MAP OF TRACK’S END
I don’t know if it was the excitement of the fight, or the awful stillness of the night, or what it was, but after I had finished my work and sat down in the office to rest I fell into the utmost terror. The awful lonesomeness pressed down upon me like a weight. I started at the least sound; dangers I had never thought of before, such as sickness and the like, popped into my mind clear as day, 65 and, in short, I was half dead from sheer fright. There was not a breath of wind outside, or a sound, except once in a while a sharp crack of some building as the frost warped a clapboard or sprung out a nail; and at each crack I started as if I had been struck. The moon was shining brightly, but it was much colder; the thermometer already marked twenty degrees below zero.
Suddenly there came, clear and sharp, the savage howling of a pack of wolves; it seemed at the very door. I jumped out of my chair, I was so startled, and stood, I think, a most disgraceful picture of a coward. Kaiser rose up on his three sound legs and began to growl. At last I got courage to go to the window and peep out, with my teeth fairly chattering. I could see them up the street, all in a bunch, and offering a fine shot; but I was too frightened to shoot. After a while they went off, and it was still again. I wondered which was worse, their savage wailing or the awful stillness which made the ticking of the clock seem like the blows of a hammer. I wished that there might come another blizzard.
But at last I got so I could walk the floor; 66 and as I went back and forth I managed to look at things a little more calmly. The first thing I decided on was that I must no longer, in good weather at least, sleep in the hotel. It was easy to see, if the robbers came in the night and found nobody in the other houses, that they would come straight to the hotel. I made up my mind to take my bed to some empty house where they would be little likely to look for any one, or where they would not be apt to look until after I had had warning of their coming.
Another thing which I decided on was that I must keep up two or three more fires, and get up early every morning to start them. I saw, too, that I ought to distribute the Winchesters more, and board up the windows of the bank, and perhaps some of the other buildings, leaving loopholes out of which to shoot. Still another point which I thought of was this: Suppose the whole town should be burned? I wondered if I could not find or make some place where I would be safe and would not have to expose myself to the robbers if they stayed while the fire burned, as they probably would. I thought of the cellars, but 67 it did not seem that I could make one of them do in any way.
My fright was, after all, a good thing, because it made me think of all possible dangers, and consequently, as it seemed, ways to meet them. It was at this time that the idea of a tunnel under the snow across the street from the hotel to the bank occurred to me; but I was not sure about this. Still, some way to cross the street without being seen kept running in my mind. In short, I walked and thought myself into a much better state of mind, and, though I still started at every sound, I was no longer too frightened to control myself.
When it came bedtime I decided to follow out my plan for sleeping away from the hotel without delay. There was an empty store building to the north of the hotel. It was new, and had never been occupied. I had often noticed that one of the second-story windows on the side was directly opposite one in the hotel, and not over four feet away. I carried up the ironing-board from the kitchen, opened the hotel window, put the board over for a bridge, stepped across and entered the vacant building. 68
I thought I had never seen a place quite so cold before; but I carried over the mattress from my bed, together with several blankets, and placed them in a small back room in the second story. The doors and windows of the first story were all nailed and boarded up, and it seemed about the last place that you would expect to find any one sleeping. I left the dog and cat in the hotel, took one of the rifles with me, and pulled in my drawbridge. I almost dropped it as I did so, for at that instant the wolves set up another unearthly howling. I got into bed as quick as I could. They went the length of the street with their horrible noise; and then I heard them scratching at the doors and windows of the barn. I could have shot them easily in the bright moonlight; but I remember that I didn’t do so.