"Look at that!" gasped the boy, whose bright eyes took in much that the
girls missed, for _they_ were looking for Jane Ann Hicks. "That's a
menagerie car--and it's all smashed. See! 'Rival's Circus & Menagerie.'
Crickey! suppose some of the savage animals are loose!"

"Oh! don't suggest such a thing," begged his sister.

Tom saw an excited crowd of men near the broken cage cars of the traveling
menagerie. Down in the gully that was here crossed by the narrow span of
the railroad trestle, there was a thick jungle of saplings and brush out
of which a few taller trees rose, their spreading limbs almost touching
the sides of the ravine.

It must be confessed that the boy was drawn more toward this point of
interest than toward the passenger train where Jane Ann might possibly be
lying injured. But Ruth and Helen ran toward this latter spot, where the
crowd of passengers was thickest.

Suddenly the crowd parted and the girls saw a figure lying on the ground,
with a girl about their own age bending over it. Ruth screamed, "Jinny!"
and at the sound of the pet name her uncle's cow punchers had given her,
the girl from Silver Ranch responded with an echoing cry.

"Oh, Ruth! And Helen! I'm not hurt--only scratched. But this poor
fellow----"

"Who is he?" demanded Helen Cameron, as she and Ruth arrived beside their
friend.