A CHRISTMAS VALENTINE
That night Hilda slept soundly in big Frosty MacQueen’s bed. And all
through the dark hours snow came down on that long slant from the
north, so that it coated that side of the house. It froze, thawed a
little, and froze again; morning found a sparkling glare, almost
like thin ice, all over the snowy crust on which the flakes had
ceased to fall. The sun was shining; it was very beautiful, but
bitter cold—not the kind of day to go out in. Like a great knife the
wind raked the gleaming levels; it played with the dust of dry snow;
it tried at the doors and windows of the shack, rattling them
loudly. It made what was inside them seem all the more secure and
cheerful by contrast.
A curious preoccupation had taken hold of these two castaways. They
wandered about the house, and didn’t look at each other. Hilda’s
coins burned in her pocket. Uncle Hank seemed to be vaguely looking
for something.
“From his gal, I reckon,” was the comment brought out by a small
bonbon box full of much-read letters. “No, they ain’t likely to be a
thing on the place that Pettie would care for.” But anyhow he could
cook. And so, soon after the noon meal, he barricaded himself in the
kitchen, telling Hilda to occupy herself with such amusements as
could be found in the parlor—“like a lady.” She agreed, promptly and
without comment. She had important plans of her own afoot. It never
occurred to her that she could take the liberty of presenting her
Uncle Hank with anything that belonged to Frosty MacQueen. She dived
instantly and eagerly into her own inner consciousness and personal
belongings. The small bundle was unrolled and looked over.
The desperate plan of slashing right into one of the breadths of
that blue silk dress to make a necktie for Uncle Hank wasn’t given
up because Hilda would have grudged the sacrifice, only for lack of
proper needles and thread. Frosty had a “housewife,” but the
needle-book in it contained nothing but darners, some wicked
three-cornered affairs for sewing leather—Hilda cut a finger on one
of them and respectfully let them alone after that—and one short,
fat needle almost as big as a darner. As for thread, there was some
number eight, black, and some number thirty, white, and a mass of
darning cotton. Did all Frosty’s sewing consist of darning and
sewing on buttons? It looked like it. The cambric of her nightgown
would have furnished pocket-handkerchiefs—of a sort—but again, she
couldn’t hem handkerchiefs without fine thread and needle. Beyond
this was a tooth-brush, a comb, an extra hair ribbon of faded
complexion, and a little red Russian-leather note-book with her
father’s name upon it.
This last brought the happy inspiration. She would write Uncle Hank
a Christmas valentine—the combination was her own invention. Since
the spirit of the gift must be all, she would freight it with that
love which sometimes seemed to swell almost too big for her heart to
hold, and hint delicately at something more material that would come
later, when she could get in to Mesquite.
The last words of this composition were labored out in the dusk, and
Hilda rose with a start to light her lamp and finish her
preparations. There was no sound from the kitchen, but a most
delicious odor oozed through a crack of the door. “Stay there,
Pettie!” sounded Uncle Hank’s voice as she took the first step
toward his part of the house. “I put you a lamp and matches on the
table before I quit ye this afternoon. Is your fire all right? Are
you—er—are you a-having a good time, honey?” solicitously. “I’ll
open the door pretty soon.”
“No—don’t! I can light the lamp myself, Uncle Hank. Yes—oh, yes, I’m
having a fine time. I’m busy—don’t open the door.”
A satisfied chuckle from behind the panels reached the child as she
went back to the little stand and her Christmas valentine. She had
carried her work to the window to have the last faint daylight upon
it. Now, as she approached the pane, lamp in hand, two great eyes
like balls of fire glared in at her from the snowy outside. She had
just presence of mind to thrust her papers into the stand drawer as
she turned back, crying out for Uncle Hank—for, beyond the first
pair of fiery eyeballs, she had made out shadowy forms and yet more
and more burning eyes!
The old man threw the door open with a bang, letting in a whiff of
aromatic sweetness, and she plunged at him, clutching his shoulders
with her little brown hands, hiding her face against his rough
flannel shirt.
“Oh! Uncle Hank—the eyes—the eyes—glaring at me!” she cried.
“What!” his tone was hearty as he good humoredly shook her a little.
“Not whiffenpoofs again—right here with Uncle Hank—and a good light
and all?”
“Oh, no, no! Like panthers or—or wolves. You look—out the window,
there.”
Hank glanced across the shivering little figure crouching in his
arms to the window, and at once understood. The cheerful shine from
the small ranchhouse windows, sending messages of comfort out over
the snow-covered levels, had attracted the unhappy cattle, whose
only food—the short, rich plains grass—was covered deep in snow. It
was their eyeballs which glared so.
“It’s just poor, hungry cows, honey. The lamplight makes their eyes
shine that-a-way. They’ve went without supper—and without breakfast
and dinner, too, I reckon. A winter in this here cattle country is
sure a-going to wring a man’s heart, if he’s got any.”
“Oh,” said Hilda. She ran to the window now and looked out at the
ring of glaring eyes. She caught her breath. “Uncle Hank—it’s
Christmas,” she said pitifully, and gazed up into his face, pulling
at his hand.
“I know, honey—I know,” he said, soothingly. “But these here Bar
Thirteen folks out there hain’t hung up no stockings—and we ain’t
Sandy Claus. Wish we had a stack of hay for ’em—though like enough
the drinking tank is froze over, and they’re more thirsty than
hungry.”
“Oh, Uncle Hank,” Hilda pleaded, “do be Santa Claus, and I’ll be
Kris Kringle. Let’s go out and rake the snow off that little
haystack by the corral and let the bars down! Do let’s give the cows
a Christmas tree!”
There was a fizz of something “boiling over,” and a sudden blast of
steam that smelled heavenly from the kitchen. Hank hurried to quiet
matters. A moment later Hilda heard him stamping into his tall
boots.
“All right!” he called. “I’ll see what I can do for them Bar
Thirteens.”
“But me too—me too, Uncle Hank!” insisted Hilda, running after him.
“If I’m going to be a ranchwoman I’ll have to know what to do about
northers—and—everything.” Her hand was on the knob of the door
between living-room and kitchen, when Uncle Hank’s voice stopped
her.
“Stay there! Whoop! Hi—hi—hi—don’t come no further, honey girl! I’ll
be with ye in a minute! Yes, you can go if I can wrap you up
sufficient.”
Hilda backed, coughing with excited laughter, from the communicating
door. And a few minutes later there followed the old man across the
snow in the moonlight a queer figure—a little girl with a pair of
Frosty MacQueen’s heavy woolen socks pulled on over her shoes and
stockings, a man’s corduroy coat reaching to her skirt edge, its
sleeves hanging six or eight inches below her little paws like the
sleeves of ancient Russian boyars, a woolen comforter tied over head
and neck, a hoe grasped valiantly in one hand, and a long string of
pathetically hopeful Bar Thirteen cows trailing after.
The snow was raked from the small stack of coarse Laguna hay; but
the old cattleman had been right, the cows were too thirsty to eat.
They nosed it and turned away, muttering, to mumble at the snow.
Uncle Hank knew in the stillness, and without any light, that
Hilda’s big black eyes were filling, and she was struggling with
sobs.
“All right,” he spoke out cheerily, shouldering his axe; “now we’ll
get a right good drink for ’em; an’ it’s turning off so warm that
the tank ain’t likely to freeze again this trip.”
With a queer sound that might have been a cough, a sob, or a
chuckle, the child grasped his hand, and together they hurried
around the tank, where the old man, addressing himself vigorously to
the task, soon had the thick ice which covered it broken up until
only one great cake rode in the middle. Then he set Hilda—who was
laughing joyously as she looked on and applauded—across the tank
from him, provided with a long pole to push the big ice-cake toward
him, and smashed it also. The poor thirsty cattle, who had followed
trustingly close at their heels, crowded up to drink; and when Santa
Claus and Kris Kringle reached the ranchhouse door they could look
back and see the happy Bar Thirteens clustered around their
Christmas tree, “taking off the presents,” as Hilda said. “And, oh,
Uncle Hank,” squeezing his hand hard between her two little ones,
“isn’t it—just—beautiful!”
Supper found the little kitchen bare of any object suspicious to the
eye (even the eye very, very big, very black, and preposterously
keen, of eight years old), but in the air still hung a noble aroma,
and Lily, the white cat, paced up and down, mewing now and then,
rubbing against old Hank’s legs, and stopping to sniff most
indelicately at the pantry door.
Hilda giggled—or would it be more exact to say that a giggle rippled
its way from the little girl’s abashed and apologetic throat—when
the old man spoke reproachfully:
“You, Lily! I’m plumb outdone with you. Don’t I tell you they ain’t
no mice in there—leastways none that you could ketch?”
The meal went off amid a sort of eccentric joviality, which was
liable to blossom into open hilarity with no particular cause
apparent; indeed, joy bubbled so hard that there seemed perpetual
danger of a wholesale eruption.
“’Spect you better go to bed right soon,” the old man cautioned.
“And don’t forget to hang up a good long stocking.”
“Why, Uncle Hank, do you believe Santa Claus can get down a stove
pipe?” gurgled Hilda in an ecstasy of delight.
“Sure!” replied the old man gravely, but with twinkling eye. “He
knows many a way to get in where the stocking is—that draws him, as
you might say.”
Together they unearthed from big Frosty MacQueen’s kit an amazing
and Brobdingnagian pair of golf hose. “These was sure made for this
business,” murmured Hank in chuckling enjoyment, as he gazed upon
them. He helped the little girl fasten one of the great, gayly
plaided things to the wall behind the stove, all the time muttering
delighted comments upon their size and the cheerfulness of their
color scheme.
“Well, now, you hang up the other one for your own self,” suddenly
urged Hilda, though she looked a little doubtfully at its
capaciousness.
“Huh?” exclaimed the old man, facing around upon her. “Don’t you
reckon Sandy Claus would get sort of mixed up by me being at the Bar
Thirteen, when I ought, speaking proper and by the book to be at
Mesquite—or to home at the Three Sorrers ranch house?”
Hilda shook her head. “He won’t get mixed up about you any more than
he will about me,” she argued, with lips that tried hard not to
break into laughter.
“Well—now!” he murmured, pinning up the second stocking beside the
first. “I—er—mm—” He trailed off into silence; but it could not last
long. Something must say itself. “I take that mighty kind in Sandy
Claus,” thumping his thumb briskly and never knowing it. “It’s right
gentlemanly of him to spend the whole day fixing for—ouch!” suddenly
realizing the pounded thumb—“I mean, you know, for him to go
a-loping all over the Texas Panhandle hunting for me. If Sandy Claus
wasn’t most generally understood to be a man—a little old fat
man—I’d say it was plumb sweet of him.”
Well, well! Then to bed! It had been a busy day. The sharp tussle
with the cows’ Christmas tree in the frosty air had left the little
girl ready for deep, dreamless sleep, and it seemed but a moment
after she had shut her eyes, when she heard Uncle Hank calling from
the kitchen:
“Better get up and ’tend to that stocking, or it might take legs and
walk away!”
She was out of bed with one bound. There was a good fire; and behind
the roaring stove hung a stocking that bulged and—yes, and twitched!
As she looked, a small three-cornered white ear, pink-lined and
furry, came in view above the hem. Its mate followed; and then two
round bright eyes with an utterly adorable slant, as a sleepy white
kitten looked out and yawned at her.
She slipped into her dress, then cried: “It’s alive! It’s a kitten—a
real, live, human kitten! Oh, come and see it, Uncle Hank!”
Thus invited, the old man gently pushed open the kitchen door and
sat down upon its step to share her happiness.
“Oh, it’s like a swan’s-down kitten—so white! Did it snow down,
Uncle Hank? Oh, isn’t it lovely and dear?”
“Why, Sandy Claus brought him,” corrected the old man. Then, coming
down to plain facts, he added, reassuringly, “Frosty said you could
have your pick. There’s two others; one is a sorrel and one a pinto.
I judged you’d like this one the best.”
The kitten, as though it thought poorly of these revelations, gave a
tiny sneezelike “Whszt!” which set Hilda to laughing, and at this
the gay little atom, pretending to be angry, backed off and, like a
boxer, began to make passes at the corner of her coat.
“He’s a high-spirited kitten, all right,” commented Uncle Hank,
watching them with a smile. “But there’s more live stock in that
stocking—leastways more things with legs.”
Gently Hilda pulled the stocking from its nail, put in a cautious
hand and began drawing out fat gingerbread animals.
“Oh—a pony!” she cried. “And the gingerbread is just the color of
Shorty’s Gold-dust sorrel!”
“It’s just as well Shorty can’t hear you—and see that thing,”
chuckled Uncle Hank. “I take no pride in that nag. He was a tricky,
deceivin’ critter, Pettie; looked well enough in the dough, but,
come to bake him, he sort of drawed up in the legs like he was
spavined.”
“Oh, but this dear little jack-rabbit!” Hilda went on with her
investigations.
The old man watched her a moment silently; then, as she made no
correction of her statement, “That there was aimed for a burro,” he
said mildly. “You can’t always go by the long ears. Look at the pack
on his back.”
“Oh, yes—the pack!” cried Hilda eagerly. “Why, of course!” She had
taken the pack for the hump of a rabbit!
There were now hauled out of the great stocking, one after another,
a coyote, whose color helped along the illusion, and whom Hilda,
grown more cautious, did not call anything till she had artfully
induced Uncle Hank to classify him; a cow, which Uncle Hank
willingly, even a bit hastily, named, adding in an apologetic tone,
“Them horns—no, them there—them’s its horns—swelled something
ridiculous in the baking!” Then there was really a jack-rabbit
(about the cow’s own size, and much resembling her), some mice, and
a flock of fat little yellow ducks, made by knotting a string of
dough, flattening one end for the tail, and bunching the other for
the head. These looked so good that Hilda suddenly became conscious
of her lack of breakfast. Down in the toe of the stocking was a
small jar filled with that which had yesterday spread such maddening
odors abroad and had fizzled and boiled over—a most marvelous, a
truly heavenly soft taffy, all juicy and moist with chopped prunes.
“Oh,” she said, concluding her investigations with a sigh of
rapture, “you’ve made me a lovelier Christmas than as if we had got
in to Mesquite. Now, Uncle Hank, look in yours.”
“Reckon I better?” he debated, glancing doubtfully at the lank
stocking. “Sometimes Sandy Claus gets stalled in the snow, and you
don’t get your gift till some days after Christmas. I’ve knowed it
to happen in the Tennessee mountains, and I ain’t going to hold it
against him if that’s the case this time.”
“But it isn’t—it isn’t!” cried Hilda, with very bright eyes.
The enterprising kitten ran up Hilda’s chair at a rush, tumbled into
her lap and began nibbling at a gingerbread duck. Uncle Hank crossed
the floor in two big strides and thrust his hand deep into the
swinging stocking. He drew out the small red book. As he stood and
looked down at the name upon it, his tanned weather-beaten face
softened beautifully.
“Charley’s book, God bless him—poor boy!” he said, hardly above his
breath. He looked at her, not seeing her, his gaze—full of pitying
love—fixed on things a short way back on Hilda’s and his own life
trail. “The little book Charley always packed. Charley’s baby was
bound to see that Uncle Hank was remembered.” He turned it in gentle
fingers. Against one inside cover was a pocket, and in it lay a
length of tinsel ribbon, such as comes about bolts of muslin; a baby
picture of Hilda’s self, a bit of Charley’s dark, curling hair, a
pressed flower—treasures of a lonely child—and with them a folded
paper.
“Open it!” Hilda couldn’t restrain herself. “It’s just a valentine—a
Christmas valentine—Uncle Hank; but I want you to keep the book,
and—and you said I could be a ranchwoman—and write poetry at nights
and while I’m resting.”
She had worked with her own red-and-blue pencil and Frosty McQueen’s
violet ink to put a vine around the page by way of border. The
blossoms of this stem were botanically erratic, but they would
commend themselves to Uncle Hank’s partial eyes. A red bird plumed
itself in the upper right-hand corner of the sheet, supported by a
blue fowl on the left. The little girl had written in her large,
clear, childish hand between:
My Uncle Hank
I wish to thank
For all he teaches me.
To ride and rope
And soon I hope
A ranchwoman to be.
The “Sorrows” fair,
Shall be our care,
Where we shall tend the kine.
There through the years
Of hopes and fears
I’ll be your valentine.
“Kine are cattle—in poetry—you know, Uncle Hank,” she explained
hastily, as she saw he had finished the verses. “And I put in a note
to tell why I had to give it to you now, instead of on Valentine
day.”
He turned the sheet and found:
“To My Dear Uncle Hank:
“This is a Valentine only it is Christmas you know and I
have nothing to give you but my love because the Necktie
is at Mesquite and it Snows. But you will understand and
I can get it then.
“Your loving little girl,
“Hildegarde Rensselaer Van Brunt.”
With misty eyes, the old man was reading: “Nothing to give you but
love ... but you will understand....” He folded the sheet together,
and bent to kiss the upraised childish face.
“Nothin’ but love—why, Pettie, that’s a gift to fill the
whole—wide—world!”