CHAPTER VII

CHRISTMAS

Christmas week came upon Los Ranchos suddenly, and, although there were so few to celebrate it this year, Jami and Raquel and Georgie went out in the car to gather mistletoe, according to the custom. The scrub oak was covered with the pretty parasite, and they gathered great bundles, thick with pearly berries, mixing it with sprays of silver spruce and ground holly from the mountains.

Raquel did up large boxes and sent Russell in to town to mail packages off to the Marvins, and to The Towers in care of Miss Carter.

With the rest she decorated the house, and three days before Christmas she and her mother drove into town to do their Christmas shopping. For Ole Hossfoot, who would be down Christmas Eve as usual, she got a leather jacket, composed mainly of pockets. For her mother she bought a quilted satin dressing gown, fleece-lined, to wear elegantly as she sat before her fire on winter nights after the last dish had been dried and set back on the table for breakfast, after the cats had been fed and put out and let back in again.

It never took Raquel long to decide about anything, and in a short time there was a gift for every one but Anne and Jimmy. Anne’s gift would be late of course. As Raquel strode along the main street she saw in a curio window _the_ gift--a string of graduated, polished turquoise wampum, a lovely thing that Anne could wear beautifully.

What for Jimmy? Impulsively Raquel pointed to a red leather frame and, slipping a large kodak picture of herself out of her bag, she tucked it in with a Christmas card, “Love to Jimmy.”

As she stepped out into the street she came face to face with a man who had been standing there looking through the curio window. It was “A. B.”

“Howdy, Miss Daniels.” The ranchman’s voice was suavely courteous as he waved his hand towards his hat, bowed deeply, and spat by way of greeting.

“Howdy do, Mr. Meyers,” Raquel answered pleasantly as she started up the street.

But he blocked the way.

“Say, Raquel,” he said without looking at her, shifting his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, “I understand your Dad had an option on that piece of valley range that lies near my northern fences. Don’t suppose you care to hold on to that now. Just thought I’d tell you I was willin’ to take it off your hands.”

“Why, no; we want to hold on to that land, thanks. We will take care of it when the time comes.”

“Better not be too sure of that, my gal; financial conditions are pretty bad, pretty dangerous, right now.”

“Well, I’d have to have my Dad’s instructions before I could sell and he said he wanted to hold on to that land.” Raquel turned to go.

“Is that so?” “A. B.” could not control the rage that he felt at being thus dismissed by a mere slip of a girl. “Well, let me tell you,” he called angrily after her, “you’d better keep your Dad’s cattle off my land then. The next animal found on my range I’ll brand.” And with this threat he turned about and strode the other way.

It was an unpleasant encounter, and Raquel went into the post office angry and defiant. There was no mail for any of them. Raquel had not known that she would feel so disappointed. Nothing from Jimmy? Had Anne forgotten her so quickly? She had not heard from her since returning to Los Ranchos nearly a month before.

There was not even a line from Custer, nor from Pop. Mom did not seem to mind, for letters were an almost unknown quantity in her life.

Had it not been for Georgie and Ole Hossfoot it would have been a sorry Christmas Eve. The boys had all gone into town. Mom and Georgie and Raquel sat late before Mom’s fire, and went reluctantly to bed, as if they were waiting for something.

At nine o’clock on Christmas morning, as they lingered over a holiday breakfast of pancakes and cane syrup, and fresh pork sausage, a great hallooing was heard outside the gate, then a heavy tread on the veranda. The door burst open, and there was Custer.

There was a joyful clamor. Mom, unable to flee the arms of her six-foot son, had taken refuge in his coat front, from which haven she eventually emerged transfigured.

“And Raquela, the kid sister, Boss of the Lazy L!” Custer swung her round with one arm while he kept Mom prisoned with the other. “Don’t make ’em any finer!” He kissed her warmly.

He was a man after a girl’s heart, this Custer Daniels--and after a man’s. A gay, undaunted adventurer, with a way about him that seemed to extend even to his roping. But alas for the peace of mind of the girl who, at a ranch ball or a blowout in La Cruz, took to heart the laughing flattery of his words, or believed what his eyes said! And alas for the luckless puncher who presumed on any one’s else range or reputation within Custer’s vicinity!

Custer was courageous and handsome, and now there was a tempering of his spirits with a white fire of consecration to this cause on which he, along with the other youth of the country, had embarked so lightly.

Raquel in her chaps would have been the same little sister to Custer, but now he looked at her again in amazement. Was this Raquel in the citified green dress?

“Mountain cats! But ain’t she the prettiest thing this side San Antone!”

He swung her off her feet and with one hand, held her up under the mistletoe, where he smacked her right heartily. Georgie was then properly cuffed, the hound dogs fondled, a packet of _cigarritos_ slipped Angel while Jami and Russ were wreathed with smiles, smoke emanating from large and murderous looking black cigars.

“Mom’s the only one gets a present, a real present.” And he pulled from his pocket a dull square of folded silk that shook out into a gorgeous Spanish shawl, rare and strange, its golden brown embroidered in pale yellow and crimson roses. Amber and jade flecked its surface like sunshine on a shaded pool.

“It’s too beautiful for me, son.” Mrs. Daniels spoke tremulously. “I danced in one something like this the night I met your father.”

“Well, I’ll tell you something strange about my finding this,” said Custer.

He had been looking for a gift to bring his mother, he said, and was wandering down through the curio shops in El Paso when suddenly he saw a face, the most beautiful girl! He knew he had seen her before, and then it came across him that she was just like that picture of Jimmy’s cousin, Lois, which he had always been so loco about.

He’d have sworn it was she; so he followed her into a shop and saw her go up to look at a shawl. It was this one. She was with an elderly man, and Custer had just made up his mind to step up and speak to her when they turned suddenly, went out a side entrance and, before he could get into the street, stepped into a car and were a block away.

So he went back and bought the shawl. And the next morning he dropped into the same shop, hoping to run across her again. But the shopkeeper said she had returned the same evening and had been fearfully put out, real angry, that the shawl was gone, and she and her father had gone on to the train. They had said they were leaving that night.

Raquel heaved a sigh of relief. That must have been Lois all right!

“I plumb forgot the mail,” said Custer. “Stopped by the post office early and made the boys give it to me. Bring it in from the car, Angel.”

So Christmas was very nearly perfect after all. There was a card from Dad, about to sail on a transport, a letter from Grant, “_safely_ on the other side,” a five-pound box of candy from Jimmy, and a long letter from Anne, and a box.

“Don’t think I have forgotten you, you precious Rakie,” wrote Anne. “I haven’t been at school since the week after you left. Came home to help with the terrific war work that piles up. If I was ever lazy may Heaven forgive me now.... I have scarcely slept, nor has Mamma.... A letter from Barry asks after you and he wishes to be remembered to you without fail.”

Raquel had scarcely dared to think of the elegant Barry since she had been back at home. But at the message a pleasurable warmth mounted to her hair.

The box held five beautifully bound volumes of history, an etching and some handkerchiefs.

After dinner Raquel told Custer about her encounter in town with “A. B.”; of the purchase of La Bolsa, and of the dead heifer which she and Georgie had found, as well as the incident of the half-wit’s horse and its brand.

“Lordy,” said Custer, “not so long ago that would have meant a killin’. But there’s too much shootin’ goin’ on now in the world as it is. And _I_ can’t take time to have it out with the old pizen snake now. Don’t worry, Sis, just keep track of everything and we’ll look after it when we come home!

“Leaving tonight, Mom,” he went on. “Got to. I’ll see Jimmy in Kansas City Wednesday, and we sail just a week later.”

The day passed brilliantly, and all too soon. Yet even after Custer’s rented car had disappeared in the purple shadow of the pass they were heartened by the robust confidence and cheer he always spread.