I
Those who like a “white Christmas” should see one out on the Western plains, where old Mother Earth lies down for her winter sleep under a coverlet so white that from horizon to horizon there is hardly enough gray to outline her form. The winds play tricks with her in scandalous style out there, making roundness where no roundness is and doing their best to lay bare her very bones. “These winds don’t care a cuss fer clothes,” said Job Tolaver, the stage driver, once; and John Haloran on his hard missionary rides had thought of it a thousand times since. He was saying it to himself numbly now as with stiffening fingers and head lowered against the gale he drove along the faint track of a road.
His wife threw open the door as he drove up, and a stream of light fell athwart the wagon. There was a barrel in the back.
“Dead, John?—or only half?” Her eager eyes searched his face. She knew the whole pitiful story without a word. The draft had not come. Then, because she knew, she went on gayly, “Or have you gone to peddling? What’s in your barrel?”
“‘DEAD, JOHN?—OR ONLY HALF?’”
“I don’t know yet,” he said heavily, twisting it into the room. “We’ll see when I’ve fed Daisy.”
When he was gone she eyed the barrel curiously, tilting it and reading aloud:
- Rev. John F. Haloran,
- Blue Lick, Wyoming.
“It’s not potatoes. It isn’t heavy enough for that.” Then she struck an attitude with clasped hands. “I never saw one before—never! But my prophetic soul tells me this is a missionary barrel. And just two days before Christmas! Well, in the language of my first-born, ‘Hooray!’”