One of my Letters to my Mother, in which I tell of many Things and
especially 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 week
from the next day after my strange Christmas, to show that I did write
her long letters every Sunday, as I have said; though of course it was
many 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 since
I have been in this dreadful place that I am very glad to send you
some good news at last, and that is that my ankle, of which I wrote
you last Sunday, is all well. I kept up the hot-water applications and
by the next morning it was so much better that I could walk on it. I
hope I may not turn it again.
I don't know as there is much other good news to write, except that it
is good news, and maybe quite strange news, that I am still alive at
all 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 gives
a 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 not
believe that Crazy Jane has laid an egg since her night on the
chimney, and I'm almost afraid she caught cold, as she has not had a
genuine fight with another hen since. Kaiser and the cat and Dick and
Ned are all well and in good appetite. I have heard rather less of the
wolves of late, and I still think it would be easier to get the Man in
the Moon to come to this town than any of those Indians. But the
outlaws I still fear very much. Oh, something I ought to have written
you last week! I mean this: I got a letter from them that day out at
Mountain's, but I had no time to read it Christmas and the next day I
forgot 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 too
bad 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 do
much 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 the
west, however; and they could come in on the grade. Of course they can
come on snow-shoes at any time and go everywhere. I cannot even hope
to keep out of having trouble with them. I have made no answer to this
letter, and can't make up my mind whether it would be best to do so or
not.
I kept up work all the week on the fortifications, when the weather
would permit; for there has been another great blizzard, the worst of
the winter so far. I even worked all day yesterday, though it was
New-Year's. Monday morning I again started all of my fires, but I
found that in three of the buildings there was not enough coal to last
long. So I hitched up Ned and Dick on an old sleigh of Sours's and
took a good lot to each place from the sheds at the railroad. It was a
lucky thing I did so, too, because it snowed more Tuesday night and
began to blizzard Wednesday and kept it up till Friday without once
stopping; and it would now be impossible to drive anywhere near the
coal-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 stove
griddles laid on them, and it makes a great smoke without much fire.
The guns and ammunition I have disposed of here and there, in good
places for me in case of attack, but hard to find for other folks. One
I keep standing by my bed's head, but nobody would be apt to look
there for either gun or bed, I hope. I take in my drawbridge always
the minute I cross.
The last blizzard has helped me a good deal. The street is now so full
that the first-story doors and windows of the hotel and bank and most
of the other buildings are covered. Not a bit of daylight gets into
the hotel office, and I am writing this by lamplight, though the sun
is bright outdoors. The hotel can now only be entered by the back
door, which I have strengthened with boards and braces. I have also
boarded up the second-story windows, as they are now not much above
the level of the drifts.
My tunnel might now be much higher and I am going to make it so that I
can stand up straight all the way through. This is the only way there
is to get into the bank now, unless you were to pound off the planks I
have nailed over the upper windows, or shovel the snow away below. I
drew over lumber from the yard the day I had the team hitched up for
the coal. There are plenty of nails at Taggart's. The blacksmith tools
which would be good to break open a safe with I have buried in the
snow. I have not yet carried out the plan I told you about which might
save me in case the town is burned. It is a big job, but I am going at
it 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 it
seems 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 things
those savage Indians lugged out in the square. I fastened up all of
the buildings which they had torn open and straightened up things in
the 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 of
barrels and boxes and crates and everything you can think of, all
broken open and the things thrown everywhere, that I only looked down
and gave it up then and there.
As soon as I can get around to it I mean to build some more tunnels to
some of the other houses. I think I ought to draw up a list of regular
hours for getting up, fixing the fires, climbing the windmill tower to
look with the field-glass, and such-like things, as I used to hear
Uncle Ben tell was the way they did when he was in the army. I mean to
go 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 were
going to you so that you would get it before you get others, or before
you 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 I
would take the chance to go away from this horrid place! If I live to
get away I will never come here again. So I must tell you what little
I can of this other matter.
I am not here in Track's End alone. What it is that is here I do not
know. How long it has been here I do not know. Where it stays, what it
does, where it goes, I do not know. I have looked over my shoulder
twenty times from nervousness since I began this letter.
Last Monday night I hung a piece of bacon on a rafter in the shed back
of the kitchen, after cutting off a slice for breakfast the next
morning. I kept it there because it is a cool place and handy to the
kitchen. Tuesday morning it was gone. I had left the outside door
shut, and it was still shut in the morning. The door between the
kitchen and shed was locked. I could see no tracks or marks of any
kind.
Wednesday morning the thumb-piece of the latch on the depot door was
pressed down. I don't think I left it that way. A pail by the back
door in which I had thrown some scraps which I was saving for the
chickens 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 nothing
unusual.
Friday morning a quilt and a blanket had been stolen from a bed in the
hotel. Another quilt was drawn from the bed and lay on the floor. I
think the window (it had not yet been boarded up) at the foot of the
bed had been raised. The snowbank outside is high. The blizzard was
still blowing.
Yesterday morning I saw nothing wrong, but I thought about it a good
deal during the day. I remembered of hearing strange sounds at night
from 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 was
very still, but it was cloudy and dark and a flake of snow fell once
in a while. I put on the big fur coat and sat on a box just inside
the woodshed door, which was open on a crack. At about eleven o'clock
I heard a faint noise at the barn as if something were in the yard at
the side trying to get in at one of the windows. I swung my door open
a little more, it creaked and I saw something dark go across the yard
and over the fence. There was no sound that I could hear. I could not
see that it touched the ground. It went behind a haystack by the
fence. There was instantly another glimpse of it as it passed beyond
the stack, going either behind or through the shed under which the men
stood that night when Pike shot Allenham. I was not sure if I saw it
the other side of there or not, but I could not see so well beyond the
shed. The motion was gliding; I heard no footstep, nor sound of wings,
nor anything. It snowed some more in the night. This morning I could
find nothing wrong except that a clothes-line beyond the shed was
broken. 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, and
if I remember aright, it has all the time been drawn up so that it did
not sag at all. It was snapped off as if something had run against
it.
I must close now and do up my work for the night. I only ask that I
may live to see you all again. If I do not, then may this reach you
somehow.
Your Dutiful Son,
JUDSON PITCHER.