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

by Hayden Carruth

Pike and Friends.

I look for them any time. My only hope is that the weather will be too bad for them to travel; but of course there must be some good weather. The snow is already so deep that it will be very hard for them to do much on horseback. The street is full, and it is very deep north, east, and south. The ground is almost bare for half a mile to the west, however; and they could come in on the grade. Of course they can come on snow-shoes at any time and go everywhere. I cannot even hope to keep out of having trouble with them. I have made no answer to this letter, and can’t make up my mind whether it would be best to do so or not.

I kept up work all the week on the fortifications, when the weather would permit; for there has been another great blizzard, the worst of the winter so far. I even worked all day yesterday, though it was New-Year’s. Monday morning I again started all of my fires, 108 but I found that in three of the buildings there was not enough coal to last long. So I hitched up Ned and Dick on an old sleigh of Sours’s and took a good lot to each place from the sheds at the railroad. It was a lucky thing I did so, too, because it snowed more Tuesday night and began to blizzard Wednesday and kept it up till Friday without once stopping; and it would now be impossible to drive anywhere near the coal-sheds.

I have got up a plan to do what I want to do without using much coal; I smother the fires, all except the one in the hotel, with stove griddles laid on them, and it makes a great smoke without much fire. The guns and ammunition I have disposed of here and there, in good places for me in case of attack, but hard to find for other folks. One I keep standing by my bed’s head, but nobody would be apt to look there for either gun or bed, I hope. I take in my drawbridge always the minute I cross.

The last blizzard has helped me a good deal. The street is now so full that the first-story doors and windows of the hotel and bank and most of the other buildings are covered. Not 109 a bit of daylight gets into the hotel office, and I am writing this by lamplight, though the sun is bright outdoors. The hotel can now only be entered by the back door, which I have strengthened with boards and braces. I have also boarded up the second-story windows, as they are now not much above the level of the drifts.

My tunnel might now be much higher and I am going to make it so that I can stand up straight all the way through. This is the only way there is to get into the bank now, unless you were to pound off the planks I have nailed over the upper windows, or shovel the snow away below. I drew over lumber from the yard the day I had the team hitched up for the coal. There are plenty of nails at Taggart’s. The blacksmith tools which would be good to break open a safe with I have buried in the snow. I have not yet carried out the plan I told you about which might save me in case the town is burned. It is a big job, but I am going at it as soon as I can. There is much other work which I want to do. There is a large tin keg of blasting-powder at Taggart’s which it seems as if I ought to use 110 somehow. Sometimes I wish I had a cannon, but I don’t know as it would be much use to me.

I had a vast deal of work Monday and Tuesday carrying back the things those savage Indians lugged out in the square. I fastened up all of the buildings which they had torn open and straightened up things in the stores as best I could. Fitzsimmons’s was in the worst confusion, and I could not do much with it. The cellar was such a wreck of barrels and boxes and crates and everything you can think of, all broken open and the things thrown everywhere, that I only looked down and gave it up then and there.

As soon as I can get around to it I mean to build some more tunnels to some of the other houses. I think I ought to draw up a list of regular hours for getting up, fixing the fires, climbing the windmill tower to look with the field-glass, and such-like things, as I used to hear Uncle Ben tell was the way they did when he was in the army. I mean to go out every good day and take some target practice with my rifle.

I wish I could close this letter here, and I 111 would do so if it were going to you so that you would get it before you get others, or before you know that you are never to get others from me, if that is to be, as I fear it may. Oh, if I only had it to do over again, how quick I would take the chance to go away from this horrid place! If I live to get away I will never come here again. So I must tell you what little I can of this other matter.

I am not here in Track’s End alone. What it is that is here I do not know. How long it has been here I do not know. Where it stays, what it does, where it goes, I do not know. I have looked over my shoulder twenty times from nervousness since I began this letter.