“Oh, yes—the pack!” cried Hilda eagerly. “Why, of course!” She had taken the pack for the hump of a rabbit!
There were now hauled out of the great stocking, one after another, a coyote, whose color helped along the illusion, and whom Hilda, grown more cautious, did not call anything till she had artfully induced Uncle Hank to classify him; a cow, which Uncle Hank willingly, even a bit hastily, named, adding in an apologetic tone, “Them horns—no, them there—them’s its horns—swelled something ridiculous in the baking!” Then there was really a jack-rabbit (about the cow’s own size, and much resembling her), some mice, and a flock of fat little yellow ducks, made by knotting a string of dough, flattening one end for the tail, and bunching the other for the head. These looked so good that Hilda suddenly became conscious of her lack of breakfast. Down in the toe of the stocking was a small jar filled with that which had yesterday spread such maddening odors abroad and had fizzled and boiled over—a most marvelous, a truly heavenly soft taffy, all juicy and moist with chopped prunes.
“Oh,” she said, concluding her investigations with a sigh of rapture, “you’ve made me a lovelier Christmas than as if we had got in to Mesquite. Now, Uncle Hank, look in yours.”
“Reckon I better?” he debated, glancing doubtfully at the lank stocking. “Sometimes Sandy Claus gets stalled in the snow, and you don’t get your gift till some days after Christmas. I’ve knowed it to happen in the Tennessee mountains, and I ain’t going to hold it against him if that’s the case this time.”
“But it isn’t—it isn’t!” cried Hilda, with very bright eyes.
The enterprising kitten ran up Hilda’s chair at a rush, tumbled into her lap and began nibbling at a gingerbread duck. Uncle Hank crossed the floor in two big strides and thrust his hand deep into the swinging stocking. He drew out the small red book. As he stood and looked down at the name upon it, his tanned weather-beaten face softened beautifully.
“Charley’s book, God bless him—poor boy!” he said, hardly above his breath. He looked at her, not seeing her, his gaze—full of pitying love—fixed on things a short way back on Hilda’s and his own life trail. “The little book Charley always packed. Charley’s baby was bound to see that Uncle Hank was remembered.” He turned it in gentle fingers. Against one inside cover was a pocket, and in it lay a length of tinsel ribbon, such as comes about bolts of muslin; a baby picture of Hilda’s self, a bit of Charley’s dark, curling hair, a pressed flower—treasures of a lonely child—and with them a folded paper.
“Open it!” Hilda couldn’t restrain herself. “It’s just a valentine—a Christmas valentine—Uncle Hank; but I want you to keep the book, and—and you said I could be a ranchwoman—and write poetry at nights and while I’m resting.”
She had worked with her own red-and-blue pencil and Frosty McQueen’s violet ink to put a vine around the page by way of border. The blossoms of this stem were botanically erratic, but they would commend themselves to Uncle Hank’s partial eyes. A red bird plumed itself in the upper right-hand corner of the sheet, supported by a blue fowl on the left. The little girl had written in her large, clear, childish hand between:
My Uncle Hank