“I know, honey—I know,” he said, soothingly. “But these here Bar Thirteen folks out there hain’t hung up no stockings—and we ain’t Sandy Claus. Wish we had a stack of hay for ’em—though like enough the drinking tank is froze over, and they’re more thirsty than hungry.” “Oh, Uncle Hank,” Hilda pleaded, “do be Santa Claus, and I’ll be Kris Kringle. Let’s go out and rake the snow off that little haystack by the corral and let the bars down! Do let’s give the cows a Christmas tree!” There was a fizz of something “boiling over,” and a sudden blast of steam that smelled heavenly from the kitchen. Hank hurried to quiet matters. A moment later Hilda heard him stamping into his tall boots. “All right!” he called. “I’ll see what I can do for them Bar Thirteens.” “But me too—me too, Uncle Hank!” insisted Hilda, running after him. “If I’m going to be a ranchwoman I’ll have to know what to do about northers—and—everything.” Her hand was on the knob of the door between living-room and kitchen, when Uncle Hank’s voice stopped her. “Stay there! Whoop! Hi—hi—hi—don’t come no further, honey girl! I’ll be with ye in a minute! Yes, you can go if I can wrap you up sufficient.” Hilda backed, coughing with excited laughter, from the communicating door. And a few minutes later there followed the old man across the snow in the moonlight a queer figure—a little girl with a pair of Frosty MacQueen’s heavy woolen socks pulled on over her shoes and stockings, a man’s corduroy coat reaching to her skirt edge, its sleeves hanging six or eight inches below her little paws like the sleeves of ancient Russian boyars, a woolen comforter tied over head and neck, a hoe grasped valiantly in one hand, and a long string of pathetically hopeful Bar Thirteen cows trailing after. The snow was raked from the small stack of coarse Laguna hay; but the old cattleman had been right, the cows were too thirsty to eat. They nosed it and turned away, muttering, to mumble at the snow. Uncle Hank knew in the stillness, and without any light, that Hilda’s big black eyes were filling, and she was struggling with sobs. “All right,” he spoke out cheerily, shouldering his axe; “now we’ll get a right good drink for ’em; an’ it’s turning off so warm that the tank ain’t likely to freeze again this trip.”