128CHAPTER XIVI have an exciting Hunt and get some Game, which I bring Home with a vast deal of Labor, only to lose Part of it in a startling Manner: together with a Dream and an Awakening.
I had not had my eyes to the loophole ten seconds when I found out something more about the coming invaders; what I had taken for cattle were buffaloes, a thing which surprised me very much, for they were even then extremely scarce. There were about a dozen of them, and they were coming on all in a bunch and throwing up the snow like a locomotive.
I saw that the buffaloes would follow the swell of ground and that it would bring them in close to town, and perhaps right across the square between the stores and the depot. But I did not believe that they could ever flounder through the drifts to the south and east, so it seemed as if the hunters would overtake them so near that they would probably129stay and again take possession of the town. I think I should rather have seen the outlaws coming. I decided to fire at them and see if I could not drive them off. But it was not necessary. I think some of them must have been the same Indians that called on me Christmas Day, and went away so suddenly, without stopping to say good-by.
I am sure of this, because when still a good half-mile from town they stopped and began circling around, and waving their guns in the air, and making all sorts of strange motions. I suppose they were trying to drive away the evil spirit which they thought was in the place, and which I had had in the pumpkin lantern, and which had also been in Fitzsimmons’s barrel. Then one of them who had been sitting still on his horse rode a little forward and got off, and I could see a thin ribbon of blue smoke arising. I suppose he was the medicine-man of the tribe making medicine to frighten the evil spirit; or rather, perhaps, to get up their own courage to face it. This kept up for half an hour. The buffaloes in the mean time had walked slowly along till they were not much more than a hundred130yards away, and stood looking at the houses in the greatest wonder; the first they had ever seen, it is safe to say.
But it appeared that the Indian’s medicine did not work any better than white men’s medicine sometimes does; for they began very slowly to go back the way they had come. I could see them stop often, and circle around and, I suppose, hold long talks; but they could not get up their courage to venture closer to the place where the awful spirit with the flaming eyes and the fiery teeth had looked down upon them and chased them with his terrible limping gait. At last they passed entirely out of sight.
My next thought was, of course, to try getting a buffalo myself, since I needed fresh meat as badly as the Indians, or worse. But by this time they had drawn back some distance and were out of range for any but a very good marksman, a thing which I was not. I should have to follow them, which I decided to do quick as a flash. Through the tunnel I rushed and out to the barn. In another minute I brought out Dick saddled and bridled. He had not been beyond a small yard for a131month. He began to jump like a whirlwind. How I ever got on with my gun I don’t know, but I think I must have seized the horn of the saddle and hung to it like a dog to a root, and some of his jumps must have thrown me up so high that I came down in the saddle. Anyhow, I found myself riding away straight south as if I were on a streak of chain-lightning.
This would not do, so I pulled with all my strength and tried to turn him. I might as well have tried to turn a steamboat by saying “haw!” and “gee!” to it. But the pulling on the big curb-bit made him mad and he stopped and began to buck. I hung on with all hands and legs, and at last he bucked his head around in the right direction, and then I yelled at him, making the most outlandish noise I could, and he started across the square and straight for the buffaloes as if he had been shot out of a gun. You may see the exact course we took, and where the buffaloes were, by looking at my map. This map I have drawn with great care and much hard labor, spoiling several before I got one to suit me. I hope every one who reads this book will look at132the map often, since it shows the lay of the land very well, I think, and just where everything happened.
When Dick saw the buffaloes I think he knew what was up, because he began to act more reasonable. They saw me coming and stopped and looked back surprised. I thought they were going to wait, but they soon galloped on. I saw I must go to one side if I wished to get within range, and turned to the right. In a few minutes I came up abreast of them and within easy range, but I soon found that though I could guide my horse I could not stop him, pull as hard as I might. I could not even make him stop and buck again. He was going straight toward the north pole, and I thought it would not take him long to get there. One way to stop him came to me. It was a rash plan, but I saw no other.
Ahead and a little more to the right was a mighty bank of snow in the lee of a little knoll. It sloped up gradually and did not look dangerous. I turned him full into it. At the third jump he was down to his chin, and I had gone on over his head. When at last I133struck I went down a good ways beyond my chin; in fact my chin went down first, and if any part of me was in sight it must have been my heels. All I knew was that I was hanging to my gun as if it were as necessary as my head.
Why the breath of life was not knocked out of me I don’t know, but it wasn’t, and I kicked and thrashed about till I got my head and shoulders to the surface, with a peck of snow down the back of my neck. I looked for the buffaloes, and there they stood in blank astonishment, wondering, I guess, if I always got off of a horse that way. I ran my sleeve along the barrel of my rifle, rested it over a lump of frozen snow and fired at the nearest one, which was standing quartering to me. I saw the ball plow up the snow beyond and to the left. They all started on. As mine turned his side square to me I fired again. He went down with a mighty flounder. The others rushed away. I waded nearer and finished him with one more shot.
Dick was still aground in the snow, snorting like a steam-engine, but by the time I had tramped the drift down and got him out he134was over his nonsense and carried me back to the barn quite decently. I was all for skinning and dressing my buffalo. To Taggart’s I went and got some good sharp knives, and, taking Kaiser and the sled, started back. I don’t think I ever worked so hard in my life as I did at that job. It was not very cold, which was one good thing. Every minute I expected the wolves, and I did not have long to wait either. Before three o’clock they came howling along the trail the buffaloes had made, and I had to stop and fire at them every few minutes to keep them off. I am sure they were not so hungry as usual or I never could have kept them back at all. Twice I killed one when I shot, but I dared not go up and get them, and they were soon devoured by the others. The pack kept growing larger as others came over from the timber north of the Butte.
At last I got off the hide and loaded it on the sled. I wanted to take all of the meat, but it made too big a load, and I had to be satisfied with two quarters. I even had to give up taking the head, which was a fine large specimen. A little after four o’clock as the135sun began to sink low the wolves became bolder, and I knew it was not safe to stay longer. The load was more than Kaiser could pull, so I saw I must take hold and help him. I fired five or six shots at the wolves as fast as I could pump them up, seized the rope and off we went. We were not ten rods away when the whole pack was upon the carcass fighting and tearing at it. They kept up the hideous battle all night and howled so much that it seemed as if their throats must be worn raw.
Once back home I set at my regular work tired enough. But the fires were all low and I expected a day or two more of good weather, and the ease with which the Indians and buffaloes had got down from the north made me fear more than ever the coming of the outlaws from the west. I still had little hope of ever getting out of the place alive, but I could only work on and do all I could for my safety.
I laid the quarters of meat on some boxes in the shed and bolted the door. I was so tired I think I must have slept sounder that night than for a long time. In the morning I found that the shed door had been forced136open, one of the bolts being torn off and the other one broken. Even the hinges were bent. A big piece of the best part of each quarter was gone. I could not tell if it had been torn off or haggled off with a dull knife. It might even have been gnawed off; I could not tell.
I looked for tracks of the robber with, as the saying is, my heart in my mouth; but to no purpose. Although it had neither snowed nor blown during the night, a deep layer of frost, like feathers made out of the thinnest ice, had settled everywhere toward morning and I could find nothing.
That this new reminder of my unknown enemy brought on another attack of terror I need hardly say; but it was daylight and I conquered it better. The worst feeling I had to fight with was that whatever the thing was, it might be looking at me as I moved about town. I thought I saw eyes peering at me, sometimes of one kind, sometimes of another, out of every window, through every crack, over every roof, around every corner, from behind every chimney; even the tops of the freshly made snowbanks, blown over like hoods, were not free from them; and when I137looked out on the prairie I expected to see something coming to catch me. I could scarce tell if I were more afraid on top of the drifts or under them in my tunnels, for here I constantly expected to meet something, or look back and see eyes. I think the loneliness and the strain of the expected robbers must have half turned my mind. If I had known what to look for and dread I think I should not have cared so much, but, not knowing, I imagined everything and became more terrified about I knew not what than were the Indians at my pumpkin lantern. Sometimes I was sorry that I had driven the Indians away; and there were times when I thought I should be glad to have the Pike gang come, just for company.
Three days after the buffalo hunt, in the night, I thought the gang had come indeed; I was not more frightened at any time while I was at Track’s End than I was that night. I had gone to bed as usual in the empty building, taking in my drawbridge and closing both windows behind me. The northwest wind had died away at sundown, and the night was still and the sky becoming138cloudy. I looked for an east wind the next day and probably snow later.
What hour I woke up I knew not, but it must have been about midnight. I know I awoke gradually, because I had a long dream before doing so. I thought a giant was shouting at me from a grove of green trees on a hillside; it kept up for a long time, deep, hoarse shouts which fairly shook the earth; I could not see him, but seemed to know what he was. I was not frightened, but stood in a meadow listening. Then there was a crash of a tree falling on the hillside, and the giant’s shouts came twice as loud, and I awoke and fought the bed-clothes off my head and knew it was Kaiser barking.
At first this did not startle me, since he often barked in the hotel at night, sometimes at the wolves, and other times, I had reason to think, at the thing which prowled in the night. The next instant I realized that his barks were much louder and that he was nearer. I started up and saw that a dull, flickering light was coming through the cracks in the boards over the window and moving on the wall. I thought of northern lights,139then saw that it was on the north wall and not on the south. I leaped to the window and peeped out a crack and saw that there was a great fire somewhere; the snow was lit up like day almost, and I could see black cinders floating above the barn.
I got into such of my clothes as I had taken off and rushed to the side window. Here the light did not come much, but I could see Kaiser standing with his feet on the hotel windowsill and his head and shoulders out the window. He had smashed through the glass, as he had that day when the wolves came. Not once did he stop his terrific barking.
I pushed up my window and seized the drawbridge. I started to put it across, as I had done so many times before, but I was so excited and in such a foolish fright that it slipped out of my hands and fell between the buildings. I stood a full minute unable to move. The lower part of the hotel window was divided into two panes, and Kaiser had broken one of them. I could see that he had cut himself, and I was afraid of doing likewise. But there was no other way to get out. I put on my mittens and got out140of my window, clinging to the upper sash and standing on the outside sill. Then, with a prodigious step, I landed on the other sill, seized the opening regardless of the jagged glass, crouched down and plunged into the room head first. Kaiser had drawn back as he saw me coming, but as I shot into the room he bounded in front of me, and we rolled over together there on the floor in the darkness. I was half dazed, but knew I smelled smoke, and heard the crackling of a great fire.
141CHAPTER XVThe mysterious Fire, and Something further about my wretched State of Terror: with an Account of my great System of Tunnels and famous Fire Stronghold.
Once I said, when I told of how I found myself helpless at Bill Mountain’s, that I thought Kaiser the best dog that ever lived; here I may say I know it. Though he got in my way and made me turn a few somersets in the dark, he may have saved Track’s End from destruction.
When I got to my feet I felt my way across the room and through the hall to a room in the southeast corner of the hotel, where there was a loophole in the boards over the window. Through this I saw that the livery stable was a pillar of fire.
How long I stood there at the loophole staring I know not; I think I did not move or scarcely breathe. It was a large building, the second story packed with hay; and below142there were stored many wagons, some farm machinery, and a quantity of lumber and building material, all things that would burn well. Everything was ablaze, the roof fell in as I looked, and the flames and sparks and smoke reached up like a vast column, it seemed to the very clouds.
At last I saw it was no time for idleness, so I turned away and went down-stairs. As I started to pull open the back door it came to me suddenly that Pike and his men must have come. I reached behind the desk and got Sours’s Winchester. Then I went out, leaving Kaiser behind, much to his disappointment. The heat struck my face like a blast from a furnace, and the light dazzled my eyes. I crept very cautiously over the snowbank behind Hawkey’s and Taggart’s till I came to Fitzsimmons’s. Here the heat almost scorched my face, and I saw that the paint on the building was beginning to blister. I peered everywhere for signs of the men, but saw nothing. I crept around the corner of the building and looked across the square, but there was no sign of human life. I expected nothing less than that the143whole town would be burned up; but I was helpless.
Finally I ran across the square and, leaving my rifle on the ground, scrambled up the windmill tower. It was truly a beautiful sight, as I knew despite my fears. The sky was covered with thick, low-hanging clouds, and save for the fire, the night was pitch-dark. The whole town lay below me, half lit up like day, half inky shadows. Even at this distance I could feel the heat, and the sullen roar and crackling of the flames never stopped. But though I shaded my eyes and peered everywhere among the houses and across the prairie, I could make out no living thing.
Cinders were falling all over town, but there seemed to be little fire left in them when they alighted. The roofs were mostly flat and covered with tin, though the depot, the Headquarters barn, and a few others were of shingles. Suddenly a cinder unusually large fell on the depot roof and lay there blazing. I hurried down the tower, and hauled a ladder which I had noticed the day the Indians came from beneath the platform, thinking I might climb up and put out the fire with144snow. There was no water to be had anywhere except from the well back of the hotel. But the flame died out, and I dragged the ladder across the square. It occurred to me that it would be no great loss to me should the depot burn. I could not know the good thing that was later to come out of it.
It was so hot that I could not go behind Fitzsimmons’s, so I dragged my ladder across the drifts of the street and through between the hotel and Hawkey’s. When I came out in the rear of these I was startled to find a small blaze on the barn roof. I hurried to the barn with my ladder, got it in place, and then with pails of water from the well I managed to put it out. Once more it caught, and once the roof of the shed where Pike shot Allenham blazed up; but I dashed water on the fires and saved both buildings.
At last the stable fire began to die down. The current of air from the northeast had become stronger, and the column of smoke was swaying more and more to the southwest. Just as daylight began to appear in the east the last remaining timber of the stable fell, and, though there was a great cloud of145sparks and still much heat, I saw that unless a strong east wind should spring up there was no longer danger that the town would be consumed. By this time I was cold and stiff, my face scorched by the fire, and my clothes frozen with the water from the pailfuls I had carried. I went into the hotel.
Kaiser was so glad to see me that he reared up and put his forepaws on my shoulders. I was patting and praising him, when suddenly the question, What caused the fire? flashed into my mind. There had been no trace of Pike. From the windmill tower I had been unable to see any trail leading from the way he would come. There was no explanation except that it must have been caused by the same thing that had made me so much other trouble. Till it was broad daylight I paced up and down the office floor, unable to stop. For two days I thought of little else, and brooded on it till I was half sick.
It seems to me as I look back at it that every time I got fairly desperate through lonesomeness or pure fright I went and dug a snow tunnel. I was as bad as a mole146for tunnels; and I meant to tell about my system before this; but so many things keep popping into my mind, what with my memory and with the old hotel register and the letters to my mother lying spread out before me, that I have not once got around to mention any of them except the first, which connected the hotel and the bank, directly across the street. I was so taken up with this that soon after New-Year’s I decided to build some others.
I was keeping up at that time five fires (or smokes) besides the one in the hotel, to wit: one in the harness shop and one in Joyce’s, both at the north end of the street and opposite each other; one in the bank; one in Townsend’s store at the south end of the street on the west side, and one in the depot out across the square in front of the south end of the street. There was a chance for a good tunnel to all of these except to the depot; here the northwest wind had swept across the square and the ground in some places was almost bare.
But the street between the houses was filled up pretty much like a bread tin with a loaf, and starting from the north side of my first147tunnel I began another and ran it straight up the street to between the harness shop and Joyce’s, and here I ran side tunnels to each of these. The snow was rather low in front of Joyce’s at first, and was not enough above the sidewalk to give me room, but the sidewalk here was high, being made of plank, as were all the walks in town; so I went under it by getting down on my hands and knees, and, as the building had no underpinning, I went on under and up through a trap-door in the floor. I got a good many things to eat from Joyce’s, such as canned fruit and the like; but I always wrote down on a piece of paper nailed on the wall everything I got from any store, so that in the spring, if I were still alive, I could pay for it, or, if it were food, Sours could, since I was, of course, still working for him and it was his place to pay for my keep.
South from the first tunnel I next ran another and curved it into Townsend’s store. This was a fine, high tunnel; and it would have done your heart good to have seen Kaiser whisk about through all of them, filling the air with snow from waving his tail, just like a great feather duster, and oftentimes148barking at the top of his voice. “Be still, sir,” I would say to him; “you will disturb the neighbors,” at the which he would bark the louder. I often wondered what a stranger on top of the drifts would have thought to have heard the dog’s noise beneath his feet.
It always seemed warm and comfortable in the tunnels, if they were made of snow; this you noticed particularly on a blizzardy day, since, of course, no wind whatever got into them. Indeed, on a windy day I doubt not a snow tunnel would be warmer than a house without a fire. But though Kaiser delighted in the tunnels, Pawsy would have nothing to do with any of them at all except the one which led from the woodshed to the barn.
This I made last. I got into it from a shed window, which I cut down and fitted with a rough door. It went into the barn through a small door in the corner, which was in halves, like a grist-mill door. I opened only the lower half, and this tunnel I used mainly in bad weather. I had only just finished it the day before the fire. It was the day after the fire, when I was feverish for some way to get rid of my scare, that I decided to go to work149on my place of retreat in case the town was burned.
I had thought about building something of the kind for a long while, but could not seem to get it planned out in my mind just to suit me. The burning of the livery stable, of course, set me thinking harder than ever. The place had to be, of course, something that would not burn and some place that could not be found. The only thing that wouldn’t burn was the snow, but in case of fire I knew that it would melt for some distance from the buildings. I had just had an example of this. Besides, there had to be a way to get into it which could not be seen either before or after the fire, and this entrance must be from a building so that I would not have to expose myself in going to it. The place must also be where I could stay a few days if I had to. A dozen times I thought I had got the whole thing planned out, and once I wrote about it to my mother, but I always found that something was weak about the plan somewhere. But I now concluded that I had struck on the right thing at last.
A hundred feet back of the next building to150the north of the one in which I had my bedroom was a small barn where the man who owned the place had kept a cow. It was so small that I always thought he must have measured his cow, like a tailor, and built the barn to fit. Fifty feet back (east) of this barn was a haystack. Before the snow came the top of it had been taken off so it was left about four or five feet high and the shape of a bowl turned wrong side up. It was in the lee of the barn, and the snow had piled up over it in a great drift so that you would never once have guessed that there was such a thing as a haystack within half a mile. It was, maybe, a hundred feet from the Headquarters barn to this stack, with four or five or more feet of snow all the way. My idea was to tunnel from the barn to the stack, dig out some hay on the south side and have a snug room half made of hay and half of snow.
There was no underpinning beneath the Headquarters barn (most of the buildings in town simply stood on big stones a few feet apart) and the space where it should have been was filled in with a wide board and banked outside with hay. Under Ned’s manger I151sawed out a piece of this board big enough to crawl through, and hung it on leather hinges at the top, concealed by the manger. I then dug through the hay and had a clear field for my tunnel straight to the stack.
I ran my tunnel, or rather burrow, as it was small and low, a little too much east, and missed the haystack by about three feet, but I probed for it with a long, stiff wire and soon found it. I carried in a hay-knife and cut me out a little room like an Esquimau’s house, high enough to sit in and wide and long enough so that I could stretch out comfortably in it. The hay had been wet and was frozen, so there was no danger of its caving down on me. As the stack was all covered with snow no wind could get in, and I knew it would always be warm enough to be comfortable with plenty of clothes and blankets. I took in a buffalo-robe and some things of that sort and left them there. I also cached a box of food there, consisting of dried beef, crackers, and such things; enough, I calculated, to last three days. I could hardly tell what to do about water, but at last tried the plan of chopping ice into small pieces and putting them into152some of Mrs. Sours’s empty glass fruit-jars. My notion was that in case I was imprisoned there I could button a can inside of my coat and thus thaw enough of the ice to get a drink.
I was very well pleased with what I called my fire stronghold. I could enter from a hidden place in the barn, and could get into the barn through the tunnel from the hotel, which connected with the whole tunnel system. I knew if every house in town burned that it would not melt the snow around the stronghold; and I thought if I were in it when the barn burned I could push down the snow where it melted along the tunnel so that it would not be noticed.
In short I was so tickled over my Esquimau house that I took Kaiser the first night it was done and slept in it; and though it was one of the coldest nights we were comfortable. I heard the wolves sniffing about on the roof, but we were getting used to wolves. I didn’t know that we were going to have to sleep under snow again before spring; and in less comfortable quarters.
153CHAPTER XVITelling of how Pike and his Gang come and of what Kaiser and I do to get ready for them: together with the Way we meet them.
Here, now, I must tell of how the outlaws came to Track’s End, and of the fight we, that is to say, Pike and his gang on the one side and I, Judson Pitcher, on the other side, had that day.
I may speak in prejudice, though I mean to be fair, when I say that I believe them to have been as bad a gang of cutthroats as you could well scare up. Though I fought them all as best I could I make no bones of saying that I should ten thousand times rather have been at home blowing the bellows, or doing anything else.
I was very lucky with these villains and was not caught away from home flat on my back, as I had been by those other scoundrels, the Indians; if I had not been lucky I should154not now be here to tell the tale. Those fellows meant no good to me nor to anybody else. It would have been no bad thing if they could all have been hanged by the neck.
They came, then, to Track’s End to rob, and to murder if needs be, on Saturday, February 5th. My good luck consisted in this: The evening before, just as the sun was about to go down, I saw them at Mountain’s from the windmill tower with Tom Carr’s field-glass. I had gone up on purpose to have a look about, as I did two or three times every day when the weather was so I could see. For three days the weather had been much better than at any time before, and it had even thawed a little; so I was not much surprised when I saw horses coming up to the shack from the west. I made out seven men all told, and some extra led horses. I could see that the men went into the shack and that many of the horses lay down. By this I knew they were tired, and guessed that the gang would probably stay there that night and rest. I was surprised that they had got through on horses at all. I stayed on the tower till it was so dark that I could not see155any more. The longer I stayed the louder my heart thumped.
I knew they might, after all, come that night, either with the horses or on snow-shoes, so I did what I could to get ready for them. The fires were all going well, and I lit several lamps about town. I wished a thousand times for the population I was pretending I had. I thought if I could have even one friend just to talk to perhaps my heart wouldn’t act quite so unreasonably. But after a while it tired out and quieted down. My knees got stronger and more like good, sensible knees that you don’t have to be ashamed of. I took a look at all the guns and wiped them up. I locked and bolted everything except the doors or windows which led into the tunnels. There wasn’t anything more I could do except wait and try to keep that crazy heart of mine a little quiet.
I knew that whenever or however they came they would be most likely to come in on the grade, so I thought the best place to wait was in Townsend’s store, as they would have to come up facing the back of it. The windows were planked up; but I knew that there were156no windows in town, or even sides of houses, either, which would stop a bullet from a good rifle. I calculated if they came in the night it would probably be about one or two o’clock, and if they waited till morning I could look for them when it began to get light.
I went over to Townsend’s early in the evening and sat down close to a back window in the second story. I had Kaiser with me. I think he was gradually getting the thing through his head, because he had stopped wagging his tail and begun to growl once in a while. I thought I could trust him to hear any sound for three or four hours, and I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. Every few minutes I went up a short ladder and put my head out the scuttle in the roof to look and listen. I heard a good deal, but except for the wolves away off it was all in my ears. About midnight by the stars I went to sleep in my chair before I knew it.
When I woke up I gave a great jump. It seemed as if I had been asleep a week; and it certainly had been several hours. Kaiser was sitting on the floor beside my chair. I knelt down and threw my arms around his neck and157gave him such a prodigious hug that it must have hurt him. “We will do the best we can!” I said to him.
From the roof I could see a faint light in the east. The wind was fresher from the northwest and it was drifting a little; this was good. I scolded myself for having slept so long. I knew if they had come that I should not have been ready for them.
I hurried around and fixed the fires. I drank a cup of coffee at the hotel, but couldn’t eat anything. I think if I had had outlaws every day that my keep wouldn’t have cost Sours very much. I was back at Townsend’s in a jiffy. It was getting red in the east now, and the moon, which had shone all night, was about down. It was light enough so I could see pretty well by this time; but I heard the crunching of the crust by the horses’ feet before I could see them at all. Then I saw the whole gang coming on a dog-trot along the grade, two abreast, with one ahead, seven pleasant neighbors coming to call on me at Track’s End. I let them come as near as they deserved to come to any honest town and then fired a shot in front of them. I tried to see if158the bullet skipped on the snow, but the smoke got in my eyes.
Anyhow, they stopped pretty quick, and stood all in a bunch, talking. “Maybe you don’t like to be shot at,” I said out loud. I don’t know how it was, but my heart was doing better. I thought I would wait and see before I did any more shooting.
They talked a few minutes; then one of them got off his horse, handed his gun and belt to one of the others, took off his big fur coat, pulled out a white cloth and waved it and came walking very slowly toward the town. This seemed fair enough; I had heard my Uncle Ben tell about flags of truce in the war. I waved my handkerchief out of the port-hole and then waited three or four minutes as if we in the houses were talking it over; then I walked boldly out the back door. Kaiser wanted to go along, so I let him.
The man walked very slowly, and I did the same, but we came up within a few steps of each other at last. This was out not very far from the water-tank. I had expected it was Pike himself, and, sure enough, it was, wearing a leather jacket with the collar turned up.
MY MEETING WITH PIKE, TRACK’S END, FEBRUARY FIFTH
MY MEETING WITH PIKE, TRACK’S END, FEBRUARY FIFTH
159
“It’s you, is it, Jud?” said he in a kind of sneering tone. (It seemed strange to me to hear a man’s voice, I had been so long alone.)
“Yes, it’s me,” I answered. “What do you want?”
“I sort of thought these here Track’s Enders might send out a full-grown man to talk to me about such an important matter,” he went on.
“I was man enough to catch you a couple of times and it was only your good luck that you weren’t hung up here in Track’s End by the neck,” I said, a little put out by the way he spoke, because I was almost as big as he was.
“Oh, well, no matter. Now you–”
“I’ll tell you the reason I was sent out,” I broke in, just thinking of something.
“What is it?”
“I can say all there is to say as well as anybody, but I’m a poor shot, so it was decided that if I didn’t get back it wouldn’t make much difference in the matter of shooting you fellows down if you come any nearer.”
He pulled his collar down and looked at me160over his crooked nose. Kaiser began to growl, but I poked him in the ribs with my foot to let him understand that there was a flag of truce on and he must behave himself. I guess Pike didn’t like it, because this sounded as if we couldn’t trust him, but he didn’t say anything.
“Well,” he broke out, “there’s no use of us standing here and talking. We’ve come after that $5,000, and you fellers know it.”
“We told you all we had to say about that in the letter.”
“Then we’ll bust that safe and burn your town,” he said, like a savage.
“Go ahead and try it,” I answered. “We’re ready for you.”
His face, which had looked black as night all the while, now turned white with rage.
“We’ll try it fast enough and we’ll do it fast enough, too,” he cried, with some prodigious oaths, bad enough for any pirate. “Look here; I ain’t got any gun with me, and I s’pose you ain’t, if you’re any man at all. But you’re as near your gun as I am mine, hey?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then this here flag of truce is ended right161now. When I get hold of my gun I shoot, and you’re welcome to do the same!”
He turned and started back on the run. So there was nothing for me but to face about and do the same.
162CHAPTER XVIIThe Fight, and not much else: except a little Happening at the End which startles me greatly.
It seems a good deal to believe, but I actually half think that Kaiser had begun to get hold of the fine points of a flag of truce, and that he understood it was ended. What makes me have this idea is that I think he must have taken after Pike at first, though I wasn’t doing much looking back just then, being busy at something more important; but anyhow he wasn’t with me till I was halfway to the store, when he passed me with a great bark and went on tearing up the snow a few steps ahead. I wish he had got ahead sooner, as I think I ran faster trying to keep up with him; but as it was I don’t know but he saved my life.
Either Pike got back before I did, or one of his cutthroats fired for him; I know not, probably the latter, but the shot was for me163and well aimed, so well that I guess the bullet went where I was when it started. Thus it was: Kaiser was ahead, and reared up and threw himself at the store door, which, being unlatched, flew open; it stopped him a little, and I, being close behind, went down over him and into the store head first, as if I had been fired out of a cannon; and at that instant the bullet I spoke of struck the open door halfway up. I slammed the door shut, grabbed my rifle, stuck the muzzle through the port-hole, and pumped three shots out of it without once trying to aim.
Then, without taking breath, I ran out the front by way of the tunnel to the bank, and so up-stairs, where with another rifle I pumped out two more shots, and then looked. The men had left the grade and were coming full tilt out around the water-tank and graders’ carts, their horses rearing and floundering through the drifts. I fired twice, aiming carefully each time, but I don’t think I hit. I saw they would soon be out of range. Again I dropped my gun, ran down-stairs and through tunnel No. 1 to the hotel and up-stairs to a corner window, double planked up, and giving164me the range on the square and the foot of the street. I was there first, with the hammer of my Winchester back, and with Kaiser behind me wishing, I know, that dogs could shoot.
The next second they came in sight and charged for the street. I aimed and fired; I hit this time; one of the horses went down and the man over his head. The other six came straight for the end of the street. I fired again, but saw no results. I counted on the drift stopping them. It did so less than I expected. Two went down in the snow; four came on. I fired and one man dropped off his horse. The hard crust was holding the other three. I fired again, but it did no good. Then the head one, on a pinto pony, went down like a flash out of sight, horse and man. He had gone into tunnel No. 3, leading to Townsend’s store.
I fired three shots as fast as I could work the lever, without stopping to aim. Then I looked out. The other two riders had turned tail. The horse of one had gone down in the snow and he was running away on foot; the other had got off the drifts without going down. I thought it was Pike. It seemed a165good time to shoot at him, and I did so, but without so much as touching him, as I think. The man in the tunnel got out and dodged around the corner of Townsend’s store before I could do my duty by him. They were all the next minute at the depot, either in it or behind it.
This thing of their taking the depot was something which I had not thought of. They were now as well covered and protected as I; and it was still seven against one, because the man that I shot off of his horse got over with the others by the help of one whose horse went down in the drift. But their building was more exposed than mine, and they could do nothing about their robbery so long as they stayed there.
They now began to fire their first shots since the one which followed me into Townsend’s store. They were well-aimed shots, too, and the bullets came through my window as if the planks were gingerbread. A splinter of wood struck my left eye and closed it up; but I had it shut most of the time anyhow, aiming with the other, so it didn’t matter. However, I didn’t like the place, and went back into the166room in the northwest corner and got a range on them from one of the front windows. I thought their bullets would glance off of the planks here, and they did; however, the ones which struck the side came right on through, lath partitions and all; but I kept close to the floor. All the time Kaiser stayed close behind me, barking so that I thought he would tear himself to pieces, and with the hair on his back standing straight up.
I had two rifles and a hundred or more cartridges, and I began to give the depot a pretty stiff bombarding. I don’t think I missed the building once, and I knew every ball went through the side; but what they did after that I couldn’t tell. There were three windows in the depot on the side toward me, all close together near the east end, but none at all to the right of them. None of them were boarded up, and the robbers were pretty careful about showing themselves much at them. They gradually dropped off the platform on the other side and crawled under to the front from where I had watched the Indians that day. They were well protected here, but the wind swept across the west end of the square167and blew such a spray of snow in their faces that they could not see to aim well. On the other hand the sun had now got up and the reflection came in my eyes and hurt my shooting. I wished that the horse was out of the way so I could get through tunnel No. 3 into Townsend’s, where a side window, well planked, looked right down on the depot; but it was just as well that I couldn’t, as I found out afterward.
They were still thinking that there was a large population in Track’s End, and I could see splinters flying all over town where they were plugging away at windows and doors.
I soon noticed that they were not shooting quite so much, and thought some of them might be sneaking around and thinking of coming up from the west, so I went through to the bank once in a while, firing a few shots from its front window at the depot so as to keep up their large-population idea. At the third visit I looked out back and saw a man run from the coal-shed to behind the water-tank. I got ready and waited. Another ran across. I gave him a shot which made him jump. Then I fired half a dozen shots through168the inclosed part below the tank, and if any of the balls missed the big timbers they must have gone through. I thought those fellows would keep awhile, and ran back to the hotel and began to pepper away at the depot again. This I kept up for an hour, I think, when I caught a glimpse of one of the men from the tank going back, and thought likely they had both gone.
The outlaws made just one more rally, and it was very well planned, and if I had not been expecting it it might, after all, have gone hard with the town of Track’s End. All at once they began an uncommonly lively firing from under the depot platform. I thought this might mean a charge from the other side, so I started to see. Joyce’s store ran back farther than any of the others on that side of the street, and had a side window near the back corner; so I went there instead of to the bank.
It was slow work crawling under the sidewalk and getting up through the trap-door, but I made it at last and ran to the window. Two of the men were charging straight across the square for the rear of Townsend’s, carrying a169big torch of sticks and twisted hay. The window was not boarded up, but I stuck my rifle barrel through the glass and fired at them. The bullet, I think, struck the torch, because I saw the fire fly in all directions. They dropped it and retreated in a great panic, while I shot again.
I ran back to the hotel and began shooting once more at the depot. They never fired another shot. I went over to the bank and from the back window I could see them going away to the southwest, keeping under cover of the tank and coal-shed. They came around up on to the grade a half-mile to the west. I had a look at them through the glass. Some were walking and some riding. There seemed to be two men on one horse. I think that more than one of them was wounded, but the drifting snow now made it hard to see. I went back through the hotel and down the street to watch them from the tower above the snow. The pony which had fallen into the tunnel was still there. I noticed it wore an expensive Mexican saddle, all heavy embossed leather, with a high cantle, silver ornaments, big tapaderos on the stirrups, and a horsehair170bridle with silver bit. There was a red blanket rolled up and tied on behind the saddle.
As I went by Townsend’s I saw that the window I wanted to get to was as full of holes as a skimmer, and I was glad the horse had blocked up my way. I noticed that the depot wasn’t much better off, however, for holes. I went up the tower and watched the outlaws for half an hour. They stopped a few minutes at Mountain’s to get their extra horses and then went on.
The wind was coming fresher all the time and I was pretty well chilled when I got down. I was hurrying along across the drifts to the hotel when I noticed the horse in the tunnel again. But his fine saddle and bridle were gone. I knew instantly that it must be the work of my unknown night visitor, who had not stolen anything for some time. This was the first thing that had been disturbed by daylight; it was growing bolder. My heart had behaved itself so well during the fight that I had forgotten that I had such a thing; now it started to thumping so hard that I thought it was all there was to me.