“Yes, sir; the tree! Of course them little folks must have a tree. They say they want one, an’ why shouldn’t they have it, with the finest Christmas trees in the world right at hand here in the mountains?”
“Where you goin’ to have the tree, I’d like to know?” said a burly miner.
“In the hall over the post-office.”
“Well, if you ain’t plannin’ a reg’lar jamboree!”
“Course I am!” replied Ma’am Hickey. “Got any objections?”
“Better keep ’em to yourself if you have,” said Big Dan. “For what Ma’am Hickey an’ them two little youngsters says—goes.”
“That settles it,” said Ma’am Hickey, with a laugh.
Crystal City was a long distance from Singing River, and the mountain trails were hard and dangerous to travel at that time of the year. The stage would not make another trip until after Christmas, and it might be a month before it returned after it left the camp.
Big Dan and Joe Burke set off at daybreak the morning after the arrival of the two little wayfarers. The men had “chipped in” for the purchase of “gimcracks” for the tree, and they had been so generous that Big Dan said just before he started for Crystal City:
“We’ll have to have the biggest pine we kin git for the tree. You chaps have it all set up in the hall by the time we git back.”