Clarice E. Richards

Within a radius of many miles there were only three small children, and about them our Christmas festivities revolved. They furnished the excuse for the tree, but no work was too pressing, no snow too deep to prevent the boys from bringing the Christmas tree and greens from a small clump of pines which stood on top of a distant hill, like a dark green island in the midst of the prairie sea.

Early on Christmas morning Steve started out with gaily bedecked baskets for the Mexicans, and at the ranch the greatest excitement prevailed. I dashed frantically between the bunkhouse and our kitchen to be certain that nothing was forgotten. The big turkeys were stuffed to the point of bursting, all the “trimmings” were in readiness, and the last savory mince pies were in the ovens.

BUCKING HORSE AND RIDER

Behind the closed doors of the living room the tall tree, festooned with ropes of popcorn and garlands of gaudy paper chains, glittered and glowed with its tinsel ornaments and candles.

Owen divided his attention between his “Santa Claus” costume and pails of water, which he placed near the tree in case it should catch fire.

The boys spent most of the morning “slicking up” and put on their red neckties, the outward and visible sign of some important event, then passed the remaining hours sitting around anxiously awaiting the arrival of the guests of honor and—dinner.

Sometimes members of the family were with us or some friends were lured from the city by the promise of a “really, truly Christmas,” and there were always a few lonely bachelors to whom the holidays, otherwise, would have brought only memories.

Christmas was our one great annual celebration, a day of cheer and happiness, in which everyone joyously shared. It was a new experience in the life of the undomesticated cow-puncher, but he took as much satisfaction in the fact that “Our tree was a whole lot prettier than the one I’ve saw in town” as though he had won a roping contest.

Each year the children and their parents were invited for Christmas dinner. They might be delayed en route by deep snowdrifts, out of which they had to dig themselves, but they always arrived eventually. We came to have a sincere affection for those children, gentle little wild flowers of the prairie.

They were very sweet, perfectly ingenuous, gazing in round-eyed wonder upon things which to most of us were commonplace.

I never thought of its being anything new in their brief experience until at dinner one of the small boys turned to his mother after tasting a piece of celery and said, “Look, Mamma, ’tain’t cabbage and ’tain’t onions. What is it?”

They positively trembled with excitement as they learned to read and laboriously spelled out the words in the simple books we gave them. They craved knowledge as a starving man craves bread.

As Santa Claus, Owen wore a ruddy mask with a long white beard and bristling eyebrows, a fur cap pulled down over his ears, heavy felt boots and his long fur overcoat. He looked and acted the part so perfectly the children for years insisted that “there is a Santa Claus ’cause we’ve seen him.”

The first Christmas everyone was gathered about the tree waiting for this mysterious personage to appear when Owen suddenly thought of bells; he must have sleigh-bells. No self-respecting Santa Claus was complete without them. I was in despair; there wasn’t a sleigh-bell within a hundred miles, but Owen insisted that he must jingle. At last after a great deal of argument and searching for something which would give forth bell-like sounds, he finally pranced out before the spell-bound audience with my silver table bell sewed to the top of one of his boots. He had to prance because the bell refused to tinkle unless it was shaken, and for the ensuing hour he pranced so vigorously that between the exercise and the fur coat he nearly perished from heat.

After dinner we all assembled in the big living-room, where my disguised husband presented each person with some little gift and ridiculous toy, accompanied by a still more ridiculous rhyme, over which the boys roared. They enjoyed the jokes most of all. No one escaped; Owen and I came in for our share with the rest. Mine usually bore veiled or open allusion to my particular pet lamb which had developed strong butting proclivities. He butted friend and foe indiscriminately, so that even my fond eyes were not blinded to his faults, and Owen’s remarks were most uncomplimentary after he had acted as a shield for us when “Jackie” had chased my sister and me all about the yard.

Later in the afternoon everybody scattered—our house guests amused themselves as they chose, riding, driving or hunting coyotes, the boys rode over to the neighboring ranches or went to “town,” the store and saloon at the railroad station sixteen miles away, but I spent an hour or two playing with the children or reading to them until their father “brought the team around,” their happy mother climbed up on the high seat of the lumber-wagon and, clinging to dolls, trains and toys, three blissfully happy but perfectly exhausted little children were wrapped up in quilts and coats, stowed into the back of the wagon and started on the twenty-mile drive “back home.”

It had been an eventful day in their short, barren lives, but for us it was the best part of Christmas, except the evening, when we all gathered about the big fireplace which drew everyone into its circle like a magnet.

There was nothing prosaic about those who grouped themselves around the great stone fireplaces on the ranches in the old days. Here again were found those contrasts, so striking and unexpected; university men who had come West for adventure or investment, men of wealth whose predisposition to weak lungs had sent them in exile to the wilderness, modest young Englishmen, those younger sons so often found in the most out-of-the-way corners of the earth, and who, through the sudden demise of a near relative, had such a startling way of becoming earls and lords over night; adventurous Scotchmen, brilliant young Irishmen, all smoking contentedly there in the firelight and discussing the “isms” and “ologies” and every other subject under heaven. But most interesting of all were their own reminiscences.

We were all sitting around the fire one Christmas night when the conversation turned on adventure, and everyone promised to tell the most thrilling experience he had ever had.

Two of the men were lying on the big bearskin before the fire. One, a mining engineer, told of having been captured by bandits and held for a ransom, in some remote corner of Mexico where he had gone to examine a very famous mine. The other, a surveyor for the Union Pacific Railroad, had been lost during a storm and, becoming snow-blind, crawled for five miles on his hands and knees, feeling the trail with naked, half frozen hands until he reached the creek down which he waded until he came to the camp.

In a big chair, the firelight playing over her slender figure, sat Janet Courtland, an Eastern woman, who as a mere girl had come West with her young husband and had gone up into Montana where he had bought a large cattle ranch.

“Come on, Mrs. Courtland, you’re next,” the Surveyor said as he finished his story.

“Well,” Janet began, “Will and I have had so many experiences I scarcely know which was the most exciting, but I think our encounter with the Indians was the most thrilling from first to last.

“Will had to go into Miles City on business and I went with him for great unrest had been reported among the Indians and he didn’t want to leave me on the ranch alone. We had been in town only a few days when we heard that they were on the war path and Will felt he must go back to the ranch. He wanted me to stay in town, but I wouldn’t. If he was going back I was going with him, so we started in the buck-board on that long eighty-five mile drive. I’ll never forget it. The day was fearfully hot and we were constantly looking out for Indians. We had gone about half-way, when we came over the top of a hill and saw a band of Indians just below us. They saw us before we could turn back, we had to go on, and as we came towards them they formed into two lines so that we had to drive between them. It was horrible.” And Janet gave a shiver at the recollection. “I’ll never forget as long as I live those frightful, painted faces. Not an Indian moved; we passed through the line and had gone a short distance beyond, when we heard the report of a gun. Will clapped his hand to his side and said: ‘My God, I’m shot. Drive as fast as you can’—and he threw the lines to me.

“I lashed the horses and we fairly tore. Everything was still, there was only that one shot, the Indians made no attempt to follow us. We did not speak. Will was lying back in the buckboard, his hand pressed to his side. When we had gone out of sight of the Indians I stopped the horses and asked Will where he was struck.

“‘In the side; I can feel the blood oozing through my fingers,’ he said. He took his hand away and gave an exclamation as he looked at it. It was wet but not with blood. We could not find the sign of a wound. We got out to investigate and discovered—that just as we passed the Indians the cork flew out of a bottle of root beer we had in the back of the buckboard and struck him in the side. Poor old Willie, no wonder he thought he was shot,” and Janet smiled at her husband, who laughed with the rest of us.

“Now, Owen,” he said, “I know some of the things you’ve been through, so you can’t beg off,” and Owen began his story.

“In the spring of ’81 I came West to visit my brother, Ed., on his ranch in Wyoming. I was a tenderfoot, never having been on the plains before—and yet—I had scarcely arrived when I announced that the one thing I wanted to do was to kill a buffalo. He told me that if my heart was set on it I should have the chance, but that it was dangerous sport even for experienced hunters, as a buffalo frequently turns and gores the horse before it can get out of the way.

“The very next day the dead body of a professional hunter was brought to the ranch. He had wounded a buffalo bull which had turned, caught with his horn the horse he was riding, thrown him to the ground and gored the hunter to death. The sight of his mangled body was shocking and made a terrible impression on my mind, but my purpose was not changed.

“My brother assigned Al. Turpin the responsibility of serving as my guide. He was one of the best riders on the ranch, cool-headed and a good shot. We took breakfast before daylight in order to get an early start. After riding a considerable distance three dark objects were discovered far away on a hill which sloped toward us. A pair of field glasses confirmed the opinion that they were buffalo lying down. We rode in their direction and kept out of sight, except as we peered cautiously over the top of each succeeding ridge until it was possible to approach no nearer in concealment, when we rode to the top of the nearest hill and were in full view. The buffalo saw us and quick as lightning were on their feet running away. We sent our horses at full speed down the slope, across a level piece of ground and up the hill after them. We were gaining rapidly. My horse was the faster of the two and was in the lead. He was one of the best trained cow ponies I have ever ridden and was my brother’s favorite for cutting out cattle.

“When about thirty yards behind the buffalo, one stopped. The bit I was using was severe. I pulled and threw my horse back on his haunches. The buffalo was an immense bull. He appeared to me as big as a mountain. He turned facing me, his body at an angle, cocked his head on the side, then threw it toward the ground and, quicker than a flash, came down the hill like a landslide.

“My horse struggled against the bit and tried to jump toward the buffalo and turn him as he would a steer. I tried to swing his head away and dug my spurs into his sides to make him move, but he did not understand why he should run from a buffalo. He did respond a little and turned so that his haunches were toward the great brute coming down the hill.

“The head of the buffalo was in striking distance. He looked like a great devil. His beadlike eyes flashed fire. The next instant I expected the horse to be pitched down the hill. I could feel myself thrown into the air and then gored to death when I struck the ground. I could see the mangled body of the dead hunter.

“While my six-shooter was a powerful gun, I knew that if I should shoot the brute in the head, the ball would not go through the mass of matted hair and the thick skull. Still there was nothing else to do. I thought my time had come. In order to hit him at all it was necessary to shoot over my left arm. In my haste I pulled the trigger too soon. The loud report startled the horse into a run and turned the buffalo. Its discharge, so near my head, gave me a terrible shock. I thought the shot had blown away all the right side of my head and I put up my hand to keep my brains from falling out, but there were neither brains nor blood on my hand. The bullet had just grazed my head and gone through the rim of my hat. That brute looked like an infuriated demon. I couldn’t have been more frightened if I had met the devil himself at the mouth of hell.

“When it was all over, I was not in a mood for challenging him again, but as he loped away, Al. ran his horse abreast and from a safe distance put a shot into his brisket. He fell dead. Believe me, I have had many close calls, but that was the one time in all my life when I was really scared.”

“What extraordinary experiences people do have in this country,” Will Mason exclaimed, as he leaned forward to light a fresh cigar. “Speaking of Ed. reminds me of a strange coincidence which happened the year after he came West.

“We had been together the year before in New York, where we had met a chap named Courtney Drake. He was a Yale man and a member of the University Club, so we saw quite a good deal of him. He was very congenial and one of the most lovable fellows I ever knew. He was married but he seldom spoke of his wife and we never met her.

“One morning we picked up the paper and were horrified to read that Mrs. Courtney Drake had shot her maid. There it was in glaring headlines, the whole wretched affair. The Drakes were one of the oldest and wealthiest families in New York and it was spicy reading for the scandal lovers I assure you.

“It seems that Drake had gotten mixed up with this woman when he first came out of college and in order to force him to marry her she told him that she was soon to have a child. He wouldn’t believe it, and how she worked it I don’t know. She must have been mighty clever, for she and her maid got hold of a baby somewhere and she made Courtney believe it was hers and that he was the father—so he married her.

“They had only been married a short time when the maid began to demand large sums of ‘hush money’ and Mrs. Drake gave her whatever she asked, for she was in mortal dread of having Drake discover the truth. The girl found blackmail so profitable she became more and more insistent in her demands and nearly drove Mrs. Drake wild. At last she could endure it no longer and in a perfect frenzy, shot and killed the maid and then the whole thing came out. Mrs. Drake was sent to prison, where she died later, but Courtney vanished utterly after the trial—no one knew what became of him.

“The next fall Ed. and I came West and two years later were up in the Jackson’s Hole country with a party, shooting. Ed. and one of the guides went out one morning to get some ducks, but in a short time they came back to camp carrying the dead body of Courtney Drake. They had come across his body on the shore of a small lake, lying face down in the mud. There was a single bullet hole in the back of his head.

“Think of his having been found out there in the wilderness by the only man in the country who knew who he was! Talk about chance,” Will sighed, “Poor devil, he was living out there under an assumed name. His family had no idea where he was. Ed. notified them and then took his body East.

“Just after his death Drake’s partner produced a bill of sale for the entire ranch and took possession of it. Everyone suspected him of the murder, but it couldn’t be proved. About three years later the man killed his wife and at the time of his conviction the question of Drake’s murder was brought up and he confessed. Isn’t it strange the way things happen?” Will’s question was general. “What on earth do you suppose sent Ed. Brook into the Jackson’s Hole country at that one time of all others?”

No one answered.

“I wonder if all new countries abound in such tragic mysteries?” The Surveyor looked up at me.

“What tragic mysteries have you encountered, Mrs. Brook, that makes you speak so feelingly?”

Just then the clock struck twelve and I got up.

“It’s too late for more mysteries, it’s time to go to bed—and we don’t want tragedies to keep us wide awake on Christmas night.”

“Oh, come on Esther, tell us your most thrilling experience,” they begged. “We won’t move a step until you do.”

“Marrying Owen,” I replied, looking over at my unsuspecting husband, “I’ve never had a chance to get my breath since.”

And amid a shout of laughter the Christmas party broke up.