A Christmas on the Arkansas [pp. 26-40]

A Christmas on the A rkansaw.
Gomez, lying in the shadow, ground
out a curse from between his teeth.
"What's that, you Mexican, hey?
Mad'cause I broke up a show one of
your petticoated priests had got up? I'm
liberal in my religious views. I never
shot the bald-headed old woman himself.
Tell us what the tree all trimmed up so
was for."
Gomez raised himself on his arm and
glared malignantly at the speaker.
"The bed to you will make hisself in
hell for your sacrilege, and it eez not I
who will speak of holy things to hereticos.
He crossed himself piously and lay
down again.
The chairman, scenting possible bloodshed, rapped on a log of wood for order,
and Rupe, likewise intent on peace, addressed himself to the boys: "You
youngsters fresh from home, give us
some idees on the stPbject."
Dandy Jim started to his feet, left his
place of modest retirement, and put himself in a conspicuous position before the
fire.
"I'm the man that can give you all
the information you want. You have
struck the source of knowledge this
time. First the tree, -that is to put the
presents on, and for a gaudy spectacle
besides; we have it gay with silver stars
and gilt things; then they hang up their
stockings, the children do, the night
before, and Santa Claus, driving a superb
team of reindeer, comes down the chimney and fills them with whatever a fellow
wants most. Once when I was a little
shaver I found a turning-lathe and a
Shetland pony in mine."
"In your stockin', did you say?"
"That's what I said," replied young
James with equanimity.
"How did you account for there being
room there for such cumbersome objects?" asked the chairman.
"I did n't account for it; did n't have
to. I just took the things, then I went
through Ed's stockings; he was asleep."
The camp smiled tenderly upon the
boy; they saw in him the germs of
future greatness, and they were fast
learning to forget his New England
birth in consideration of his sterling
qualities of pluck, endurance, and a fertile imagination.
"Then Dolly must hang up them little
red stockin's of hemrn to be filled," said
Rupe.
"In course," chimed in a dozen voices.
"Mr. Chairman, I don't tie to this yarn
about Santy Claus, I don't," said a lank,
sallow, one-eyed man from Missouri, in
slow, hesitating tones. He had hitherto
been silent, but now felt impelled to give
utterance to the cankering doubts within
him. "I hev went to school more than
some of you-uns; the old man sent me
fur three winters before I was fourteen,
bein' as I was sickly from the measles
and no account on the farm, and I hev
had it from good authority that Santy
is mytherkle."
All eyes were turned upon the speaker;
a sullen, wrathful murmur was heard portending danger. He shrank before the
combined gaze; his solitary pale blue orb
fell to the ground, and he nervously
shifted his quid of tobacco from one hollow cheek to the other. The chairman
plainly felt that the duty of investigating
devolved upon him. Gingerly, as one
handling dynamite, he lifted up the
unknown word. "Myth-er-kle? You,
a person of eddication, you give it out
cold that this portentate which we have
been a-discussing is mytherkle?"
The answer came somewhat faintly,
as the man darted an uneasy glance
around, "I do."
A gloomy silence fell on the company,
the faces of the men grew stern and forbidding; they had worn such looks when
they sentenced a cattle-thief to be hung.
The man from Missouri read their countenances like an open book, much better
indeed; he edged away from the fire as
though the blaze was growing too hot
for him, and cautiously felt for his pis
34
[Jan.