CHAPTER VIII

MR. DAMON ARRIVES

“WHAT shall I do, Tom?” called Mary Swift in a tense voice into the ear of her husband beside whom she sat on the seat of the House on Wheels. “Is this the end?”

For it seemed that only death awaited them at the foot of the mountain down which they were sliding, beyond control, gripped in the mass of earth, trees, and rocks that formed the great slide.

“Sit still, Mary dear!” exclaimed Tom. He did not turn his eyes to look at her, much as he wished to, for he must keep a steady hand on the wheel and keep his eyes in front to avoid, if possible, crashing into some great boulder. He realized that he could still steer the House on Wheels, though to hold it back or send it forward out of danger on top of that slide was beyond human power.

“Don’t fear for me. I’ll sit still,” Mary answered quietly and, white-lipped, she braced herself on the seat, waiting for the great crash she expected to come at any moment.

Mrs. Nestor, clinging to her husband back in the big car, was terrified, and with reason; but she was a woman of great common sense and not panicky. Her experience on Earthquake Island with Tom Swift had taught her that he was to be relied upon in an emergency. So, though she clung to her husband and moaned a little, she did not try to leap out of a window or the door at the rear, as some might have done.

“Steady!” murmured Mr. Nestor, holding his wife to him. “If we are to come out of this alive, Tom Swift will accomplish it. If it is to be the end we must meet it bravely,” he said, though there was a tremor in his voice as he looked at Mary sitting beside her husband.

“Tom, do you want any help?” asked his father. “I can do a lot yet.”

“No. Stay where you are—all of you!” Tom called over his shoulder. “And keep to the rear as far as you can, to hold the back wheels down. If we don’t up-end I think we’ll be all right.”

“What did the car do—leave the road?” asked Mr. Nestor.

They all had to shout to be heard above the rumble, roar, crash, clatter, bang, and rattle of the landslide.

“No, we didn’t leave the road,” Tom said grimly. “The road tried to leave us and I’m not sure yet but what it may. But, so far, we have stuck together.”

What had happened was that a section of the side of the mountain, into which the highway was cut, had suddenly broken off, either because of much rain or because there was a fault in the rock and earth of which it was composed. This big piece, weighing thousands of tons, had broken off the road itself, and the portion of the highway, on which the House on Wheels rested, began to slip down into the valley below. Fortunately, none of the falling earth, stones and trees had struck the big auto. But the House on Wheels was being carried down the slope as an integral part of the landslide, even as were some of the gigantic boulders and tall trees.

“Do you think we can come through it safely, Tom?” asked Mary softly, her face close against his shoulder.

“I think so—I hope so. Steady now! If we can get past that big rock I think we’ll make it.”

Ahead of them was a great boulder, as big, if not bigger, than the House on Wheels itself. It was moving more slowly than was Tom’s car, for the reason that the latter had wheels.

Closer and closer to the great rock the House on Wheels slid. Tom was pulling with all his might on the steering wheel. Mary saw that he was using his last ounce of strength, and she quickly put her hands beside his and helped him turn the front wheels, which were hard to move, in spite of being arranged on a gear, for they were now embedded deep in sand and gravel.

“Oh, we’re going to hit!” cried Mrs. Nestor nervously.

“Pull, Mary!” shouted Tom.

The wheel slowly turned—oh, so slowly.

But when it seemed that there must be a crash, the great House slid past the immense rock and came to rest against a bank of sand in the valley below the broken road. The gigantic boulder rolled off to one side. The House on Wheels quivered and was still.

“Safe!” cried Mr. Nestor, looking out of a window as he gently released himself from his wife’s arms.

“Safe, but stuck,” murmured Tom, his hands white and tensed from the strain of pulling around the steering wheel. Mary sank against her husband limply, game but “all in,” as she expressed it.

“What do you mean, ‘stuck,’ Tom?” asked his father.

“I mean we’ve run her nose into a sand bank. Nothing is broken, I think, but we’ll have to be dug out before we can get back on the road. I guess it means staying here for the night.”

“And we can be very thankful,” said Mrs. Nestor, “that we have such a wonderful house to stay in, Tom Swift. You’re a dear boy!” and she kissed him.

“Yes, we can put up at this hotel!” chuckled Mr. Nestor. “It will be rather fun, I think. For I’m a bit shaky and I’d just as soon stop where we are as fuss up for a regular hotel dining room.”

Tom was out of the car looking around, over, and under it. He could see nothing wrong except that all four wheels were buried deep in sand, gravel, and rocks. The landslide had reached bottom, carrying the great car with it, but not damaging it.

“All right. Here’s where we stay until I can get a gang of men with shovels in the morning to dig us out,” Tom said. “It’s lucky we have our beds and kitchen with us.”

“Yes, and mother and I will get the meal!” offered Mary. “You’re to do nothing but rest, Tom!”

“That won’t be a bad idea!” he chuckled. Really the danger had been great and the strain on him terrific. For he thought that Mary and all of them would be killed, or at least badly hurt. But they were now safe and sound.

It did not take long to prepare the meal and get ready to spend the night. The car rested on almost a level “keel,” if that expression is permissible, and there was a little stream of clear, sparkling water in the valley where they had come to rest.

So they made not such a bad night of it after all, as the beds, though small, were comfortable. Tom soon recovered his nerve, but he was more than a little anxious, though he did not say so, about the grotesque dwarf and what he had heard about him from Mr. Notine.

“I wonder if Jardine is playing some game,” mused Tom, as he fell asleep. “Well, I’ll find out when I get back home.”

The next day when men from the state highway department came out to investigate the landslide, they were much surprised to see the big House on Wheels standing where it had been caught in the slipping earth.

“That road around the cliff wasn’t supposed to be used,” one of the engineers said to Tom. “How’d you come to take it?”

“A young fellow at a hot-dog stand told me it was a short cut. But this was a little too short,” and Tom glanced significantly up the side of the mountain down which they had literally slid.

“I should say so!” remarked the engineer. “Well, we’ll dig you out and then I’ll have a talk with that lad. He might have sent you all to your deaths.”

“I wondered why we didn’t meet other cars,” Tom said.

It did not take long to dig out the House, though afterward it had to proceed slowly over rough ground to get back to a hard road. But after all no great damage was done, proving that when Tom Swift built a machine he built it well.

A little later they were well on their road to the great hotel in the big woods of Mt. Camon and reached their stopping place before noon.

“Isn’t this a wonderful hotel, Tom?” cried Mary, when the car had been run around to a garage and they were being shown to their rooms.

“Great!” he said. “I didn’t know there were so many trees in the world!”

The Mt. Camon Hotel was situated on a mountain top, girt around by immense forest stretches in every direction.

“I am glad you like it here,” said Mr. Thorndyke, the hotel manager, as he greeted the Nestors, who had been his guests many seasons. “The only thing is that we are very dry up here.”

“We’re all prohibitionists, so we won’t mind that,” laughed Tom.

“You mistake me,” said Mr. Thorndyke, with a smile. “I mean we have had no rain for a long time. It is that dryness I mean.”

“Is the hotel water supply running low?” Tom asked. He knew what a shortage like that meant in the height of the season.

“Not that,” the manager said. “We have our own artesian well that never goes dry. But all about us the forests are like tinder. It is feared that if there are forest fires they may get beyond control. The fire wardens are worried and are constantly on the alert.”

“Let us hope that doesn’t happen,” Tom said, lightly enough. “And it may rain.”

“It may. I hope so,” said Mr. Thorndyke but he had a worried air.

However, Tom, Mary and the others had come to Mt. Camon for a good time and such a thing as a dry spell was not going to spoil their vacation. So they got settled in their rooms, Mary saw that her mother and father and Mr. Swift were comfortable, then she took Tom out to show him around the place, for she had spent many summers there.

“I suppose,” said Tom, rather jokingly, “that you will take me to Bridal Veil Falls, Lovers’ Leap, the Maiden’s Retreat, and all sorts of places like that.”

“We have them all!” laughed Mary. “But I do hope the dry weather hasn’t spoiled the flower gardens. They are, or were when I was last here, quite a feature of this hotel. Let’s go out and look.”

They went through the main entrance, out on a broad piazza, and started down the long walk that led up to the hotel from the road. On either side were beds of flowers, plants, and shrubs, and Tom was beginning to admire them.

“Oh, this isn’t what I want to show you yet,” said Mary. “Come over this way.”

She led him through a path of shrubbery. Just ahead of them were two men, one evidently a gardener. The figure of the other was familiar to Tom Swift. Then he heard a well known voice say:

“Bless my watering can, but those are the finest roses I ever saw! I must have one!”

He reached over to pick a blossom.

“Mr. Damon!” cried Tom in delight.

“Tom Swift!” ejaculated the other, turning about. “When did you get here?”

“Just arrived,” Tom answered. “But I never expected to see you. When did you come?”

“I just arrived, too. The bus brought me here from that little jerkwater station shaped like a mushroom. But see these flowers! In spite of the dry spell this fellow has made them bloom,” and he motioned to the gardener standing beside him.

Mr. Damon reached over again to pick a rose. As he did so, the man beside him, with a cry like that of a wild animal, shouted:

“No! You must not! I forbid you!”

“My man, you forget yourself!” said Mr. Damon severely. “I have been a guest here before and I know it is allowed to pick a few flowers. Stand aside!” for the man, with a face showing rage, seemed about to prevent him.

“No! No! You must not pick that rose!” cried the man, and he raised his hand as if to strike Mr. Damon. But that eccentric character was very quick, and a moment later the gardener went flying backward into some bushes, propelled by the vigorous fist of Wakefield Damon.