As we started back Kaiser stopped and began to growl at something out on the prairie, and I looked, and after a time made out Dick and Ned. They were very nervous, and would not let me come up to them, but I toiled around them at last and started them toward their barn. I next looked after Blossom. I found her lying down, as comfortable as you please, chewing her cud and right at home in the cellar. She had made a meal out of the coarse hay which came out of a crockery bale, and I thought I would leave her for the night. So I took a big pitcher out of the bale and milked her then and there, and took it home, and Kaiser and Pawsy and I disposed of it without more to-do. I was beginning to feel better about my family, and felt still more so when I found that Dick and Ned had gone into their stalls and had stopped their snorting, and only breathed hard when they saw me. Next I went after Crazy Jane; but though I coaxed and shooed, and threw chunks of frozen snow at her, while Kaiser barked his teeth loose, almost, it did no sort of good; she only looked at me and made a funny noise as a hen does when she sees a hawk. I could not climb up with my hurt ankle, so I had to leave her, much against my will. The chimney, I thought, was a good deal exposed for a sleeping-place in winter, but there was no wind and I didn't have much fear but that she would come out all right. I had like to have forgotten the other chickens; they never popped into my mind till I was back in the hotel, but I dragged myself out after them. I found the poor things stuffed in three sacks, as if they had been turnips, lying on the snow. I knew I could not carry them, and felt that I could scarce drag them even; so I hit upon the plan of taking a bit of rope from the pile of plunder and hitching Kaiser to the sacks, and so in that way we got them, one by one, to the barn at last and let them out, all cramped and ruffled. Kaiser was so proud of his work that he set up a bark which started the broncos into another fit of snorting. I think if there had been one more member of my family lost that I could have done nothing for it that night, my ankle was in such a state. I tried bathing it in hot water, and before I went to bed I had it fairly parboiled, which seemed greatly to relieve it. I was too tired to go across the drawbridge to my room, so I stretched out on the lounge in the office, not much caring if all the robbers in Christendom came. But I could not help wondering at my strange Christmas; and half the night I heard the wolves howling round the blacksmith shop and looking up (I knew) at Crazy Jane; but I thought they might as well howl around the gilt chicken on a weather-vane for all the good it would do them. CHAPTER XII 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.