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.