fix said, “because it is only when we get to England that we'll know whether he is a gentleman, or a terrible robber. Are we friends, then?”

“Friends?” said Passepartout. “Never! But allies, perhaps. At the least sign that you intend to slow us down, however, I will knock you to the ground.”

Fix twisted his mustache. “Fair enough.”

Ten days later, on December 3, the
General Grant
entered the bay of San Francisco.

“California,” I said.

Frankie and I looked at each other. We grinned.

“You know that Palmdale is only a few hundred miles from here,” she said.

“I know. I'm tingling. Should we scoot off and say hello to Mrs. Figglehopper and Mr. Wexler?”

Frankie giggled. “Dude, they're old, but not that old. This is way over a hundred years ago!”

“Maybe we could visit their great-great-grandparents,” I suggested.

Frankie looked at me. I looked at Frankie.

We both said the same thing at the same time.

“Nah!”

As Mr. Fogg zigzagged us across San Francisco from the port to the railway station, Frankie and I found that it was full of none of the big skyscrapers we remembered from a trip we took there with our families when we were in kindergarten.

The whole city was all small wooden buildings and low brick and stone ones. Some of the main roads were paved with dirt and huge ruts dug by wagon wheels.

One thing I did remember, though, was the hills.

San Francisco is all steep hills and curvy roads, and we rode up and down bunches of them to get to the train station where Mr. Fogg shed another couple of pounds from his carpetbag by buying us all tickets.

He even bought Fix a ticket.

“The guy may be as cold as a fish,” said Frankie, “but he's polite and generous.”

“I hope it doesn't get him into trouble,” I said. “I think I'll read some more.” I was so hooked by the story, the hours passed quickly. If only Mr. Wexler and Mrs. Figglehopper could see me whiz through a book like that.

The train left in a huff of steam at six o'clock in the evening. It rumbled out of town and across the deserty spaces east of San Francisco. Soon it was nighttime, then morning of the next day. By noon we were already deep into what Mr. Fogg called the Great Basin, which was not a huge sink, but a flat area of land between California and the Rockies.

Everyone jammed up to the windows to get a look, but Frankie and I decided we needed a better view. Scrambling up the short metal ladder to the roof of the car, we ran and jumped from car to car until we were at the front. Soon we entered a flat, wide desert.

“It's awesome out here,” said Frankie, sitting cross-legged on the roof. “Where exactly are we?”

I popped open the book again and found the page. “It's called the Great Salt Lake Desert.”

“Why do they call it that?” she asked.

“Because it's near the Great Salt Lake,” I said.

“I see a city up ahead.”

“That's Salt Lake City.”

“Sort of ran out of names, didn't they?”

A little while later, as we were passing through what I read was southern Wyoming, the train pulled to a stop before an old bridge. Frankie and I climbed down to take a look. It was a wooden bridge built over a deep chasm in the rocks. A man was standing before the bridge, waving a red flag.

“The bridge is too shaky,” he called out to everyone. “Sorry, but it won't bear the weight of the train.”

“Leave Detective Fix behind,” Frankie whispered.

“And his mustache, too,” I added.

“What are we to do here?” Passepartout asked. “Shiver in the freezing cold?”

“I've telegraphed to Omaha, Nebraska, for a train to come to the other side of the chasm,” the flag waver said. “You can cross the bridge on foot to meet it.”

“When will the train from Omaha come?” Fogg asked.

“Six hours,” said the man.

Frankie checked her watch. “No, we can't spare the time. There must be another way.”

But no one could think of one. So I cracked that old classic open and read the next page. “Whoa!” I gasped.

“Do you have an idea?” asked Aouda.

“No, but the train's engineer does. Let's find him!”

The engineer was a little guy in a grease-stained uniform. He sat on a small stool in a small cabin just behind the engine. We told him what the flagman said.

“The bridge isn't safe, it's true,” he said. “But, well, it might be possible to get across. If the train got up to its very top speed, it might lessen the train's weight and get us over faster.”

I thought about that. “Is it like when you make a running leap, it goes longer than a standing jump?”

The engineer nodded. “A bit like that. I've known it to happen. Once or twice.”

Frankie chewed her lip. “Um, not great odds …”

But Mr. Fogg turned his head slightly. He almost got excited for an instant. Then he calmly said, “Listen to the boy and the engineer. Their idea seems a good one.”

“Whoa, yes!” I said, punching the air. “My idea!”

In an instant, everyone was agreed.

Well, almost everyone. As the train whistled and squealed, then reversed itself, backing up for nearly a mile, Frankie gave me a look. “Devin, I sure hope this works—”

Eeeee!
The engine let out a huge loud burst of steam, the engineer pulled the whistle, and the train burst into speed, heading for the wobbly bridge.

Faster and faster we drove. The train rushed along the tracks, gaining more and more speed until we were going nearly a hundred miles an hour. The rails were screaming when we finally reached the bridge.

It seemed as if the train actually leaped from one side to the other. In fact, we were going so fast, no one even saw the bridge. It was over in a flash.

“We did it!” I said, jumping up and down and shaking everyone's hand. “That was my idea, my idea. Did you see that? It was so cool! Did I say it was my idea?”

But Frankie turned me around and made me look out the back of the train. The instant we crossed the bridge, it twisted and wobbled and wiggled and quivered.

Then it crashed in a tangled mess into the river below!

“Nice work, Devin,” she said. “Was that your idea?”

I gulped. “Actually, it was the engineer's idea. But who cares. We don't need to go back—”

“We need to go back!” cried Aouda.

I blinked. “Um … why?”

“Because we are under attack!” said Passepartout.

“Attack?” I yelped. “Who's attacking us?

Frankie pointed out the window at a band of warriors charging the train.

“Them!” she said.

Chapter 16

The hillsides swarmed with warriors from the Indian tribe known as the Sioux.

“Why are they attacking us?” asked Aouda, taking cover behind her seat.

“I'm not sure,” I said, leaning over to get a better look. It was a good thing I did.

Thwang!
An arrow shot right through the car, narrowly missing me.

“We just crossed into Indian territory!” shouted the conductor. “They're mad we're trying to steal the land and they don't want us here!”

Thwang! Fwing!
Another round of arrows flickered through the car, shattering windows on both sides.

“Someone had better do something,” said Fix, twisting his mustache in fear. “Someone, not me, of course.”

“Weasel,” I muttered.

Even though we were walking targets, I had to admit that the army of warriors sweeping toward us, driving their horses like the wind, was actually pretty cool.

It was like the movies, only more real.

Everything about these guys looked fast. Their long hair was flying up behind them, and the fringes on their suede pants, and the feathers decorating their bows, made them seem as if they had wings.

“They're trying to stop the train,” said Mr. Fogg. “We must help the engineer.”

What he was suggesting was dangerous, but he didn't even flinch, just like he didn't when he risked his life to save Aouda. When he bolted through the cars to the engine, Frankie, Passepartout, Aouda, and I followed. Not Fix, of course. He was hiding.

“You shouldn't be here,” the engineer shouted over the sound of the engine when we got up front. “If the Sioux stop the train, we'll be captured for sure!”

Urging their horses even faster, some of the warriors were riding parallel to the engine up front. They kept shouting and whooping to one another.

“Let us leave at once,” said Mr. Fogg. Then he calmly led the engineer and the rest of us back into the first car.

Well, almost all of us. At the moment I was about to make my exit, three warriors leaped up from their horses right into the engine room, whooping and hollering and blocking the door so I couldn't leave.

The largest of them turned to me. “Stop the train!” he shouted.

I knew that if the train stopped now, the passengers would be overrun. There would be no helping us.

“Me? Stop the train?” I said. “What am I, a genius?”

“Stop the train!”

I blinked at the dude. “Look at me. Is this the face of someone who knows how to stop trains?”

He pushed right up against me. “This is the face of someone who says … STOP—THE—TRAIN!”

I gulped. “Yes, sir.” I looked around at all the knobs and levers and cranks and buttons. Any one of them might stop the train. Of course, any one of them might blow up the train, too. I decided to be scientific about it.

“Eeny, meeny, miney—this one.”

I pulled back on a long red lever.

WOOO!
A huge puff of steam blasted from the funnel and—
ERRRRCH!
—the train bolted ahead even faster.

It was enough to make the warriors lose their balance. I took the chance to dash back into the first car where Frankie was waiting for me.

The Sioux didn't like that and started to chase us.

“Okay, you're angry!” I said as we ran. “We get the point!”

“Not yet you don't!” said one of the warriors. Then he loaded up his bow and shot at us.

At just that moment, Mr. Fogg appeared from nowhere and swung his carpetbag up.

Thwonk!
The arrow lodged in the bag. Then Aouda jumped out from behind him, whipped off her slippers, and shot them with lightning speed at the warriors.

As a final move, Passepartout tossed a round of apples, and—
fwing! fwing! fwing!
—the three Sioux warriors raced back to the engine room.

“Thanks for the save, you guys!” I said.

“Think nothing of it,” Mr. Fogg replied calmly. “Besides, there is a more immediate problem.”

“Staying alive?” asked Frankie.

“In a sense,” he said. “The engineer tells me that unless we stop this train at Fort Kearney in …” He glanced at his watch. “… in two minutes and forty-eight seconds, we will surely be captured. For there isn't another station for miles.”

“But getting to the engine is impossible!” said Aouda, pointing through the cars to the bunches of Sioux leaping onto the train. “They have nearly taken over every car. They will trap us in here.”

Meanwhile, the train was thundering over the rails.

Passepartout stepped forward. “I will climb under the cars to the engine and stop the train,” he said.

Frankie shook her head. “That's crazy talk, Passepartout. We're way at the back of the train. It's impossible to crawl under the train for that long … unless …”

“Unless what?” I asked.

She turned to me and grinned. “Unless … we go on the roof. We did it before. It's more or less fairly safe.”

I looked at her. I blinked. Then I smiled, too. “Come on, Passepartout,” I said. “We'll show you the way.”

In exactly a few seconds, Frankie and I climbed up to the roof of the car, with Passepartout right behind us. We took a running start and leaped onto the roof of the next car. And the next one, and the next one.

It was an awesome feeling, running up there. I had never felt so excited and nervous, and yet I liked it.

“Frankie,” I said, as we made another leap and landed two cars away from the engine. “Here we are, smack in the middle of a life-and-death adventure.”