Part 20

Mr. Bear looked up in the air and rubbed his head and finally said something about wreaths in the windows, and Mr. Dog answered briskly that he was going to make the finest plum pudding that day for dinner they ever saw and if that wasn’t celebrating Christmas, what was?

Still, it did seem as if the time would never arrive, for you know yourself how slow Christmas and birthdays and vacations are about getting around; and how very quickly school-days and trips to the dentist, and such things come. But at last it really was December twenty-fourth, and that very evening after sunset had been planned both by Mr. Dog and Mr. Bear for their grand surprise.

Mr. Dog had all his presents on the top shelf of his bedroom closet, and Mr. Bear had all his presents on the top shelf of _his_ bedroom closet: and both of them had their closets locked and the keys in their pockets.

Neither of the friends talked much at supper that night for both were too busy thinking. Mr. Bear wanted to get some good excuse for leaving Mr. Dog and getting into the forest where the Christmas tree was to be found. It was already cut, but it wanted trimming, and Mr. Bear decided to trim it right where it stood, or rather where it leaned against another fir-tree, and then manage some way to get it into the house without Mr. Dog’s knowing it. Mr. Bear’s pockets were full of tinsel and bells, gilt walnuts, golden and silver balls, and such like ornaments. He fairly tinkled when he walked; but Mr. Dog was so very busy thinking that he didn’t notice.

At last supper was over and the dishes neatly washed and put away. The two friends turned to each other, and both spoke at once and said just the same thing all in a breath without pausing:

“I was thinking of taking a little stroll this evening.”

“Why, that’s a good idea,” said Mr. Bear, putting on his cap and goloshes as he spoke. It was handy for him not having to bother with anything more on account of his fine fur coat, though he would rather have liked a muffler.

“I think so, too,” said Mr. Dog, hurriedly getting into his coasting togs--sweater, tasseled cap, and all.

“Which way were you going, Mr. Bear? I was thinking of going west--”

“I was thinking of going east,” said Mr. Bear, much relieved at the turn things were taking. And so the two friends parted.

Mr. Bear called out over his shoulder, “No use, Mr. Dog, of being back before eight o’clock a fine night like this.”

“Oh, no!” said Mr. Dog, much pleased and inwardly planning to get his tree trimmed in the forest, and then to have it all set up in the cottage a few moments before that hour.

So both friends hurried off--Mr. Dog to the west, to hang on his tree as fast as ever he could the strings of cranberries and pop-corn with which his pockets were bulging, and Mr. Bear to decorate his tree in the most beautiful manner and as rapidly as possible. And my! weren’t they busy? You may not believe it, but each of them got through the very same moment, which was exactly seventeen and a half minutes to eight o’clock, and each of them was exactly one half mile from home. Mr. Bear put his tree on his shoulder and started; Mr. Dog put _his_ tree on _his_ shoulder and started. Mr. Bear’s tree was bigger and heavier than Mr. Dog’s tree, but then Mr. Bear was stronger than Mr. Dog, so they both covered the ground at the same rate of speed.

Now I suppose you have already guessed what happened. It was sure to, wasn’t it? And it just did.

Mr. Dog, stealthily coming up the back way, and Mr. Bear, stealthily coming up the front way, met right at the cottage door, and I wish you had been there to see them. I don’t suppose their eyes were ever wider opened in all their lives; and as for their mouths, they were open too, and both their tongues were hanging out.

Mr. Dog was the quickest, so he began to laugh first, but Mr. Bear was not long in following, and they both laughed so hard they had to lean their beautiful Christmas trees up against the side of the cottage while they rolled over and over in the snow and neither one could stop.

But at last Mr. Bear caught his breath and sat up, and Mr. Dog, still wiping away tears of merriment with his paw, sat up too, and then it all came out--their wonderful plans and all the doings.

Well, the end of it was, there were two Christmas trees set up in Mr. Bear’s house that night and two very happy people.

The presents were truly a surprise after all, and they were exactly right. Each said so to the other, I don’t know how many times. Mr. Bear put on his muffler at once, though the cottage was as hot as hot could be, and Mr. Dog had so much perfumery on his handkerchief that they had to open the front door to air off. Mr. Dog began to do things with his tools at once, while gnawing ever and anon at his wonderful bone, and Mr. Bear ate a piece of blueberry pie that was big enough to give him seven kinds of nightmare, but didn’t.

Then Mr. Bear drew up his big rocking-chair to the fire, while Mr. Dog threw himself down on the rug in front of it and stretched out to enjoy the blaze with his paws clasped under his head. And they both said there had never been such a Christmas and that it was the greatest fun having it that way, all alone. I suppose they meant not having the forest and the farm people there; and perhaps this is a good place and time for you and me to leave them, too.

[26] Reprinted by permission of the author and “St. Nicholas Magazine.”

A BURNT FORK SANTA CLAUS[27]

_Elinore Pruitt Stewart_

Mrs. Culberson stood in her cabin door, and looked out upon the sparkling beauty of a sunny winter morning. Beyond the valley rose the shining, snow-covered mountains. A mile below lay the white surface of Henry’s Fork, tree-bordered and ice-bound. She could see the exact spot in the stream where she and the children had caught the barrel of suckers that had been their chief food since the snow came.

When Henry Clay, her oldest child and only son, had come from the creek one day and told her that there were a great many fish at the bend, and that they were lying on the bottom almost too lazy to move, she had said, “We’ll go and catch a lot; we will salt them down in our water keg; they’ll come in handy.” That had been almost four months before.

“Pa” Culberson was one of those Micawber-like persons who are always expecting something to turn up. In more prosperous days, when the Culbersons had lived farther east, they had owned a good team of horses and a cow; but Pa’s waiting propensities had encouraged the man with the mortgage to “turn up,” and the family had been left without their horses and their cow.

Mrs. Culberson had urged her husband to sell their little plot of land and to use the proceeds to begin anew in another place. Pa had a “swapping” streak in him, and so it was not long before they had traded their land for a rickety wagon and a pair of small beasts that Mrs. Culberson called “dunkeys.” Then, with all they owned piled into the wagon, they set forth to make a fresh start in the world. Pa sat on the top of the load to drive the donkeys, and Mrs. Culberson and the children walked alongside.

One night they had camped by a stream in a fertile little valley. Mrs. Culberson liked the water and the view, and refused to go on. Weeks of wandering had worn out the children’s shoes, and winter would soon be upon them; so they unloaded their scanty belongings and set about building their cabin. It stood close to a hillside for shelter from the fierce winds, and it had no floor except the earth. A place had been left for a window in one end, but there was no glass in it. A piece of cheesecloth tacked over the opening let in light and a wooden shutter kept out the storm. The roof was made of poles laid carefully side by side and well covered with earth.

While Mrs. Culberson and the children were chinking and daubing the cracks in their cabin, Pa began to build the stable for the donkeys. The golden September days were slipping away, and the food supply was getting low; as soon as he had finished the tiny stable, Pa went off to get work with the sheepmen. The family were left alone in their new house; it might be months before they saw him again; in fact, it might be as long as that before they saw anyone except “Grandma” Clark, who lived in a cabin near the stream.

Every day little Mrs. Culberson worked with all her might; and in order that the children should not get lonely or afraid in the wilderness, she tried to keep them busy. First she set them hauling wood from the cedars near by; Pa had made a door for the cabin from the wagon box, but they could load the wood and poles on the running gear of their wagon. They could manage the donkeys easily, and they soon gathered a huge woodpile. Then the children dug a cellar in the side of the hill. Henry Clay and Lizzie Isabel, who were the oldest, did the digging. Jennie Lou and Jessie May helped by carrying out the dirt as fast as it was loosened. Mrs. Culberson and five-year-old baby C’listie did the encouraging. Each was proud of sharing in the work.

A few days after the cellar was finished, the children went on an exploring expedition to discover whether they had any neighbors. The first rancher they found laughed when he saw the eager, freckled children on their little donkeys. He was harvesting his vegetables, and he offered them all a chance to work for him. After that, the children and their mother were busy for almost a month, picking up potatoes and helping store winter vegetables for the ranchers who lived up and down the valley. In that way they had stocked their own cellar, and had become the proud owners of a few bags of grain, which they put by for their faithful donkeys.

As Mrs. Culberson stood in the door that winter morning, looking out over the snow-covered country, she was mentally giving thanks that she and the children had a warm cabin to shelter them. On a tall, dead pine she saw a great eagle sitting in the sun. A coyote dug a rabbit out of the snow, and trotted away with it. Far below on the creek, she could see the smoke curling upward from her nearest neighbor’s chimney.

“Poor old soul!” she said to herself. “There all alone while her grandson, Charley, is away herding sheep. It must be plumb bad to have only one child, and to be a widow, and old, too. Here it is just two days before Christmas. I believe I’ll go down and bring her up here for a spell.”

Her care-seamed face was thoughtful. “It’s more’n three months since Pa left, and not a word from him. I _do_ hope he hasn’t--”

But she was too loyal to put what she feared into words, even to herself. Closing the door, she put the breakfast of salt fish and potatoes on the table.

“Ma, can’t we have a little _tiny_ piece of bacon for breakfast?” asked Jennie Lou.

“It’s very near Christmas,” said Jessie May.

“I just hate suckers!” said Lizzie Isabel.

“Now you young uns eat what is put before you, and don’t be so choicey,” said Mrs. Culberson. “I declare, I’ll have to boil you up some sage tea to make your fish and potatoes taste good to you again. Then after we’re through, I have a _big_ secret to tell you.”

The wagon box had furnished enough lumber to make not only the door, but a bench, and a high shelf across one end of the cabin. When the children had finished breakfast, their mother put a box upon the bench. Mounting the box, she took from the shelf several small packages.

“Now, children,” she said, as she unrolled a square package, “here is all the meat we have--just enough for seven slices. We are going to have it for dinner Christmas Day, and _who_ do you guess is going to eat the extra slice? _That_ is my big secret.”

“I could eat _all_ of it now,” said Henry Clay. The children eyed the piece of bacon hungrily.

“Children, what on earth has come over you to make you so gluttonous? I am ashamed of you. Now, if you can behave yourselves, I will tell you something.”

They watched her with fascinated eyes as she measured two cupfuls of sugar into a small pail. Next she took four tablespoonfuls of rice, carefully tied the little heap of white grains in a cloth, and dropped it into the pail with the sugar. Putting the lid on the pail, she again mounted the box, and put the pail beside a small jar that contained a handful of coffee.

“There,” she said, with pride in her voice, “that is my sick corner. If any of you get sick, I have _some_ little things for you.”

“I’m sick, I’m awfully sick,” said C’listie.

“C’listie Culberson, no one would ever dream you were named for your own grandmother, C’listie Yancy. Your Grandma Yancy would _never_ act that way.”

The children watched her intently and silently as she measured the remaining sugar.

“There is enough for a cake, and we can have a carrot pie,” she said, “and perhaps some sugar syrup for breakfast, and there will be a little left in the bowl. Don’t one of you young uns dare to touch that bowl; the sugar in the bowl is for manners; now mind that. We’ll have a nice dish of rice, and enough grease will fry out of the bacon to season the potatoes and to make the pie crust, and we can have biscuit, too,” she ended triumphantly.

The children, catching her jubilant spirit, began to clap their hands and dance.

“Now, Lizzie Isabel, we will clean up the house and get everything ready. You girls can wear your gingham dresses, and Henry Clay can--well, he can wear his pa’s light shirt, and his trousers, too; they will be too long, of course, but he can roll them up, and we can girt them in at the waist. We’ll all dress up and go after Grandma Clark. She’s all alone. We couldn’t be so selfish as to sit down and eat all our good things alone.”

So they all worked with a will; but there was not much to do.

“You children don’t know how lucky you are to be poor,” said Mrs. Culberson. “If we’d been rich enough to have a floor, we would have to scrub; and if we had a glass window, we’d have that to wash. But as it is, we can get this room in order in a jiffy.”

Through all her ups and downs, Mrs. Culberson had kept her “settin’ out”; she had her feather bed, the ten beautiful patchwork quilts given her by different members of her family; the Yancy sheets and the lovely Culberson tablecloth, all homespun and woven.

It was a proud little group that later in the day left the freshly decked cabin and started for Grandma Clark’s. All the girls’ dresses were a year too small, their sleeves were too short and their waists too tight; but the children had pressed their worn ribbons, and their hair was neatly braided, and they were all so happy that only an unfeeling critic could have seen anything except beauty and sweetness about them. Henry Clay’s trousers were many sizes too large, but they were rolled up at the bottom and well “girt in” at the waist. His shirt was caught up and tacked and pinned in so many places that it had almost lost all resemblance to a shirt; but if his fourteen year old body _was_ too small to fill his father’s clothes, his pride overflowed, and made him seem large and important in his own eyes.

They had laid poles upon the running gear of the wagon and wired them firmly, in order to have a safe place for Grandma Clark to ride. Mrs. Culberson took a last satisfied look round the neat room, warned the children once more to mind their manners, and not to let the company see that they did not have bread every meal, and to remember how fortunate they were to have a good warm cabin, plenty of wood, and friends to share their comforts, “and them friends rale close neighbors, not more’n six miles away.”

So they clambered on their odd carryall and drove off, with the donkeys belly-deep in the soft snow.

* * * * *

Miles away, up in the mountains near Burnt Fork, lay the ranch of Jack Nevin. He was an “old-timer” without kith or kin, but he never lived alone, for he was always taking some one in to share his home. At that time he had living with him old John Enderby, who had a special fondness for making fun of others. Once a year Jack Nevin made a trip to Green River for supplies, but, oddly enough, he would never permit anyone to go with him.

No one who came to the ranch suspected that Jack’s heart was starved for home ties, and that he longed for some one to love and to work for. For years he had had an imaginary family. He took almost as much pleasure in the growth and development of his imaginary children as he would have taken had they been real. Of course he could not tell his friends about his pretense; but when he went to town he spoke to strangers of his “folks,” and talked about them just as if he had actually had a family.

This was the first time he had ever been in Green River when the holidays were so near. The windows of the stores were filled with toys and candies. As he drove up the street his heart was sad; there were so many things that he would have liked to buy if he had only had some one to give them to.

When he drove into the livery barn, the proprietor, to whom he had talked on his other visits, called out, “Hello, Nevin! How are you? How are the little girls and their ma? In town to interview Santa Claus, I suppose?”

Jack walked up the street, looking at the pretty things, and almost hating other men who had “folks” to buy for. Suddenly he remembered what Hall, the liveryman, had said. After all, why should he not do it? Whose business was it, anyway, if he chose to buy dolls, toys, and trinkets? As he thought over the idea his recklessness grew. The boys might laugh and joke, he realized, but the chance that they would find out seemed small.

That night he confided in his landlady; and his enthusiasm for his family was so contagious that she forgot the high price of meat.

“I suppose your little girls sent you loaded with a list?” she said.

Jack searched his pockets, but failed to find any list.

“Well, now, that’s too bad,” he said, with such evident concern that the landlady was entirely deceived.

“Now don’t you worry,” she said. “My Emma works at Little Pete’s. You can get more for your money in there than you can at any other store in town. And Emma will help you make a good selection.”

The next morning the whim was still upon Jack Nevin. He went to Little Pete’s, and passed there the happiest three hours of his life, choosing and buying the things that he would have liked to put into little stockings.

“I believe I’ll take that sweater for ma,” he said awkwardly. After a while his fancy became more practical, and he bought warm hoods, pieces of flannel, gingham, and calico.

At last all the bundles were wrapped and loaded on the wagon with the provisions that he had purchased for the winter. Jack was standing in a store entrance, trying to remember whether he had forgotten anything, when up the street rode half a dozen Burnt Fork boys, with their “chaps” flapping and their spurs jangling merrily. They shouted a greeting when they caught sight of Jack. Jack watched them canter up the street with foreboding in his heart.

It was already late in the afternoon, but he decided to start on the return trip to his ranch immediately for he did not enjoy the thought that the “boys” might discover how he had been spending his time in Green River.

Sunset of the following day saw him nearing home, but trouble had sat with him all the way. He could imagine what “fun” there would be at the ranch if those boys found out his poor secret. What could he do with all the things he had bought for his imaginary family? If he took them home, there was John Enderly to be reckoned with.

Finally a solution occurred to him--he would throw them into Henry’s Fork. He knew where he could find an air hole. By driving across the ice below the regular crossing, he hoped to avoid discovery, and so, leaving the road, he turned down the long cañon that led out on the plateau on which the Culberson cabin stood. When he came in sight of the little log building he gave a whistle of surprise, for he had not known that anyone lived there. As he approached the cabin he hallooed, and getting no answer, was about to drive on, when he noticed that smoke was coming from the stove-pipe.

He decided to go in and warm his feet; but when he entered the cabin, he found himself more interested in the evidences of poverty than in the stove. A box nailed to the wall served as a cupboard. He lifted the flour-sack curtain before it, and peeped within; he saw the bacon sliced for the Christmas dinner; he saw all the scanty preparations.

“Huh!” he grunted. “Cake with no eggs! I’ve made it; I know what it’s like!”

Dropping the curtain, he glanced about the room. “No chairs,” he commented. “Must be mighty poor. Kids in the bunch, too.” Then he noticed a cap hanging on a peg. “Boy among ’em. By heck, I guess I’m in time to beat Santy Claus, but I didn’t buy anything for a boy.”