“They’ve likely went to town for Christmas,” he said. “But that don’t make no difference to us; we’ll mighty soon have things humming here.”
He hung up his big white cowboy hat, hustled off Hilda’s snow-soaked outer garments, and came back from a foraging expedition with a small blanket, in which he wrapped her, tucking her into a comfortable chair.
“Now you’re done up like a papoose,” he laughed. “Can’t move none in that there serape. You just set and watch your Uncle Hank while he shows you how folks make theirselves to home in Texas when they come to see you—and you ain’t there.”
Soon fires were roaring gayly in both the kitchen and front-room stoves, a can of tomatoes was opened, a can of corn beside it; the odor of brewing coffee floated pleasantly through the house; condensed milk, butter,—all that goes to make a cozy meal was brought out. A lamp was lit—as the darkness thickened—the table spread, and they ate their supper.
Hilda could not get the great white cat to stay with her. Lily came in and welcomed them sedately; then, in spite of all Hilda’s petting, offering of diluted condensed milk and other dainties, she walked away with the air of a hostess who feels her duty complete.
“Leave her go,” said Uncle Hank easily. “You can gentle her to-morrow. We’ll be right here for three days.”
“I keep on being almost glad,” Hilda said. “It’s like a desert island—sort of. And the plain out there is the sea. If it had happened on the way back, and I’d had—er—something I wanted to get in Mesquite, I think Christmas here would be lots of fun.”
“Ye-ah. So do I, Pettie.” The old man spoke absently from a small wall cupboard, where he was pushing aside a home-made checkerboard with buttons for checkers, several incomplete and very dirty packs of cards, that had made many a solitaire in long lonesome evenings, and Frosty’s extra supply of tobacco. “If I had—” His voice trailed off. His plans had not been so exact as Hilda’s, but he had expected to fill a small stocking to overflowing with what he could buy at Brann’s store; and now there was nothing to “do with,” as he himself would have put it, but whatever he could find in or about the Bar Thirteen shack. He sighed a little, then turned with a smile to drop another stick of mesquite wood into the little air-tight stove. He surveyed the bright, warm room, while outside the norther had its own way on the naked plain. “Comfortable! Why, we’re just a-suffering with comfort, you and me—ain’t we, honey?”
CHAPTER VIII
A CHRISTMAS VALENTINE
That night Hilda slept soundly in big Frosty MacQueen’s bed. And all through the dark hours snow came down on that long slant from the north, so that it coated that side of the house. It froze, thawed a little, and froze again; morning found a sparkling glare, almost like thin ice, all over the snowy crust on which the flakes had ceased to fall. The sun was shining; it was very beautiful, but bitter cold—not the kind of day to go out in. Like a great knife the wind raked the gleaming levels; it played with the dust of dry snow; it tried at the doors and windows of the shack, rattling them loudly. It made what was inside them seem all the more secure and cheerful by contrast.