Hayden Carruth

“ There was not a breath of wind outside, or a sound, except once in a while a sharp crack of some building as the frost warped a clapboard or sprung out a nail; and at each crack I started as if I had been struck. The moon was shining brightly, but it was much colder; the thermometer already marked twenty degrees below zero.
Suddenly there came, clear and sharp, the savage howling of a pack of wolves; it seemed at the very door. I jumped out of my chair, I was so startled, and stood, I think, a most disgraceful picture of a coward. Kaiser rose up on his three sound legs and began to growl. ”

“ We followed the trail, now as deep with mud as it had been with dust, meeting many freighters on the way, and found the buffaloes near the Deadwood stage barn.
"See!" exclaimed Ollie; "there they are, in the yard."
"Don't say 'yard,'" returned Jack; "say 'corral,' with a good, strong accent on the last syllable. A yard is a corral, and a farm a ranch, and a revolver a six-shooter--and a lot more. Don't be green, Oliver."
"Oh, bother!" replied Ollie. "There's ten of 'em. See the big fellow!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just as the sun set we drove in through the Golden Gate, and east anchor at our old camp near the mill.
The next morning was wintry again, with snowflakes floating in the air. The ground was frozen, and the wind seemed to come through the wagon-cover with rather more freedom than we enjoyed.
"It's time we began the return voyage," said Jack. "We're a long way from home, and we won't get there any too soon if we go as fast as we can and take the shortest out." So we started that afternoon. ”

“ Every few minutes a sharp twinge of pain in my ankle would bring me back to my deplorable condition there in that deserted shack sunk in the frozen snow, and I would be half ready to cry; but, with all my thinking of both good and bad, I did at last get to sleep. Once, some time in the night, I woke up with a jump at a strange, unearthly, whooping noise which seemed to be in the room itself, but at last I made it out to be an owl to-whooing on the roof. Again I heard wolves, very distant, and twenty times in imagination there sounded in my ears the tramp of Pike’s horses. ”

“ By this time we had left the sea of sunflowers and crept over the wrinkle at the western edge of the valley, and were off across the rolling prairie itself. Still Snoozer never stirred.
"I wonder when he'll wake up?" said Ollie.
"You'll see him awake enough at dinnertime," said Jack.
"Well, you'll see me awake enough then, too," answered Ollie. "I'm hungry."
"We hardy pioneers plunging into the trackless waste of a new and unexplored country never eat but one meal a day," said Jack. "And that's always raw meat--b'ar-meat, generally." ”

“ 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. ”

“ We called Snoozer back, and soon one of the little animals cautiously put up his head, saw that the coast was clear, gave one bark, and all the rest came up, and the concert began as if nothing had happened.
"I suppose that was the mayor of the town that peeped up first?" said Ollie. "Yes, or the chief of police," answered Jack. We camped that night by the bed of a dry creek, and watered the horses at a settler's house half a mile away.
"That's the most beautiful place for a stream I ever saw," observed Jack. "If a man had a creek and no bed for it to run in, he'd be awfully glad to get that." ”

“ There is Kaiser shut in under a water-tank; Blossom locked in the cellar of a grocery store; Crazy Jane, the hen, on top of the smoke-stack of a blacksmith shop; the rest of the chickens sacked up and scattered on the ground; Dick and Ned, the horses, I don’t know where; Pawsy, the cat, on top of the door; and Jud himself, the head of the family, here eating what the Indians have left, with a hurt ankle and a smell of roasted pumpkin all through his clothes. ”

“ The pony I fed in the big tin pail near by. The grass beside the road was so dry, and it was so windy, that we decided it was not safe to build a fire outdoors, so Jack cooked pancakes over the oil-stove inside. These with some cold meat he handed out to Ollie and me as we sat on the wagon-tongue, while he sat on the dash-board. We were half-way through dinner when we heard a peculiar whine, followed by a low bark, in the wagon, and then Snoozer leaped out, stretched himself, and began to wag his tail so fast that it looked exactly like a whirling feather duster. ”

“ Kaiser’s leg was no better, and Pawsy was still nervous and kept looking at the windows 70 as if she expected wolves to bolt in head-first; and I did not blame her much. It seemed to me that the wolves had howled most of the night. I only wished that the timber beyond Frenchman’s Butte and the coteaux and the Chain of Lakes were a hundred miles away, for without them there would have been no wolves, or nothing but little prairie wolves or coyotes, which, of course, don’t amount to much. ”

“ There was no road, nothing but a mere cattle-path, steep and stony in many places. We found the spring and watered all the horses, left Blacky and Browny, and went on after the hay with the pony, Jack leading her, and Ollie and I walking ahead with the lantern. It seemed a long way as we stumbled along in the darkness, all the time downhill. "I guess that man wasn't so liberal as he seemed," said Jack. "The pony will be able to carry just about enough hay up here to make Snoozer a bed." ”

“ The cow mooed at me, and even the horses whinnied a little, though they were not what you might call children’s pets, being broncos, and more apt to take a kick at you than to try to throw you a kiss. The chickens had gone to roost and didn’t have much to say. They refused to come down for their supper, but the horses and the cow were very glad to get theirs. Then I milked the cow, told them all good-night, made everything about the barn as snug as I could, and shouldered my way through the storm to the house. I found both Kaiser and Pawsy wide awake and waiting for me. ”