Christmas Day dawned, brilliant, glorious.  There was not a Christmas tree in all Heart’s Desire.  There was not a child within two hundred miles who had ever seen a Christmas tree.  There was not a woman in all Heart’s Desire saving those three newcomers in the cabin across the arroyo.  Yet these new-comers were acquainted with the etiquette of the land.  There was occasion for public announcement in such matters.

At eleven o’clock in the morning the man from Leavenworth and the Littlest Girl from Kansas came out upon the street.  They were ostensibly bound to get the mail, although there had been no mail stage for three days, and could be none for four days more, even had the man from Leavenworth entertained the slightest thought of getting any mail at this purely accidental residence into which the fate of a tired team had thrown him.  Yet there must be the proper notification that he and his family had concluded to abide in Heart’s Desire; that he was now a citizen; that he was now entitled by the length of his beard to be called “’Squire,” and to be accepted into all the councils of the town.  This walk along the street was notice to the pure democracy of that land that all might now leave cards at the cabin across the arroyo.  One need hardly doubt that the populace of Heart’s Desire was lined up along the street to say good morning and to receive befittingly this tacit pledge of its newest citizen.  Moreover, as to the Littlest Girl, all Heart’s Desire puffed out its chest.  Once more, indeed, the camp was entitled to hold up its head.  There were Women in the town! Ergo Home; ergo Civilization; ergo Society; and ergo all the rest.  Heretofore Heart’s Desire had wilfully been but an unorganized section of savagery; but your Anglo Saxon, craving ever savagery, has no sooner found it than he seeks to civilize it; there being for him in his aeon of the world no real content or peace.

“I reckon the old man is goin’ to take a look at the post-office to see how he likes the place,” said Curly, reflectively, as he gazed after the gentleman whom he had frankly elected as his father-in-law.  “He’ll get it, all right.  Never saw a man from Leavenworth who wasn’t a good shot at a postoffice.  But say, about that Littlest Girl—­well, I wonder!”

Curly was very restless until dinner-time, which, for one reason or another, was postponed until about four of the afternoon.  We met at Dan Anderson’s law office, which was also his residence, a room about a dozen feet by twenty in size.  The bunks were cleaned up, the blankets put out of the way, and the centre of the room given over to a table, small and home-made, but very full of good cheer for that time and place.  At the fireplace, McKinney, flushed and red, was broiling some really good loin steaks.  McKinney also allowed his imagination to soar to the height of biscuits.  Coffee was there assuredly, as one might tell by the welcome odor now ascending.