ts of a nest
they were building, only disturbed without awakening him.

CHAPTER XI

MERRY CHRISTMAS

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 othe