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  TRACK'S END

  CHAPTER I

  Something about my Home and Track's End: with how I leave the one andget acquainted with Pike at the other.

  When I left home to shift for myself I was eighteen years old, and, Isuppose, no weakling; though it seems to me now that I was a mere boy.I liked school well enough, but rather preferred horses; and a penseems to me a small thing for a grown man, which I am now, to befooling around with, but I mean to tell (with a little help) of someexperiences I had the first winter after I struck out for myself.

  I was brought up in Ohio, where my father was a country blacksmith andhad a small farm. His name was William Pitcher, but, being well likedby all and a square man, everybody called him Old Bill Pitcher. I wasnamed Judson, which had been my mother's name before she was married,so I was called Jud Pitcher; and when I was ten years old I knew everyhorse for a dozen miles around, and most of the dogs.

  It was September 16th, in the late eighteen-seventies, that I firstclapped eyes on Track's End, in the Territory of Dakota. The name ofthe place has since been changed. I remember the date well, for onthat day the great Sisseton prairie fire burned up the town of LoneTree. I saw the smoke as our train lay at Siding No. 13 while theconductor and the other railroad men nailed down snake's-heads on thetrack. One had come up through the floor of the caboose and smashedthe stove and half killed a passenger. Poor man, he had a game leg aslong as I knew him, which was only natural, since when the rail burstthrough the floor it struck him fair.

  I was traveling free, as the friend of one of the brakemen whom I hadgot to know in St. Paul. He was a queer fellow, named Burrdock. Therailroad company set great store by Burrdock on account of hisdealings with some Sioux Indians. They had tried to ride on top ofthe cars of his train without paying fare, and he had thrown them alloff, one by one, while the train was going. The fireman told me aboutit.

  Burrdock was taking me out to Track's End because he said it was alive town, and a good place for a boy to grow up in. He had firstwanted me to join him in braking on the railroad, but I judged thework too hard for me. If I had known what I was coming to at Track'sEnd I'd have stuck to the road.

  Perhaps I ought to say that I left home in June, not because I wasn'twelcome to stay, but because I thought it was time I saw something ofthe world. Mother was sure I should be killed on the cars, but at lastshe gave her consent. I went to Galena, from there up the Mississippion a packet to St. Paul, and then out to Dakota with Burrdock.

  The snake's-heads delayed us so that it was eleven o'clock at nightbefore we reached Track's End. Ours was the only train that ran on theroad then, and it came up Mondays and Thursdays, and went backTuesdays and Fridays. It was a freight-train, with a caboose on theend for passengers, "and the snake's-heads," as the fireman said. Asnake's-head on the old railroads was where a rail got loose from thefish-plate at one end and came up _over_ the wheel instead of stayingdown _under_ it.

  Track's End was a new town just built at the end of the railroad. Thenext town back toward the east was Lone Tree; but that day it burnedup and was no more. It was about fifty miles from Track's End to LoneTree, with three sidings between, and a water-tank at No. 14. Afterthe fire the people all went to Lac-qui-Parle, sixty miles fartherback; so that at the time of which I write there was nothing betweenTrack's End and Lac-qui-Parle except sidings and the ashes of LoneTree; but these soon blew away. There were no people living in thecountry at this time, and the reason the road had been built was tohold a grant of land made to the company by the government, which wasa foolish thing for the government to do, since a road would have beenbuilt when needed, anyhow; but my experience has been that thegovernment is always putting its foot in it.

  When I dropped off the train at Track's End I saw by the moonlightthat the railroad property consisted of a small coal-shed, aturntable, a roundhouse with two locomotive stalls, a water-tank andwindmill, and a rather long and narrow passenger and freight depot.The town lay a little apart, and I could not make out its size. Therewere a hundred or more men waiting for the train, and one of them tookthe two mail-sacks in a wheelbarrow and went away toward the lights ofthe houses. There were a lot of mules and wagons and scrapers andother tools of a gang of railroad graders near the station; also sometents in which the men lived; these men were waiting for the trainwith the others, and talked so loud and made such a disturbance thatit drowned out all other noises.

  The train was left right on the track, and the engine put in theroundhouse, after which Burrdock took me over town to the hotel. Itwas called the Headquarters House, and the proprietor's name wasSours. After I got a cold supper he showed me to my room. The secondstory was divided into about twenty rooms, the partitions being lathedbut not yet plastered. It made walls very easy to talk through, and,where the cracks happened to match, as they seemed to mostly, theyweren't hard to look through. I thought it was a good deal likesleeping in a squirrel-cage.

  The railroad men that I had seen at the station had been working on anextension of the grade to the west, on which the rails were to be laidthe next spring. They had pushed on ten miles, but, as the governmenthad stopped making a fuss, the company had decided to do no more thatseason, and the train I came up on brought the paymaster with themoney to pay the graders for their summer's work; so they all gotdrunk. There were some men from Billings in town, too. They were ontheir way east with a band of four hundred Montana ponies, which theyhad rounded up for the night just south of town. Two of them stayed tohold the drove, and the rest came into town, also to get drunk. Theyhad good luck in doing this, and fought with the graders. I heard twoor three shots soon after I went to bed, and thought of my mother.

  Some time late in the night I was awakened by a great rumpus in thehotel, and made out from what I heard through the laths that some menwere looking for somebody. They were going from room to room, and sooncame into mine, tearing down the sheet which was hung up for a door.They crowded in and came straight to the bed, and the leader, a bigman with a crooked nose, seized me by the ear as if he were takinghold of a bootstrap. I sat up, and another poked a lantern in myface.

  "That's him," said one of them.

  "No, he was older," said another.

  "He looks like he _would_ steal a dog, anyhow," said the man with thelantern. "Bring him along, Pike."

  "No," said the man who had hold of my ear, "he ain't much more'n aboy--we're looking for grown men to-night."

  Then they went out, and I could feel my ear drawing back into place asif it were made of rubber. But it never got quite back, and has alwaysbeen a game ear to this day, with a kind of a lop to it.

  Sours told me in the morning that they were looking for the man thatstole their dog, though he said he didn't think they had ever had adog. Pike, he said, had come out as a grader, but it had been a longtime since he had done any work.

  I took a look around town after breakfast and found forty or fiftyhouses, most of them stores or other places of business, on one streetrunning north and south. There were a few, but not many, housesscattered about beyond the street. Some of the buildings had canvasroofs, and there were a good many tents and covered wagons in whichpeople lived. The whole town had been built since the railroad camethrough two months before. There was a low hill called Frenchman'sButte a quarter of a mile north of town. I climbed it to get a view ofthe country, but could see only about a dozen settlers' houses, alsojust built.

  The country was a vast level prairie except to the north, where therewere a few small lakes, with a little timber around them, and somecoteaux, or low hills, beyond. The grass was dried up and gray. Ithought I could make out a low range of hills to the west, where Isupposed the Missouri River was. On my way back to town a man told methat a big colony of settlers were expected to arrive soon, and thatTrack's End had been built partly on the strength of the businessthese people would bring. I never saw the colony.

  When I got back to the hotel Sours said to me:

  "Young man, don't you want a job?"

/>   I told him I should be glad of something to do.

  "The man that has been taking care of my barn has just gone on thetrain," continued Sours. "He got homesick for the States, and lit outand never said boo till half an hour before train-time. If you wantthe job I'll give you twenty-five dollars a month and your board."

  "I'll try it a month," I said; "but I'll probably be going back myselfbefore winter."

  "That's it," exclaimed Sours. "Everybody's going back before winter. Iguess there won't be nothing left here next winter but jack-rabbitsand snowbirds."

  I had hoped for something better than working in a stable, but mymoney was so near gone that I did not think it a good time to standaround and act particular. Besides, I liked horses so much that thejob rather pleased me, after all.

  Toward evening Sours came to me and said he wished I would spend thenight in the barn and keep awake most of the time, as he was afraid itmight be broken into by some of the graders. They were acting worsethan ever. There was no town government, but a man named Allenham hadsome time before been elected city marshal at a mass-meeting. Duringthe day he appointed some deputies to help him maintain order.

  At about ten o'clock I shut up the barn, put out my lantern, and satdown in a little room in one corner which was used for an office. Thetown was noisy, but nobody came near the barn, which was back of thehotel and out of sight from the street. Some time after midnight Iheard low voices outside and crept to a small open window. I couldmake out the forms of some men under a shed back of a store across anarrow alley. Soon I heard two shots in the street, and then a mancame running through the alley with another right after him. As thefirst passed, a man stepped out from under the shed. The man inpursuit stopped and said:

  "Now, I want Jim, and there's no use of you fellows trying to protecthim." It was Allenham's voice.

  There was a report of a revolver so close that it made me wink. Theman who had come from under the shed had fired pointblank at Allenham.By the flash I saw that the man was Pike.