at 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 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.

When at last Kaiser began to act like a reasonable being, I said to
the Indian, pretty loud and sharp, so he wouldn't know I was scared:

"What do you want?"

He grunted and made a noise down in his throat, which I couldn't see
meant anything. So I said:

"Don't understand. Where'd you come from?"

He only grunted again. I knew that a great many times an Indian will
pretend he can't talk English when he can, so I kept at him.

"What you going to do with the gun?" I next asked him.

This seemed to interest him. He looked down at it over his thick