Wallie shivered in his sleep and pulled the soogans higher. The act exposed his feet instead of his shoulders, so it did not add to his comfort. He felt sleepily for the flour sack which he wore on his head as protection against the dust that blew in through the crack in the logs and his fingers sank into a small snow bank that had accumulated on his pillow.

The chill of it completely awakened him. He found that there was frost on the end of his nose and he was in a miniature blizzard as far as his shoulders. The wind was howling around the corners and driving the first snow of the season through the many large cracks in his log residence.

The day was Christmas, and there was no reason to believe that it would be a merry one.

Wallie lay for a time considering the prospect and comparing it with other Christmases. He had a kettle of boiled beans, cold soda biscuit, coffee, and two prairie-dogs which he intended cooking as an experiment, for his Christmas dinner.

Growing more and more frugal as his bank account shrank with alarming rapidity, Wallie reasoned that if he could eat prairie-dog it would serve a double purpose: While ridding his land of the pests it would save him much in such high-priced commodities as ham and bacon. Prairie-dog might not be a delicacy sought after by epicures, yet he never had heard anything directly against them, beyond their propensity for burrowing, which made them undesirable tenants. He reasoned that since they subsisted upon roots mainly, they were of cleanly habits and quite as apt to be nourishing and appetizing, if properly cooked, as rabbit.

Having the courage of his convictions, Wallie skinned and dressed the prairie-dogs he had caught out of their holes one sunshiny morning, and meant to eat them for his Christmas dinner if it was humanly possible.

The subject of food occupied a large part of Wallie's time and attention since he was not yet sufficiently practised to make cooking easy. He had purchased an expensive cook book, but as his larder seldom contained any of the ingredients it called for, he considered the price of it wasted. He had found that the recipes imparted by Tex McGonnigle, who had built his ten-by-twelve log cabin for him, were far more practical. Under his tuition Wallie had learned to make "sweat-pads," "dough-gods," "mulligan," and other dishes with names deemed unsuitable for publication.

After considering his dinner menu for a time, Wallie drew his knees to his chin, which enabled him to his get entire body under the soogan, and contrasted his present surroundings with those of the previous Christmas.




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