Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1901-12-26
CHRISTMAS ON
RANCH
By
Theodore
Roosevelt

One December, while was out on my
ranch, so much work had to be done that
u was within q week of Christmas be.
fore we were able to take any thought
for the Christmas dinner. The wintef
set in late that year and there had beer
comparatively little cold weather, buf
one day the ice on the river had been
sufficiently strong to enable us to hauf
up wagon load of -four, with enough
salt pork to last through the winter, and
a very few cans of timed goods to he
used at special feasts. We had some
bushels of potatoes, the heroic victors of
a struggle for existence, in which the
rest of our garden vegetables had sue
cumbed to drought, frost and grasshop-
pers, and we also had some wild pums
and dried elk yenison. But we had no
fresh meat, and so one day my foreman
and / agreed to make hunt on the NOR
row.
Accordingly one of the cowboys rode
out in the frosty afternoon to fetch in
the saddle band from the plateau three
miles off, where they We're grazing. 1t
was necessary to get to the hunting
grounds by sunrise, and it still lacked a
couple of hours of dawn when the fore
man wakened me with n touch as | Law
asleep beneath the buffalo robes. Dress
ing hurriedly and breakfasting on a cup
of coffee and some mouthfuls of bread
and jerked elk meat, we slipped out to
the barn, threw the saddles on the horses
and were off.
The air was bitterly chill. The cold had
been severe for two days, so that the riv-
er ice would again bear horses 1t had al
ready frozen once and then again thawed
Beneath the light covering of powdery
x,rno fool H.. 4,
wrinkled iron under the horses hoofs.
There was no moon, but the stars shone
brilliantly down through the cold, clear
air. and our willing horses galloped swift
ly across the long bottom on which the
ranchhouse stood, threading their way
deftly among the clumps of sprawing
sagebrush. a mile off we crossed the
river the ice cracking with noises like
pistol shots as our horses picked their
way gingerly over it. On the opposite
side was a dense jungle of bullberry
bushes, and on breaking through this we
found ourselves galloping up a long,
winding valley which led back many
miles into the hills. The ccannies and lit
tie side ravincs were filed with brush
wood and groves of stuntcd ash. BY this
time there was Il faint flush of gray in
the east, and as we rode silently along
we could make out dInly the tracks made
by the wild animals as they had passed
and rcpasscd in the snow. Several tim"e
we dismounted to examine them. A cou-
pie of coyotes, possibly frightened by our
approach, had uottcd and loped up the
valley ahead of us. leaving a trail like
that of two dogs. The sharper, more del
icate footprints Of fox crossed our path,
and outside one long patch OF brushwood
q series of round imprints in the snow
betrayed where Il bobcat as plainsmen
term the small lynx, had been lurking
around to try to pick up a rabbit or prai-
rie fowl.
As the dawn REDEEMED and it became
light enough to see objects some little
way off we began to sit erect in our sad
dies and to sean the hillsides sharply for
sight of feeding deer. Hitherto we had
seen no deer tracks save inside the bull
berry bushes by the river, and we knew
that the deer which lived in that impene-
trablc jungle were cunning white tails
and that in such place they could only
be hunted by the aid of hound. But
just before sunrise we came on three
lines of heart shaped footmarks in the
snow which showed where as many deer
had just crossed n little plain ahead of
us. They We're walking leisurely, and
from the lay of the land we believed we
would find them over the ridge, where