The mysterious Fire, and Something further about my wretched State of
Terror: with an Account of my great System of Tunnels and famous Fire
Stronghold.
Once I said, when I told of how I found myself helpless at Bill
Mountain's, that I thought Kaiser the best dog that ever lived; here I
may say I know it. Though he got in my way and made me turn a few
somersets in the dark, he may have saved Track's End from
destruction.
When I got to my feet I felt my way across the room and through the
hall to a room in the southeast corner of the hotel, where there was a
loophole in the boards over the window. Through this I saw that the
livery stable was a pillar of fire.
How long I stood there at the loophole staring I know not; I think I
did not move or scarcely breathe. It was a large building, the second
story packed with hay; and below there were stored many wagons, some
farm machinery, and a quantity of lumber and building material, all
things that would burn well. Everything was ablaze, the roof fell in
as I looked, and the flames and sparks and smoke reached up like a
vast column, it seemed to the very clouds.
At last I saw it was no time for idleness, so I turned away and went
down-stairs. As I started to pull open the back door it came to me
suddenly that Pike and his men must have come. I reached behind the
desk and got Sours's Winchester. Then I went out, leaving Kaiser
behind, much to his disappointment. The heat struck my face like a
blast from a furnace, and the light dazzled my eyes. I crept very
cautiously over the snowbank behind Hawkey's and Taggart's till I came
to Fitzsimmons's. Here the heat almost scorched my face, and I saw
that the paint on the building was beginning to blister. I peered
everywhere for signs of the men, but saw nothing. I crept around the
corner of the building and looked across the square, but there was no
sign of human life. I expected nothing less than that the whole town
would 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 I
knew despite my fears. The sky was covered with thick, low-hanging
clouds, and save for the fire, the night was pitch-dark. The whole
town lay below me, half lit up like day, half inky shadows. Even at
this distance I could feel the heat, and the sullen roar and crackling
of the flames never stopped. But though I shaded my eyes and peered
everywhere among the houses and across the prairie, I could make out
no living thing.
Cinders were falling all over town, but there seemed to be little fire
left in them when they alighted. The roofs were mostly flat and
covered with tin, though the depot, the Headquarters barn, and a few
others were of shingles. Suddenly a cinder unusually large fell on the
depot roof and lay there blazing. I hurried down the tower, and hauled
a ladder which I had noticed the day the Indians came from beneath the
platform, 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 the
hotel. But the flame died out, and I dragged the ladder across the
square. It occurred to me that it would be no great loss to me should
the depot burn. I could not know the good thing that was later to come
out of it.
It was so hot that I could not go behind Fitzsimmons's, so I dragged
my ladder across the drifts of the street and through between the
hotel and Hawkey's. When I came out in the rear of these I was
startled to find a small blaze on the barn roof. I hurried to the barn
with my ladder, got it in place, and then with pails of water from the
well I managed to put it out. Once more it caught, and once the roof
of the shed where Pike shot Allenham blazed up; but I dashed water on
the fires and saved both buildings.
At last the stable fire began to die down. The current of air from the
northeast had become stronger, and the column of smoke was swaying
more and more to the southwest. Just as daylight began to appear in
the east the last remaining timber of the stable fell, and, though
there was a great cloud of sparks and still much heat, I saw that
unless a strong east wind should spring up there was no longer danger
that the town would be consumed. By this time I was cold and stiff, my
face scorched by the fire, and my clothes frozen with the water from
the pailfuls I had carried. I went into the hotel.
Kaiser was so glad to see me that he reared up and put his forepaws on
my shoulders. I was patting and praising him, when suddenly the
question, What caused the fire? flashed into my mind. There had been
no trace of Pike. From the windmill tower I had been unable to see any
trail leading from the way he would come. There was no explanation
except that it must have been caused by the same thing that had made
me so much other trouble. Till it was broad daylight I paced up and
down the office floor, unable to stop. For two days I thought of
little 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 fairly
desperate through lonesomeness or pure fright I went and dug a snow
tunnel. I was as bad as a mole for tunnels; and I meant to tell about
my 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 to
my mother lying spread out before me, that I have not once got around
to mention any of them except the first, which connected the hotel and
the bank, directly across the street. I was so taken up with this that
soon after New-Year's I decided to build some others.
I was keeping up at that time five fires (or smokes) besides the one
in the hotel, to wit: one in the harness shop and one in Joyce's, both
at the north end of the street and opposite each other; one in the
bank; one in Townsend's store at the south end of the street on the
west side, and one in the depot out across the square in front of the
south end of the street. There was a chance for a good tunnel to all
of these except to the depot; here the northwest wind had swept across
the square and the ground in some places was almost bare.
But the street between the houses was filled up pretty much like a
bread tin with a loaf, and starting from the north side of my first
tunnel I began another and ran it straight up the street to between
the harness shop and Joyce's, and here I ran side tunnels to each of
these. The snow was rather low in front of Joyce's at first, and was
not enough above the sidewalk to give me room, but the sidewalk here
was high, being made of plank, as were all the walks in town; so I
went under it by getting down on my hands and knees, and, as the
building had no underpinning, I went on under and up through a
trap-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 piece
of paper nailed on the wall everything I got from any store, so that
in the spring, if I were still alive, I could pay for it, or, if it
were food, Sours could, since I was, of course, still working for him
and it was his place to pay for my keep.
South from the first tunnel I next ran another and curved it into
Townsend's store. This was a fine, high tunnel; and it would have done
your heart good to have seen Kaiser whisk about through all of them,
filling the air with snow from waving his tail, just like a great
feather duster, and oftentimes barking at the top of his voice. "Be
still, sir," I would say to him; "you will disturb the neighbors," at
the which he would bark the louder. I often wondered what a stranger
on top of the drifts would have thought to have heard the dog's noise
beneath his feet.
It always seemed warm and comfortable in the tunnels, if they were
made of snow; this you noticed particularly on a blizzardy day, since,
of course, no wind whatever got into them. Indeed, on a windy day I
doubt not a snow tunnel would be warmer than a house without a fire.
But though Kaiser delighted in the tunnels, Pawsy would have nothing
to do with any of them at all except the one which led from the
woodshed to the barn.
This I made last. I got into it from a shed window, which I cut down
and fitted with a rough door. It went into the barn through a small
door in the corner, which was in halves, like a grist-mill door. I
opened only the lower half, and this tunnel I used mainly in bad
weather. I had only just finished it the day before the fire. It was
the day after the fire, when I was feverish for some way to get rid of
my scare, that I decided to go to work on my place of retreat in case
the 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 harder
than ever. The place had to be, of course, something that would not
burn and some place that could not be found. The only thing that
wouldn't burn was the snow, but in case of fire I knew that it would
melt for some distance from the buildings. I had just had an example
of this. Besides, there had to be a way to get into it which could not
be seen either before or after the fire, and this entrance must be
from a building so that I would not have to expose myself in going to
it. 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, and
once I wrote about it to my mother, but I always found that something
was weak about the plan somewhere. But I now concluded that I had
struck on the right thing at last.
A hundred feet back of the next building to the north of the one in
which I had my bedroom was a small barn where the man who owned the
place had kept a cow. It was so small that I always thought he must
have measured his cow, like a tailor, and built the barn to fit. Fifty
feet back (east) of this barn was a haystack. Before the snow came the
top of it had been taken off so it was left about four or five feet
high and the shape of a bowl turned wrong side up. It was in the lee
of the barn, and the snow had piled up over it in a great drift so
that you would never once have guessed that there was such a thing as
a haystack within half a mile. It was, maybe, a hundred feet from the
Headquarters barn to this stack, with four or five or more feet of
snow 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 of
hay and half of snow.
There was no underpinning beneath the Headquarters barn (most of the
buildings in town simply stood on big stones a few feet apart) and the
space where it should have been was filled in with a wide board and
banked outside with hay. Under Ned's manger I sawed out a piece of
this board big enough to crawl through, and hung it on leather hinges
at the top, concealed by the manger. I then dug through the hay and
had a clear field for my tunnel straight to the stack.
I ran my tunnel, or rather burrow, as it was small and low, a little
too much east, and missed the haystack by about three feet, but I
probed for it with a long, stiff wire and soon found it. I carried in
a 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 stretch
out comfortably in it. The hay had been wet and was frozen, so there
was no danger of its caving down on me. As the stack was all covered
with snow no wind could get in, and I knew it would always be warm
enough to be comfortable with plenty of clothes and blankets. I took
in a buffalo-robe and some things of that sort and left them there. I
also cached a box of food there, consisting of dried beef, crackers,
and such things; enough, I calculated, to last three days. I could
hardly tell what to do about water, but at last tried the plan of
chopping ice into small pieces and putting them into some of Mrs.
Sours's empty glass fruit-jars. My notion was that in case I was
imprisoned there I could button a can inside of my coat and thus thaw
enough of the ice to get a drink.
I was very well pleased with what I called my fire stronghold. I could
enter from a hidden place in the barn, and could get into the barn
through the tunnel from the hotel, which connected with the whole
tunnel system. I knew if every house in town burned that it would not
melt the snow around the stronghold; and I thought if I were in it
when the barn burned I could push down the snow where it melted along
the tunnel so that it would not be noticed.
In short I was so tickled over my Esquimau house that I took Kaiser
the first night it was done and slept in it; and though it was one of
the coldest nights we were comfortable. I heard the wolves sniffing
about on the roof, but we were getting used to wolves. I didn't know
that we were going to have to sleep under snow again before spring;
and in less comfortable quarters.