CHAPTER XV

The 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 below there were stored many wagons, some farm machinery, and a quant.i.ty 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 s...o...b..nk 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 the whole 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 with snow.

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 of sparks 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 mole for 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 first tunnel 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 oftentimes barking 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 work on 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 to the 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 s.p.a.ce where it should have been was filled in with a wide board and banked outside with hay. Under Ned's manger I sawed 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 into some of Mrs.

Sours's empty gla.s.s fruit-jars. My notion was that in case I was imprisoned there I could b.u.t.ton 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.

CHAPTER XVI

Telling 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 should not 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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-gla.s.s. 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 see any 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 were no 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 and gave 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 if the 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MY MEETING WITH PIKE, TRACK'S END, FEBRUARY FIFTH]

"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.