I had truly thought that those savages had been making a great noise before, but it had been nothing to the sound which now came from the cellar. Such another shrieking and screaming I never heard before nor since. I would not have believed that any lot of human beings could make such an uproar. Then I heard them fighting their way up the stairs and go squawking and bellowing out the front door of the store. When I heard the last one go I seized up the pumpkin, took it on one shoulder, and with my stick went hippety-hopping out through the alley and along the sidewalk after them. They were going away in the darkness for their ponies like the wind. I went to the end of the walk and, holding the lantern in both hands, raised and lowered and waved it at them. Not once did they stop their howls of terror, and I could hear and partly see them tumbling onto their ponies in all ways and plunging off through the drifts to the west like madmen. I longed to be on Dick's back with my lantern to chase them, but I knew not where Dick was, and my ankle had already borne too much, as it told me plainly. I got back to the hotel as best I could, put up the lamp in its place and sat down to rest. But though I needed rest, I needed food more; so I started the fire and looked about for something to eat. I soon found that the Indians had left nothing except a few crusts of bread and some frozen eggs. But I boiled the eggs and made out a sort of a meal. As I finished I heard a yowl which I thought I knew, and, sure enough, when I looked up, there was the cat still on the door. This set me to laughing, and I said: "I wonder was ever a family so scattered before on a Christmas night as is mine? There is Kaiser shut in under a water-tank; Blossom locked in the cellar of a grocery store; Crazy Jane, the hen, on top of the smoke-stack of a blacksmith shop; the rest of the chickens sacked up and scattered on the ground; Dick and Ned, the horses, I don't know where; Pawsy, the cat, on top of the door; and Jud himself, the head of the family, here eating what the Indians have left, with a hurt ankle and a smell of roasted pumpkin all through his clothes." I had a good laugh over things, and then decided that I must do what I could for my scattered family, though my ankle seemed about ready to go by the board. So I first got down the cat and then lit the lantern and started out after Kaiser. Poor dog, he was beside himself to see me, and liked to have knocked me down in showing how glad he was.