Doc, since I seen yu' at the rain-making, and I'm a heap older than them

hospital days when I bust my leg on yu'. Three or four glasses and quit.
That's my rule."

"That your rule, too?" inquired the Governor of Shorty, Chalkeye, and
Dollar Bill. These gentlemen of the saddle were sitting quite

expressionless upon their horses.
"We ain't talkin', we're waitin'," observed Chalkeye; and the three

cynics smiled amiably.
"Well, Doc, see yu' again," said Mr. McLean. He turned to accompany his

brother cow-punchers, but in that particular moment Fate descended or
came up from whatever place she dwells in and entered the body of the

unsuspecting Governor.
"What's your hurry?" said Fate, speaking in the official's hearty manner.

"Come along with me."
"Can't do it. Where are yu' goin'?"

"Christmasing," replied Fate.
"Well, I've got to feed my horse. Christmasing, yu' say?"

"Yes; I'm buying toys."
"Toys! You? What for?"

"Oh, some kids."
"Yourn?" screeched Lin, precipitately.

His Excellency the jovial Governor opened his teeth in pleasure at this,
for he was a bachelor, and there were fifteen upon his list, which he

held up for the edification of the hasty McLean. "Not mine, I'm happy to
say. My friends keep marrying and settling, and their kids call me uncle,

and climb around and bother, and I forget their names, and think it's a
girl, and the mother gets mad. Why, if I didn't remember these little

folks at Christmas they'd be wondering--not the kids, they just break
your toys and don't notice; but the mother would wonder--'What's the

matter with Dr. Barker? Has Governor Barker gone back on us?'--that's
where the strain comes!" he broke off, facing Mr. McLean with another

spacious laugh.
But the cow-puncher had ceased to smile, and now, while Barker ran on

exuberantly, McLean's wide-open eyes rested upon him, singular and
intent, and in their hazel depths the last gleam of jocularity went out.

"That's where the strain comes, you see. Two sets of acquaintances.
Grateful patients and loyal voters, and I've got to keep solid with both

outfits, especially the wives and mothers. They're the people. So it's
drums, and dolls, and sheep on wheels, and games, and monkeys on a stick,

and the saleslady shows you a mechanical bear, and it costs too much, and
you forget whether the Judge's second girl is Nellie or Susie, and--well,

I'm just in for my annualcircus this afternoon! You're in luck.
Christmas don't trouble a chap fixed like you."

Lin McLean prolonged the sentence like a distant echo.
"A chap fixed like you!" The cow-puncher said it slowly to himself. "No,

sure." He seemed to be watching Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill
going down the road. "That's a new idea--Christmas," he murmured, for it

was one of his oldest, and he was recalling the Christmas when he wore
his first long trousers.

"Comes once a year pretty regular," remarked the prosperous Governor.
"Seems often when you pay the bill."

"I haven't made a Christmas gift," pursued the cow-puncher, dreamily,
"not for--for--Lord! it's a hundred years, I guess. I don't know anybody

that has any right to look for such a thing from me." This was indeed a
new idea, and it did not stop the chill that was spreading in his heart.

"Gee whiz!" said Barker, briskly, "there goes twelve o'clock. I've got to
make a start. Sorry you can't come and help me. Good-bye!"

His Excellency left the rider sitting motionless, and forgot him at once
in his own preoccupation. He hastened upon his journey to the shops with

the list, not in his pocket, but held firmly, like a plank in the
imminence of shipwreck. The Nellies and Susies pervaded his mind, and he

struggled with the presentiment that in a day or two he would recall some
omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made him look

up, and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently watched him
go, and saw the pony hunch and stiffen in the check of his speed when Lin

overtook his companions. Down there in the distance they took a side
street, and Barker rejoicingly remembered one more name and wrote it as

he walked. In a few minutes he had come to the shops, and met face to
face with Mr. McLean.

"The boys are seein' after my horse," Lin rapidly began, "and I've got to
meet 'em sharp at one. We're twelve weeks shy on a square meal, yu' see,

and this first has been a date from 'way back. I'd like to--" Here Mr.
McLean cleared his throat, and his speech went less smoothly. "Doc, I'd

like just for a while to watch yu' gettin'--them monkeys, yu' know."
The Governor expressed his agreeable surprise at this change of mind, and

was glad of McLean's company and judgment during the impending
selections. A picture of a cow-puncher and himself discussing a couple of

dolls rose nimbly in Barker's mental eye, and it was with an imperfect
honesty that he said, "You'll help me a heap."

And Lin, quite sincere, replied, "Thank yu'."
So together these two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming's Chief

Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as
good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era, which now

the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man has
been as good as another in three places--Paradise before the Fall; the

Rocky Mountains before the wire fence; and the Declaration of
Independence. And then this Governor, beside being young, almost as young

as Lin McLean or the Chief Justice (who lately had celebrated his
thirty-second birthday), had in his doctoring days at Drybone known the

cow-puncher with that familiarity which lasts a lifetime without breeding
contempt; accordingly he now laid a hand on Lin's tall shoulder and drew

him among the petticoats and toys.
Christmas filled the windows and Christmas stirred in mankind. Cheyenne,

not over-zealous in doctrine or litanies, and with the opinion that a
world in the hand is worth two in the bush, nevertheless was flocking

together, neighbor to think of neighbor, and every one to remember the
children; a sacredassembly, after all, gathered to rehearse unwittingly

the articles of its belief, the Creed and Doctrine of the Child. Lin saw
them hurry and smile among the paper fairies; they questioned and

hesitated, crowded and made decisions, failed utterly to find the right
thing, forgot and hastened back, suffered all the various desperations of

the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with that
undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal human

face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher's brooding
eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. Children escaped

from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch and
meddle in places forbidden. Friends dashed against each other with

rabbits and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the
sound of musical boxes.

Through this tinkle and bleating of little machinery the murmur of the
human heart drifted in and out of McLean's hearing; fragments of home

talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours,
and whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed

knit in a single skein of home ties. Two or three came by whose purses
must have been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after

much nice adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both
ends meeting, and the woman with him laid a hand on his arm, saying that

his children must not feel this year was different, Lin made a step
toward them. There were hours and spots where he could readily have

descended upon them at that, played the role of clinking affluence, waved
thanks aside with competentblasphemy, and tossing off some infamous

whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the frontier.
But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could make no such

parade in this place. The people brushed by him back and forth, busy upon
their errands, and aware of him scarcely more than if he had been a

spirit looking on from the helpless dead; and so, while these weaving
needs and kindnesses of man were within arm's touch of him, he was locked

outside with his impulses. Barker had, in the natural press of customers,
long parted from him, to become immersed in choosing and rejecting; and

now, with a fair part of his missionaccomplished, he was ready to go on
to the next place, and turned to beckon McLean. He found him obliterated

in a corner beside a life-sized image of Santa Claus, standing as still
as the frosty saint.