"Aw, we'll have buckets of grub," said the smith. "We'll ask 'em all to 'please bring refreshments,' same as they do in families where they never git a good square meal except at surprise-parties and birthday blow-outs. Don't you fear about the feed."
"Well, we ought to git the jig to goin'," suggested Field. "Lots of the boys needs a good fair warnin' when they're goin' to tackle cookin' grub for a Christmas dinner. I vote we git out of here and go down hill and talk the racket up."
This motion was carried at once. The boys filed out with hearty good-nights, and wended their way down the slope, with the bite of the frosted air at their ears.
Then Jim, at the very thought of travelling forty miles to fetch a tree for Christmas gayeties, sat down before his fire to take a rest.
CHAPTER XI
TROUBLES AND DISCOVERIES
For the next ten days the talk of the camp was the coming celebration. Moreover, man after man was surrounding himself with mystery impenetrable, as he drew away in his shell, so to speak, to undergo certain throes of invention and secret manufacture of presents for the tiny boy at the cabin on the hill. Knowing nods, sly winks, and jealous guarding of their cleverness marked the big, rough fellows one by one. And yet some of the most secretive felt a necessity for consulting Jim as to what was appropriate, what would please little Skeezucks, and what was worthy to be tied upon the tree.
That each and every individual thus laboring to produce his offering should be eager to excel his neighbor, and to win the greatest appreciation from the all-unknowing little pilgrim for his own particular toy or trinket, was a natural outcome of the Christmas spirit actuating the manoeuvres. And all the things they could give would have to be made, since there was not a shop in a radius of a hundred miles where baubles for youngsters could be purchased, while Borealis, having never had a baby boy before in all its sudden annals of being, had neglected all provision for the advent of tiny Skeezucks.
The carpenter came to the cabin first, with a barley-sack filled with the blocks he had made for the small foundling's Christmas ecstasy. Before he would show them, however, Keno was obliged to leave the house and the tiny pilgrim himself was placed in a bunk from which he could not see.
"I want to surprise him," explained the carpenter.