CHAPTER III
A Fire and a Blizzard: with how a great many People go away from Track’s End and how some others come.
It was an even two hours’ fight between the town of Track’s End and the fire; and they came out about even–that is, most of the scattering dwelling-houses were burned, but the business part of the town was saved. There was no water to be had, nor time to plow a furrow, so we fought the fire mainly with brooms, shovels, old blankets, and such-like things with which we could pound it out. But it got up to the dwellings in spite of us. As soon as the danger seemed to be past, I said to Allenham, who had had charge of the fire brigade:
“I saw a man set that fire out there. Don’t you suppose we could find him?”
“Pike, I’ll bet a dollar!” exclaimed Allenham. “We’ll try it, anyhow, whoever it is.” 23
He ordered everybody that could to get a horse, and soon we all rode off into the darkness. But though we were divided into small parties and searched all that night and half the next day, nothing came of it. I kept with Allenham, and as we came in he said:
“There’s no use looking for him any longer. If he didn’t have a horse and ride away out of the country ahead of all of us, then he’s down a badger-hole and intends to stay there till we quit looking. I’ll wager he’ll know better’n to show himself around Track’s End again, anyhow.”
Toward night the train came in pushing Pike’s box-car ahead of it. Burrdock, who had now been promoted to conductor, said he had bumped against it about six miles down the track. The little end door had been broken open from the inside with a coupling-pin, which Pike must have found in the car and kept concealed. With the window open it was no trick at all to crawl out, set the brake, and stop the car. Nobody doubted any longer that he was the one who had started the fire.
I may as well pass over the next month without making much fuss about it here. 24 Nothing happened except that folks kept going away. After the fire nearly all of those burned out left, and about the same time all of the settlers who had taken up claims in the neighborhood also went back east for the winter, some of them on the train, but most of them in white-topped covered wagons. There was almost no business in town, and if you wanted to get into a store you would generally first have to hunt up the owner and ask him to open it for you. I saw Mr. Clerkinwell occasionally. He always spoke kindly and wished me success. Then the great October blizzard came.
Folks in that country still talk about the October blizzard, and well they may do so, because the like of it has never been known since. It came on the twenty-sixth day of October, and lasted three days. It was as bad as it ought to have been in January, and the people at Track’s End, being new to the country, judged that the winter had come to stay, and were discouraged; and so most of the rest of them went away.