The long journey from the little Ohio town on Lake Erie to western Nebraska had been without mishap.  His uncle’s ranch lay far away from the main line of the railroad on the end of the branch.  There was but one train a day upon it, and that was a mixed train.  The coach in which Henry sat was attached to the end of a long string of freight cars.  Travel was infrequent in that section of the country.  On this day Henry was the only passenger.

The train had been going up-grade for many miles and had just about reached the crest of the divide.  Bucking the snow had become more and more difficult; several times the train had stopped.  Sometimes the engine backed the train some distance to get headway to burst through the drift.  So Henry thought nothing of it when the car came to a gentle stop.

The all-day storm blew from the west and the front windows of the car were covered with snow so he could not see ahead.  Some time before the conductor and rear brakeman had gone forward to help dig the engine out of the drift and they had not come back.

Henry sat in silence for some time watching the whirling snow.  He was sad; even the thought of the gifts of his father and friends in his trunk which stood in the baggage compartment of the car did not cheer him.  More than all the Christmas gifts in the world, he wanted at that time his mother and father and friends.

“It doesn’t look as though it was going to be a very merry Christmas for me,” he said aloud at last, and then feeling a little stiff from having sat still so long he got up and walked to the front of the car.

It was warm and pleasant in the coach.  The Baker heater was going at full blast and Henry noticed that there was plenty of coal.  He tried to see out from the front door; but as he was too prudent to open it and let in the snow and cold he could make out nothing.  The silence rather alarmed him.  The train had never waited so long before.

Then, suddenly, came the thought that something very unusual was wrong.  He must get a look at the train ahead.  He ran back to the rear door, opened it and standing on the leeward side, peered forward.  The engine and freight cars were not there!  All he saw was the deep cut filled nearly to the height of the car with snow.

Henry was of a mechanical turn of mind and he realized that doubtless the coupling had broken.  That was what had happened.  The trainmen had not noticed it and the train had gone on and left the coach.  The break had occurred at the crest of the divide and the train had gone rapidly down hill on the other side.  The amount of snow told the boy that it would not be possible for the train to back up and pick up the car.  He was alone in the wilderness of rolling hills in far western Nebraska.  And this was Christmas Eve!

It was enough to bring despair to any boy’s heart.  But Henry Ives was made of good stuff, he was a first-class Boy Scout and on his scout coat in the trunk were four Merit Badges.  He had the spirit of his father, who had often bucked the November storms on Lake Superior in his great six-hundred-foot freighter, and danger inspired him.