THE INDIAN GETTING MY RIFLE IN THE STRONGHOLD
It happened on the night of March 14th that I took it into my head to sleep another night in the stronghold with Kaiser, and so brought about one more startling thing. It seemed that I must always be doing something instead of staying content with things as they were. It had been thawing a little for several days and I was beginning to wonder if I could not hope for such weather that the train might get through before long and release me from the awful place; though I knew the snow was packed in the cuts all along the line to the east like ice, and that it would take a great thaw to make any impression on it.
About nine o’clock I left the hotel, after carefully locking everything, and went through the tunnel to the barn with Kaiser, my rifle, and the lantern. I locked all the doors behind me, and then we crawled through the small door under Ned’s manger, and that I fastened also. In the stronghold I rolled up in a blanket and the buffalo-robe with Kaiser beside me. I left the lantern burning in the 184 tunnel just beyond my feet at the edge of the stack. Kaiser barked at something when we first got in; later I heard wolves sniffing about on the roof; then we both went to sleep.
Some time in the night I awoke; what woke me I suppose I shall never know. But when I awoke I sat up suddenly as if I had never been asleep. I was face to face with the worst-looking creature I had ever seen in my life, black and blear-eyed and ugly, on his hands and knees in the tunnel beyond the lantern drawing my gun toward him by the stock. Then Kaiser sprang up like any wild beast; but I held him back by the collar.
CHAPTER XIX
I find out who my Visitor is: with Something about him, but with more about the Chinook which came out of the Northwest: together with what I do with the Powder, and how I again wake up suddenly.
When I sat up there in the stronghold and saw that creature with the glare of the lantern on his hideous face I knew two things, and these were, first, that it was an Indian, and, second, that he was the thief who had made me so much trouble, though how I knew this latter I can’t say. I knew, too, that I was at his mercy.
What I should have done first I don’t know if it had not been for Kaiser, but he acted so that it took all my strength to quiet him. I saw it would not do to let him spring at the wretch, who was now squatting in the snow at the mouth of the tunnel with my gun on his knee, the muzzle pointed straight at me.