tlaws would come again, and I did not go
to bed at all. I stayed all night in Townsend's store, thinking to
give them as warm a reception as I could. The next morning, the 18th,
the chinook had stopped, but it was still thawing, though not so fast.
There was scarcely any wind, but the sun was warm. I tried to take a
nap after dinner, but I was too nervous. The prairie was half bare.
The little drifts were all gone and the big ones had shrunk to little
ones. There was a good deal of snow in the street yet, but it would be
easy to ride through it. I walked about all day trying to think of
what was best to do. I knew that I could not keep awake another night.
At last I decided to try putting the Indian on guard part of the
night. He had said (I thought that was what he meant) that the outlaws
had stolen ponies from his tribe, and I concluded he could have no
love for them, even if he had none for me. I found him in the store,
but he was still sullen about the spigot.

"Want you to watch to-night for robbers," I said to him.

He only looked at me, so I repeated it, and added: "I will give you
rifle, shoot if they come."

At this he grunted and said, "All right." He waited a moment and
seemed to be thinking; then suddenly he raised his left hand tightly
shut above his head, looked at it with half-closed eyes, and said,
"Ugh! scalp 'em!"

It made my blood run cold to see that big savage standing there within
arm's-length gloating over an imaginary scalp, knowing as I did that
he would probably enjoy scalping me quite as much. But I said nothing
except to make him understand that he could go to bed if he wanted to,
and I would wake him when it was time. I thought I would stay up as
long as I could myself.

Twenty times that day I climbed the windmill tower and looked one way
for the outlaws and the other for the train, but got no sight of
either. The track was mostly bare as far as I could see, but I knew
that even if the chinook had reached so far east many cuts around
where Lone Tree had been and west even as far as the last siding, No.
15, would still be half full of snow and ice which would need a vast
deal of shoveling and quarrying before any train could come through.

It was growing colder, and after the sun went down it began to freeze.
I thought I could easily sit up till midnight, and after it was dark
began patrolling the sidewalk like a policeman. The Indian had gone to
sleep in his cellar. There was an east