Track's End Part 7

I had truly thought that those savages had been making a great noise before, but it had been nothing to the sound which now came from the cellar. Such another shrieking and screaming I never heard before nor since. I would not have believed that any lot of human beings could make such an uproar. Then I heard them fighting their way up the stairs and go squawking and bellowing out the front door of the store.

When I heard the last one go I seized up the pumpkin, took it on one shoulder, and with my stick went hippety-hopping out through the alley and along the sidewalk after them. They were going away in the darkness for their ponies like the wind. I went to the end of the walk and, holding the lantern in both hands, raised and lowered and waved it at them. Not once did they stop their howls of terror, and I could hear and partly see them tumbling onto their ponies in all ways and plunging off through the drifts to the west like madmen. I longed to be on d.i.c.k's back with my lantern to chase them, but I knew not where d.i.c.k was, and my ankle had already borne too much, as it told me plainly. I got back to the hotel as best I could, put up the lamp in its place and sat down to rest.

But though I needed rest, I needed food more; so I started the fire and looked about for something to eat. I soon found that the Indians had left nothing except a few crusts of bread and some frozen eggs.

But I boiled the eggs and made out a sort of a meal. As I finished I heard a yowl which I thought I knew, and, sure enough, when I looked up, there was the cat still on the door.

This set me to laughing, and I said: "I wonder was ever a family so scattered before on a Christmas night as is mine? There is Kaiser shut in under a water-tank; Blossom locked in the cellar of a grocery store; Crazy Jane, the hen, on top of the smoke-stack of a blacksmith shop; the rest of the chickens sacked up and scattered on the ground; d.i.c.k and Ned, the horses, I don't know where; Pawsy, the cat, on top of the door; and Jud himself, the head of the family, here eating what the Indians have left, with a hurt ankle and a smell of roasted pumpkin all through his clothes."

I had a good laugh over things, and then decided that I must do what I could for my scattered family, though my ankle seemed about ready to go by the board. So I first got down the cat and then lit the lantern and started out after Kaiser. Poor dog, he was beside himself to see me, and liked to have knocked me down in showing how glad he was.

As we started back Kaiser stopped and began to growl at something out on the prairie, and I looked, and after a time made out d.i.c.k and Ned.

They were very nervous, and would not let me come up to them, but I toiled around them at last and started them toward their barn. I next looked after Blossom. I found her lying down, as comfortable as you please, chewing her cud and right at home in the cellar. She had made a meal out of the coa.r.s.e hay which came out of a crockery bale, and I thought I would leave her for the night. So I took a big pitcher out of the bale and milked her then and there, and took it home, and Kaiser and Pawsy and I disposed of it without more to-do.

I was beginning to feel better about my family, and felt still more so when I found that d.i.c.k and Ned had gone into their stalls and had stopped their snorting, and only breathed hard when they saw me. Next I went after Crazy Jane; but though I coaxed and shooed, and threw chunks of frozen snow at her, while Kaiser barked his teeth loose, almost, it did no sort of good; she only looked at me and made a funny noise as a hen does when she sees a hawk. I could not climb up with my hurt ankle, so I had to leave her, much against my will. The chimney, I thought, was a good deal exposed for a sleeping-place in winter, but there was no wind and I didn't have much fear but that she would come out all right.

I had like to have forgotten the other chickens; they never popped into my mind till I was back in the hotel, but I dragged myself out after them. I found the poor things stuffed in three sacks, as if they had been turnips, lying on the snow. I knew I could not carry them, and felt that I could scarce drag them even; so I hit upon the plan of taking a bit of rope from the pile of plunder and hitching Kaiser to the sacks, and so in that way we got them, one by one, to the barn at last and let them out, all cramped and ruffled. Kaiser was so proud of his work that he set up a bark which started the broncos into another fit of snorting.

I think if there had been one more member of my family lost that I could have done nothing for it that night, my ankle was in such a state. I tried bathing it in hot water, and before I went to bed I had it fairly parboiled, which seemed greatly to relieve it. I was too tired to go across the drawbridge to my room, so I stretched out on the lounge in the office, not much caring if all the robbers in Christendom came. But I could not help wondering at my strange Christmas; and half the night I heard the wolves howling round the blacksmith shop and looking up (I knew) at Crazy Jane; but I thought they might as well howl around the gilt chicken on a weather-vane for all the good it would do them.

CHAPTER XII

One of my Letters to my Mother, in which I tell of many Things and especially of a Mystery which greatly puzzles and alarms me.

Here I am going to put in the letter which I wrote to my mother a week from the next day after my strange Christmas, to show that I did write her long letters every Sunday, as I have said; though of course it was many weeks before she got this or the others:

TRACK'S END, _Sunday, January 2d._

MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,--I have written you so much bad news since I have been in this dreadful place that I am very glad to send you some good news at last, and that is that my ankle, of which I wrote you last Sunday, is all well. I kept up the hot-water applications and by the next morning it was so much better that I could walk on it. I hope I may not turn it again.

I don't know as there is much other good news to write, except that it is good news, and maybe quite strange news, that I am still alive at all in such a place. I am getting along better with the cooking, though I am beginning to long for some fresh meat. The cow still gives a good mess of milk, and I now get three or four fresh eggs a day; thanks to the warm food which I give the hens, I guess. I do not believe that Crazy Jane has laid an egg since her night on the chimney, and I'm almost afraid she caught cold, as she has not had a genuine fight with another hen since. Kaiser and the cat and d.i.c.k and Ned are all well and in good appet.i.te. I have heard rather less of the wolves of late, and I still think it would be easier to get the Man in the Moon to come to this town than any of those Indians. But the outlaws I still fear very much. Oh, something I ought to have written you last week! I mean this: I got a letter from them that day out at Mountain's, but I had no time to read it Christmas and the next day I forgot I had it till after I had put your letter in the post-office.

This is what was in it:

CITISENS TRACK'S END,--We will Rob your bank and burn your town if we don't get the small some we ask for. If adoing it we kill anyboddy it wun't be our fawlt. Leave the Munny as we told you to and save Bludd Shedd.

PIKE AND FRIENDS.

I look for them any time. My only hope is that the weather will be too bad for them to travel; but of course there must be some good weather.

The snow is already so deep that it will be very hard for them to do much on horseback. The street is full, and it is very deep north, east, and south. The ground is almost bare for half a mile to the west, however; and they could come in on the grade. Of course they can come on snow-shoes at any time and go everywhere. I cannot even hope to keep out of having trouble with them. I have made no answer to this letter, and can't make up my mind whether it would be best to do so or not.

I kept up work all the week on the fortifications, when the weather would permit; for there has been another great blizzard, the worst of the winter so far. I even worked all day yesterday, though it was New-Year's. Monday morning I again started all of my fires, but I found that in three of the buildings there was not enough coal to last long. So I hitched up Ned and d.i.c.k on an old sleigh of Sours's and took a good lot to each place from the sheds at the railroad. It was a lucky thing I did so, too, because it snowed more Tuesday night and began to blizzard Wednesday and kept it up till Friday without once stopping; and it would now be impossible to drive anywhere near the coal-sheds.

I have got up a plan to do what I want to do without using much coal; I smother the fires, all except the one in the hotel, with stove griddles laid on them, and it makes a great smoke without much fire.

The guns and ammunition I have disposed of here and there, in good places for me in case of attack, but hard to find for other folks. One I keep standing by my bed's head, but n.o.body would be apt to look there for either gun or bed, I hope. I take in my drawbridge always the minute I cross.

The last blizzard has helped me a good deal. The street is now so full that the first-story doors and windows of the hotel and bank and most of the other buildings are covered. Not a bit of daylight gets into the hotel office, and I am writing this by lamplight, though the sun is bright outdoors. The hotel can now only be entered by the back door, which I have strengthened with boards and braces. I have also boarded up the second-story windows, as they are now not much above the level of the drifts.

My tunnel might now be much higher and I am going to make it so that I can stand up straight all the way through. This is the only way there is to get into the bank now, unless you were to pound off the planks I have nailed over the upper windows, or shovel the snow away below. I drew over lumber from the yard the day I had the team hitched up for the coal. There are plenty of nails at Taggart's. The blacksmith tools which would be good to break open a safe with I have buried in the snow. I have not yet carried out the plan I told you about which might save me in case the town is burned. It is a big job, but I am going at it as soon as I can. There is much other work which I want to do.

There is a large tin keg of blasting-powder at Taggart's which it seems as if I ought to use somehow. Sometimes I wish I had a cannon, but I don't know as it would be much use to me.

I had a vast deal of work Monday and Tuesday carrying back the things those savage Indians lugged out in the square. I fastened up all of the buildings which they had torn open and straightened up things in the stores as best I could. Fitzsimmons's was in the worst confusion, and I could not do much with it. The cellar was such a wreck of barrels and boxes and crates and everything you can think of, all broken open and the things thrown everywhere, that I only looked down and gave it up then and there.

As soon as I can get around to it I mean to build some more tunnels to some of the other houses. I think I ought to draw up a list of regular hours for getting up, fixing the fires, climbing the windmill tower to look with the field-gla.s.s, and such-like things, as I used to hear Uncle Ben tell was the way they did when he was in the army. I mean to go out every good day and take some target practice with my rifle.

I wish I could close this letter here, and I would do so if it were going to you so that you would get it before you get others, or before you know that you are never to get others from me, if that is to be, as I fear it may. Oh, if I only had it to do over again, how quick I would take the chance to go away from this horrid place! If I live to get away I will never come here again. So I must tell you what little I can of this other matter.

I am not here in Track's End alone. What it is that is here I do not know. How long it has been here I do not know. Where it stays, what it does, where it goes, I do not know. I have looked over my shoulder twenty times from nervousness since I began this letter.

Last Monday night I hung a piece of bacon on a rafter in the shed back of the kitchen, after cutting off a slice for breakfast the next morning. I kept it there because it is a cool place and handy to the kitchen. Tuesday morning it was gone. I had left the outside door shut, and it was still shut in the morning. The door between the kitchen and shed was locked. I could see no tracks or marks of any kind.

Wednesday morning the thumb-piece of the latch on the depot door was pressed down. I don't think I left it that way. A pail by the back door in which I had thrown some sc.r.a.ps which I was saving for the chickens was tipped over. I think some of the meat rinds were gone.

The blizzard began that morning.

Thursday morning the blizzard was still going on. I noticed nothing unusual.

Friday morning a quilt and a blanket had been stolen from a bed in the hotel. Another quilt was drawn from the bed and lay on the floor. I think the window (it had not yet been boarded up) at the foot of the bed had been raised. The s...o...b..nk outside is high. The blizzard was still blowing.

Yesterday morning I saw nothing wrong, but I thought about it a good deal during the day. I remembered of hearing strange sounds at night from the first of my being here alone. I had thought it wolves, owls, jack-rabbits, or something like that.

Last night I decided to watch. The storm had stopped and the night was very still, but it was cloudy and dark and a flake of snow fell once in a while. I put on the big fur coat and sat on a box just inside the woodshed door, which was open on a crack. At about eleven o'clock I heard a faint noise at the barn as if something were in the yard at the side trying to get in at one of the windows. I swung my door open a little more, it creaked and I saw something dark go across the yard and over the fence. There was no sound that I could hear. I could not see that it touched the ground. It went behind a haystack by the fence. There was instantly another glimpse of it as it pa.s.sed beyond the stack, going either behind or through the shed under which the men stood that night when Pike shot Allenham. I was not sure if I saw it the other side of there or not, but I could not see so well beyond the shed. The motion was gliding; I heard no footstep, nor sound of wings, nor anything. It snowed some more in the night. This morning I could find nothing wrong except that a clothes-line beyond the shed was broken. It had hung across the way which what I saw must have gone.

Its ends were tied to posts at least seven feet from the ground, and if I remember aright, it has all the time been drawn up so that it did not sag at all. It was snapped off as if something had run against it.

I must close now and do up my work for the night. I only ask that I may live to see you all again. If I do not, then may this reach you somehow.

Your Dutiful Son, JUDSON PITCHER.

CHAPTER XIII

Some Talk at Breakfast, and various other Family Affairs: with Notes on the Weather, and a sight of Something to the Northwest.

It was on the morning of Tuesday, January 25th, as I sat at breakfast with Pawsy in her chair at one end and with Kaiser at the other, drumming on the floor for another bit of bacon, that I said to myself:

"It is just one month to-day since I clapped eyes on a human being; and the ones I saw then were not very good humans, being thieving and drunken Indians." And when I said this I had not forgotten (when had it been once out of my mind, waking or sleeping?) what I saw on New-Year's night; but I knew not if I were to count that as human or what.

I remember that Sunday night after I finished the letter to my mother which I put in the last chapter, how I found it darker than I expected when I went out, and how I ran along the s...o...b..nks with my heart thumping like to split, and threw the letter in the top of the post-office door (the rightful opening was long before buried under the snow) and then shot back to the hotel, not daring to look behind me or even stop to breathe. I was well ashamed of myself, at the time, but I could not help it.

On that night it was even nine o'clock before I could get up courage to go to the barn and feed the stock. I think I was in a greater state of terror than on the night after the battle with the wolves. I walked the floor, back and forth, on tiptoe and listened; and the less there was to hear, the more I heard. At last I, after a fas.h.i.+on, put down my fright, and ventured out to the barn; but even then I could not whistle; I tried, but my lips would not stay puckered.

I went to bed as soon as I could, and though I thought I should never get to sleep, I did at last. What my dreams were, or how many times I sat up in bed with a start, are things I do not like to think about.

But notwithstanding this, I felt better in the morning and went at the work as hard as I could.