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  CHAPTER XII

  One of my Letters to my Mother, in which I tell of many Things andespecially of a Mystery which greatly puzzles and alarms me.

  Here I am going to put in the letter which I wrote to my mother a weekfrom the next day after my strange Christmas, to show that I did writeher long letters every Sunday, as I have said; though of course it wasmany weeks before she got this or the others:

  TRACK'S END, _Sunday, January 2d._

  MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,--I have written you so much bad news sinceI have been in this dreadful place that I am very glad to send yousome good news at last, and that is that my ankle, of which I wroteyou last Sunday, is all well. I kept up the hot-water applications andby the next morning it was so much better that I could walk on it. Ihope I may not turn it again.

  I don't know as there is much other good news to write, except that itis good news, and maybe quite strange news, that I am still alive atall in such a place. I am getting along better with the cooking,though I am beginning to long for some fresh meat. The cow still givesa good mess of milk, and I now get three or four fresh eggs a day;thanks to the warm food which I give the hens, I guess. I do notbelieve that Crazy Jane has laid an egg since her night on thechimney, and I'm almost afraid she caught cold, as she has not had agenuine fight with another hen since. Kaiser and the cat and Dick andNed are all well and in good appetite. I have heard rather less of thewolves of late, and I still think it would be easier to get the Man inthe Moon to come to this town than any of those Indians. But theoutlaws I still fear very much. Oh, something I ought to have writtenyou last week! I mean this: I got a letter from them that day out atMountain's, but I had no time to read it Christmas and the next day Iforgot I had it till after I had put your letter in the post-office.This is what was in it:

  CITISENS TRACK'S END,--We will Rob your bank and burn your town if we don't get the small some we ask for. If adoing it we kill anyboddy it wun't be our fawlt. Leave the Munny as we told you to and save Bludd Shedd.

  PIKE AND FRIENDS.

  I look for them any time. My only hope is that the weather will be toobad for them to travel; but of course there must be some good weather.The snow is already so deep that it will be very hard for them to domuch on horseback. The street is full, and it is very deep north,east, and south. The ground is almost bare for half a mile to thewest, however; and they could come in on the grade. Of course they cancome on snow-shoes at any time and go everywhere. I cannot even hopeto keep out of having trouble with them. I have made no answer to thisletter, and can't make up my mind whether it would be best to do so ornot.

  I kept up work all the week on the fortifications, when the weatherwould permit; for there has been another great blizzard, the worst ofthe winter so far. I even worked all day yesterday, though it wasNew-Year's. Monday morning I again started all of my fires, but Ifound that in three of the buildings there was not enough coal to lastlong. So I hitched up Ned and Dick on an old sleigh of Sours's andtook a good lot to each place from the sheds at the railroad. It was alucky thing I did so, too, because it snowed more Tuesday night andbegan to blizzard Wednesday and kept it up till Friday without oncestopping; and it would now be impossible to drive anywhere near thecoal-sheds.

  I have got up a plan to do what I want to do without using much coal;I smother the fires, all except the one in the hotel, with stovegriddles laid on them, and it makes a great smoke without much fire.The guns and ammunition I have disposed of here and there, in goodplaces for me in case of attack, but hard to find for other folks. OneI keep standing by my bed's head, but nobody would be apt to lookthere for either gun or bed, I hope. I take in my drawbridge alwaysthe minute I cross.

  The last blizzard has helped me a good deal. The street is now so fullthat the first-story doors and windows of the hotel and bank and mostof the other buildings are covered. Not a bit of daylight gets intothe hotel office, and I am writing this by lamplight, though the sunis bright outdoors. The hotel can now only be entered by the backdoor, which I have strengthened with boards and braces. I have alsoboarded up the second-story windows, as they are now not much abovethe level of the drifts.

  My tunnel might now be much higher and I am going to make it so that Ican stand up straight all the way through. This is the only way thereis to get into the bank now, unless you were to pound off the planks Ihave nailed over the upper windows, or shovel the snow away below. Idrew over lumber from the yard the day I had the team hitched up forthe coal. There are plenty of nails at Taggart's. The blacksmith toolswhich would be good to break open a safe with I have buried in thesnow. I have not yet carried out the plan I told you about which mightsave me in case the town is burned. It is a big job, but I am going atit as soon as I can. There is much other work which I want to do.There is a large tin keg of blasting-powder at Taggart's which itseems as if I ought to use somehow. Sometimes I wish I had a cannon,but I don't know as it would be much use to me.

  I had a vast deal of work Monday and Tuesday carrying back the thingsthose savage Indians lugged out in the square. I fastened up all ofthe buildings which they had torn open and straightened up things inthe stores as best I could. Fitzsimmons's was in the worst confusion,and I could not do much with it. The cellar was such a wreck ofbarrels and boxes and crates and everything you can think of, allbroken open and the things thrown everywhere, that I only looked downand gave it up then and there.

  As soon as I can get around to it I mean to build some more tunnels tosome of the other houses. I think I ought to draw up a list of regularhours for getting up, fixing the fires, climbing the windmill tower tolook with the field-glass, and such-like things, as I used to hearUncle Ben tell was the way they did when he was in the army. I mean togo out every good day and take some target practice with my rifle.

  I wish I could close this letter here, and I would do so if it weregoing to you so that you would get it before you get others, or beforeyou know that you are never to get others from me, if that is to be,as I fear it may. Oh, if I only had it to do over again, how quick Iwould take the chance to go away from this horrid place! If I live toget away I will never come here again. So I must tell you what littleI can of this other matter.

  I am not here in Track's End alone. What it is that is here I do notknow. How long it has been here I do not know. Where it stays, what itdoes, where it goes, I do not know. I have looked over my shouldertwenty times from nervousness since I began this letter.

  Last Monday night I hung a piece of bacon on a rafter in the shed backof the kitchen, after cutting off a slice for breakfast the nextmorning. I kept it there because it is a cool place and handy to thekitchen. Tuesday morning it was gone. I had left the outside doorshut, and it was still shut in the morning. The door between thekitchen and shed was locked. I could see no tracks or marks of anykind.

  Wednesday morning the thumb-piece of the latch on the depot door waspressed down. I don't think I left it that way. A pail by the backdoor in which I had thrown some scraps which I was saving for thechickens was tipped over. I think some of the meat rinds were gone.The blizzard began that morning.

  Thursday morning the blizzard was still going on. I noticed nothingunusual.

  Friday morning a quilt and a blanket had been stolen from a bed in thehotel. Another quilt was drawn from the bed and lay on the floor. Ithink the window (it had not yet been boarded up) at the foot of thebed had been raised. The snowbank outside is high. The blizzard wasstill blowing.

  Yesterday morning I saw nothing wrong, but I thought about it a gooddeal during the day. I remembered of hearing strange sounds at nightfrom the first of my being here alone. I had thought it wolves, owls,jack-rabbits, or something like that.

  Last night I decided to watch. The storm had stopped and the night wasvery still, but it was cloudy and dark and a flake of snow fell oncein a while. I put on the big fur coat and sat on a box just insidethe woodshed door, which was open on a crack. At ab
out eleven o'clockI heard a faint noise at the barn as if something were in the yard atthe side trying to get in at one of the windows. I swung my door opena little more, it creaked and I saw something dark go across the yardand over the fence. There was no sound that I could hear. I could notsee that it touched the ground. It went behind a haystack by thefence. There was instantly another glimpse of it as it passed beyondthe stack, going either behind or through the shed under which the menstood that night when Pike shot Allenham. I was not sure if I saw itthe other side of there or not, but I could not see so well beyond theshed. The motion was gliding; I heard no footstep, nor sound of wings,nor anything. It snowed some more in the night. This morning I couldfind nothing wrong except that a clothes-line beyond the shed wasbroken. It had hung across the way which what I saw must have gone.Its ends were tied to posts at least seven feet from the ground, andif I remember aright, it has all the time been drawn up so that it didnot sag at all. It was snapped off as if something had run againstit.

  I must close now and do up my work for the night. I only ask that Imay live to see you all again. If I do not, then may this reach yousomehow.

  Your Dutiful Son, JUDSON PITCHER.