He ordered everybody that could to get a horse, and soon we all rode off into the darkness. But though we were divided into small parties and searched all that night and half the next day, nothing came of it.

I kept with Allenham, and as we came in he said:

"There's no use looking for him any longer. If he didn't have a horse and ride away out of the country ahead of all of us, then he's down a badger-hole and intends to stay there till we quit looking. I'll wager he'll know better'n to show himself around Track's End again, anyhow."

Toward night the train came in pushing Pike's box-car ahead of it.

Burrdock, who had now been promoted to conductor, said he had b.u.mped against it about six miles down the track. The little end door had been broken open from the inside with a coupling-pin, which Pike must have found in the car and kept concealed. With the window open it was no trick at all to crawl out, set the brake, and stop the car. n.o.body doubted any longer that he was the one who had started the fire.

I may as well pa.s.s over the next month without making much fuss about it here. Nothing happened except that folks kept going away. After the fire nearly all of those burned out left, and about the same time all of the settlers who had taken up claims in the neighborhood also went back east for the winter, some of them on the train, but most of them in white-topped covered wagons. There was almost no business in town, and if you wanted to get into a store you would generally first have to hunt up the owner and ask him to open it for you. I saw Mr.

Clerkinwell occasionally. He always spoke kindly and wished me success. Then the great October blizzard came.

Folks in that country still talk about the October blizzard, and well they may do so, because the like of it has never been known since. It came on the twenty-sixth day of October, and lasted three days. It was as bad as it ought to have been in January, and the people at Track's End, being new to the country, judged that the winter had come to stay, and were discouraged; and so most of the rest of them went away.

It began to snow on the morning of the twenty-fifth, with an east and northeast wind. The snow came down all day in big flakes, and by evening it was a foot deep. It turned colder in the night, and the wind shifted to the northwest. In the morning it was blizzarding. The air was full of fine snow blown before the wind, and before noon you could not see across the street. Some of the smaller houses were almost drifted under. This kept up for three days. Of course the train could not get through, and the one telegraph wire went down and left the town like an island alone in the middle of the ocean.

The next day after the blizzard stopped it grew warmer and the snow began to melt a little, but it was another four days before the train came. By the time it did come it seemed as if everybody in town was disgusted or frightened enough to leave. When the second train after the blizzard had gone back, there were but thirty-two persons, all told, at Track's End. Only one of these was a woman, and she it was that was the cause of making me a hotel-keeper on a small scale.

The woman was Mrs. Sours, wife of my employer. One morning, after every one had left the breakfast-table except her husband and myself, she said to me:

"Jud, couldn't you run the hotel this winter, now that there are only three or four boarders left, and them not important nor particular, only so they get enough to eat?"

"I don't know, ma'am," I said. "I can run the barn, but I'm afraid I don't know much about a hotel."

"Do you hear the boy say he can do it, Henry?" says she, turning to her husband. "Of course he can do it, and do it well, too. He always said his mother taught him how to cook. That means I'm a-going down on the train to-morrow, and not coming back to this wretched country till spring has melted off the snow and made it fit for a decent body to live in."

"Well, all right," said Sours. "You may go; Jud and me are good for it."

"Mercy sakes!" cried Mrs. Sours, "do you suppose I'm going to leave you here to be frozen to death, and starved to death, and killed by the wolves that we already hear howling every night, and murdered by Indians, and shot by Pike and that wretched band of horse-thieves that the Billings sheriffs who stopped here the other night was looking for? No, Henry; when I go I am going to take you with me."

Sours tried to argue with her a little, but it did no sort of good, and the next day they both went off and I was left in charge of the hotel for the winter with three boarders--Tom Carr, the station agent and telegraph operator; Frank Valentine, the postmaster; and a Norwegian named Andrew, who was to take my place in the barn. Allenham had gone before the blizzard. Some others went on the same train with Mr. Sours and his wife. We were twenty-six, all told, that night.

The weather remained bad, and the train was often late or did not come at all. On the last day of November there were an even fourteen of us left. On the morning of that day week Tom Carr came over from the station and brought word that he had just got a telegram from headquarters saying that for the rest of the winter the train would run to Track's End but once a week, coming up Wednesday and going back Thursday.

"Well, that settles it with _me_," said Harvey Tucker. "I shall go back with it the first Thursday it goes."

"Same with me," said a man named West. "I know when I've got enough, and I've got enough of Track's End."

Mr. Clerkinwell, who happened to be present, laughed cheerfully. He was by far the oldest man left, but he always seemed the least discouraged.

"Oh," he said to the others, "that's nothing. The train does us no good except to bring the mail, and it can bring it just as well once a week as twice. We were really pampered with that train coming to us twice a week," and he laughed again and went out.

It was just another week and a day that poor Mr. Clerkinwell was taken sick. He had begun boarding at the hotel, and that night did not come to supper. I went over to his rooms to see what the trouble was. I found him on the bed in a high fever. His talk was rambling and flighty. It was a good deal about his daughter Florence, whom he had told me of before. Then he wandered to other matters.

"It's locked, Judson, it's locked, and n.o.body knows the combination; and there aren't any burglars here," he said. I knew he was talking about the safe in the room below.

We all did what we could for him, which was little enough. The doctor had gone away weeks before. He grew worse during the night. The train had come in that day, and I asked Burrdock if he did not think it would be best to send him away on it in the morning to his friends at St. Paul, where he could get proper care. Burrdock agreed to this plan. Toward morning the old gentleman fell asleep, and we covered him very carefully and carried him over to the train on his bed. He roused up a little in the car and seemed to realize where he was.

"Take care of the bank, Judson, take good care of it," he said in a sort of a feeble way. "You must be banker as well as hotel-keeper now."

I told him I would do the best I could, and he closed his eyes again.

It was cold and blizzardy when the train left at nine o'clock. Tucker and West were not the only ones of our little colony who took the train; there were five others, making, with Mr. Clerkinwell, eight, and leaving us six, to wit: Tom Carr, the agent; Frank Valentine, the postmaster; Jim Stackhouse; Cy Baker; Andrew, the Norwegian, and myself, Judson Pitcher.

After the train had gone away down the track in a cloud of white smoke, we held a mock ma.s.s-meeting around the depot stove, and elected Tom Carr mayor, Jim Stackhouse treasurer, and Andrew street commissioner, with instructions to "clear the streets of snow without delay so that the city's system of horse-cars may be operated to the advantage of our large and growing population." The Norwegian grinned and said:

"Aye tank he be a pretty big yob to put all that snow away."

[Ill.u.s.tration: READING THE OUTLAWS' LETTER, DECEMBER SIXTEENTH]

In a little while the new street commissioner and I left the others at a game of cards and started out to go to the hotel. There was a strong northwest wind, and the fine snow was sifting along close to the ground. I noticed that the rails were already covered in front of the depot. The telegraph wire hummed dismally. We were plowing along against the wind when we heard a shout and looked up. Over by the old graders' camp there were three men on horseback, all bundled up in fur coats. One of them had a letter in his hand which he waved at us.

"Let's see what's up," I said to Andrew, and we started over. At that the man stuck the letter in the box of a broken dump-cart, and then they all rode away to the west.

When we came up to the cart I unfolded the letter and read:

TO PROP. BANK OF TRACK'S END AND OTHER CITIZENS AND FOLKS:

The Undersined being in need of a little Reddy Munny regrets that they have to ask you for $5,000. Leave it behind the bord nailed to the door of Bill Mountain's shack too mile northwest and there wunt be no trubble. If we don't get munny to buy fuel with we shall have to burn your town to keep warm. Maybe it will burn better now than it did last fall. So being peecibel ourselves, and knowing _how very peecibel_ you all are, it will be more plesent all around if you come down with the cash. No objextions to small bills. We know _how few there are of you_ but we don't think we have asked for too much.

Yours Respecfully, D. PIKE, and numrous Frends.

P.X. Thow somewhat short on reddy funs, We still no how to use our guns.

This is poetry but we mean bizness.

CHAPTER IV

We prepare to fight the Robbers and I make a little Trip out to Bill Mountain's House: after I come back I show what a great Fool I can be.

The next minute I was back in the depot reading this letter to the others. When I had finished they all looked pretty blank. At last Jim Stackhouse said:

"Well, I'd like to know what we're going to do about it?"

Tom Carr laughed. "If they come it will be the duty of the street commissioner to remove 'em for obstructing the car lines," he said.

I don't think Andrew understood this joke, though the rest of us laughed, partly, I guess, to keep up our courage.

"Well," went on Carr, "there's one thing sure--we can't send them five thousand dollars even if we wanted to; and we don't want to very much.

I don't believe there is a hundred dollars in the whole town outside of Clerkinwell's safe."

"What do you suppose there is in that?" asked Baker.

"There might be a good deal and there might not be so much," said Carr. "I heard that he saved $20,000 out of the failure of his business back east and brought it out here to start new with. He certainly didn't take any of it away with him, nor use much of it here. He might have sent it back some time ago, but it hasn't gone through the express office if he did."

"Nor it hasn't gone through the post-office," said Frank Valentine. "I guess it's in the safe yet, most of it."