"Dishes Rattle and the Log Roof Bounces and the Lamp Goes Out"

"Gunman's Christmas."
By Caddo Cameron (Charles Richard Beeler, 1888-1961?).
Genre: Western.
First appearance: Short Stories, December 25, 1946.
Reprinted in West (U.K.), December 1951 and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (AHMM), January 1994.
Short story (12 pages).
Was at Pulpgen.

"Christmas Was Just Four Days Away, and for All the Fugitive Knew, the Guns of the Law Were Even Closer"

By the time this Christmas is over, our nameless narrator will come to see what a real life saver it is to have company for Christmas; as he says, "a powerful fine idea"—and we're serious about that life saver bit . . .

Typos: "I Injun down"; "Nobody taken up"; "there saddle stock"; "on the room."

Resource:
- Pulp Flakes has a substantial article about our much-traveled Western author, Caddo Cameron (HERE).