This last she confided to the three Littell girls.

“Won’t they dig us out?” asked the practical Louise.

“What a lark!” exclaimed Bobby, clapping her hands.

“Just think!  Buried in the snow!  How wonderful!” murmured Libbie.

“Cheese!” exclaimed Tommy Tucker, overhearing this.  “You’ll think it’s wonderful.  The brakeman told me that the drivers were clogged at six o’clock and the wheels haven’t turned since.  We’re completely buried in snow and it’s still snowing.  Head engine’s an oil-burner and there is plenty of fuel; but there isn’t a chance of our being dug out for days.”

“How brutal you are,” giggled Bobby, who could not be frightened by any misadventure.  “How shall we live?”

“After we eat up the bread and ham we will draw lots and eat up each other,” Bob observed soberly.

“But those little children can’t eat each other,” Betty declared with conviction.  “Come on Bobby.  You’re dressed.  Let’s see what we can do for that poor mother and the babies.”

The two girls had to confer with Uncle Dick first of all.  He had charge of the supplies.  Betty knew there was some way of mixing condensed milk with water and heating the mixture so that it would do very well at a pinch—­the pinch of hunger!—­for a nursing child.  Uncle Dick supplied the canned milk and some other food for the older children, and Betty and Bobby carried these into the day coach where the little family had spent such an uncomfortable night and were likely to spend a very uncomfortable day as well.

For there was no chance of escaping from their present predicament—­all the train crew said so—­until plows and shovelers came to dig the train out of the cut.

Of course the conductors and the rest of the crew knew just where they were.  Behind them about three miles was a small hamlet at which the train had not been scheduled to stop, and had not stopped.  Had the train pulled down there the situation of the crew and passengers would have been much better.  They would not have been stalled in this drifted cut.

Cliffdale, to which Uncle Dick and his party were bound, was twenty miles and more ahead.  The roadbed was so blocked that it might be several days before the way would be opened to Cliffdale.

“The roads will be opened by the farmers and teams will get through the mountains before the railroad will be dug out,” Mr. Gordon told the boys.  “If we could get back to that station in the rear we might find conveyances that would take us on to Mountain Camp.  If I had a pair of snowshoes I certainly could make it over the hills myself in a short time.”

“You go ahead, Mr. Gordon,” said Tommy Tucker, “and tell ’em we’re coming.”

“I’ll have to dig out of here and get the webs on my feet first,” replied Uncle Dick, laughing.

His speech put an idea in the head of the ingenious Tommy Tucker.  While the girls were attending to the children in the car ahead, the twins and Bob and Timothy Derby went through the train to the very end.  The observation platform was banked with snow, and the snow was packed pretty hard.  But there were some tools at hand and the boys set to work with the two porters and a brakeman to punch a hole through the snowbank to the surface.