"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 sacred assembly,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 competent blasphemy,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 mission accomplished,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.
"He looks livelier than you do,"said the hearty Governor."'Fraid it's been slow waiting.""No,"replied the cow-puncher,thoughtfully."No,I guess not."This uncertainty was expressed with such gentleness that Barker roared.
"You never did lie to me,"he said,"long as I've known you.Well,never mind.I've got some real advice to ask you now."At this Mr.McLean's face grew more alert."Say Doc,"said he,"what do yu'want for Christmas that nobody's likely to give yu'?""A big practice--big enough to interfere with my politics.""What else?Things and truck,I mean."
"Oh--nothing I'll get.People don't give things much to fellows like me.""Don't they?Don't they?"
