Track's End: Being the Narrative of Judson Pitcher's Strange Winter Spent There as Told by Himself and Edited by Hayden Carruth Including an Accurate Account of His Numerous Adventures, and the Facts Concerning His Several Surprising Escapes from Death Now First Printed in FullCarruth, Hayden
General
Track's End: Being the Narrative of Judson Pitcher's Strange Winter Spent There as Told by Himself and Edited by Hayden Carruth Including an Accurate Account of His Numerous Adventures, and the Facts Concerning His Several Surprising Escapes from Death Now First Printed in Full
Carruth, Hayden
Adventure stories; Dakota Territory -- Fiction; Winter -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
"Do you live in cellar?" I asked. He made the sound that seemed to
mean yes. I remembered that I had not gone down into Fitzsimmons's
cellar after the Indians went away because things were in such
confusion that I saw I could do nothing with them. Since that I had
had no occasion to go into the store at all. I had no doubt that he
had stolen everything I had missed, but had been unable to get a gun
before, because I had kept them very carefully under lock and key. I
thought from his looks that he had probably lived principally on the
liquor in the cellar, with the groceries that were in the store and
what meat he had stolen from me. I could feel that it was getting
colder in the stronghold, and guessed that he had broken open the
tunnel, either purposely, after hearing Kaiser bark, or by accident
when walking over it, as the thaw had weakened the roof a good deal.
"Want to get out," I said. "Go first!"
He pressed back close to the wall of the tunnel. "You go--take dog,"
he said. I made Kaiser go ahead, took the lantern and followed,
saying "Come" to the Indian. He did so, simply stooping down, though I
crawled on my hands and knees. Sure enough, the tunnel was broken down
near the barn. We got out through the hole and went across the drifts
to the open place back of the hotel. I tried again to get the gun away
from him, but he hung on to it tighter than ever. I asked him if he
were hungry, and he forgot to grunt and said "yes."
I brought out some food for him, and he stood in the shed and ate it
like a hungry wolf. He gave a satisfied grunt when he got through, and
I once more tried to get him to let me have the gun, but he hung to it
without even a grunt, and started in the direction of the Fitzsimmons
building. I went with him, as I could not understand how he had gone
in and out for so long without my seeing some traces of it.
He stalked on in silence, his moccasins not making a sound on the hard
snow. There was a well with a high curb a few feet behind the
Fitzsimmons building and directly opposite the window through which I
had shown the jack-lantern. There was now a big bank of snow as high
as the well curb from it to the building. He stepped over in the well
curb, and, without looking back, disappeared through a hole in the
side of it where he had pried off some of the boards. He had borrowed
one of my ideas and made a tunnel between the well and window.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account