“Yes, and stayin’,” answered the cow-puncher, nodding gravely at the stove. “Not a nice night to go walking,” ventured the tenderfoot; “in fact, I think I’d rather be here. It’d take a bit to get me out--and Christmas Eve, too. As you say, doctor, the wind _does_ sound like wolves; and no doubt if one were out they’d find the wolves--or the wolves find them.” “No doubt whatever, young feller,” remarked the puncher, dryly. “Wolves _are_ out this weather for grub; and when they’re out for grub they’re out on a business trip, dead sure.” The doctor bit the end off a fresh cigar. “Do you boys want a story?” said he. “Go ahead, doc,” replied the cow-puncher, proffering a match. And the doctor, after lighting up, went ahead to the following effect. * * * * * Well, boys, it’s a long time ago now--a Christmas Eve, too--way back in the ’seventies, when things on the prairies were very different. It was usual in those days to get a brush with the Utes or the Cheyennes pretty regularly once or twice a month. The twenty-third of December was a bright, sunny day, with not more than three or four inches of snow on the plains. Over the thin snow-crust galloped Jimmie Dink--“Darky Dink” we called him, because of his swarthy hair and skin. “Doc,” said he, pulling his broncho up short before me, “Wolfie Jim’s about done. Can’t you go to him? He’s ’most busted up.” Poor old Wolfie! I knew why. Some time previously he had run in among his dogs, which were attacking a timber wolf they had turned up on the creek bank. He intended to knife it, as he had done many a time before, but the old fellow, maybe, was not so agile as formerly, and things had gone a bit wrong. Anyhow, he’d knifed the wolf all right, but the wolf bit his foot badly, and Wolfie doctored it in his own peculiar manner with unlimited bad whisky, taken both outside and in. Well, the foot didn’t heal, and Wolfie couldn’t understand it. He was one of the old fur-cap-and-buckskin-shirt trappers who never consulted even a medicine-man, let alone a white doctor. I’d stopped at his shack once or twice and got a liking for the quaint old fellow, so I told Darky to get one of the boys to put a saddle on my old horse Pete while I got my “murder-bag,” as they called my medicine outfit, and was soon ready for Wolfie and his trouble. Away loped Pete over the beautiful glistening prairie; I could have found my way to Wolfie’s with my eyes shut. It occurred to me soon that I was foolish not to have brought a heavier overcoat, but I knew if I didn’t start on my return journey before sundown I could either stay with old Wolf or borrow something to make me warm; besides, although it was December, it was one of those prairie days that would almost fool a wise man into the belief that it was spring.