He made not a sound in reply to this.
“Give me the gun,” I said.
He gave his head a little shake and jerked out a sharp grunt.
“Give it to me and I give you another to-morrow.”
He made not a movement or sound. I 188 could see that he had no intention of giving it up.
“Do you live in cellar?” I asked. He made the sound that seemed to mean yes. I remembered that I had not gone down into Fitzsimmons’s cellar after the Indians went away because things were in such confusion that I saw I could do nothing with them. Since that I had had no occasion to go into the store at all. I had no doubt that he had stolen everything I had missed, but had been unable to get a gun before, because I had kept them very carefully under lock and key. I thought from his looks that he had probably lived principally on the liquor in the cellar, with the groceries that were in the store and what meat he had stolen from me. I could feel that it was getting colder in the stronghold, and guessed that he had broken open the tunnel, either purposely, after hearing Kaiser bark, or by accident when walking over it, as the thaw had weakened the roof a good deal.
“Want to get out,” I said. “Go first!”
He pressed back close to the wall of the tunnel. “You go–take dog,” he said. I made Kaiser go ahead, took the lantern and 189 followed, saying “Come” to the Indian. He did so, simply stooping down, though I crawled on my hands and knees. Sure enough, the tunnel was broken down near the barn. We got out through the hole and went across the drifts to the open place back of the hotel. I tried again to get the gun away from him, but he hung on to it tighter than ever. I asked him if he were hungry, and he forgot to grunt and said “yes.”
I brought out some food for him, and he stood in the shed and ate it like a hungry wolf. He gave a satisfied grunt when he got through, and I once more tried to get him to let me have the gun, but he hung to it without even a grunt, and started in the direction of the Fitzsimmons building. I went with him, as I could not understand how he had gone in and out for so long without my seeing some traces of it.
He stalked on in silence, his moccasins not making a sound on the hard snow. There was a well with a high curb a few feet behind the Fitzsimmons building and directly opposite the window through which I had shown the jack-lantern. There was now a big bank 190 of snow as high as the well curb from it to the building. He stepped over in the well curb, and, without looking back, disappeared through a hole in the side of it where he had pried off some of the boards. He had borrowed one of my ideas and made a tunnel between the well and window.