Track's End Page 18

  CHAPTER XV

  The mysterious Fire, and Something further about my wretched State ofTerror: with an Account of my great System of Tunnels and famous FireStronghold.

  Once I said, when I told of how I found myself helpless at BillMountain's, that I thought Kaiser the best dog that ever lived; here Imay say I know it. Though he got in my way and made me turn a fewsomersets in the dark, he may have saved Track's End fromdestruction.

  When I got to my feet I felt my way across the room and through thehall to a room in the southeast corner of the hotel, where there was aloophole in the boards over the window. Through this I saw that thelivery stable was a pillar of fire.

  How long I stood there at the loophole staring I know not; I think Idid not move or scarcely breathe. It was a large building, the secondstory packed with hay; and below there were stored many wagons, somefarm machinery, and a quantity of lumber and building material, allthings that would burn well. Everything was ablaze, the roof fell inas I looked, and the flames and sparks and smoke reached up like avast column, it seemed to the very clouds.

  At last I saw it was no time for idleness, so I turned away and wentdown-stairs. As I started to pull open the back door it came to mesuddenly that Pike and his men must have come. I reached behind thedesk and got Sours's Winchester. Then I went out, leaving Kaiserbehind, much to his disappointment. The heat struck my face like ablast from a furnace, and the light dazzled my eyes. I crept verycautiously over the snowbank behind Hawkey's and Taggart's till I cameto Fitzsimmons's. Here the heat almost scorched my face, and I sawthat the paint on the building was beginning to blister. I peeredeverywhere for signs of the men, but saw nothing. I crept around thecorner of the building and looked across the square, but there was nosign of human life. I expected nothing less than that the whole townwould 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 Iknew despite my fears. The sky was covered with thick, low-hangingclouds, and save for the fire, the night was pitch-dark. The wholetown lay below me, half lit up like day, half inky shadows. Even atthis distance I could feel the heat, and the sullen roar and cracklingof the flames never stopped. But though I shaded my eyes and peeredeverywhere among the houses and across the prairie, I could make outno living thing.

  Cinders were falling all over town, but there seemed to be little fireleft in them when they alighted. The roofs were mostly flat andcovered with tin, though the depot, the Headquarters barn, and a fewothers were of shingles. Suddenly a cinder unusually large fell on thedepot roof and lay there blazing. I hurried down the tower, and hauleda ladder which I had noticed the day the Indians came from beneath theplatform, 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 thehotel. But the flame died out, and I dragged the ladder across thesquare. It occurred to me that it would be no great loss to me shouldthe depot burn. I could not know the good thing that was later to comeout of it.

  It was so hot that I could not go behind Fitzsimmons's, so I draggedmy ladder across the drifts of the street and through between thehotel and Hawkey's. When I came out in the rear of these I wasstartled to find a small blaze on the barn roof. I hurried to the barnwith my ladder, got it in place, and then with pails of water from thewell I managed to put it out. Once more it caught, and once the roofof the shed where Pike shot Allenham blazed up; but I dashed water onthe fires and saved both buildings.

  At last the stable fire began to die down. The current of air from thenortheast had become stronger, and the column of smoke was swayingmore and more to the southwest. Just as daylight began to appear inthe east the last remaining timber of the stable fell, and, thoughthere was a great cloud of sparks and still much heat, I saw thatunless a strong east wind should spring up there was no longer dangerthat the town would be consumed. By this time I was cold and stiff, myface scorched by the fire, and my clothes frozen with the water fromthe pailfuls I had carried. I went into the hotel.

  Kaiser was so glad to see me that he reared up and put his forepaws onmy shoulders. I was patting and praising him, when suddenly thequestion, What caused the fire? flashed into my mind. There had beenno trace of Pike. From the windmill tower I had been unable to see anytrail leading from the way he would come. There was no explanationexcept that it must have been caused by the same thing that had mademe so much other trouble. Till it was broad daylight I paced up anddown the office floor, unable to stop. For two days I thought oflittle 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 fairlydesperate through lonesomeness or pure fright I went and dug a snowtunnel. I was as bad as a mole for tunnels; and I meant to tell aboutmy 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 tomy mother lying spread out before me, that I have not once got aroundto mention any of them except the first, which connected the hotel andthe bank, directly across the street. I was so taken up with this thatsoon after New-Year's I decided to build some others.

  I was keeping up at that time five fires (or smokes) besides the onein the hotel, to wit: one in the harness shop and one in Joyce's, bothat the north end of the street and opposite each other; one in thebank; one in Townsend's store at the south end of the street on thewest side, and one in the depot out across the square in front of thesouth end of the street. There was a chance for a good tunnel to allof these except to the depot; here the northwest wind had swept acrossthe square and the ground in some places was almost bare.

  But the street between the houses was filled up pretty much like abread tin with a loaf, and starting from the north side of my firsttunnel I began another and ran it straight up the street to betweenthe harness shop and Joyce's, and here I ran side tunnels to each ofthese. The snow was rather low in front of Joyce's at first, and wasnot enough above the sidewalk to give me room, but the sidewalk herewas high, being made of plank, as were all the walks in town; so Iwent under it by getting down on my hands and knees, and, as thebuilding had no underpinning, I went on under and up through atrap-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 pieceof paper nailed on the wall everything I got from any store, so thatin the spring, if I were still alive, I could pay for it, or, if itwere food, Sours could, since I was, of course, still working for himand it was his place to pay for my keep.

  South from the first tunnel I next ran another and curved it intoTownsend's store. This was a fine, high tunnel; and it would have doneyour heart good to have seen Kaiser whisk about through all of them,filling the air with snow from waving his tail, just like a greatfeather duster, and oftentimes barking at the top of his voice. "Bestill, sir," I would say to him; "you will disturb the neighbors," atthe which he would bark the louder. I often wondered what a strangeron top of the drifts would have thought to have heard the dog's noisebeneath his feet.

  It always seemed warm and comfortable in the tunnels, if they weremade of snow; this you noticed particularly on a blizzardy day, since,of course, no wind whatever got into them. Indeed, on a windy day Idoubt not a snow tunnel would be warmer than a house without a fire.But though Kaiser delighted in the tunnels, Pawsy would have nothingto do with any of them at all except the one which led from thewoodshed to the barn.

  This I made last. I got into it from a shed window, which I cut downand fitted with a rough door. It went into the barn through a smalldoor in the corner, which was in halves, like a grist-mill door. Iopened only the lower half, and this tunnel I used mainly in badweather. I had only just finished it the day before the fire. It wasthe day after the fire, when I was feverish for some way to get rid ofmy scare, that I decided to go to work on my place of retreat in casethe 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 harderthan ever. The place had to be, of course, something that would notburn and some place that could not be found. The only thing thatwouldn't burn was the snow, but in case of fire I knew that it wouldmelt for some distance from the buildings. I had just had an exampleof this. Besides, there had to be a way to get into it which could notbe seen either before or after the fire, and this entrance must befrom a building so that I would not have to expose myself in going toit. 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, andonce I wrote about it to my mother, but I always found that somethingwas weak about the plan somewhere. But I now concluded that I hadstruck on the right thing at last.

  A hundred feet back of the next building to the north of the one inwhich I had my bedroom was a small barn where the man who owned theplace had kept a cow. It was so small that I always thought he musthave measured his cow, like a tailor, and built the barn to fit. Fiftyfeet back (east) of this barn was a haystack. Before the snow came thetop of it had been taken off so it was left about four or five feethigh and the shape of a bowl turned wrong side up. It was in the leeof the barn, and the snow had piled up over it in a great drift sothat you would never once have guessed that there was such a thing asa haystack within half a mile. It was, maybe, a hundred feet from theHeadquarters barn to this stack, with four or five or more feet ofsnow 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 ofhay and half of snow.

  There was no underpinning beneath the Headquarters barn (most of thebuildings in town simply stood on big stones a few feet apart) and thespace where it should have been was filled in with a wide board andbanked outside with hay. Under Ned's manger I sawed out a piece ofthis board big enough to crawl through, and hung it on leather hingesat the top, concealed by the manger. I then dug through the hay andhad a clear field for my tunnel straight to the stack.

  I ran my tunnel, or rather burrow, as it was small and low, a littletoo much east, and missed the haystack by about three feet, but Iprobed for it with a long, stiff wire and soon found it. I carried ina 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 stretchout comfortably in it. The hay had been wet and was frozen, so therewas no danger of its caving down on me. As the stack was all coveredwith snow no wind could get in, and I knew it would always be warmenough to be comfortable with plenty of clothes and blankets. I tookin a buffalo-robe and some things of that sort and left them there. Ialso cached a box of food there, consisting of dried beef, crackers,and such things; enough, I calculated, to last three days. I couldhardly tell what to do about water, but at last tried the plan ofchopping ice into small pieces and putting them into some of Mrs.Sours's empty glass fruit-jars. My notion was that in case I wasimprisoned there I could button a can inside of my coat and thus thawenough of the ice to get a drink.

  I was very well pleased with what I called my fire stronghold. I couldenter from a hidden place in the barn, and could get into the barnthrough the tunnel from the hotel, which connected with the wholetunnel system. I knew if every house in town burned that it would notmelt the snow around the stronghold; and I thought if I were in itwhen the barn burned I could push down the snow where it melted alongthe tunnel so that it would not be noticed.

  In short I was so tickled over my Esquimau house that I took Kaiserthe first night it was done and slept in it; and though it was one ofthe coldest nights we were comfortable. I heard the wolves sniffingabout on the roof, but we were getting used to wolves. I didn't knowthat we were going to have to sleep under snow again before spring;and in less comfortable quarters.