Telling of how Pike and his Gang come and of what Kaiser and I do to get ready for them: together with the Way we meet them.
Here, now, I must tell of how the outlaws came to Track’s End, and of the fight we, that is to say, Pike and his gang on the one side and I, Judson Pitcher, on the other side, had that day.
I may speak in prejudice, though I mean to be fair, when I say that I believe them to have been as bad a gang of cutthroats as you could well scare up. Though I fought them all as best I could I make no bones of saying that I should ten thousand times rather have been at home blowing the bellows, or doing anything else.
I was very lucky with these villains and was not caught away from home flat on my back, as I had been by those other scoundrels, the Indians; if I had not been lucky I should 154 not now be here to tell the tale. Those fellows meant no good to me nor to anybody else. It would have been no bad thing if they could all have been hanged by the neck.
They came, then, to Track’s End to rob, and to murder if needs be, on Saturday, February 5th. My good luck consisted in this: The evening before, just as the sun was about to go down, I saw them at Mountain’s from the windmill tower with Tom Carr’s field-glass. I had gone up on purpose to have a look about, as I did two or three times every day when the weather was so I could see. For three days the weather had been much better than at any time before, and it had even thawed a little; so I was not much surprised when I saw horses coming up to the shack from the west. I made out seven men all told, and some extra led horses. I could see that the men went into the shack and that many of the horses lay down. By this I knew they were tired, and guessed that the gang would probably stay there that night and rest. I was surprised that they had got through on horses at all. I stayed on the tower till it was so dark that I could not see 155 any more. The longer I stayed the louder my heart thumped.
I knew they might, after all, come that night, either with the horses or on snow-shoes, so I did what I could to get ready for them. The fires were all going well, and I lit several lamps about town. I wished a thousand times for the population I was pretending I had. I thought if I could have even one friend just to talk to perhaps my heart wouldn’t act quite so unreasonably. But after a while it tired out and quieted down. My knees got stronger and more like good, sensible knees that you don’t have to be ashamed of. I took a look at all the guns and wiped them up. I locked and bolted everything except the doors or windows which led into the tunnels. There wasn’t anything more I could do except wait and try to keep that crazy heart of mine a little quiet.
I knew that whenever or however they came they would be most likely to come in on the grade, so I thought the best place to wait was in Townsend’s store, as they would have to come up facing the back of it. The windows were planked up; but I knew that there were 156 no windows in town, or even sides of houses, either, which would stop a bullet from a good rifle. I calculated if they came in the night it would probably be about one or two o’clock, and if they waited till morning I could look for them when it began to get light.
I went over to Townsend’s early in the evening and sat down close to a back window in the second story. I had Kaiser with me. I think he was gradually getting the thing through his head, because he had stopped wagging his tail and begun to growl once in a while. I thought I could trust him to hear any sound for three or four hours, and I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. Every few minutes I went up a short ladder and put my head out the scuttle in the roof to look and listen. I heard a good deal, but except for the wolves away off it was all in my ears. About midnight by the stars I went to sleep in my chair before I knew it.
When I woke up I gave a great jump. It seemed as if I had been asleep a week; and it certainly had been several hours. Kaiser was sitting on the floor beside my chair. I knelt down and threw my arms around his neck and 157 gave him such a prodigious hug that it must have hurt him. “We will do the best we can!” I said to him.
From the roof I could see a faint light in the east. The wind was fresher from the northwest and it was drifting a little; this was good. I scolded myself for having slept so long. I knew if they had come that I should not have been ready for them.
I hurried around and fixed the fires. I drank a cup of coffee at the hotel, but couldn’t eat anything. I think if I had had outlaws every day that my keep wouldn’t have cost Sours very much. I was back at Townsend’s in a jiffy. It was getting red in the east now, and the moon, which had shone all night, was about down. It was light enough so I could see pretty well by this time; but I heard the crunching of the crust by the horses’ feet before I could see them at all. Then I saw the whole gang coming on a dog-trot along the grade, two abreast, with one ahead, seven pleasant neighbors coming to call on me at Track’s End. I let them come as near as they deserved to come to any honest town and then fired a shot in front of them. I tried to see if 158 the bullet skipped on the snow, but the smoke got in my eyes.
Anyhow, they stopped pretty quick, and stood all in a bunch, talking. “Maybe you don’t like to be shot at,” I said out loud. I don’t know how it was, but my heart was doing better. I thought I would wait and see before I did any more shooting.
They talked a few minutes; then one of them got off his horse, handed his gun and belt to one of the others, took off his big fur coat, pulled out a white cloth and waved it and came walking very slowly toward the town. This seemed fair enough; I had heard my Uncle Ben tell about flags of truce in the war. I waved my handkerchief out of the port-hole and then waited three or four minutes as if we in the houses were talking it over; then I walked boldly out the back door. Kaiser wanted to go along, so I let him.
The man walked very slowly, and I did the same, but we came up within a few steps of each other at last. This was out not very far from the water-tank. I had expected it was Pike himself, and, sure enough, it was, wearing a leather jacket with the collar turned up.
MY MEETING WITH PIKE, TRACK’S END, FEBRUARY FIFTH
“It’s you, is it, Jud?” said he in a kind of sneering tone. (It seemed strange to me to hear a man’s voice, I had been so long alone.)
“Yes, it’s me,” I answered. “What do you want?”
“I sort of thought these here Track’s Enders might send out a full-grown man to talk to me about such an important matter,” he went on.
“I was man enough to catch you a couple of times and it was only your good luck that you weren’t hung up here in Track’s End by the neck,” I said, a little put out by the way he spoke, because I was almost as big as he was.
“Oh, well, no matter. Now you–”
“I’ll tell you the reason I was sent out,” I broke in, just thinking of something.
“What is it?”
“I can say all there is to say as well as anybody, but I’m a poor shot, so it was decided that if I didn’t get back it wouldn’t make much difference in the matter of shooting you fellows down if you come any nearer.”
He pulled his collar down and looked at me 160 over his crooked nose. Kaiser began to growl, but I poked him in the ribs with my foot to let him understand that there was a flag of truce on and he must behave himself. I guess Pike didn’t like it, because this sounded as if we couldn’t trust him, but he didn’t say anything.
“Well,” he broke out, “there’s no use of us standing here and talking. We’ve come after that $5,000, and you fellers know it.”
“We told you all we had to say about that in the letter.”
“Then we’ll bust that safe and burn your town,” he said, like a savage.
“Go ahead and try it,” I answered. “We’re ready for you.”
His face, which had looked black as night all the while, now turned white with rage.
“We’ll try it fast enough and we’ll do it fast enough, too,” he cried, with some prodigious oaths, bad enough for any pirate. “Look here; I ain’t got any gun with me, and I s’pose you ain’t, if you’re any man at all. But you’re as near your gun as I am mine, hey?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then this here flag of truce is ended right 161 now. When I get hold of my gun I shoot, and you’re welcome to do the same!”
He turned and started back on the run. So there was nothing for me but to face about and do the same.