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 snowbanks with my heart thumping 116 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 fashion, 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.

But though, as I say, up to the 25th of 117 January (and even beyond) I had no further glimpse of the mysterious visitor, I saw evidence of its presence often enough.

Night after night the scrap-pail by the back door was rummaged and something taken from it, and once a chicken was missing from the barn. The only way that anything could get in was through a window into the hay-loft seven or eight feet above the drift. After I missed the chicken I nailed this up and lost no more. I thought there were a few scratches on the side of the barn below the window, but I could tell nothing from them. Almost every night it either snowed or drifted, or both, so there was almost no hope of ever finding tracks of any kind on the ground. One morning I found the windmill at the station thrown into gear and running full tilt, but the lever which controlled it may have slipped. Two or three times I thought I heard the windlass of the well near the barn creak, but I tried to make myself believe that it was only the wind.

You may be sure that my sleep was very light, and I often heard Kaiser growling and barking late at night in the hotel. I never had the courage to sit up and watch again. I 118 may have been more cowardly than I should have been; I leave that to the reader to say. One night I lay awake listening to the wolves howling up at the north end of the town. Suddenly their cry changed and they swept the whole length of the street like the wind, and much faster than they usually went when simply ranging for prey. They may have been chasing a jack-rabbit.

Another night they howled so long right in front of the building I was in that I put down my foolish fears and got up and fired at them, hoping to scare them away and maybe get another skin for my coat. One fell, and the others made off at a great rate. I watched the one on the snow till I was sure he was dead, and I heard nothing more of the others that night. In the morning there was neither hide nor hair of the dead wolf.

But the work I had to do kept my mind off of my terror a good deal, and saved me, I really believe, from going stark mad. I will tell about my great system of tunnels presently, but before I began it I did much else. One of the first things was to make a long, light sled for Kaiser to draw, and also a harness 119 for him. The materials and tools for the one I got from the wagon-repair shop attached to Beckwith’s blacksmith shop, and the same for the other from the harness shop, where I kept up one of my fires. I was always handy with all kinds of tools, inheriting a love for them from my father; besides, I had worked with him in the shop at home a good deal, and had thus become a fairly good mechanic for my age. I could handle a plane or a drawshave or a riveting-hammer, or even an awl, for the matter of that, with any of them.

I used this dog rig chiefly for taking over ground feed from the depot to the barn for the horses and cow; but Kaiser learned to enjoy the work of dragging the sled so much that I soon came to use him nearly always in good weather in making my rounds to look after the fires or patrol the town. He would whisk me along on top of the frozen drifts at such a rate that it would nearly take my breath away sometimes. I practised with the skees till there was no danger of turning my ankle again, and would sometimes run races with him on them; but he could beat me all hollow unless there was a good, stiff load on the sled. 120

Another thing that I made was a pair of leather spectacles, something which my mother had used often to tell me I needed when I was small and could not see something that was plain as a pikestaff. My spectacles were made out of a strip of black leather two inches wide which went over my eyes and around my head, with two slits through which I could look. These I wore on the dazzling bright days and was troubled no more by snow-blindness, which had made my eyes so painful the day I came back from Mountain’s.

It was about New-Year’s that I began to spend my evenings in noting down in the hotel register what had happened during the day. I did this chiefly so that when I came to write to my mother Sunday I would forget nothing; and I am very glad now that I did so, for without the register and the letters (both of which I now have) about some things, especially dates, I might go wrong in writing this account. Besides, in the past, it has been much satisfaction when I have related any of the incidents of my winter at Track’s End and some person, to show how smart he was, has tried to cast doubt on my word–it has 121 been much comfort to me, I say, in such cases to have the register and letters to show him, with it all set down in black and white.

Thus it comes I know that Pawsy caught a mouse in the barn on Wednesday, January 12th, at about half-past seven o’clock in the morning, while I was milking the cow. I think it was the only mouse at Track’s End that winter, for I never saw or heard any other. There were no rats in the Territory then anywhere, unless it may have been at Yankton, or at some of the old Red River settlements about Pembina.

Pawsy was a good hunter, and several times caught a snowbird, though I boxed her ears for this; and on Friday, the 21st, I found her near Joyce’s store trying to drag home a jack-rabbit. She must have caught it by lying in wait, but I marveled how she killed the monstrous creature. But she was, indeed, one of the largest and strongest cats I ever knew. I would have trusted her to whip a coyote in a fair fight. I got three jacks in January myself with the rifle, and found them very good to eat; but the first one, after skinning it, I left overnight in the shed, and in the morning 122 it was gone. That day I went to Taggart’s and got two good bolts and put them on the shed door.

Getting my meals I found very hard work, but I made out better than you might think, since my mother had taught me something about cooking. At first I neglected getting regular meals, snatching a bite of anything that I could lay my hands on; but I soon saw that this would not do if I were to keep in good health and strength. My boarders, too, were great hands to complain if they did not get their meals regularly. You might have thought that cat and dog were paying good money for their board, the way they would mew and whine if a meal were late. I took very good care of the chickens, giving them plenty of warm food, so from about Christmas I got a dozen or more eggs each week. The cow, too, I fed well on ground feed and hay, with pumpkins and sometimes a few potatoes, and she gave me a fair quantity of milk all winter; and on the eggs and milk, together with potatoes, bacon, and salt codfish, I and my boarders managed to live tolerably well. 123

Pie I missed very much, and cookies and apple dumplings and such things, all of which my mother used to make very freely at home, and never keeping them hid. I looked longingly at the pumpkins, and once fetched a quantity of ginger from Joyce’s, vowing I would attempt pumpkin pie; but I never got up my courage. Bread, also, I never attempted, though I got a package of yeast from the store and looked at it many times. The place of this was taken by pancakes, which I made almost every day, big and thick, which with molasses went very well; though a good cook, as like as not, would have said they were somewhat leathery.

There was not an apple in town, nor any kind of fresh fruit, but there were dried apples and prunes, and canned fruit and vegetables, especially tomatoes. Of the canned things I liked the strawberries best, and ate many, though they tasted somewhat of the tin. There were plenty of crackers in the stores, and some dry round things, dark-colored, which called themselves gingersnaps; I took home a large package in great glee, thinking I had made a find; I ate one of them 124 by main strength and gave the rest to the cow. Butter I made several times, with fair success, though it was not like mother’s, being more greasy.

Fresh meat I missed very much, though the few jack-rabbits I got helped out, and were good eating, as I have said, and smelled as good as anything could while cooking. Some other fresh meat I had also, as you shall see directly. Once I made up my mind to have some chicken. There was one hen who was very fat and never, I was sure, laid an egg. I took the hatchet, which was sharp enough, and went to the barn, intending to behead her, having it all planned how I should cook her for my Sunday dinner. When I got to the barn the hen seemed to know what I intended, and she looked at me with one eye, very reproachful, and I went back to the house with my hatchet and never made any more plans for fried chicken.

There was much bad weather in January. Often I noticed that this was the way of it: It would snow for one day, blizzard for three, and then for two be still, steady, bitter cold. On these latter the thermometer would often go 125 over forty degrees below zero, with the sun shining bright and the sky blue; but with a frightful big yellow-and-orange sun-dog each side of the sun, morning and evening, like two great columns; and sometimes there would be a big orange circle around the sun all day, with much frost in the air.

Some of the nights were light, almost, as day with the northern lights flaming up from behind Frenchman’s Butte all over the whole sky, and all colors and shapes. On these nights the horses (they had been wild ponies once) would stamp about in the barn, and Kaiser would growl in his sleep. When I rubbed the cat’s back it would crack and sparkle. The wolves seemed to howl more and differently on these nights, and once I went to the station, thinking the fire there needed fixing, and I heard the telegraph instrument clicking fit to tear itself to pieces. Often the next day after the northern lights would come the storm.

It was on the very day that I had said to Kaiser and Pawsy at breakfast (that is, January 25th) that it was a month since I had seen any human being, that I was at the depot after 126 a load of ground feed, and in looking to the northwest thought I saw something moving. It did not take me long to go up the windmill tower. It was not past ten o’clock in the forenoon, so the light for looking toward the northwest was good, though of course, as the sun was shining, the snow was pretty dazzling. But I could still only make out that something was moving south or southwest. It was impossible to tell if it were men or horses or cattle. So I went down as fast as I could, jumped onto the sled, and the next minute Kaiser had me at the hotel, where I got the field-glass and went back.

Up the tower I scrambled for another look. The snow was so dazzling that the glass did less good than you might suppose, but with it I could soon tell that it was a party of men on horseback following either another party or a drove of cattle or horses. The band ahead swung gradually about and came toward Track’s End. The ones behind seemed to be trying to cut them off, but they failed to do it. On they came, and in ten minutes I could see that it was either cattle or horses that were being chased by twenty or twenty-five men on 127 horseback. The cattle were following a low, broad ridge where the snow was less deep, and which spread out west of the town, making less snow there also, as I have mentioned before. I thought there was something peculiar about the riding of the men; I watched closely, and then I saw they were Indians.

My first thought was that it was daylight and no jack-lantern would scare them away. I saw I must depend on harsher measures. In almost no time I had got over town, locked the barn, shut Kaiser in the hotel, run through my tunnel to the bank so as to be on the west side of town, and stood peeping out a loophole with two fully loaded Winchesters on a table beside me.

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