A Journey in Search of Christmas

A Journey in Search of Christmas by Owen Wister

Governor Barker, burdened with buying Christmas presents for the children of friends, meets Lin McLean, Shorty, Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill arriving in Cheyenne after twelve weeks on the trail, intent on spending their money in celebration. Lin is struck by Barker’s account of Christmas gifts and, though he has no family or obvious recipient for his wealth, accompanies him through the crowded shops. Watching townspeople choose presents and care for one another’s children awakens in him a painful sense of exclusion. Barker, mistaking Lin’s seriousness for his usual comic recklessness, jokes about Lin’s former marriage. Lin quietly reveals how deeply he was hurt when the woman he impulsively married returned publicly to her first husband, Lusk. Barker learns that Lin’s outward swagger has concealed a loneliness and a desire to stop pretending. Unable to enjoy his planned meal and revelry with his fellow cow-punchers, Lin leaves Cheyenne for Denver, claiming he intends to drink champagne. There, while drifting from saloon to saloon, he encounters three bootblacks: Billy, Towhead, and their self-important leader. He playfully convinces them that his badge makes him a dangerous detective, pays them generously to shine his boots, and invites them to dinner and the Opera-house. Their suspicion gradually gives way to trust as he lets them lead him to an ordinary Market Street restaurant, where they share turkey, oyster stew, pie, and rough conversation. At the theatre, Lin grows especially close to Billy, who admires the cow-puncher’s pistol and tales of bears. Billy explains that he has run away from Laramie because his mother beats him and his father cannot protect him. When Lin discovers that the boy is Billy Lusk, the child of the woman who humiliated him, Billy fears he will be sent home. Lin assures him that he will not betray him or force him back, then leaves him free to choose whether to seek him at Smith’s Palace. Billy comes to the hotel, where Lin gives him the pistol belt to wear and listens as the boy offers him treasured possessions: an arrow-head and kinni-kinnic seed. Billy falls asleep against him, and Lin puts him to bed with unexpected tenderness. In the morning, Lin persuades him to spend Christmas Day together rather than meet his smoking companions. They breakfast, attend church, and are deeply moved by the music and words about peace and good-will. Lin begins to recognize that Christmas has become real to him through companionship and responsibility. They travel to Golden, shoot the pistol in the foothills, and wander until Billy’s feet are painfully worn out. Lin tends him anxiously through the night, then becomes increasingly troubled by the boy’s life as a bootblack among older, corrupting companions. He refuses to consider returning Billy to his parents, knowing the boy would only flee again. For the following week in Denver, Lin stays near Billy while considering a future for him. By New Year’s Eve, he has returned to Cheyenne with the boy. He tells Governor Barker that he has “struck Christmas” and explains that he and Billy have decided towns are not good places to live. Lin plans to place Billy with Judge Henry’s foreman and his wife at Sunk Creek, or otherwise provide for him himself, and rides on with the boy toward the open plain.

By Owen Wister · First published 1904 · Genre: Western Fiction, Christmas Fiction, Literary Fiction · 5 chapters · 14,077 words

First lines

The Governor descended the steps of the Capitol slowly and with pauses, lifting a list frequently to his eye. He had intermittently pencilled it between stages of the forenoon's public business, and his gait grew absent as he recurred now to his jottings in their accumulation, with a slight pain at their number, and the definite fear that they would be more in seasons to come. They were the names of his friends' children to whom his excellent heart moved him to give Christmas presents. He had put off this regenerating evil until the latest day, as was his custom, and now he was setting forth to do the whole thing at a blow, entirely planless among the guns and rocking-horses that would presently surround him. As he reached the highway he heard himself familiarly addressed from a distance, and, turning, saw four sons of the alkali jogging into town from the plain. One who had shouted to him galloped out from the others, rounded the Capitol's enclosure, and, approaching with radiant countenance, leaned to reach the hand of the Governor, and once again greeted him with a hilarious "Hello, Doc!"

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Christmas · American West · Wyoming · Cheyenne · Denver · late nineteenth century · frontier fiction · Western fiction · holiday story · cowboys · cow-punchers · loneliness

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A Journey in Search of Christmas is listed on Textopian as a novella by Owen Wister, dated 1904 CE.

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