One
Week Later:
“St. Paul! Union Station, St. Paul! Next stop!”
The eastbound version of
the Empire Builder rolled smoothly
past piles of melting snow into one of Minnesota’s largest cities. In one of the lounge cars, tons of excited
faces were pressed against the windows.
Jim Dawson had taken trains to the Twin Cities numerous times before,
but the rest of his family was visiting for the first time.
“Look at all those tall
buildings!” Rick, one of Marilyn’s younger brothers, said excitedly.
“And those cars! All over the place! There must be quite a bit to do here,” said
Ryan, another brother.
“We’ll have plenty of
time to explore the city this afternoon, kids, as well as tomorrow once we’re
done meeting with John Budd. It was nice
of the Great Northern president to invite us here, wasn’t it?”
Jim Dawson laughed. “It’s the least he could do,” he told his
wife, “after what Marilyn did. Can you
imagine the consequences for the railroad if that train crash had
happened? Not only would the publicity
for the railroad be terrible, but surely, another gang would be tempted to try
a similar stunt.”
Baby Maggie let out a
yell, and Mrs. Dawson went back to rocking her.
She gave her quite a bit of rocking when the train, pulling into a
platform, finally skidded to a stop.
“Let’s go, let’s go,
everybody off!” Dawson said in the manner of a veteran railroad employee. “We’re not going to Chicago.”
“Chicago?” said
Rick. “Ooh, I’m staying on.”
“Come along now, come
along,” said Mr. Dawson, leading the way over to the door.
The conductor had gotten
out and placed a stepstool on the platform for everybody’s convenience. “Thank you very much, thanks for riding,” he
said. “Careful with that baby now,
ma’am.”
“I’ve got it, thanks,”
said Mrs. Dawson, feeling much better than she had a week ago.
Ahead, her children ran
towards the sign marked EXIT, each with a thousand different ideas of what they
wanted to do once they got out and explored.
Mavis wasted no time stating her intentions. “After Marilyn gets her reward tomorrow,
there’s a shoe store I want to visit, and then there’s a clothing store—and
then there’s another clothing store—oh, and Barbara [her friend] said that
there’s a…”
Jim Dawson let himself
lag behind, not wanting to get caught up in as boring a conversation as
that. Suddenly, he noticed somebody from
the group was missing. Turning around, he
spied Marilyn.
She was standing in the
center of the platform, watching a Northern Pacific train pulling in on the
other side. An expression of pure joy
sat on her face as she watched the light glimmer off the engine’s green and tan
paint.
“I could stay here all
day,” she told her dad when he walked up.
“There’s so much to see!”
“I know how you feel,”
her dad said. He chuckled. “That’s how I felt the first time I went to
Union Station in Chicago. Cheer up! Once we get settled in at the hotel, we can
come back as often as you want while we’re here.”
Turning, Marilyn smiled
up at her dad. He smiled back down at
her, and they started for the exit. As
they left the platform, a horn blared, signaling the safe arrival of yet
another train.
THE END
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
COMING NEXT WEEK:
Twelve-year-old
Sarah Emery was expecting just a normal plane ride from Philadelphia to
Minneapolis when she went to the airport one rainy afternoon. That all changed when she unexpectedly ran
into her best friend, Tracy Turner, who she hadn’t seen in two years. Little did Sarah know that the reunion wasn’t
a coincidence, and even less did she suspect that she was the target of a vast
criminal organization’s dastardly scheme!
Both sides wanted her—only one wanted her alive! Chased across half the country, hounded by
spies at every turn, she’d come to realize before it was all over that—
THE
BEST KIND OF FRIEND IS A SECRET AGENT!
Premieres
August 14, 2017
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