e until I had a certainty of killing him in his
tracks. At last he stopped to browse in a little open, oval table-land,
on the summit of a cedar ridge.

"The ridge-top was nowhere over a hundred yards across, and was
surrounded with a thick fringe of dwarf cedars. Peeping through one of
these dwarf cedars, I could see the deer's broad fat quarters about
forty yards in front of me. The buck was slowly walking from where I
stood concealed. I put my cap in a fork of the cedar, laid my
rifle-barrel on it, brought its stock to my shoulder, and bleated like a
doe.

"The big buck stopped, turned his body half round, his head wholly so,
and looked straight towards me with his head down.

"I drew a careful bead between his eyes, and dropped him--stone-dead!

"I ran up to bleed him, feeling quite relieved and glad at so successful
a termination of ten hours' difficult hunting. I had not noticed it
while engrossed by the interest of pursuit, but now found I was very
hungry, and so lit a fire at once, that there might be roasting-coals
ready by the time I had skinned my deer.

"I was soon enjoying a jolly rib-roast, making a tremendous meal, and
recruiting myself for the tramp of from twelve to fifteen miles lying
between me and the camp."

So, after all, we had our Christmas dinner according to programme, and a
capital one it was, too.

The turkeys were _a merveille_, the venison delicious; for the big
buck--he was nearly as big as a Mexican burro-deer--was very fat indeed.
It is only the man who has eaten _really_ fat wild venison who knows
what good venison _really_ is. The kidneys were completely covered with
tallow, and my companion assured us that the buck cut nearly an inch of
fat on the brisket. The quarters had been hung out to freeze all night,
and were thawed in melted snow-water before being cooked, and so were
quite tender.

The plum-pudding was over a foot in diameter; we could hardly pull it
out of the pot. It was as good as possible, and followed by a bowl of
punch, our punch-bowl being for the nonce a tin bucket; not to mince
matters, it was our horses' watering-bucket, which, though not elegant,
was capacious, and the only utensil we had capable of holding the amount
of punch the occasion called for.

No holly grew in the country, but the bright red berries of the Indian
arrow-wood and of the bearberry-bush made beautiful substitutes, and
there were more evergreens in sight than entire Christendom could