The Superintendent, Colonel White, being an Englishman, asked plaintively if we couldn't manage a plum pudding! We certainly managed one just bursting with plums. That made him happy for the rest of the day.
I didn't tell anybody what I intended to have for my own special dish, but when
the time came I produced a big, rich fruit cake, baked back home by my own mother, and stuffed full of nuts and fruit and ripened to a perfect taste.
All the rangers helped to prepare the feast. One of them rode down the icy trail to Indian Gardens and brought back crisp, spicy watercress to garnish the turkey.
After it became an effort to chew, and impossible to swallow, we washed the dishes and gathered around the blazing fire. Ranger Winess produced his omnipresent guitar and swept the strings idly for a moment. Then he began to sing, "Silent Night, Holy Night." That was the beginning of an hour of the kind of music one remembers from childhood. Just as each one had chosen his favorite dish, now each one selected his favorite Christmas song. When I asked
for "Little Town of Bethlehem" nobody hesitated over the words. We all knew it better than we do "Star Spangled Banner!" I could have prophesied what Colonel White would call for, so it was no surprise when he swung into "God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay." Fortunately, most of us had sung carols in our distant youth, and we sang right with the Colonel.
Someone suggested that each one tell of the strangest Christmas Day he or she
had ever spent. For a while none of us were in Arizona. Ranger Winess was in a
state of siege in the Philippines, while the Moros worked themselves into a state of frenzy for the attack that followed; Ranger Fisk scaled Table Mountain, lying back of Capetown, and there picked a tiny white flower which he had pressed in
the Bible presented to him there that day; each sailor in port had received a Bible that day with this inscription: "Capetown, Africa, Christ's Birthday, December 25, 19—." White Mountain snowshoed twenty miles in Yellowstone to have Christmas dinner with another ranger, but when he got there he found his friend
delirious with flu. "Did he die?" we questioned anxiously. Ranger Winess and the Chief looked at each other and grinned.
"Do I look like a dead one?" Ranger Winess demanded.
"I couldn't let him die," White Mountain said. "We had just lost one Government man, mysteriously, and hadn't any more to spare. So I got his dogs and sledge and hauled him into Headquarters."
Of course we wanted to know about the "lost" ranger. It seemed that there had broken out among the buffalo herd in the Park a strange malady that was killing
them all off. An expert from Washington was en route to make a study of the ailment, and was due to arrive just before Christmas. Days passed into weeks and still he didn't show up. Inquiries to Washington disclosed that he had started as per schedule. Tracing his journey step by step it was discovered that on the train out of Chicago he had become ill with flu and had been left in a small town hospital. There he had died without recovering his speech, and had been buried
in the potter's field!
"Well, then what happened to the buffalo?"
"Washington sent us a German scientist. We loved that nation just about that time, and on his arrival diplomatic relations were badly strained. He was too fat and soft to use snowshoes or skis, so we loaded him on a light truck and started for the buffalo farm. We stalled time and again, and he sat in lordly indifference while we pushed and shoveled out. We seemed hopelessly anchored in one drift,
and from his perch where he sat swaddled up like a mummy came his 'Vy don't you carry a portable telephone so ve couldt hook it over the vires and call for them to come and pull us oudt?' One of the rangers replied, 'It would be nice for us to telephone ourselves to please pull us oudt. We are the them that does the pulling around here.'
"The old boy mumbled and sputtered but rolled out and put a husky shoulder to the wheel, and we went on our way rejoicing. He won our respect at the buffalo
farm for he soon discovered the germ that was killing our charges, and he prepared a serum with which we vaccinated the entire herd."
"Wow!" Colonel White exclaimed. "I think I'd rather fight Moros than vaccinate buffalo." He, too, had spent years in foreign warfare; his experiences are graphically told in Bullets and Bolos.
While we heard about the buffalo, one of the rangers left the room. He came back presently, and White Mountain said to me: "Don't you want to see your Christmas present?"
I looked across at my proud new riding-boots, with their fancy stitching, and funny high heels just like those the rangers wore. "I'm crazy about them," I said.
But the whole bunch were laughing. White Mountain led me to the door, and there I had my first glimpse of Tar Baby! He was a four-year-old horse that had
spent those years running wild on the range. A few months before he had been
captured and partly tamed. But he was hard-mouthed, and stiff-necked and hell-
bent on having his own way about things. I didn't know all that when I saw him
this Christmas Day. To me he was perfect. He was round and fat, shiny black, with a white star in his forehead, and four white feet. One eye was blue, and the other one the nicest, softest, kindest brown! He was just that kind of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde horse, too! He was fitted out with a new saddle, a gaudy Navajo
saddle blanket, and a bridle with silver inlaid fittings. The spade bit was necessary. I found that out later, also.
I would have stood there speechless with admiration the rest of the day, but the others reminded me it was time to light the big tree we had planned for the children in the Park.
The rangers had brought a slender fir into the Information Room and we had it
trimmed within an inch of its life. Cranberries and popcorn ropes festooned its branches, and again Montgomery Ward and Company's catalogue had been
searched for treasures to load it with. Every child in the Park, regardless of race or color, was remembered. Little brown brothers, whose Filipino mothers worked in the laundry, found themselves possessors of strange toys; Navajo babies and Hopi cupids from the Hopi House were well supplied. One small Hopi lass wailed loudly at the look of the flaxen-haired doll that fell to her lot.
She was afraid to hold it—she wouldn't let anybody else touch it—so she stood it in a corner and squalled at it from a safe distance. When the party was over, an older sister had to carry it for her. I suspect she much preferred her native dolls.
After the tree was bare, we all went down to the Fred Harvey Recreation Room
and danced the rest of the evening away.
I could hardly wait for morning to go for a ride on Tar Baby. Ranger West brought him down to the house to saddle him. While I dressed up in my new boots I overheard the conversation between the ranger and the horse. It was a rather one-sided talk, but quite interesting.
"Whoa there, Tar Baby!" very firmly and casually. "Stand still now!"
"Hey, now, you black devil, don't you try bitin' me again! Yes, he's a nice baby horse," this last remark quite saccharine. A slight silence fell while the cinches were being tightened, then—heels beating a tune on the side of the shed, and sultry, sulphuric remarks being fitted to the tune. About that time I was ready to go out.
