EARLY in December all of the help on the Crooked Creek ranch, with the exception of Hank Brodie and the polo team, were discharged and the men drifted away to seek other employment or to loaf during the winter and the ranch settled down into the quiet of the long cold winter.
Christmas was a very lively day at the ranch house. There was a Christmas tree for the children of the manager and the cow-punchers entered into this festivity with all the abandon of youth. In the evening there was an old-time country dance. Men and we men came from neighboring ranches for fifty miles around. The furniture in the long narrow ranch room was stacked up in the hallway and in the corners of the room, and an old fashioned dance was enjoyed until the small hours of the morning with two squeaky violins and a portable organ to furnish the music. Long Tom in a high-keyed nasal voice called off the figures.
After this holiday dance there was little sociability or farm work until the spring time. By the first of
