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

CHAPTER XIII

Some Talk at Breakfast, and various other Family Affairs: with Notes on the Weather, and a sight of Something to the Northwest.

It was on the morning of Tuesday, January 25th, as I sat at breakfast with Pawsy in her chair at one end and with Kaiser at the other, drumming on the floor for another bit of bacon, that I said to myself:

“It is just one month to-day since I clapped eyes on a human being; and the ones I saw then were not very good humans, being thieving and drunken Indians.” And when I said this I had not forgotten (when had it been once out of my mind, waking or sleeping?) what I saw on New-Year’s night; but I knew not if I were to count that as human or what.

I remember that Sunday night after I finished the letter to my mother which I put in the last chapter, how I found it darker than I expected when I went out, and how I ran along the snowbanks with my heart thumping 116 like to split, and threw the letter in the top of the post-office door (the rightful opening was long before buried under the snow) and then shot back to the hotel, not daring to look behind me or even stop to breathe. I was well ashamed of myself, at the time, but I could not help it.

On that night it was even nine o’clock before I could get up courage to go to the barn and feed the stock. I think I was in a greater state of terror than on the night after the battle with the wolves. I walked the floor, back and forth, on tiptoe and listened; and the less there was to hear, the more I heard. At last I, after a fashion, put down my fright, and ventured out to the barn; but even then I could not whistle; I tried, but my lips would not stay puckered.

I went to bed as soon as I could, and though I thought I should never get to sleep, I did at last. What my dreams were, or how many times I sat up in bed with a start, are things I do not like to think about. But notwithstanding this, I felt better in the morning and went at the work as hard as I could.

But though, as I say, up to the 25th of 117 January (and even beyond) I had no further glimpse of the mysterious visitor, I saw evidence of its presence often enough.

Night after night the scrap-pail by the back door was rummaged and something taken from it, and once a chicken was missing from the barn. The only way that anything could get in was through a window into the hay-loft seven or eight feet above the drift. After I missed the chicken I nailed this up and lost no more. I thought there were a few scratches on the side of the barn below the window, but I could tell nothing from them. Almost every night it either snowed or drifted, or both, so there was almost no hope of ever finding tracks of any kind on the ground. One morning I found the windmill at the station thrown into gear and running full tilt, but the lever which controlled it may have slipped. Two or three times I thought I heard the windlass of the well near the barn creak, but I tried to make myself believe that it was only the wind.

You may be sure that my sleep was very light, and I often heard Kaiser growling and barking late at night in the hotel. I never had the courage to sit up and watch again. I 118 may have been more cowardly than I should have been; I leave that to the reader to say. One night I lay awake listening to the wolves howling up at the north end of the town. Suddenly their cry changed and they swept the whole length of the street like the wind, and much faster than they usually went when simply ranging for prey. They may have been chasing a jack-rabbit.