After some discussion they had decided to remain in the woods until after Christmas.

By Christmas time the ground and the trees were white with snow, and Tom closed his "cruising" for the season.

Willy Horse was absent much of the time, trapping for himself and hunting game for the table of the lumberjacks.
The girls were now living in a real log cabin which the jacks, hearing them express a wish that they might have one, had built.

Logs blazed in the fireplace, and there the Overland girls, after long hikes in the forest, and occasional rides on their ponies, spent many happy hours.
At Nora's suggestion, an elaborate Christmas celebration, including a Christmas tree, was planned by the girls for the jacks and themselves.
Tom, obliged to go to St.Paul on business, more than a week's journey in itself, was commissioned to purchase the supplies and Christmas gifts for the celebration, and returned in a sleigh from Bisbee's Corners, reaching the Overland camp by way of a new trail that his men had cut.
He was a regular Santa Claus, except that he rode "behind mules instead of reindeers," as Emma Dean expressed it.

Then began the real preparations for Christmas, with many conferences in the log cabin.
Two Christmas dinners were to be laid Christmas evening, one in the new modern bunk-house that had been recently erected, where the old original gang of lumberjacks and a few selected newcomers were then living.