The rest of my second Night at Track's End, and part of another: with
some Things which happen between.
I was too frightened at first to move, and stood at the window staring
into the darkness like a fool. I heard the men scramble over a fence
and run off. Then I ran out to where Allenham lay. He made no answer
when I spoke to him. I went on and met two of the deputies coming into
the alley. I told them what I had seen.
"Wake up folks in the hotel," said one of the men; then they hurried
along. I soon had everybody in the hotel down-stairs with my shouting.
In a minute or two they brought in Allenham, and the doctor began to
work over him. The whole town was soon on hand, and it was decided to
descend on the graders' camp in force. Twenty or thirty men
volunteered. One of the deputies named Dawson was selected as
leader.
"Are you certain you can pick out the man who fired the shot?" said
Dawson to me.
"Yes," I answered. "It was Pike."
"If you just came, how do you happen to know Pike?" he asked.
"He pulled me up last night by the ear and looked at me with a
lantern," I said.
"Well," replied the man, "we'll take you down and you can look at him
with a lantern."
They formed into a solid body, four abreast, with Dawson ahead holding
me by the arm, as if he were afraid I would get away. To tell the
truth, I should have been glad enough to have got out of the thing,
but there seemed to be no chance of it. I was glad my mother could not
know about me.
We soon came up to the camp, and the men lined out and held their guns
ready for use. Not a sound was to be heard except the loud snoring of
the men in the nearest tent, which seemed to me almost _too_ loud.
There was a dying camp-fire, and the stars were bright and twinkling
in a deep-blue sky; but I didn't look at them much.
"Come, you fellows, get up!" called Dawson. This brought no answer.
"Come!" he called louder, "roust up there, every one of you. There's
fifty of us, and we've got our boots on!"
A man put his head sleepily out of a tent and wanted to know what was
the trouble. Dawson repeated his commands. One of our men tossed some
wood on the fire, and it blazed up and threw the long shadows of the
tents out across the prairie. One by one the men came out, as if they
were just roused from sleep. There was a great amount of loud talk and
profanity, but at last they were all out. Pike was one of the last.
Dawson made them stand up in a row.
"Now, young man," said he to me, "pick out the man you saw fire the
shot that killed Allenham."
At the word killed Pike started and shut his jaws tightly together in
the middle of an oath. I looked along the line, but saw that I could
not be mistaken. Then I took a step forward, pointed to Pike, and
said:
"That's the man."
He shot a look at me of the most deadly hatred; then he laughed; but
it didn't sound to me like a good, cheerful laugh.
"Come on," said Dawson to him. Then he ordered the others back into
their tents, left half the men to guard them, and with the rest of our
party went a little ways down the track to where an empty box-car was
standing on the siding. "Get in there!" he said to Pike, and the man
did it, and the door was locked. Three men were left to guard this
queer jail, and the rest of us went back to the Headquarters House.
Here we found that the doctor's report was that Allenham would
probably pull through.
The next morning a mass-meeting was held in the square beside the
railroad station. After some talk, most of it pretty vigorous, it was
decided to order all of the graders to leave town without delay,
except Pike, who was to be kept in the car until the outcome of
Allenham's wound was known. It wasn't necessary even for me to guess
twice to hit on what would be the fate of Pike if Allenham should
die.
In two hours the graders left. They made a long line of covered wagons
and filed away to the east beside the railroad track. They were pretty
free with their threats, but that was all it amounted to.
For a week Track's End was very quiet. Allenham kept on getting
better, and by that time was out of danger. There was a good deal of
talk about what ought to be done with Pike. A few wanted to hang him,
notwithstanding that Allenham was alive.
"When you get hold of a fellow like him," said one man, "you can't go
far wrong if you hang him up high by the neck and then sort o' go off
and forget him."
Others proposed to let him go and warn him to leave the country. It
happened on the day the question was being argued that the wind was
blowing from the southwest as hard a gale as I ever saw. It swept up
great clouds of dust and blew down all of the tents and endangered
many of the buildings. In the afternoon we heard a shout from the
direction of the railroad. We all ran out and met the guards. They
pointed down the track to the car containing Pike rolling off before
the wind.
"How did it get away?" everybody asked.
"Well," said one of the guards, "we don't just exactly know. We reckon
the brake got off somehow. Mebby a dog run agin the car with his nose
and started it, or something like that," and the man rolled up his
eyes. There was a loud laugh at this, as everybody understood that the
guards had loosened the brake and given the car a start, and they all
saw that it was a good way to get rid of the man inside. Tom Carr, the
station agent, said that, if the wind held, the car would not stop
short of the grade beyond Siding No. 15.
"My experience with the country," said Sours, "is that the wind always
holds and don't do much else. It wouldn't surprise me if it carried
him clean through to Chicago."
I went back to the barn and sat down in the office. To tell the truth,
I felt easier that Pike was gone. I well knew that he had no love for
me. I sat a long time thinking over what had happened since I had come
to Track's End. It seemed, as if things had crowded one another so
much that I had scarcely had time to think at all. I little guessed
all the time for thinking that I was going to have before I got away
from the place.
While I was sitting there on the bench an old gentleman came in and
asked something about getting a team with which to drive into the
country. There was a livery stable in town kept by a man named Munger
and a partner whose name I have forgotten; but their horses were all
out. The Headquarters barn was mainly for the teams of people who put
up at the hotel, but Sours had two horses which we sometimes let folks
have. After the old gentleman had finished his business he asked me my
name, and then said:
"Well, Judson, you did the right thing in pointing out that desperado
the other night. I'm pleased to know you."
My reply was that I couldn't very well have done otherwise than I did
after what I saw.
"But there's many that wouldn't have done it, just the same," answered
the old gentleman. "Knowing the kind of a man he is, it was very brave
of you. My name is Clerkinwell. I run the Bank of Track's End,
opposite the Headquarters House. I hope to hear further good reports
of you."
He was a very courtly old gentleman, and waved his hand with a
flourish as he went out. You may be sure I was tickled at getting such
words of praise from no less a man than a banker. I hurried and took
the team around to the bank, and had a good look at it. It was a
small, square, two-story wooden building, like many of the others,
with large glass windows in the front, through which I could see a
counter, and behind it a big iron safe.
I had given up sleeping in the house, with its squirrel-cage rooms,
preferring the soft prairie hay of the barn. But when bedtime came
this night Mr. Clerkinwell had not returned, so I sat up to wait for
the team. He had told me that he might be late. It was past midnight
when he drove up to the barn.
"Good-evening, Judson," said he. "So you waited for me."
"Yes, sir," I answered.
"Do you know if Allenham or any one is on watch about town to-night?"
"I think not, sir," I said. "I haven't seen nor heard anybody for over
an hour."
"Very careless, very careless," muttered the old gentleman. Then he
went out, and in a moment I heard his footsteps as he went up the
outside stairs to his rooms in the second story of his bank building.
I put the horses in their stalls, and fed and watered them, and
started up the ladder to the loft. What Mr. Clerkinwell had said was
still running in my mind. I stopped and thought a moment, and
concluded that I was not sleepy, and decided to take a turn about
town.
I left my lantern and went out to the one street. There was not a
sound to be heard except the rush of the wind around the houses. The
moon was almost down, and the buildings of the town and Frenchman's
Butte made long shadows on the prairie. There was a dull spot of light
on the sky to the southeast which I knew was the reflection of a
prairie fire a long ways off; but there was a good, wide fire-brake a
quarter of a mile out around the town, so there was no danger from
that, even if it should come up.
I went along down toward the railroad, walking in the middle of the
street so as not to make any noise. The big windmill on the water-tank
swung a little in the wind and creaked; and the last light from the
moon gleamed on its tail and then was gone. I turned out across where
the graders had had their camp. Here the wind was hissing through the
dry grass sharp enough. I stood gaping at the stars with the wind
blowing squarely in my face, and wondering how I ever came so far
from home, when all at once I saw straight ahead of me a little blaze
of fire.
My first thought was that it was the camp-fire of some mover on the
fire-brake. It blazed up higher, and lapped to the right and left. It
was the grass that was afire. Through the flames I caught a glimpse of
a man. A gust of wind beat down the blaze, and I saw the man, bent
over and moving along with a great torch of grass in his hand, leaving
a trail of fire. Then I saw that he was inside the fire-brake.
In another moment I was running up the middle of the street yelling
"Fire!" so that to this day it is a wonder to me that I did not burst
both of my lungs.