Stub dropped his burden on the floor and whined. He was particularly proud to-night; he had brought home a partridge--the first he had ever caught without the aid of his master"s gun.
The figure on the bed did not move.
The dog picked up the bird he had dropped and walked toward his master.
This time he laid his offering close to the bunk and barked.
The man stirred and groaned. For long minutes the dog stood motionless, watching; then he crept to the fire and almost into the hot ashes in his efforts to warm the blood in his shivering little legs.
In the morning the fire was quite out. Stub stretched his stiffened body and gazed about the room. Over on the bed the man did not stir nor speak. The dead bird lay untouched at his side. There was a whine, a bark, and a long minute of apparent indecision; then the dog pattered across the floor, wormed himself through the partly open door, and took the trail that led to the foothills.
Three times Stub brought to the fireless, silent cabin the result of his day"s hunt and laid it at his master"s side, and always there was only silence or a low groan to greet him.
On the third night it snowed--the first storm of the season. A keen wind swept down the mountain and played hide-and-seek with the cabin door, so that in the morning a long bar of high-piled snow lay across the cabin floor.
When the men from the village had ploughed their way through the snow and pushed open the door, they stopped amazed upon the threshold, looking at one another with mingled alarm and pity; then one of them, conquering his reluctance, strode forward. He stooped for a moment over the prostrate form of the man before he turned and faced his companions.
"Boys, he"s--gone," he said huskily; and in the silence that followed, four men bared their heads.
It was a dog"s low whine that first stirred into action the man by the bunk. He looked down and his eyes grew luminous. He saw the fireless hearth, the drifted snow, and the half-dead dog keeping watchful guard over a pile of inert fur and feathers on the floor--a pile frozen stiff and mutely witnessing to a daily duty well performed.
"I reckon I"m needin" a dog," he said, as he stooped and patted Stub"s head.
A Matter of System
At the office of Hawkins & Hawkins, system was everything. Even the trotter-boy was reduced to an orbit that ignored c.r.a.ps and marbles, and the stenographer went about her work like a well-oiled bit of machinery. It is not strange, then, that Jasper Hawkins, senior member of the firm, was particularly incensed at the confusion that Christmas always brought to his home.
For years he bore--with such patience as he could muster--the attack of nervous prostration that regularly, on the 26th day of December, laid his wife upon a bed of invalidism; then, in the face of the unmistakable evidence that the malady would this year precede the holy day of peace and good-will, he burst his bonds of self-control and spoke his mind.
It was upon the morning of the 21st.
"Edith," he began, in what his young daughter called his "now mind"
voice, "this thing has got to stop."
"What thing?"
"Christmas."
"_Jas_-per!"--it was as if she thought he had the power to sweep good-will itself from the earth. "Christmas--_stop_!"
"Yes. My dear, how did you spend yesterday?"
"I was--shopping."
"Exactly. And the day before?--and the day before that?--and before that? You need n"t answer, for I know. And you were shopping for--"
he paused expectantly.
"Presents." Something quite outside of herself had forced the answer.
"Exactly. Now, Edith, surely it need not take all your time for a month before Christmas to buy a few paltry presents, and all of it for two months afterward to get over buying them!"
"But, Jasper, they are n"t few, and they"re anything but paltry.
Imagine giving Uncle Harold a _paltry_ present!" retorted Edith, with some spirit.
The man waved an impatient hand.
"Very well, we will call them magnificent, then," he conceded. "But even in that case, surely the countless stores full of beautiful and useful articles, and with a list properly tabulated, and a sufficiency of money--" An expressive gesture finished his sentence.
The woman shook her head.
"I know; it sounds easy," she sighed, "but it is n"t. It"s so hard to think up what to give, and after I "ve thought it up and bought it, I "m just sure I ought to have got the other thing."
"But you should have some system about it."
"Oh, I had--a list," she replied dispiritedly. "But I"m so--tired."
Jasper Hawkins suddenly squared his shoulders.
"How many names have you left now to buy presents for?" he demanded briskly.
"Three--Aunt Harriet, and Jimmy, and Uncle Harold. They always get left till the last. They"re so--impossible."
"Impossible? Nonsense!--and I"ll prove it to you, too. Give yourself no further concern, Edith, about Christmas, if _that_ is all there is left to do--just consider it done."
"Do you mean--you"ll get the presents for them?"
"Most certainly."
"But, Jasper, you know--"
An imperative gesture silenced her.
"My dear, I"m doing this to relieve you, and that means that you are not even to think of it again."
"Very well; er--thank you," sighed the woman; but her eyes were troubled.
Not so Jasper"s; his eyes quite sparkled with antic.i.p.ation as he left the house some minutes later.
On the way downtown he made his plans and arranged his list. He wished it were longer--that list. Three names were hardly sufficient to demonstrate his theories and display his ability. As for Aunt Harriet, Jimmy, and Uncle Harold being "impossible"--that was all nonsense, as he had said; and before his eyes rose a vision of the three: Aunt Harriet, a middle-aged spinster, poor, half-sick, and chronically discontented with the world; Jimmy, a white-faced lad who was always reading a book; and Uncle Harold, red-faced, red-headed, and--red-tempered. (Jasper smiled all to himself at this last thought.) "Red-tempered"--that was good. He would tell Edith--but he would not tell others. Witticisms at the expense of a rich old bachelor uncle whose heir was a matter of his own choosing were best kept pretty much to one"s self. Edith was right, however, in one thing, Jasper decided: Uncle Harold surely could not be given a "paltry" present. He must be given something fine, expensive, and desirable--something that one would like one"s self. And immediately there popped into Jasper"s mind the thought of a certain exquisitely carved meerschaum which he had seen in a window and which he had greatly coveted. As for Aunt Harriet and Jimmy--their case was too simple for even a second thought: to one he would give a pair of bed-slippers; to the other, a book.
Some minutes later Jasper Hawkins tucked into his pocketbook an oblong bit of paper on which had been neatly written:--
Presents to be bought for Christmas, 1908:
Aunt Harriet, spinster, 58(?) years old--Bed-slippers.