Chapter 8 CHAPTER VIII

I begin my Letters to my Mother and start my Fortifications: then I very foolishly go away, meet with an Accident, and see Something which throws me into the utmost Terror.

The next day, the nineteenth of December, was Sunday. I had been left alone (or, rather, let me say the truth, I had like a fool refused to go) on Friday, which seems in this case to have been unlucky for me, however it may ordinarily be. I woke up early, half cramped with the weight of the bed-clothes, I had piled on so many; but I was none too warm, either. I put out my drawbridge and got back to the hotel and started the fire. Outside the thermometer stood close to thirty-five degrees below zero, but the sun was rising bright and dazzling into a clear, blue sky.

Kaiser's leg was no better, and Pawsy was still nervous and kept looking at the windows 70 as if she expected wolves to bolt in head-first; and I did not blame her much. It seemed to me that the wolves had howled most of the night. I only wished that the timber beyond Frenchman's Butte and the coteaux and the Chain of Lakes were a hundred miles away, for without them there would have been no wolves, or nothing but little prairie wolves or coyotes, which, of course, don't amount to much.

As soon as my own fire was started I went about town and got the others going; this I called "bringing the town to life." As I stood at the depot and watched the long columns of smoke from the chimneys it scarcely seemed that I was the only inhabitant of the town. After I had had breakfast and done up the work at the barn, I sat down in the office and was glad enough that it was Sunday. I suddenly thought of a way to spend the day, and in ten minutes I was at something which I did every Sunday while I stayed at Track's End.

This was to write a letter to my mother, stamp and direct it, and drop it in the slot of the post-office door. Of course it would not go 71 very soon, but if nothing happened it would go some time; and, I thought, if I am killed or die in this dreadful place, the letters may be the only record she will ever have of my life here.

I accordingly set to work and wrote her a long letter, telling her fully everything that had happened so far, but without much of my fears for the future. I told her I was sorry that I had got myself into such a scrape, but that, now being in, I meant to go through it the best I could.

The next morning, Monday, I began work on my fortifications, by which name I included everything that would help to keep off invaders. I started two more fires, one in Townsend's store, at the south end of the street, and the other in Joyce's store, at the north end of town and nearly opposite the harness shop. I made another visit to Taggart's, and found some barrels of kerosene, which I needed, and more ammunition. Still another thing was a number of door-keys, so that I made up a string of them with which I could unlock almost every door in town. In Joyce's, besides groceries and such things, I found a buffalo overcoat, which I took the 72 liberty of borrowing for the winter. It was so large for me that it almost touched the ground, but it was precisely what I needed, and, I think, once saved my life; and that before long.

I kept at the fortification-work for four days pretty steadily, though I did not use the best judgment in picking out what to do first. I was fascinated, boy-like, with the tunnel idea, when, I think, with the knowledge I then had, it would have been wiser to have paid more attention to some other things; but, as luck would have it, it all came out right in the end. I boarded up a few of the windows, but not many, and did nothing whatever at providing a secret retreat in case of fire, though I had a plan in mind which I thought was good. Worst of all, I left the Winchesters about here and there without any particular attempt at hiding them. But I kept at the tunnel hammer and tongs.

There were two front windows in the hotel office. At one of these the snow came only a little above the sill, which was the one where the wolf had come in; but the other was piled nearly to the top. It was even higher against 73 the bank front opposite, and at no place in the street between was it less than four feet deep. Both buildings stood almost flat on the ground. I took out the lower sash of the window in the hotel and began work. I made the tunnel something over two feet wide and about four high, except where the drift was no more than this, where I did not think it safe to have the tunnel over three feet high. The snow was packed remarkably hard, and, as it all had to be carried out through the office in a basket and emptied in the street, it was slow work. But at last, on Thursday evening, it was done, and Kaiser and I passed through it; but nothing could induce the cat to come nearer than the window. I was very proud of my work, and went through the tunnel twenty times with no object whatever.

The next morning I ought to have gone at other fortification-work, but instead I thought up the foolish notion that I ought to go out to Bill Mountain's to see if Pike had got our letter and had left any in reply. It was Friday, the day before Christmas, and I thought that the holiday would be more satisfactory if I knew about this; though, to tell the truth, I had not 74 worried much about the gang's coming since I had been so taken up with the tunnel. I had been so careless that I might have been surprised twenty times a day.

It was a pleasant morning, and not very cold. Andrew had left behind a pair of skees, or Norwegian snow-shoes–light, thin strips of wood, four inches wide and eight or ten feet long–and, though I had never been on them but once or twice, I determined to use them in going. I fixed the fires well, made everything snug about town, gave the stock in the barn some extra feed, put on my big overcoat, with a luncheon in one pocket and Sours's revolver in the other, and started. Kaiser's leg was still a little stiff, but I let him go along.

I think I fell down three times before I got out of town; it was as many as this at least; and outside of town, there being more room, I fell oftener. But I soon began to improve and get along better. I decided to follow the railroad grade west, as it was most of the way higher than the prairie, and the snow on it was smoother.

When I got opposite Mountain's I found the grade some ten or twelve feet above the 75 prairie, but it looked a very easy matter to slide down on the skees. I had seen Andrew go down the steep side of Frenchman's Butte. I accordingly slid, went wrong, fell, turned my ankle, and found myself on the hard snow at the bottom unable to stand on my feet.

I lay still some time thinking that perhaps my ankle might get better; but it got worse. It was still almost half a mile to Mountain's, but it was over two miles back to town. I felt that I might be able to crawl the half-mile, so I started, with the skees on my back. I hope I may never again have to do anything so slow and painful. Kaiser was prodigiously excited, and jumped around me and barked and said as plainly as words that he would like to help if he could. But, though I thought a hundred times that I should never reach there, I kept burrowing and floundering along and did accomplish it at last. It was far past noon. The sky had clouded over. I saw a new letter behind the board, but could not rise up to get it. I pushed open the door, crawled to the heap of hay by the stove, and lay on it, more miserable, it seemed, than ever before. 76

I scarcely stirred till I noticed that it was beginning to get dark. Then I crept to the door and looked out; the snow was falling fast and in big flakes. I shut the door and crawled back to the hay. There seemed to be nothing to do. I knew I could not keep up a hay fire, even if I could start one. Besides, I had a sudden fear that some of the Pike gang might visit the shanty to look for an answer to their letter, and I thought if I simply lay still I might escape, even if they did come. I ate part of my luncheon, and gave Kaiser part. Then I drew my big overcoat around me as best I could, made the dog lie close up to me on the hay, and tried to sleep.

My ankle pained me a good deal, and the bed was not comfortable. I thought as I lay there that my mother and father and all the folks at home must then be at the church for the Christmas-tree; and I could see the lights, and the bright toys on the tree, and all the boys and girls I knew getting their presents and laughing and talking; and the singing and the music of the organ came to me almost as if I had been there. Then I thought of how, if I were home, later I should hang up my stocking 77 and find other gifts in it in the morning, and of what a pleasant time Christmas was at home.

Every few minutes a sharp twinge of pain in my ankle would bring me back to my deplorable condition there in that deserted shack sunk in the frozen snow, and I would be half ready to cry; but, with all my thinking of both good and bad, I did at last get to sleep. Once, some time in the night, I woke up with a jump at a strange, unearthly, whooping noise which seemed to be in the room itself, but at last I made it out to be an owl to-whooing on the roof. Again I heard wolves, very distant, and twenty times in imagination there sounded in my ears the tramp of Pike's horses.

When morning came I crawled to the door again. There were six inches of soft, new snow, but the sun was rising clear, and there were no signs of a blizzard. I got back to the hay and for a long time rubbed my ankle. I thought it was a little better. I ate the rest of the food and called myself names for ever having left the town. The fires, I knew, were out, and everything invited an attack of the robbers, while I lay crippled in a cold shack two miles away, on the road along which they 78 would come and go. I had been in no greater terror at any time since my troubles began than I was now on this Christmas morning.

Perhaps it was nine o'clock when I noticed that Kaiser was acting very peculiarly. He stood in the middle of the room with his head lowered and a scowl on his face. Then I saw the hair on his back slowly begin to rise; next he growled. I told him to hush, and waited. I could hear nothing, but I knew there must be good cause for his actions.

At last I could stand it no longer. I dared not open the door, but I seized one corner of the dry-goods box, drew myself up, and hobbled to the window, regardless of the pain. Going straight for the town, a quarter of a mile away, were a dozen men on horseback. I could see by their trail that they had passed within fifty yards of where I was.

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