Chapter 11. Merry Christmas

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_ CHAPTER XI. MERRY CHRISTMAS

Wallie shivered in his sleep and pulled the soogans higher. The act exposed his feet instead of his shoulders, so it did not add to his comfort. He felt sleepily for the flour sack which he wore on his head as protection against the dust that blew in through the crack in the logs and his fingers sank into a small snow bank that had accumulated on his pillow.

The chill of it completely awakened him. He found that there was frost on the end of his nose and he was in a miniature blizzard as far as his shoulders. The wind was howling around the corners and driving the first snow of the season through the many large cracks in his log residence.

The day was Christmas, and there was no reason to believe that it would be a merry one.

Wallie lay for a time considering the prospect and comparing it with other Christmases. He had a kettle of boiled beans, cold soda biscuit, coffee, and two prairie-dogs which he intended cooking as an experiment, for his Christmas dinner.

Growing more and more frugal as his bank account shrank with alarming rapidity, Wallie reasoned that if he could eat prairie-dog it would serve a double purpose: While ridding his land of the pests it would save him much in such high-priced commodities as ham and bacon. Prairie-dog might not be a delicacy sought after by epicures, yet he never had heard anything directly against them, beyond their propensity for burrowing, which made them undesirable tenants. He reasoned that since they subsisted upon roots mainly, they were of cleanly habits and quite as apt to be nourishing and appetizing, if properly cooked, as rabbit.

Having the courage of his convictions, Wallie skinned and dressed the prairie-dogs he had caught out of their holes one sunshiny morning, and meant to eat them for his Christmas dinner if it was humanly possible.

The subject of food occupied a large part of Wallie's time and attention since he was not yet sufficiently practised to make cooking easy. He had purchased an expensive cook book, but as his larder seldom contained any of the ingredients it called for, he considered the price of it wasted. He had found that the recipes imparted by Tex McGonnigle, who had built his ten-by-twelve log cabin for him, were far more practical. Under his tuition Wallie had learned to make "sweat-pads," "dough-gods," "mulligan," and other dishes with names deemed unsuitable for publication.

After considering his dinner menu for a time, Wallie drew his knees to his chin, which enabled him to his get entire body under the soogan, and contrasted his present surroundings with those of the previous Christmas.

In the spacious Florida hotel last year he had only to touch a button to bring a uniformed menial who served him coffee and lighted a grate fire for him, while the furnishings of his room and bath were quite as luxurious as those of The Colonial.

Now, as the light strengthened, Wallie could see his third-handed stove purchased from the secondhand man, Tucker, standing in the corner with its list to starboard. The wind blowing through the baling wire which anchored the stove-pipe to the wall sounded like an aeolian harp played by a maniac. His patent camp chair had long since given way beneath him, and when he had found at the Prouty Emporium two starch boxes of the right height, he had been as elated when they were given to him as if he had been the recipient of a valuable present. They now served as chairs on either side of his plank table.

His pneumatic mattress had collapsed from punctures, and Wallie's bones were uncomfortably close to the boards in the bottom of the bunk McGonnigle had built against one end of the cabin. His pillow was a flour sack filled with straw and of a doubtful colour, as was also the hand towel hanging on a nail beside a shocking wash basin.

There was a dirt roof on the cabin from which clods of earth fell rather frequently and bounced on Wallie's head or dropped in the food, or on his bed to startle him when sleeping. The floor contained knotholes through which the field mice and chipmunks came up to share his provisions, and the door, being a trifle larger than the frame, could not be closed entirely.

When Wallie had called McGonnigle's attention to the fact that he could stand in the middle of his cabin and view the scenery through the cracks in any direction, McGonnigle had assured him that "fresh air never hurt nobody," and while he cheerfully admitted that he was not a carpenter, declared that he had made allowances for this fact in his charges.

Though Wallie could not notice it when he paid them, he said nothing, for by now he was accustomed to having everything cost more than he had anticipated, however liberal he might be in his estimate.

Boise Bill rode by occasionally and inquired humorously if he thought he would "winter." To which Wallie always replied that he intended to, though there were moments of depression when he doubted it.

It was upon Wallie's inability to "winter" that Canby was counting. He had hung on longer than Canby had thought he would, but the cattleman felt fairly sure that the first big snowstorm would see the last of Wallie. The hardships and loneliness would "get" him as it did most tenderfeet, Canby reasoned, and some morning he would saddle up in disgust, leaving another homestead open to entry.

If, perchance, this did not happen, Canby had a system of his own for eliminating settlers. It was quite as efficacious as open warfare, though it took longer and was open to the objection that sometimes it enabled them to stay long enough to plow up eighty acres or so which went to weeds when they abandoned it.

Canby had no personal feeling against Wallie and, after meeting him, decided he would use the more lawful and humane method of ridding himself of him. Instead of running him off by threats and violence he would merely starve him out, and Wallie's bank balance indicated that Canby was in a fair way to accomplish his purpose.

Several happenings had made Wallie suspect something of Canby's purpose, and the same latent quality which had made Wallie trudge doggedly after his cow and horse until he had worn out their perversity always made him tell himself grimly that he was going to stick until he had his crop in and harvested if he laid down, a skeleton, and died beside one of his own haystacks.

Mostly, however, he was so busy with his cooking, feeding his livestock, getting wood and water, to say nothing of piling rocks and grubbing sagebrush that he had no time to brood over Canby and the wrongs he had done him. He had learned from McGonnigle that his locoed horses would grow worse instead of better and eventually would have to be shot, and that person had imparted the discouraging information also that not only could he expect no milk from his cow until her calf arrived in January but Jerseys were a breed not commonly selected for beef cattle.

Wallie had thought that his aunt would surely relent to the extent of writing him a Christmas letter but, yesterday, after riding eight miles to look in the bluing box nailed to a post by the roadside, he had found that it had contained only a circular urging him to raise mushrooms in his cellar.

Helene Spenceley, too, might have sent him a Christmas card or something. He had seen her only twice since the sale, and each time she had whizzed past him in Canby's machine on the way to Prouty. The sight had given him a curious feeling which he had tried to analyze but had been unable to find a satisfactory name for it.

Altogether, Wallie felt very lonely and forlorn and forgotten this Christmas morning as he lay in a knot under the soogan, listening to the wind twanging the stove-pipe wire and contemplating his present and future.

He had discovered that by craning his neck slightly when in a certain position he could look through a crack and see the notch in the mountain, below which was the Spenceley ranch, according to Pinkey. He was prompted to do so now, but an eyeful of snow discouraged his observation, so he decided that he would get up, feed his animals and, after breakfast, wash his shirt and a few towels by way of recreation.

The cabin was not only as cold as it looked but colder, and as Wallie hopped over the floor bare-footed and shivering he reflected that very likely his potatoes and onions were frozen and wished he had taken them to bed with him.

They were, unmistakably, for they rattled like glass balls when he picked up several onions and examined them with a pained expression.

Wallie was still wearing much of the wardrobe he had brought with him, and when dressed to go outside he was warm but unique in a green velour hat, his riding breeches, brilliant golf stockings that were all but feetless thrust in arctics, a blue flannel shirt from the Emporium in Prouty, and a long, tight-fitting tan coat which had once been very smart indeed.

The snow had stopped falling by the time he had done his chores and breakfasted. The only benefit the storm had brought him was that it did away with the necessity of carrying water for his washing. He had acquired the agility of a cliff-dweller from scaling the embankment by means of the "toe-holts"; yet, at that, it was no easy matter to transport a bucket of water without spilling it.

He wished for a well every time that he panted in from a trip to the creek, and meant to have one as soon as he could afford it.

While the snow-water was melting Wallie considered the manner in which he should prepare the prairie-dogs. He presumed that it was too much to expect that the cook book would have anything to say on the subject, but it surely would recognize rabbit, and a recipe suitable for one would do for the other.

Wallie got out his cook book and turned eagerly to the index. There was no mention of rabbit. A thought struck him--rabbit was hare and hare was rabbit, wasn't it? If so, the cook book would not admit it, for there was no such word under the H's.

He was disgusted. What good was such a cook book, he asked himself as he turned the leaves in resentment. He wished he could collect the two-fifty he had paid for it. He read aloud, sneeringly:

"Caviar toast, garnished. Crab, scalloped, in shell. Aspic in jelly. Fondu of cheese. Floating Island. Meringue glace, and Whipped Cream."

The mere mention of the dishes made his mouth water, while his anger against the dame who had compiled it mounted higher. He remotely contemplated writing to inquire of the culinary oracle why she had ignored hare and rabbit.

Continuing to scan the index, his eye caught a word which held possibilities. Game! If rabbit was not game, what was it?

Ah! Wallie looked at a picture of a rabbit lying on a platter with its legs in the air and artistically decorated with parsley until he felt more hungry than ever. Then he read aloud with gusto:

"Barbecued rabbit. Casserole of rabbit. Roast rabbit. Smothered rabbit. Stewed rabbit."

He perused all the recipes carefully. After giving weighty consideration to each, roast rabbit seemed to make the strongest appeal to him. He read the recipe aloud twice that he might the better comprehend it:

"Dress and wash the wily coureur de bois, but leave the heads on in cleaning them. Stuff the bodies with a forcemeat of fat, salt pork, minced onions, and fine bread crumbs well seasoned with salt and pepper. Sew them up with fine thread and lay upon thin slices of pork, covering the grating of the roaster. Lay other slices of pork over them, pour over all a cupful of stock, and roast one hour. Remove the pork, then wash with butter and dredge with flour and brown.

"Drain off the gravy, lay the bits of bacon about the rabbit in the dish: thicken the gravy with browned flour. Boil up, add a tablespoonful of tomato catsup and a glass of claret, then take from the fire."

Wallie reflected, as he sat with his feet on the stove-hearth overflowing with ashes, that when it came to the "forcemeat" he was "there with the crumbs," since he had an accumulation of ancient biscuit too hard to eat. Also he had salt pork and onions. The butter, tomato catsup, stock, claret, he must dispense with. After all, the prairie-dogs were the main thing and he had them.

He congratulated himself that he had decided to leave on the heads when skinning them. The recipe so enthused him that he decided to prepare them before starting in with his washing.

Obviously the first thing to do was to thaw the onions, so he put them in the oven, after which he went to a box in the corner and selected a few biscuit. Crumbs were crumbs, as he viewed it, and biscuit crumbs were quite as good as bread crumbs for his purpose.

There were certain marks on these biscuit that were made unmistakably by the teeth of mice and chipmunks, but these traces he removed painstakingly. As he reduced the biscuit to crumbs with a hammer, he recalled that he had been awakened several times by the sound of these pestiferous animals frisking in the box in the corner. He did not allow his mind to dwell upon this, however, lest it prejudice him when it came to the eating of the "forcemeat."

Onions, he found, were not improved by freezing. Those he removed from the oven were distinctly pulpy, but since they smelled like onion and tasted like it, he mushed them in with the biscuit crumbs, and seasoned.

Then he crammed the prairie-dogs with the mixture and looked for a thread among his sewing articles. Since he could find nothing but black linen, Wallie threaded a darning needle and did a fancy "feather" stitch down the middle of each of them.

This accomplished, he stood off and viewed his handiwork with eminent pride and satisfaction, though it occurred to him that owing to his generous use of "forcemeat" they had a bloated appearance, as if they had died of strychnine poisoning.

The heads, too, were decidedly rat-like, and as the long, sharp teeth of the pair of them grinned up at Wallie he covered them hastily and set about his washing.

He had come to begrudge every stick of firewood, and it took an incredible amount to heat wash-water. A man could very well fill his time if he did nothing but collect wood and carry water.

As he set his tub and washboard on a box and rubbed vigorously on his undergarments, he smiled to himself and wondered what his friends of The Colonial would say if they could see him at the moment. He did not so much mind washing, it was easier than digging post holes, but it was not much of a way to spend Christmas and he was desperately lonely. He wished someone would come along to talk to.

He was so far from the road that there were no passersby, and no one wanted to see him anyhow, but his loneliness became so great as he dwelt upon it that on the remote chance that he might see someone even in the distance he stopped washing and walked to the window, where with his elbow he rubbed a spot clear of frost.

Looking out through the loop-hole, it was a white, tractless world he gazed upon, and he might have been in the Arctic Circle for all the signs of life he could discover. He told himself that he might have known better than to hope for any.

As he squinted, he suddenly pressed his eye harder against the window. Did he see a speck that moved or did he imagine it? He enlarged the hole and strained his eyes until they watered. Surely it moved--surely. It would be too disappointing for words if it were only a delusion.

It did! It did! There was now no mistake about it. Someone was coming toward the cabin. Wallie shook with excitement at the prospect of a visitor. Whoever it might be, Wallie would make him stay for dinner if he had to pay him by the hour for his company. That was settled. Very likely it was Pinkey, but to-day even Boise Bill would be welcome.

Wallie shoved his Christmas dinner in the oven and slammed the door upon it, stoked the fire lavishly, then fell upon the washboard and rubbed furiously that he might be done the sooner. At intervals he dashed to the window, half afraid to look lest the rider had changed his mind and gone in another direction.

But no, he kept coming, and there was something in the way he sat his horse which made him think it was Pinkey.

And Pinkey it was, brilliant as a rainbow in orange chaps, red flannel shirt, and a buckskin waistcoat. His coat tied behind the cantle suggested that he either had become overheated or at only twelve below zero had not yet felt the need of it. His horse was snorting steam like a locomotive and icicles of frozen breath were pendent from its nostrils.

Wallie stood in the door, suds to the elbow and his hands steaming, waiting to receive him.

His voice trembled as he greeted him:

"I never was so glad to see anybody in my life, Pinkey."

"This is onct I know you ain't lyin'. Got anything to eat? I'm starvin'. I been comin' sence daylight."

"I got something special," Wallie replied, mysteriously. "Tie your horse to the haystack. I'll hurry things up a little."

Pinkey returned shortly and sniffed as he entered:

"It smells good, anyhow. There's something homelike about onions. What you cookin'?"

"It's a secret, but you'll like 'em. I made 'em out of the cook book."

Pinkey threw his coat on the table and the thud sounded as if it had a brick rolled in it.

"Here's something Helene sent--she made it--it's angel food or somethin', I reckon."

"Now wasn't that good of her!" Wallie exclaimed, gratefully.

"I can't tell till I taste it. I wouldn't call her much of a cook generally." He prodded the cake as he unrolled it and commented:

"Gosh, it's hard! I turned my thumb-nail back on it."

"It's frozen--that's what's the matter," Wallie defended, promptly.

"I think it's a bum cake," declared Pinkey, callously.

"I think you don't know what you're talking about until you try it," Wallie retorted with asperity.

Pinkey looked at him thoughtfully and changed the subject.

"I see you're playin' a tune on the washboard."

Wallie replied stiffly:

"Yes, I'm doing a little laundry." Pinkey's criticism of the cake still rankled.

"You ain't washin' that blue shirt a'ready?" Pinkey demanded, incredulously. "You only bought it Thanksgivin'."

"The front of it bent like rubber-glass and I couldn't stand it any longer." He added reminiscently: "There was a time when I wore a fresh shirt daily."

Pinkey stared at him awe-stricken:

"I wouldn't think changin' as often as that would be healthy."

The clothes in the dishpan on the stove boiled over, and as Wallie jumped for the broom-handle to poke them under, Pinkey demanded:

"Are you bilin' your flannens?"

"Certainly."

"A ten-year-ol' boy can't git in that suit of underwear onct you're done cookin' it," Pinkey explained, and added, disgustedly: "Wallie, don't you know nuthin'?"

Wallie looked his consternation.

"I'll know better next time," he said, humbly.

Pinkey consulted his watch and hinted:

"Don't you want me to make the bread?"

"No, I have some biscuit to warm over, we'll boil potatoes, thaw the cake out, open some pineapple, and with what I have in the oven we will have a dinner that'll be nothing short of a banquet."

"Great! I'm so hungry I could eat with a Digger Injun."

Wallie opened the oven door.

"They're browning beautifully!" he reported.

"Chickens?"

Wallie shook his head:

"I shan't tell you until you've passed upon them."

"If you've got enough of whatever it is--that's all that's worryin' me," declared Pinkey, hungrily. "You'd ought to build you a root cellar next winter--if you're livin'," he remarked as the potatoes rattled when Wallie dropped them in the kettle.

"Do you suppose I could grow potatoes? Is it too dry?"

"This is a great country for potatoes. There's somethin' in the soil that gits in the potatoes' eyes and makes 'em water so they irrigate themselves. Shore! you can grow potatoes."

"I want to make a good many improvements here before next winter," announced Wallie, hopefully. "I wish you could come over for awhile and help me."

"That mightn't be a bad idea," said Pinkey, thoughtfully. "Sence the country went dry I don't much care whether I draw wages or not--they's nothin' to spend money for, so what's the use of workin'? If I was over here I might add a few feet to my rope and git me a good little start off Canby."

"Do you see much of him?" Wallie asked, indifferently.

"Too much," said Pinkey, shortly.

Wallie dropped the pan he was turning in the oven.

"They're browning beautifully," he exclaimed hastily.

"You said that before. Ain't it gittin' time to work on 'em?"

"Remove your feet and I'll set the table."

"Can't you spread a paper for a tablecloth? I always git splinters in my elbows when I eat off rough lumber."

Wallie laughed good-humouredly as he obliged him.

"That's shore a great smell comin' from the oven! Let's eat, feller."

"You certainly are hungry, Pinkey. If I may judge by appearances, you are not going to be disappointed. You sit down while I put things on the table."

Pinkey needed no second invitation.

"I like spuds cooked with the clothes on," he observed as he skinned a potato.

"I trust everything is going to be to your liking," Wallie declared, cordially, as he drew the prairie-dogs from the oven and laid them on an agate-ware platter.

Busy with his potato, Pinkey did not see them until they were before him. Then he stopped and stared hard as they lay on their backs grinning up at him with the "forcemeat" oozing through the stitching.

"What are they? " His emphasis was not flattering.

"I shan't tell you yet," declared Wallie.

Pinkey continued to eye them suspiciously.

"They kinda remind me of a mummy I seen in a side-show; then, again, they look like incubator childern--roasted. Them teeth are what git me. I can't quite place 'em. 'Tain't wood-pussy or nothin', Wallie? 'Tain't no notorious animal like pole-kitty?"

Wallie looked offended.

"I intend to eat some myself," he replied with dignity.

"Are they some kind of a varmint?" Dubiously.

"Varmint?"

"Pack-rat or weasel?"

"Scarcely!"

Wallie looked so injured that Pinkey said apologetically:

"I was jest cur'ous." But inquired further: "Is that stuffin' or in'ards coming through the sewin' down the front of 'em?"

"Forcemeat. I made it according to a recipe."

"Indeed?" Politely. "Don't go shy yourself jest because I'm here," he protested, as Wallie attempted to cut one in two with the butcher-knife. "I ain't feelin' so hungry--somethin' has took my appetite."

As the table swayed under Wallie's efforts to carve a prairie-dog, he suggested:

"Perhaps if you took hold of one leg----"

"Ye-ah," said Pinkey, humorously, "and you take holt of the other and put your foot on my chest so you kin git a purchase, then we'll both pull and somethin's bound to happen."

"If I could only find a joint----"

"Worry one of them legs off and we'll see how we like it before you play yourself out on it."

Wallie acted upon the suggestion and presented the severed member.

"Try it," he urged, persuasively.

Pinkey sunk his grinders into the leg and laid back on it.

"Does it seem tough?" Wallie asked, watching him anxiously.

"Tough! I'm scairt it's goin' to snap back and knock me over. Wait till I git a fresh holt on it."

"Do you get the flavour at all?"

"I can't pull enough off to taste it," Pinkey replied, plaintively.

"Try the dressing and tell me what you think of it." Wallie scooped out a generous spoonful and placed it on his plate, waiting confidently for the verdict.

Pinkey conveyed his knife to his mouth while Wallie stood regarding him with an expression of pleased expectancy as he tasted.

A startled look was succeeded by one that was unmistakably horror. Pinkey knocked over the box upon which he was sitting as he jumped from the table and tore the kitchen door open.

Wallie watched him wonderingly:

"Tell you what I think of it!" Pinkey declared, returning. "I ain't got words--they ain't none in the dictionary. My Gawd! what is it made of?"

"Just biscuit crumbs and onions," said Wallie, colouring.

"Where did you keep 'em?"

Wallie pointed to the box on the floor in the corner.

Pinkey made a hideous grimace.

"Gimme a drink of water! Gimme a chew of tobacco! Gimme anything to take the taste of mouse out'n my mouth. Wallie," solemnly, "men have died fer less'n that in this country. If I thought you'd done that on purpose I'd slit your throat from ear to ear and leave you."

"I thought I was very particular and cut off everything that looked suspicious," said Wallie, meekly, "I must have missed something."

"You shore did! And," Pinkey demanded, "what might them horrors be on the platter? Them teeth are mighty familiar."

Wallie quavered:

"Prairie-dog--I was experimenting to see if they were edible."

"Leave me out in the air again!" Pinkey groaned as he swallowed a drink of water. "And I passed up a turkey dinner to come and eat with you!"

"Shan't I cook you some bacon?" asked Wallie, contritely.

"I doubt if I ever feel like eatin' agin, but if the cake's thawed out I'll try a chunk of it to take my mind off that stuffin'."

Wallie opened the can of pineapple he had been treasuring and Pinkey helped himself freely to the Christmas cake.

"They must be about four meals in one of them slices, the way it feels inside of me," the latter commented, nibbling delicately on a ring of pineapple he held in his fingers.

"It's fruit-cake, and rich; you're not supposed to eat so much of it," Wallie said, sharply.

Pinkey raised his eyebrows and regarded Wallie attentively as he continued to nibble.

"Looks like you're turrible touchy about her cookin', and swelled up over gittin' a Christmas present," he remarked, finally. "You needn't be, because she made eight other cement bricks jest like this one and sent 'em around to fellers she's sorry for."

"Oh, did she!" Wallie ejaculated, crestfallen.

"Yes, indeed," Pinkey went on, complacently, feeling a glow of satisfaction at Wallie's lengthened countenance; "she does it every Christmas. She's kind to the pore and sufferin', but it don't mean nothin' more than a dollar she'd drop in a hat somebody was passin'."

Noting the deep gloom which immediately settled upon Wallie, Pinkey could think of the prairie-dogs with more equanimity. _

Read next: Chapter 12. The Water Witch

Read previous: Chapter 10. The Best Pulling Team In The State

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