Nine o’clock–Bed.
This system I followed out pretty closely whenever the weather was at all fair. When there was no miscellaneous work I would practise on the skees, shoot at the target, or something of this sort. Quite often on days when the weather would allow (though there were few enough of them) I would go up around and beyond the Butte on a little hunt. I got several jack-rabbits and three more wolves. One of the wolves I left outside the shed, forgetting it. In the morning it was gone. There were not many thefts, however, and the shed was not broken into any more; though, to be sure, I had made the door twice as strong as it was before, and kept everything about town carefully and strongly locked, especially the buildings where the guns and ammunition were.
During the worst storms I used to sleep on 179 the lounge in the hotel office, but at other times I always retired to the other building and took in the drawbridge. Two or three times, just for a change, I took Kaiser and slept in the fire stronghold. Kaiser and Pawsy still remained as much company for me as they had been from the first. What I should ever have done in that solitude without them I don’t know. The great bushy wag of Kaiser’s tail, and the loud purr of the cat, were the two things that cheered me more than anything else. I do believe that cat to have had the loudest purr of any cat that ever lived. A young tiger need not have been ashamed of it. And as for the grand wave and flourish of Kaiser’s tail, it is beyond all description.
On one of my rabbit-hunting trips, about a week after the big blizzard, I very foolishly got both of my feet frost-bitten and paid the full penalty. The day seemed not quite so cold, and I did not put on the heavy pair of woolen stockings which I commonly wore outside of my shoes and inside of my overshoes. I crouched behind a snowbank beyond the Butte for some time waiting for a 180 rabbit which I saw to come within range, something which he did not do, and was so interested in this that I did not notice what was happening to my feet. But what had happened was quite plain enough when I got home and a great ache set up in my toes. I got the dish-pan full of snow and thrust my feet in, to draw out the frost gradually; but this did not save me.
Two days later I was fairly laid up. One whole day I could scarce crawl about the hotel office and keep the fire going. I could not get to the barn to feed the animals, though they were suffering for food and water; and what I called my war-fires in the other buildings I knew were out. My feet were much swollen, and the pain and the worry must have brought on a fever, and I lay on the lounge all day expecting nothing less than a fit of sickness; and what will become of me? I asked myself. I had no appetite for food, which alarmed me very greatly. I remember no day of my life at Track’s End which seemed darker to me.
Toward night I fell asleep, and awoke with Kaiser licking my face and whining. I remembered 181 that I had seen in the pantry a package of boneset, an herb by which my father set great store, holding it a sovereign remedy for all common complaints. I roused up, and by clinging to the back of a chair hobbled after it, and steeped myself a large mugful, very hot, and I believe it did me good. Be this as it may, as the saying is, I was better the next day, and managed to feed the poor, hungry creatures at the barn; and the day after I was able to start the fires. But for a week my feet were very painful, and I suffered much.
It was a little more cheerful as the days began to get longer as February went on, and in the latter part of the month I thought the weather seemed to grow slightly better on the whole. For three days after the big blizzard the thermometer had stood from forty to forty-five below zero each morning, and it did not get up much higher at any time during the day. On the last two days of February it thawed a little in the afternoon, and on March 2d the snow was soft enough so I could make snowballs to throw at Kaiser; but it soon turned cold again. 182
There were northern lights many nights, flaming all over the heavens, like long swords, and on the night of February 15th there were some more prodigious than I would believe were possible had I not seen them with these eyes. They hung, wavering and trembling, over the whole northern sky almost to the zenith, like the lower edges of vast, mighty curtains, swaying and moving, now here, now there, and with all colors, yellow, violet, scarlet, blood red, as if the whole heavens were going to burn up, the thing being so marvelous that had I not seen lesser displays before I should have thought the world were at an end, no less, and have died, I do believe, of terror. As it was I stood in the snow by the barn gazing till my feet were like blocks of ice and I knew not if I were in Track’s End or in the moon. Kaiser at first barked at the sight, then growled, then whined, and next ran yelping away to the shed, where I found him crept beneath a bench. Never in my life before nor since have I seen anything to equal the heavens that night. Early on the morning of February 24th I saw a beautiful mirage. I could see plainly, high in the air, the timber 183 and bluffs along the Missouri, and the Chain-of-Lakes and coteaux. It lasted for a full half-hour.
