Letters of a Woman Homesteader

by Elinore Pruitt Stewart

XIX[ToC]

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE

January 6, 1913.

My dear Friend,—

I have put off writing you and thanking you for your thought for us until now so that I could tell you of our very happy Christmas and our deer hunt all at once.

To begin with, Mr. Stewart and Junior have gone to Boulder to spend the winter. Clyde wanted his mother to have a chance to enjoy our boy, so, as he had to go, he took Junior with him. Then those of my dear neighbors nearest my heart decided to prevent a lonely Christmas for me, so on December 21st came Mrs. Louderer, laden with an immense plum pudding and a big "wurst," and a little later came Mrs. O'Shaughnessy on her frisky pony, Chief, her scarlet sweater making a bright bit of color against our snow-wrapped horizon. Her face and ways are just as bright and cheery as can be. When she saw Mrs. Louderer's pudding and sausage she said she had brought nothing because she had come to get something to eat herself, "and," she continued, "it is a private opinion of mine that my neighbors are so glad to see me that they are glad to feed me." Now wouldn't that little speech have made her welcome anywhere?

Well, we were hilariously planning what Mrs. O'Shaughnessy called a "widdy" Christmas and getting supper, when a great stamping-off of snow proclaimed a newcomer. It was Gavotte, and we were powerfully glad to see him because the hired man was going to a dance and we knew Gavotte would contrive some unusual amusement. He had heard that Clyde was going to have a deer-drive, and didn't know that he had gone, so he had come down to join the hunt just for the fun, and was very much disappointed to find there was going to be no hunt. After supper, however, his good humor returned and he told us story after story of big hunts he had had in Canada. He worked up his own enthusiasm as well as ours, and at last proposed that we have a drive of our own for a Christmas "joy." He said he would take a station and do the shooting if one of us would do the driving. So right now I reckon I had better tell you how it is done.

There are many little parks in the mountains where the deer can feed, although now most places are so deep in snow that they can't walk in it. For that reason they have trails to water and to the different feeding-grounds, and they can't get through the snow except along these paths. You see how easy it would be for a man hidden on the trail to get one of the beautiful creatures if some one coming from another direction startled them so that they came along that particular path.

So they made their plans. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy elected herself driver. Two miles away is a huge mountain called Phillipeco, and deer were said to be plentiful up there. At one time there had been a sawmill on the mountain, and there were a number of deserted cabins in which we could make ourselves comfortable. So it was planned that we go up the next morning, stay all night, have the hunt the following morning, and then come home with our game.