bed into a special smoking car hooked on
ahead of the engine.

"This car hooked on ahead of the engine was put on special for us so
we will always be ahead and we will get there before the train does,"
said the chairman to the committee.

The train ran out of the train shed. It kept on the tracks and never
left the rails. It came to the Horseshoe Curve near Altoona where the
tracks bend like a big horseshoe. Instead of going around the long
winding bend of the horseshoe tracks up and around the mountains, the
train acted different. The train jumped off the tracks down into the
valley and cut across in a straight line on a cut-off, jumped on the
tracks again and went on toward Ohio.

The conductor said, "If you are going to jump the train off the
tracks, tell us about it beforehand."

"When we lost our tails nobody told us about it beforehand," said the
old flongboo umpire.

Two baby blue foxes, the youngest on the committee, sat on the front
platform. Mile after mile of chimneys went by. Four hundred smokestacks
stood in a row and tubs on tubs of sooty black soot marched out.

"This is the place where the black cats come to be washed," said the
first baby blue fox.

"I believe your affidavit," said the second blue fox.

Crossing Ohio and Indiana at night the flongboos took off the roof of
the car. The conductor told them, "I must have an explanation." "It
was between us and the stars," they told him.

The train ran into Chicago. That afternoon there were pictures upside
down in the newspapers showing the blue foxes and the yellow flongboos
climbing telephone poles standing on their heads eating pink ice cream
with iron axes.

Each blue fox and yellow flongboo got a newspaper for himself and each
one looked long and careful upside down to see how he looked in the
picture in the newspaper climbing a telephone pole standing on his
head eating pink ice cream with an iron ax.

Crossing Minnesota the sky began to fill with the snow ghosts of
Minnesota snow weather. Again the foxes and flongboos lifted the roof
off the car, telling the conductor they would rather wreck the train
than miss the big show of the snow ghosts of the first Minnesota snow
weather of the winter.

Some went to sleep but the two baby blue foxes stayed up all night
watching the snow ghosts and telling snow ghost stories to each other.

Early in the night the first baby blue fox said to the second, "Who
are the snow ghosts the ghosts of?"