BUCKING HORSE AND RIDER
Behind the closed doors of the living room the tall tree, festooned with ropes of popcorn and garlands of gaudy paper chains, glittered and glowed with its tinsel ornaments and candles.
Owen divided his attention between his “Santa Claus” costume and pails of water, which he placed near the tree in case it should catch fire.
The boys spent most of the morning “slicking up” and put on their red neckties, the outward and visible sign of some important event, then passed the remaining hours sitting around anxiously awaiting the arrival of the guests of honor and—dinner.
Sometimes members of the family were with us or some friends were lured from the city by the promise of a “really, truly Christmas,” and there were always a few lonely bachelors to whom the holidays, otherwise, would have brought only memories.
Christmas was our one great annual celebration, a day of cheer and happiness, in which everyone joyously shared. It was a new experience in the life of the undomesticated cow-puncher, but he took as much satisfaction in the fact that “Our tree was a whole lot prettier than the one I’ve saw in town” as though he had won a roping contest.
Each year the children and their parents were invited for Christmas dinner. They might be delayed en route by deep snowdrifts, out of which they had to dig themselves, but they always arrived eventually. We came to have a sincere affection for those children, gentle little wild flowers of the prairie.
They were very sweet, perfectly ingenuous, gazing in round-eyed wonder upon things which to most of us were commonplace.
I never thought of its being anything new in their brief experience until at dinner one of the small boys turned to his mother after tasting a piece of celery and said, “Look, Mamma, ’tain’t cabbage and ’tain’t onions. What is it?”
They positively trembled with excitement as they learned to read and laboriously spelled out the words in the simple books we gave them. They craved knowledge as a starving man craves bread.