I do hope this New Year may bring to you the desire of your heart and all that those who love you best most wish for you.

With lots and lots of love from baby and myself.

  Your ex-washlady,
    ELINORE RUPERT.

VIII

A HAPPY CHRISTMAS

DEAR MRS. CONEY,—­

My happy Christmas resulted from the ex-sheriff of this county being snowbound here.  It seems that persons who come from a lower altitude to this country frequently become bewildered, especially if in poor health, leave the train at any stop and wander off into the hills, sometimes dying before they are found.  The ex-sheriff cited a case, that of a young German who was returning from the Philippines, where he had been discharged after the war.  He was the only child of his widowed mother, who has a ranch a few miles from here.  No one knew he was coming home.  One day the cook belonging to the camp of a construction gang went hunting and came back running, wild with horror.  He had found the body of a man.  The coroner and the sheriff were notified, and next morning went out for the body, but the wolves had almost destroyed it.  High up in a willow, under which the poor man had lain down to die, they saw a small bundle tied in a red bandanna and fast to a branch.  They found a letter addressed to whoever should find it, saying that the body was that of Benny Louderer and giving them directions how to spare his poor old mother the awful knowledge of how he died.  Also there was a letter to his mother asking her not to grieve for him and to keep their days faithfully.  “Their days,” I afterward learned, were anniversaries which they had always kept, to which was added “Benny’s day.”

Poor boy!  When he realized that death was near his every thought was for the mother.  Well, they followed his wishes, and the casket containing the bare, gnawed bones was sealed and never opened.  And to this day poor Mrs. Louderer thinks her boy died of some fever while yet aboard the transport.  The manner of his death has been kept so secret that I am the only one who has heard it.

I was so sorry for the poor mother that I resolved to visit her the first opportunity I had.  I am at liberty to go where I please when there is no one to cook for.  So, when the men left, a few days later, I took Jerrine and rode over to the Louderer ranch.  I had never seen Mrs. Louderer and it happened to be “Benny’s day” that I blundered in upon.  I found her to be a dear old German woman living all alone, the people who do the work on the ranch living in another house two miles away.  She had been weeping for hours when I got there, but in accordance with her custom on the many anniversaries, she had a real feast prepared, although no one had been bidden.

She says that God always sends her guests, but that was the first time she had had a little girl.  She had a little daughter once herself, little Gretchen, but all that was left was a sweet memory and a pitifully small mound on the ranch, quite near the house, where Benny and Gretchen are at rest beside “der fader, Herr Louderer.”