The half-breed lifted him like a feather, and laid him on his bed and drew the covering softly over him. Noiselessly he replenished the fire, and squatted before it, resuming the stocking-drying process.
The resinous boughs burst into flame, and a pungent perfume and a red glow pervaded the smoke-blackened cabin. The light fell on the patroncito as he lay on the couch of skins, caressed the slender foot he had thrust from out the covering, and danced on the silver buttons strung on his gay pantalones. Over him, like an ogre, hovered the wavering shadow of the giant’s head, rendered more grotesque by his towering cap of badger-skin, plumed with a flaunting tail.
As he sat on his heels in the brilliant light, this savage head-covering lent additional fierceness to the half-breed’s hatchet-face. Wild-eyed, too, was he as any denizen of his chosen haunts. But stolid in its composure as his saturnine countenance was, it was free from all trace of the petty passions that cramp the souls of his civilized half-brothers. And as he looked at the soft stockings, now dry in his hands, a smile parted his thin lips.
Just then the firelight flared up and went suddenly out, and the threatening shadow on the wall was lost. And though the door never opened, and even the hunter’s vigilant ears caught no sound, he felt a presence in the cabin. Looking up, he dreamily beheld, shadowed forth dimly in the gloom, the form of San Nicolas, long belated by the drifts. But how that Spanish Christmas saint looked, or what he said to remind the half-breed of that hallowed time when all should be peace on earth and good will towards men, must ever remain a secret between him and his lawless host.
The patroncito awoke, and through the open doorway saw the snow sparkling in the sun of Christmas morning. Over the fire Cherokee Sam was frying venison, and on either side hung the long silk stockings, filled.
“And I never saw him!” said the patroncito reproachfully, as he looked at them. “Oh, why didn’t you wake me, Don Cherokee Sam?”
“I didn’t dar to do it, patroncito,” explained Sam. “’Twasn’t safe when he told me not to.”
He watched the patroncito anxiously as he took the stockings down. But he need have had no fear. As their contents rolled out on the deerskin the patroncito uttered a cry of delight.
A handful of garnets, bits of broken agate, a shivered topaz, shining cubes of iron pyrites, picked up on otherwise fruitless prospects by San Nicolas; a tanned white weasel-skin purse, and ornaments of young bucks’ prongs, patiently carved by that good saint on winter evenings. Certainly, never before, with all his silk and silver, had the petted patroncito received gifts so prized as these.
“Never mind about breakfast,” he said imperiously, as he gathered them up. “Take me to the plaza right away.”