On the day before Christmas they drove thirty miles, making four fruitless halts and appeals. Everywhere they found “kids” at a premium.
The sun was low when the wife of a section boss on a lonely railroad huddled her unavailable progeny behind her and said:
“There’s a woman that’s just took charge of the railroad eatin’ house down at Granite Junction. I hear she’s got a little boy. Maybe she might let him go.”
Trinidad pulled up his mules at Granite Junction at five o’clock in the afternoon. The train had just departed with its load of fed and appeased passengers.
On the steps of the eating house they found a thin and glowering boy of ten smoking a cigarette. The dining-room had been left in chaos by the peripatetic appetites. A youngish woman reclined, exhausted, in a chair. Her face wore sharp lines of worry. She had once possessed a certain style of beauty that would never wholly leave her and would never wholly return. Trinidad set forth his mission.
“I’d count it a mercy if you’d take Bobby for a while,” she said, wearily. “I’m on the go from morning till night, and I don’t have time to ’tend to him. He’s learning bad habits from the men. It’ll be the only chance he’ll have to get any Christmas.”
The men went outside and conferred with Bobby. Trinidad pictured the glories of the Christmas tree and presents in lively colours.
“And, moreover, my young friend,” added the Judge, “Santa Claus himself will personally distribute the offerings that will typify the gifts conveyed by the shepherds of Bethlehem to—”
“Aw, come off,” said the boy, squinting his small eyes. “I ain’t no kid. There ain’t any Santa Claus. It’s your folks that buys toys and sneaks ’em in when you’re asleep. And they make marks in the soot in the chimney with the tongs to look like Santa’s sleigh tracks.”
“That might be so,” argued Trinidad, “but Christmas trees ain’t no fairy tale. This one’s goin’ to look like the ten-cent store in Albuquerque, all strung up in a redwood. There’s tops and drums and Noah’s arks and—”