ean to
go out every good day and take some target practice with my rifle.

I wish I could close this letter here, and I would do so if it were
going to you so that you would get it before you get others, or before
you know that you are never to get others from me, if that is to be,
as I fear it may. Oh, if I only had it to do over again, how quick I
would take the chance to go away from this horrid place! If I live to
get away I will never come here again. So I must tell you what little
I can of this other matter.

I am not here in Track's End alone. What it is that is here I do not
know. How long it has been here I do not know. Where it stays, what it
does, where it goes, I do not know. I have looked over my shoulder
twenty times from nervousness since I began this letter.

Last Monday night I hung a piece of bacon on a rafter in the shed back
of the kitchen, after cutting off a slice for breakfast the next
morning. I kept it there because it is a cool place and handy to the
kitchen. Tuesday morning it was gone. I had left the outside door
shut, and it was still shut in the morning. The door between the
kitchen and shed was locked. I could see no tracks or marks of any
kind.

Wednesday morning the thumb-piece of the latch on the depot door was
pressed down. I don't think I left it that way. A pail by the back
door in which I had thrown some scraps which I was saving for the
chickens was tipped over. I think some of the meat rinds were gone.
The blizzard began that morning.

Thursday morning the blizzard was still going on. I noticed nothing
unusual.

Friday morning a quilt and a blanket had been stolen from a bed in the
hotel. Another quilt was drawn from the bed and lay on the floor. I
think the window (it had not yet been boarded up) at the foot of the
bed had been raised. The snowbank outside is high. The blizzard was
still blowing.

Yesterday morning I saw nothing wrong, but I thought about it a good
deal during the day. I remembered of hearing strange sounds at night
from the first of my being here alone. I had thought it wolves, owls,
jack-rabbits, or something like that.

Last night I decided to watch. The storm had stopped and the night was
very still, but it was cloudy and dark and a flake of snow fell once
in a while. I put on the big fur coat and sat on a box just inside
the woodshed door, which was open on a crack. At about eleven o'clock
I heard a faint noise at the barn as if something were in