Track's End Part 11

I did some reading, too, during these days. There was little to read in the Headquarters House, but among Tom Carr's things I found a book by Doctor Kane, telling of his life in the arctic regions, and this I enjoyed a great deal, feeling that I was in a country not much warmer, and that I must be more lonely than he was, since he always had human companions, while I had not one. In Mr. Clerkinwell's rooms over the bank I found some other books, all with very fine leather covers. Some of these I took the liberty of borrowing, but was very careful of them. One was _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and I liked most of it exceedingly, especially the fight in the king's highway which Christian had with Apollyon. Another book was a story, very entertaining, by Charles d.i.c.kens, about little Pip and the convict who came back from Australia; I felt very sorry for Pip when he had to go out on the wet marshes so early, he being so little and the marshes so big.

There was another thing that I tried to amuse myself with, being nothing less than music. I found an old banjo belonging to Tom Carr and an accordion which Andrew had left behind. The banjo I could not do much with, but when I saw the accordion I said to myself that if I could blow the bellows in my father's forge, I ought to be able to work an accordion. So I went at it, hammer and tongs, and soon could produce a great noise, though mighty dismal, I think, and maybe what you would (had you heard it) have called heartrending, since whenever I started up Kaiser would point his nose to the ceiling and howl, very sad indeed. I think when one of our concerts was going on that could a guest have arrived at the Headquarters House he would have thought he had found a home for lunatics and not a hotel for an honest traveler who could pay his way.

During the blizzard also I drew up in black and white a programme for each day which I decided I must follow out when the weather became better; though I had lived up to most of it from the first. Thus it was:

Five o'clock--Get up, start fire in hotel and make cup of coffee.

Five-thirty--Inspect fires in bank and three stores.

Six o'clock--Feed horses and cow and chickens, and milk cow.

Six-thirty--Get breakfast for self and Kaiser and Pawsy (which included was.h.i.+ng the dishes, a hard job).

Seven-thirty--Inspect depot fire and climb windmill tower and look over country with gla.s.s.

Eight o'clock--Finish work at barn; and for two hours such miscellaneous work as might be doing, as tunnels or other fortifications.

Ten o'clock--Windmill mounting again; miscellaneous work for two hours.

Noon--Dinner for family and work at barn.

One-thirty--Inspection of fires and windmill mounting; followed by miscellaneous work.

Three o'clock--Windmill mounting; miscellaneous work.

Four-thirty--Final daylight inspection of country from windmill; miscellaneous work.

Six o'clock--Supper and work at barn.

Eight o'clock--General inspection of fires and town, including observation from windmill for lights or fires.

Nine o'clock--Bed.

This system I followed out pretty closely whenever the weather was at all fair. When there was no miscellaneous work I would practise on the skees, shoot at the target, or something of this sort. Quite often on days when the weather would allow (though there were few enough of them) I would go up around and beyond the b.u.t.te on a little hunt. I got several jack-rabbits and three more wolves. One of the wolves I left outside the shed, forgetting it. In the morning it was gone.

There were not many thefts, however, and the shed was not broken into any more; though, to be sure, I had made the door twice as strong as it was before, and kept everything about town carefully and strongly locked, especially the buildings where the guns and ammunition were.

During the worst storms I used to sleep on the lounge in the hotel office, but at other times I always retired to the other building and took in the drawbridge. Two or three times, just for a change, I took Kaiser and slept in the fire stronghold. Kaiser and Pawsy still remained as much company for me as they had been from the first. What I should ever have done in that solitude without them I don't know.

The great bushy wag of Kaiser's tail, and the loud purr of the cat, were the two things that cheered me more than anything else. I do believe that cat to have had the loudest purr of any cat that ever lived. A young tiger need not have been ashamed of it. And as for the grand wave and flourish of Kaiser's tail, it is beyond all description.

On one of my rabbit-hunting trips, about a week after the big blizzard, I very foolishly got both of my feet frost-bitten and paid the full penalty. The day seemed not quite so cold, and I did not put on the heavy pair of woolen stockings which I commonly wore outside of my shoes and inside of my overshoes. I crouched behind a s...o...b..nk beyond the b.u.t.te for some time waiting for a rabbit which I saw to come within range, something which he did not do, and was so interested in this that I did not notice what was happening to my feet. But what had happened was quite plain enough when I got home and a great ache set up in my toes. I got the dish-pan full of snow and thrust my feet in, to draw out the frost gradually; but this did not save me.

Two days later I was fairly laid up. One whole day I could scarce crawl about the hotel office and keep the fire going. I could not get to the barn to feed the animals, though they were suffering for food and water; and what I called my war-fires in the other buildings I knew were out. My feet were much swollen, and the pain and the worry must have brought on a fever, and I lay on the lounge all day expecting nothing less than a fit of sickness; and what will become of me? I asked myself. I had no appet.i.te for food, which alarmed me very greatly. I remember no day of my life at Track's End which seemed darker to me.

Toward night I fell asleep, and awoke with Kaiser licking my face and whining. I remembered that I had seen in the pantry a package of boneset, an herb by which my father set great store, holding it a sovereign remedy for all common complaints. I roused up, and by clinging to the back of a chair hobbled after it, and steeped myself a large mugful, very hot, and I believe it did me good. Be this as it may, as the saying is, I was better the next day, and managed to feed the poor, hungry creatures at the barn; and the day after I was able to start the fires. But for a week my feet were very painful, and I suffered much.

It was a little more cheerful as the days began to get longer as February went on, and in the latter part of the month I thought the weather seemed to grow slightly better on the whole. For three days after the big blizzard the thermometer had stood from forty to forty-five below zero each morning, and it did not get up much higher at any time during the day. On the last two days of February it thawed a little in the afternoon, and on March 2d the snow was soft enough so I could make s...o...b..a.l.l.s to throw at Kaiser; but it soon turned cold again.

There were northern lights many nights, flaming all over the heavens, like long swords, and on the night of February 15th there were some more prodigious than I would believe were possible had I not seen them with these eyes. They hung, wavering and trembling, over the whole northern sky almost to the zenith, like the lower edges of vast, mighty curtains, swaying and moving, now here, now there, and with all colors, yellow, violet, scarlet, blood red, as if the whole heavens were going to burn up, the thing being so marvelous that had I not seen lesser displays before I should have thought the world were at an end, no less, and have died, I do believe, of terror. As it was I stood in the snow by the barn gazing till my feet were like blocks of ice and I knew not if I were in Track's End or in the moon. Kaiser at first barked at the sight, then growled, then whined, and next ran yelping away to the shed, where I found him crept beneath a bench.

Never in my life before nor since have I seen anything to equal the heavens that night. Early on the morning of February 24th I saw a beautiful mirage. I could see plainly, high in the air, the timber and bluffs along the Missouri, and the Chain-of-Lakes and coteaux. It lasted for a full half-hour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INDIAN GETTING MY RIFLE IN THE STRONGHOLD]

It happened on the night of March 14th that I took it into my head to sleep another night in the stronghold with Kaiser, and so brought about one more startling thing. It seemed that I must always be doing something instead of staying content with things as they were. It had been thawing a little for several days and I was beginning to wonder if I could not hope for such weather that the train might get through before long and release me from the awful place; though I knew the snow was packed in the cuts all along the line to the east like ice, and that it would take a great thaw to make any impression on it.

About nine o'clock I left the hotel, after carefully locking everything, and went through the tunnel to the barn with Kaiser, my rifle, and the lantern. I locked all the doors behind me, and then we crawled through the small door under Ned's manger, and that I fastened also. In the stronghold I rolled up in a blanket and the buffalo-robe with Kaiser beside me. I left the lantern burning in the tunnel just beyond my feet at the edge of the stack. Kaiser barked at something when we first got in; later I heard wolves sniffing about on the roof; then we both went to sleep.

Some time in the night I awoke; what woke me I suppose I shall never know. But when I awoke I sat up suddenly as if I had never been asleep. I was face to face with the worst-looking creature I had ever seen in my life, black and blear-eyed and ugly, on his hands and knees in the tunnel beyond the lantern drawing my gun toward him by the stock. Then Kaiser sprang up like any wild beast; but I held him back by the collar.

CHAPTER XIX

I find out who my Visitor is: with Something about him, but with more about the Chinook which came out of the Northwest: together with what I do with the Powder, and how I again wake up suddenly.

When I sat up there in the stronghold and saw that creature with the glare of the lantern on his hideous face I knew two things, and these were, first, that it was an Indian, and, second, that he was the thief who had made me so much trouble, though how I knew this latter I can't say. I knew, too, that I was at his mercy.

What I should have done first I don't know if it had not been for Kaiser, but he acted so that it took all my strength to quiet him. I saw it would not do to let him spring at the wretch, who was now squatting in the snow at the mouth of the tunnel with my gun on his knee, the muzzle pointed straight at me.

When at last Kaiser began to act like a reasonable being, I said to the Indian, pretty loud and sharp, so he wouldn't know I was scared:

"What do you want?"

He grunted and made a noise down in his throat, which I couldn't see meant anything. So I said:

"Don't understand. Where'd you come from?"

He only grunted again. I knew that a great many times an Indian will pretend he can't talk English when he can, so I kept at him.

"What you going to do with the gun?" I next asked him.

This seemed to interest him. He looked down at it over his thick eyelids and said in very good English:

"Shoot thieves. Steal Indians' ponies."

It flashed upon me that perhaps I could make him help me after all, though I could see that he was a renegade and a drunkard.

"Did you see the fight?" I asked, beginning vaguely to suspect the truth.

He gave a grunt which meant yes. "Heap good fight," he added.

"Will you help fight if they come again?"

He said nothing, but sat looking at Kaiser, who was still growling, and only kept back because I held him by the collar.

"Where do you stay?" I asked. He made no answer.