A Fire and a Blizzard: with how a great many People go away from
Track's End and how some others come.
It was an even two hours' fight between the town of Track's End and
the fire; and they came out about even--that is, most of the
scattering dwelling-houses were burned, but the business part of the
town was saved. There was no water to be had, nor time to plow a
furrow, so we fought the fire mainly with brooms, shovels, old
blankets, and such-like things with which we could pound it out. But
it got up to the dwellings in spite of us. As soon as the danger
seemed to be past, I said to Allenham, who had had charge of the fire
brigade:
"I saw a man set that fire out there. Don't you suppose we could find
him?"
"Pike, I'll bet a dollar!" exclaimed Allenham. "We'll try it, anyhow,
whoever it is."
He ordered everybody that could to get a horse, and soon we all rode
off into the darkness. But though we were divided into small parties
and searched all that night and half the next day, nothing came of it.
I kept with Allenham, and as we came in he said:
"There's no use looking for him any longer. If he didn't have a horse
and ride away out of the country ahead of all of us, then he's down a
badger-hole and intends to stay there till we quit looking. I'll wager
he'll know better'n to show himself around Track's End again,
anyhow."
Toward night the train came in pushing Pike's box-car ahead of it.
Burrdock, who had now been promoted to conductor, said he had bumped
against it about six miles down the track. The little end door had
been broken open from the inside with a coupling-pin, which Pike must
have found in the car and kept concealed. With the window open it was
no trick at all to crawl out, set the brake, and stop the car. Nobody
doubted any longer that he was the one who had started the fire.
I may as well pass over the next month without making much fuss about
it here. Nothing happened except that folks kept going away. After
the fire nearly all of those burned out left, and about the same time
all of the settlers who had taken up claims in the neighborhood also
went back east for the winter, some of them on the train, but most of
them in white-topped covered wagons. There was almost no business in
town, and if you wanted to get into a store you would generally first
have to hunt up the owner and ask him to open it for you. I saw Mr.
Clerkinwell occasionally. He always spoke kindly and wished me
success. Then the great October blizzard came.
Folks in that country still talk about the October blizzard, and well
they may do so, because the like of it has never been known since. It
came on the twenty-sixth day of October, and lasted three days. It was
as bad as it ought to have been in January, and the people at Track's
End, being new to the country, judged that the winter had come to
stay, and were discouraged; and so most of the rest of them went
away.
It began to snow on the morning of the twenty-fifth, with an east and
northeast wind. The snow came down all day in big flakes, and by
evening it was a foot deep. It turned colder in the night, and the
wind shifted to the northwest. In the morning it was blizzarding. The
air was full of fine snow blown before the wind, and before noon you
could not see across the street. Some of the smaller houses were
almost drifted under. This kept up for three days. Of course the train
could not get through, and the one telegraph wire went down and left
the town like an island alone in the middle of the ocean.
The next day after the blizzard stopped it grew warmer and the snow
began to melt a little, but it was another four days before the train
came. By the time it did come it seemed as if everybody in town was
disgusted or frightened enough to leave. When the second train after
the blizzard had gone back, there were but thirty-two persons, all
told, at Track's End. Only one of these was a woman, and she it was
that was the cause of making me a hotel-keeper on a small scale.
The woman was Mrs. Sours, wife of my employer. One morning, after
every one had left the breakfast-table except her husband and myself,
she said to me:
"Jud, couldn't you run the hotel this winter, now that there are only
three or four boarders left, and them not important nor particular,
only so they get enough to eat?"
"I don't know, ma'am," I said. "I can run the barn, but I'm afraid I
don't know much about a hotel."
"Do you hear the boy say he can do it, Henry?" says she, turning to
her husband. "Of course he can do it, and do it well, too. He always
said his mother taught him how to cook. That means I'm a-going down on
the train to-morrow, and not coming back to this wretched country till
spring has melted off the snow and made it fit for a decent body to
live in."
"Well, all right," said Sours. "You may go; Jud and me are good for
it."
"Mercy sakes!" cried Mrs. Sours, "do you suppose I'm going to leave
you here to be frozen to death, and starved to death, and killed by
the wolves that we already hear howling every night, and murdered by
Indians, and shot by Pike and that wretched band of horse-thieves
that the Billings sheriffs who stopped here the other night was
looking for? No, Henry; when I go I am going to take you with me."
Sours tried to argue with her a little, but it did no sort of good,
and the next day they both went off and I was left in charge of the
hotel for the winter with three boarders--Tom Carr, the station agent
and telegraph operator; Frank Valentine, the postmaster; and a
Norwegian named Andrew, who was to take my place in the barn. Allenham
had gone before the blizzard. Some others went on the same train with
Mr. Sours and his wife. We were twenty-six, all told, that night.
The weather remained bad, and the train was often late or did not come
at all. On the last day of November there were an even fourteen of us
left. On the morning of that day week Tom Carr came over from the
station and brought word that he had just got a telegram from
headquarters saying that for the rest of the winter the train would
run to Track's End but once a week, coming up Wednesday and going back
Thursday.
"Well, that settles it with _me_," said Harvey Tucker. "I shall go
back with it the first Thursday it goes."
"Same with me," said a man named West. "I know when I've got enough,
and I've got enough of Track's End."
Mr. Clerkinwell, who happened to be present, laughed cheerfully. He
was by far the oldest man left, but he always seemed the least
discouraged.
"Oh," he said to the others, "that's nothing. The train does us no
good except to bring the mail, and it can bring it just as well once a
week as twice. We were really pampered with that train coming to us
twice a week," and he laughed again and went out.
It was just another week and a day that poor Mr. Clerkinwell was taken
sick. He had begun boarding at the hotel, and that night did not come
to supper. I went over to his rooms to see what the trouble was. I
found him on the bed in a high fever. His talk was rambling and
flighty. It was a good deal about his daughter Florence, whom he had
told me of before. Then he wandered to other matters.
"It's locked, Judson, it's locked, and nobody knows the combination;
and there aren't any burglars here," he said. I knew he was talking
about the safe in the room below.
We all did what we could for him, which was little enough. The doctor
had gone away weeks before. He grew worse during the night. The train
had come in that day, and I asked Burrdock if he did not think it
would be best to send him away on it in the morning to his friends at
St. Paul, where he could get proper care. Burrdock agreed to this
plan. Toward morning the old gentleman fell asleep, and we covered him
very carefully and carried him over to the train on his bed. He roused
up a little in the car and seemed to realize where he was.
"Take care of the bank, Judson, take good care of it," he said in a
sort of a feeble way. "You must be banker as well as hotel-keeper
now."
I told him I would do the best I could, and he closed his eyes again.
It was cold and blizzardy when the train left at nine o'clock. Tucker
and West were not the only ones of our little colony who took the
train; there were five others, making, with Mr. Clerkinwell, eight,
and leaving us six, to wit: Tom Carr, the agent; Frank Valentine, the
postmaster; Jim Stackhouse; Cy Baker; Andrew, the Norwegian, and
myself, Judson Pitcher.
After the train had gone away down the track in a cloud of white
smoke, we held a mock mass-meeting around the depot stove, and elected
Tom Carr mayor, Jim Stackhouse treasurer, and Andrew street
commissioner, with instructions to "clear the streets of snow without
delay so that the city's system of horse-cars may be operated to the
advantage of our large and growing population." The Norwegian grinned
and said:
"Aye tank he be a pretty big yob to put all that snow away."
[Illustration: READING THE OUTLAWS' LETTER, DECEMBER SIXTEENTH]
In a little while the new street commissioner and I left the others at
a game of cards and started out to go to the hotel. There was a strong
northwest wind, and the fine snow was sifting along close to the
ground. I noticed that the rails were already covered in front of the
depot. The telegraph wire hummed dismally. We were plowing along
against the wind when we heard a shout and looked up. Over by the old
graders' camp there were three men on horseback, all bundled up in fur
coats. One of them had a letter in his hand which he waved at us.
"Let's see what's up," I said to Andrew, and we started over. At that
the man stuck the letter in the box of a broken dump-cart, and then
they all rode away to the west.
When we came up to the cart I unfolded the letter and read:
TO PROP. BANK OF TRACK'S END AND OTHER CITIZENS AND FOLKS:
The Undersined being in need of a little Reddy Munny regrets that they
have to ask you for $5,000. Leave it behind the bord nailed to the
door of Bill Mountain's shack too mile northwest and there wunt be no
trubble. If we don't get munny to buy fuel with we shall have to burn
your town to keep warm. Maybe it will burn better now than it did last
fall. So being peecibel ourselves, and knowing _how very peecibel_ you
all are, it will be more plesent all around if you come down with the
cash. No objextions to small bills. We know _how few there are of you_
but we don't think we have asked for too much.
Yours Respecfully, D. PIKE,
and numrous Frends.
P.X. Thow somewhat short on reddy funs,
We still no how to use our guns.
This is poetry but we mean bizness.