CHAPTER VII

THE SUNDAY HAPPENINGS

But to open the service when quiet reigned again and expectation was once more concentrated upon him afforded something of a poser still to the lanky old Jim, elected to perform the offices of leading.

"Where's Shorty Hobb with his fiddle?" said he.

"Parky wouldn't leave him come," answered Bone. "He loaned him money on his vierlin, and he says he owns it and won't leave him play in no church that ever got invented."

"Parky, hey?" said Jim, drawlingly. "Wal, bless his little home'pathic pill of a soul!"

"He says he's fed more poor and done more fer charity than any man in town," informed a voice.

"Does, hey?" said the miner. "I'll bet his belly's the only poor thing he feeds regular. His hand ain't got callous cutting bread for the orphans. But he ain't a subject for church. If only I'd 'a' known what he was agoin' to do I'd made a harp. But let it go. We'll start off with roll-call and follow that up with a song."

He therefore began with the name of Webber, who responded "Here," and proceeding to note who was present, he drawled the name or familiar sobriquet of each in turn, till all had admitted they were personally in attendance.

"Ahem," said Jim, at the end of this impressive ceremony. "Now we'll sing a hymn. What hymn do you fellows prefer?"

There was not a great confusion of replies; in fact, the confusion resulted from a lack thereof.

"As no one indicates a preference," announced the miner, "we'll tackle 'Darling, I am growing old.' Are there any objections? All in favor?—contrary minded?—the motion prevails. Now, then, all together—'Darling—'Why don't you all git in?"

"How does she go?" inquired Webber.

"She goes like this," Jim replied, clearing his throat:

"'Darling, I am growing o-old, Silver bars among the gold; Shine upon—te dum te dumpty— Far from the old folks at home.'"

"Don't know it," said a voice.

"Neither do I."

"Nor I."

"Nor I."

The sheep of the flock all followed in a chorus of "Nor I's."

"What's the matter with 'Swing Low, Sweet Cheery O'?" inquired Lufkins.

"Suits me," Jim replied. "Steam up."

He and the teamster, in duet, joined very soon by all the congregation, sang over and over the only lines they could conjure back to memory, and even these came forth in remarkable variety. For the greater part, however, the rough men were fairly well united on the simple version:

"'Swing low, sweet cheery O, Comin' for to carry me home; Swing low, sweet cheery O, Comin' for to carry me home.'"

This was sung no less than seven times, when Jim at length lifted his hand for the end.

"We'll follow this up with the Lord's Prayer," he said.

Laying his big, freckled hand on the shoulder of the wondering little pilgrim, seated so quietly upon the anvil, he closed his eyes and bowed his head. How thin, but kindly, was his rugged face as the lines were softened by his attitude!

He began with hesitation. The prayer, indeed, was a stumbling towards the long-forgotten—the wellnigh unattainable.

"'Our Father which art in heaven . . . Our Father which art in heaven—'

"Now, hold on, just a minute," and he paused to think before resuming and wiped his suddenly sweating brow.

"'Our Father which art in heaven— If I should die before I wake . . . Give us our daily bread. Amen.'"

The men all sat in silence. Then Keno whispered, so loudly that every one could hear;

"By jinks! I didn't think he could do it!"

"We'll now have another hymn," announced the leader, "There used to be one that went on something about, 'I'm lost and far away from the shack, and it's dark, and lead me—somewhere—kindly light.' Any one remember the words all straight?"

"I don't," replied the blacksmith, "but I might come in on the chorus."

"Seems to me," said Bone, "a candle or just a plain, unvarnished light, would 'a' went out. It must have bin a lantern."

"Objection well taken," responded Jim, gravely. "I reckon I got it turned 'round a minute ago. It was more like:

"'Lead me on, kindly lantern, For I am far from home, And the night is dark.'"

"It don't sound like a song—not exactly," ventured Lufkins. "Why not give 'em 'Down on the Swanee River'?"

"All right," agreed the "parson," and therefore they were all presently singing at the one perennial "hymn" of the heart, universal in its application, sweetly religious in its humanism. They sang it with a woful lack of its own original lines; they put in string on string of "dum te dums," but it came from their better natures and it sanctified the dingy shop.

When it was ended, which was not until it had gone through persistent repetitions, old Jim was prepared for almost anything.

"I s'pose you boys want a regular sermon," said he, "and if only I'd 'a' had the time—wal, I won't say what a torch-light procession of a sermon you'd have got, but I'll do the best I can."

He cleared his throat, struck an attitude inseparable from American elocution, and began:

"Fellow-citizens—and ladies and gentlemen—we—we're an ornary lot of backwoods fellers, livin' away out here in the mountains and the brush, but God Almighty 'ain't forgot us, all the same. He sent a little youngster once to put a heartful of happiness into men, and He's sent this little skeezucks here to show us boys we ain't shut off from everything. He didn't send us no bonanza—like they say they've got in Silver Treasury—but I wouldn't trade the little kid for all the bullion they will ever melt. We ain't the prettiest lot of ducks I ever saw, and we maybe blow the ten commandants all over the camp with giant powder once in a while, lookin' 'round for gold, but, boys, we ain't throwed out complete. We've got the love and pity of God Almighty, sure, when he gives us, all to ourselves, a little helpless feller for to raise. I know you boys all want me to thank the Father of us all, and that's what I do. And I hope He'll let us know the way to give the little kid a good square show, for Christ's sake. Amen."

The men would have listened to more. They expected more, indeed, and waited to hear old Jim resume.

"That's about all," he said, as no one spoke, "except, of course, we'll sing some more of the hymns and take up collection. I guess we'd better take collection first."

The congregation stirred. Big hands went down into pockets.

"Who gets the collection?" queried Field.

Jim drawled, "When it ain't buttons, it goes to the parson; when it is, the parson's wife gits in."

"You 'ain't got no wife," objected Bone.

"That's why there ain't goin' to be no buttons," sagely answered the miner. "On the square, though, boys, this is all for the little skeezucks, to buy some genuine milk, from Miss Doc Dennihan's goat."

"What we goin' to put our offerings into?" asked the blacksmith, as the boys made ready with their contributions. "They used to hand around a pie-plate when I was a boy."

"We'll try to get along with a hat," responded Jim, "and Keno here can pass it 'round. I've often observed that a hat is a handy thing to collect things in, especially brains."

So the hat went quickly from one to another, sagging more and more in the crown as it travelled.

The men had come forward to surround the anvil, with the tiny little chap upon its massive top, and not one in all the groups was there who did not feel that, left alone with the timid bit of a pilgrim, he could get him to talking and laughing in the briefest of moments.

The hymns with which old Jim had promised the meeting should conclude were all but forgotten. Two or three miners, whose hunger for song was not to be readily appeased, kept bringing the subject to the fore again, however, till at length they were heard.

"We're scarin' little Skeezucks, anyhow," said the brawny smith, once more reviving the fire in the forge.

"Let's sing 'In the Sweet By-and-By,' if all of us know it," suggested a young fellow scarcely more than a lad. "It's awful easy."

"Wal, you start her bilin'," replied the teamster.

The young fellow blushed, but he nerved himself to the point and sang out, nervously at first, and then, when his confidence increased, in a clear, ringing tenor of remarkable purity, recalling the old-time words that once were so widely known and treasured:

"'There's a land that is fairer than day, And by faith we can see it afar, For the Father waits over the way To prepare us a dwelling-place there.'"

Then the chorus of voices, husky from neglect and crude from lack of culture, joined in the chorus, with a heartiness that shook the dingy building:

"'In the sweet by-and-by, We shall meet on that beautiful shore; In the sweet by-and-by, We shall meet on that beautiful shore.'"

They followed this with what they knew of "Home, Sweet Home," and so at last strolled out into the sunshine of the street, and surrounded the quaint little foundling, as he looked from one to another in baby gravity and sat in his timid way on the arm of "Bruvver Jim."

"I'll tell you what," said the blacksmith, "now that we've found that we can do the job all right, we'll get up a Christmas for little Skeezucks that will lift the mountains clean up off the earth!"

"Good suggestion," Jim agreed. "But the little feller feels tired now. I am goin' to take him home."

And this he did. But after lunch no fewer than twenty of the men of Borealis climbed up the trail to get another look at the quiet little man who glorified the cabin.

But the darkness had only begun to creep through the lowermost channels of the canyons when Skeezucks fell asleep. By then old Jim, the pup, and Keno were alone with the child.

"Keno, I reckon I'll wander quietly down and see if Doc will let me buy a little milk," said Jim. "You'd better come along to see that his sister don't interfere."

Keno expressed his doubts immediately, not only as to the excellence of goat's milk generally, but likewise as to any good that he could do by joining Jim in the enterprise suggested.

"Anyway," he concluded, "Doc has maybe went on shift by this time. He's workin' nights this week again."

Jim, however, prevailed. "You don't get another bite of grub in this shack, nor another look at the little boy, if you don't come ahead and do your share."

Therefore they presently departed, shutting Tintoretto in the cabin to "watch."

In half an hour, having interviewed Doc Dennihan himself on the hill-side quite removed from his cabin, the two worthies came climbing up towards their home once again, Jim most carefully holding in his hands a large tin cup with half an inch of goat's milk at the bottom.

While still a hundred yards from the house, they were suddenly startled by the mad descent upon them of the pup they had recently left behind.

"Huh! you young galoot," said Jim. "You got out, I see!"

When he entered the cabin it was dark. Keno lighted the candle and Jim put his cup on the table. Then he went to the berth to awaken the tiny foundling and give him a supper of bread and milk.

Keno heard him make a sound as of one in terrible pain.

The miner turned a face, deadly white, towards the table.

"Keno," he cried, "he's gone!"



CHAPTER VIII

OLD JIM DISTRAUGHT

For a moment Keno failed to comprehend. Then for a second after that he refused to believe. He ran to the bunk where Jim was desperately turning down the blankets and made a quick examination of that as well as of the other beds.

They were empty.

Hastening across the cabin, the two men searched in the berths at the farther end with parental eagerness, but all in vain, the pup meantime dodging between their legs and chewing at their trousers.

"Tintoretto!" said Jim, in a flash of deduction. "He must have got out when somebody opened the door. Somebody's been here and stole my little boy!"

"By jinks!" said Keno, hauling at his sleeves in excess of emotion. "But who?"

"Come on," answered Jim, distraught and wild. "Come down to camp! Somebody's playin' us a trick!"

Again they shut the pup inside, and then they fairly ran down the trail, through the darkness, to the town below.

A number of men were standing in the street, among them the teamster and Field, the father of Borealis. They were joking, laughing, wasting time.

"Boys," cried Jim, as he hastened towards the group, "has any one seen little Skeezucks? Some one's played a trick and took him off! Somebody's been to the cabin and stole my little boy!"

"Stole him?" said Field. "Why, where was you and Keno?"

"Down to Doc's to get some milk. He wanted bread and milk," Jim explained, in evident anguish. "You fellows might have seen, if any one fetched him down the trail. You're foolin'. Some of you took him for a joke!"

"It wouldn't be no joke," answered Lufkins, the teamster. "We 'ain't got him, Jim, on the square."

"Of course we 'ain't got him. We 'ain't took him for no joke," said Field. "Nobody'd take him away like that."

"Why don't we ring the bar of steel we used for a bell," suggested one of the miners. "That would fetch the men—all who 'ain't gone back on shift."

"Good idea," said Field. "But I ought to get back home and eat some dinner."

He did not, however, depart. That Jim was in a fever of excitement and despair they could all of them see. He hastened ahead of the group to the shop of Webber. and taking a short length of iron chain, which he found on the earth, he slashed and beat at the bar of steel with frantic strength.

The sharp, metallic notes rang out with every stroke. The bar was swaying like a pendulum. Blow after blow the man delivered, filling all the hollows of the hills with wild alarm.

Out of saloons and houses men came sauntering, or running, according to the tension of their nerves. Many thought some house must be afire. At least thirty men were presently gathered at the place of summons. With five or six informers to tell the news of Jim's bereavement, all were soon aware of what was making the trouble. But none had seen the tiny foundling since they bade him good-bye in the charge of Jim himself.

"Are you plum dead sure he's went?" said Webber, the smith. "Did you look all over the cabin?"

"Everywhere," said Jim. "He's gone!"

"Wal, maybe some mystery got him," suggested Bone. "Jim, you don't suppose his father, or some one who lost him, come and nabbed him while you was gone?"

They saw old Jim turn pale in the light that came from across the street.

Keno broke in with an answer.

"By jinks! Jim was his mother! Jim had more good rights to the little feller than anybody, livin' or dead!"

"You bet!" agreed a voice.

Jim spoke with difficulty.

"If any one did that"—he faltered—"why, boys, he never should have let me find him in the brush."

"Are you plum dead sure he's went?" insisted the blacksmith, whom the news had somewhat stunned.

"I thought perhaps you fellows might have played a joke—taken him off to see me run around," said Jim, with a faint attempt at a smile. "'Ain't you got him, boys—all the time?"

"Aw, no, he'd be too scared," said Bone. "We know he'd be scared of any one of us."

"It ain't so much that," said Field, "but I shouldn't wonder if his father, or some other feller just as good, came and took him off."

"Of course his father would have the right," said Jim, haltingly, "but—I wish he hadn't let me find him first. You fellows are sure you ain't a-foolin'?"

"We couldn't have done it—not on Sunday—after church," said Lufkins. "No, Jim, we wouldn't fool that way."

"You don't s'pose that Parky might have took him, out of spite?" said Jim, eager for hope in any direction whatsoever.

"No! He hates kids worse than pizen," said the barkeep, decisively. "He's been a-gamblin' since four this afternoon, dealin' faro-bank."

"We could go and search every shack in camp," suggested a listener.

"What would be the good of that?" inquired Field. "If the father came and took the little shaver, do you think he'd hide him 'round here in somebody's cabin?"

The blacksmith said: "It don't seem as if you could have looked all over the house. He's such a little bit of a skeezucks."

Keno told him how they had searched in every bunk, and how the milk was waiting on the table, and how the pup had escaped when some one opened the door.

The men all volunteered to go up on the hill with torches and lanterns, to see if the trail of the some one who had done this deed might not be discovered. Accordingly, the lights were secured and the party climbed the slope. All of them entered the cabin and heard the explanation of exactly how old Jim had found that the little chap was gone.

Webber was one of the number. To satisfy his incredulous mind, he searched every possible and impossible lurking-place where an object as small as a ball could be concealed.

"I guess he's went," he agreed, at last.

Then out on the hill-side went the crowd, and breaking up in groups, each with its lanterns and torches, they searched the rock-strewn slope In every direction. The wavering lights went hither and yon, revealing now the faces of the anxious men, and then prodigious features of a clump of granite bowlders, jewelled with mica, sparkling in the light.

Intensely the darkness hedged the groups about. The sounds of their voices and of rocks that crunched beneath their boots alone disturbed the great, eternal calm; but the search was vain. The searchers had known it could be of no avail, for the puny foot of man could have made no track upon the slanted floor of granite fragments that constituted the hill-side. It was something to do for Jim, and that was all.

At length, about midnight, it came to an end. They lingered on the slope, however, to offer their theories, invariably hopeful, and to say that Monday morning would accomplish miracles in the way of setting everything aright.

Many were supperless when all save Jim and little Keno had again returned to Borealis and left the two alone at the cabin.

"We'll save the milk in case he might come home by any chance," said the gray old miner, and he placed the cup on a shelf against the wall.

In silence he cooked the humble dinner, which he placed on the table in front of his equally voiceless companion. Keno and the pup went at the meal with unpoetic vigor, but Jim could do no eating. He went to the door from time to time to listen. Then he once more searched the blankets in the bunks.

"Wal, anyway," said he, at last, "he took his doll."



CHAPTER IX

THE GUILTY MISS DOC

That Keno and Tintoretto should sleep was inevitable, after the way they had eaten. Old Jim then took his lantern and went out alone. Perhaps his tiny foundling had wandered away by himself, he thought. Searching and searching, up hill and down, lighting his way through the brush, the miner went on and on, to leave no spot unvisited. He was out all night, wandering here and climbing there on the hillside, pausing now and again to listen and to look about, almost expectantly, where naught could be seen save the mighty procession of the stars, and naught could be heard save the ringing of the inter-stellar silence as the earth swung steadily onward in her course.

Hour after hour of the darkness went by and found him searching still. With the coming of the morning he suddenly grasped at a startling thought.

Miss Doc!—Miss Dennihan! She must have stolen his foundling!

Her recent climb to his cabin, her protracted stay, her baffled curiosity—these were ample explanation for the trick she must have played! How easily she might have watched the place, slipped in the moment the cabin was left unguarded, and carried off the little pilgrim!

Jim knew she would glory in such a revenge. She probably cared not a whit for the child, but to score against himself, for defeating her purpose when she called, she would doubtless have gone to any possible length.

The miner was enraged, but a second later a great gush of thankfulness and relief surged upward in his heart. At least, the little man would not have been out all night in the hills! Then growing sick in turn, he thought this explanation would be too good to be true. It was madness—only a hope! He clung to it tenaciously, however, then gave it up, only to snatch it back again in desperation as he hastened home to his cabin.

"Keno, wake up," he cried to his lodger, shaking him briskly by the shoulder. "Keno! Keno!"

"What's the matter? Time for breakfast?" asked Keno, drowsily, risking only half an eye with which to look about. "Why not call me gently?"

"Get up!" commanded Jim. "I have thought of where little Skeezucks has gone!"

"Where?" cried Keno, suddenly aroused. "I'll go and kill the cuss that took him off!"

"Miss Doc!" replied the miner. "Miss Doc!"

"Miss Doc?" repeated Keno, weakly, pausing in the act of pulling on his boots. "By jinks! Say, I couldn't kill no woman, Jim. How do you know?"

"Stands to reason," Jim replied, and explaining his premises rapidly and clearly, he punched poor Keno into something almost as good as activity.

"By jinks! I can't believe it," said Keno, who did believe it with fearful thoroughness. "Jim, she wouldn't dare, an' us two fellers liable to bust her house to pieces."

"Don't you know she'd be dead sure to play a trick like that?" said Jim, who could not bear to listen to a doubt. "Don't you see she couldn't do anything else, bein' a woman?"

"Maybe—maybe," answered Keno, with a sort of acquiescence that is deadlier than an out-and-out denial. "But—I wouldn't want to see you disappointed, Jim—I wouldn't want to see it."

"Wal, you come on, that's all," said Jim. "If it ain't so—I want to know it early in the day!"

"But—what can I do?" still objected Keno. "Wouldn't you rather I'd stay home and git the breakfast?"

"We don't want any breakfast if she 'ain't got the little boy. You come on!"

Keno came; so did Tintoretto. The three went down the slope as the sun looked over the rim of the mountains. The chill and crispness of the air seemed a part of those early rays of light.

In sight of the home of Doc and Miss Dennihan, they paused and stepped behind a fence, for the door of the neat little house was open and the lady herself was sweeping off the steps, with the briskness inseparable from her character.

She presently disappeared, but the door, to Jim's relief, was left standing open. He proceeded boldly on his course.

"Now, I'll stay outside and hold the pup," said Keno.

"If anything goes wrong, you let the pup go loose," instructed Jim. "He might distract her attention."

Thereupon he went in at the creaking little garden gate, and, leaving it open, knocked on the door and entered the house. He had hardly more than come within the room when Miss Doc appeared from her kitchen.

"Mercy in us, if you ain't up before your breakfast!" she said. "Whatever do you want in my house at this time of mornin', you Jim lazy-joints?"

"You know what I came for," said Jim. "I want my little boy."

"Your little boy?" she echoed. "I never knowed you had no little boy. You never said nuthin' 'bout no little boy when I was up to your cabin."

Jim's heart, despite his utmost efforts to be hopeful, was sinking.

"You know I found a little kid," he said, less aggressively. "And some one's taken him off—stole him—that's what they've done, and I'll bet a bit it's you!"

"Wal, if I ever!" cried Miss Doc, her eyes lighting up dangerously. "Did you come down here to tell me right to my face I stole from your dirty little shanty?"

"I want my little boy," said Jim.

"Wal, you git out of my house," commanded Miss Doc. "If John was up you'd never dare to stay here another minute. You clear out! A-callin' me a thief!"

Jim's hope collapsed in his bosom. The taking of the child he could gladly have forgiven. Any excuse would have satisfied his anger—anything was bearable, save to know that he had come on a false belief.

"Miss Doc," he said, "I only want the little kid. Don't say he ain't here."

"Tellin' me I'd steal!" she said, in her indignation. "You shiftless, good-for-nothin'—" But she left her string of epithets incompleted, all on account of an interruption in the shape of Tintoretto.

Keno had made up his mind that everything was going wrong, and he had loosed the pup.

Bounding in at the door, that enthusiastic bit of awkwardness and good intentions jumped on the front of Miss Doc's dress, gave a lick at her hand, scooted back to his master, and wagged himself against the tables, chairs, and walls with clumsy dexterity. Sniffing and bumping his nose on the carpet, he pranced through the door to the kitchen.

Almost immediately Jim heard the sound of something being bowled over on the floor—something being licked—something vainly striving with the over-affectionate pup, and then there came a coo of joy.

"There he is!" cried Jim, and before Miss Doc could lift so much as hand or voice to restrain him, he had followed Tintoretto and fallen on his knees by the side of his lost little foundling, who was helplessly straddled by the pup, and who, for the first time, dropped his doll as he held out his tiny arms to be taken.

"My little boy!" said the miner—"my little boy!" and taking both doll and little man in his arms he held them in passionate tenderness against his heart.

"How da'st you come in my kitchen with your dirty boots?" demanded Miss Dennihan, in all her unabashed pugnacity.

"It's all right, little Skeezucks," said Jim to the timid little pilgrim, who was clinging to his collar with all the strength of a baby's new confidence and hope. "Did you think old brother Jim was lost? Did you want to go home and get some bread and milk?"

"He ain't a bit hungry. He didn't want nuthin' to eat," said Miss Doc, in self-defence. "And you ain't no more fit to have that there child than a—"

"Goin' to have him all the same," old Jim interrupted, starting for the door. "You stole him—that's what you did!"

"I didn't do no sech thing," said the housewife. "I jest nachelly borrowed him—jest for over night. And now you've got him, I hope you're satisfied. And you kin jest clear out o' my house, do you hear? And I can't scrub and sweep too soon where your lazy, dirty old boots has been on the floor!"

"Wal," drawled Jim, "I can't throw away these boots any too soon, neither. I wouldn't wear a pair of boots which had stepped on any floor of yours."

He therefore left the house at once, even as the lady began her violent sweeping. Interrupting Keno's mad chortles of joy at sight of little Skeezucks, Jim gave him the tiny man for a moment's keeping, and, taking off his boots, threw them down before Miss Dennihan's gate in extravagant pride.

Then once more he took his little man on his arm and started away. But when he had walked a half-dozen rods, on the rocks that indented the tender soles of his stockinged feet, he was stepping with gingerly uncertainty. He presently came to a halt. The ground was not only lumpy, it was cold.

"I'll tell you what," he slowly drawled, "in this little world there's about one chance in a million for a man to make a President of himself, and about nine hundred and ninety-nine chances in a thousand for him to make a fool of himself."

"That's what I thought," said Keno.

"All the same, if only I had the resolution I'd leave them boots there forever!"

"What for?" said Keno.

"Wal," drawled Jim, "a man can't always tell he comes of a proud family by the cut of his clothes. But, Keno, you ain't troubled with pride, so you go back and fetch me the boots."

Then, when he presently drew his cowhide casings on, he sat for a moment enjoying the comfort of those soles beneath his feet. For the time that they halted where they were, he held his rescued little boy to his heart in an ecstasy such as he never had dreamed could be given to a man.



CHAPTER X

PREPARATIONS FOR CHRISTMAS

When the word spread 'round that Jim and the quaint little foundling were once more united, the story of the episode at Miss Doc's home necessarily followed to make the tale complete. Immensely relieved and grateful, to know that no dire calamity had befallen the camp's first and only child, the rough men nevertheless lost no time in conceiving the outcome to be fairly amusing.

"You kin bet that Doc was awake all the time, and listenin', as long as Jim was there," said Bone, "but six yoke of oxen couldn't 'a' dragged his two eyes open, or him out of bed, to mingle in the ceremonies."

To prevent a recurrence of similar descents upon his household, Jim arranged his plans in such a manner that the timid little Skeezucks should never again be left alone. Indeed, the gray old miner hardly ever permitted the little chap to be out of his sight. Hour by hour, day by day, he remained at his cabin, playing with the child, telling him stories, asking him questions, making him promises of all the wonderful toys and playthings he would manufacture soon.

Once in a while the little fellow spoke. That utterance came with difficulty to his lips was obvious. He must always have been a silent, backward little fellow, and sad, as children rarely become at an age so tender. Of who or what he was he gave no clew. He seemed to have no real name, to remember no parents, to feel no confidence in anything save "Bruvver Jim" and Tintoretto.

In the course of a week a number of names had been suggested for the tiny bit of a stranger, but none could suit the taste of Jim. He waited still for a truant inspiration, and meanwhile "Skeezucks" came daily more and more into use among the men of Borealis.

It was during this time that a parcel arrived at the cabin from the home of Miss Doc. It was fetched to the hill by Doc himself, who said it was sent by his sister. He departed at once, to avoid the discussion which he felt its contents might occasion.

On tearing it open old Jim was not a little amazed to discover a lot of little garments, fashioned to the size of tiny Skeezucks, with all the skill which lies—at nature's second thought—in the hand of woman. Neat little undergarments, white little frocks, a something that the miner felt by instinct was a "nightie," and two pairs of the smallest of stockings rewarded the overhauling of the package, and left Jim momentarily speechless.

"By jinks!" said Keno, pulling down his sleeves, "them are awful small fer us!"

"If only I had the time," drawled Jim, "I'd take 'em back to Miss Doc and throw them in her yard. We don't need anybody sewin' for little Skeezucks. I was meanin' to make him somethin' better than these myself."

"Oh!" said Keno. "Well, we could give 'em to the pup. He'd like to play with them little duds."

"No; I'll try 'em on the little boy tonight," reflected Jim, "and then, if we find they ain't a fit, why, I'll either send 'em back or cut 'em apart and sew 'em all over and make 'em do."

But once he had tried them on, their fate was sealed. They remained as much a part of the tiny man as did his furry doll. Indeed, they were presently almost forgotten, for December being well advanced, the one great topic of conversation now was the Christmas celebration to be held for the camp's one little child.

Ten of the big, rough citizens had come one evening to the cabin on the hill, to settle on some of the details of what they should do. The tiny pilgrim, whom they all regarded so fondly, had gone to sleep and Jim had placed him in his bunk. In the chimney a glowing fire drove away the chill of the wintry air.

"Speakin' of catfish, of course we'll hang up his stockin'," said Field. "Christmas wouldn't be no Christmas without a stockin'."

"Stockin'!" echoed the blacksmith. "We'll have to hang up a minin'-shaft, I reckon, for to hold all the things."

"I'm goin' to make him a kind of kaliderscope myself, or maybe two or three," said one modest individual, stroking his chin.

Dunn, the most unworkman-like carpenter that ever built a crooked house, declared it was his intention to fashion a whole set of alphabetical blocks of prodigious size and unearthly beauty.

"Well, I can't make so much in the way of fancy fixin's, but you jest wait and see," said another.

The blacksmith darkly hinted at wonders evolving beneath the curly abundance of his hair, and Lufkins likewise kept his purposes to himself.

"I s'pose we'd ought to have a tree," said Jim. "We could make a Christmas-tree look like the Garden of Eden before Mrs. Adam began to eat the ornaments."

"That's the ticket," Webber agreed. "That's sure the boss racket of them all."

"We couldn't git no tree into this shanty," objected Field. "This place ain't big enough to hold a Christmas puddin'."

"Of course it is," said the carpenter. "It's ten foot ten by eighteen foot six inches, or I can't do no guessin'."

"That 'mount of space couldn't hold jest me, on Christmas," estimated the teamster.

"And the whole camp sure will want to come," added another.

"'Ceptin' Miss Doc," suggested Webber.

"'Ceptin' Miss Doc," agreed the previous speaker.

"Then why not have the tree down yonder, into Webber's shop, same as church?" asked Field. "We could git the whole camp in there."

This was acclaimed a thought of genius.

"It suits me down to the ground," said Jim, with whom all ultimate decision lay, by right of his foster-parenthood of little Skeezucks, "only I don't see so plain where we're goin' to git the tree. We're burnin' all the biggest brush around Borealis, and there ain't a genuine Christmas-tree in forty miles."

The truth of this observation fell like a dampened blanket on all the company.

"That's so," said Webber. "That's just the luck!"

"There's a bunch of willers and alders by the spring," suggested a hopeful person.

"You pore, pitiful cuss," said Field. "You couldn't have seen no Christmas-tree in all your infancy."

"If only I had the time," drawled Jim, "I'd go across to the Pinyon mountains and git a tree. Perhaps I can do that yet."

"If you'd do that, Jim, that would be the biggest present of the lot," said Webber. "You wouldn't have to do nuthin' more."'

"Wal, I'm goin' to make a Noah's ark full of animals, anyway," said Jim. "Also a few cars and boats and a big tin horn—if only I've got the activity."

"But we'll reckon on you for the tree," insisted the blacksmith. "Then, of course, we want a great big Christmas dinner."

"What are you goin' to do fer a turkey?" inquired Field.

"And rich brown gravy?" added the carpenter.

"And cranberry sauce and mince-pie?" supplemented Lufkins.

"Well, maybe we could git a rabbit for the turkey," answered the smith.

"And, by jinks! I kin make a lemon-pie that tastes like a chunk dropped out of heaven," volunteered Keno, pulling at his sleeves.

"But what about that rich brown gravy?" queried the carpenter.

"Smoky White can dish up the slickest dough-nuts you ever slapped your lip onto," informed the modest individual who stroked his chin.

"We can have pertatoes and beans and slapjacks on the side," a hopeful miner reminded the company.

"You bet. Don't you worry; we can trot out a regular banquet," Field assured them, optimistically. "S'posen we don't have turkey and cranberry sauce and a big mince-pie?"

"I'd like that rich brown gravy," murmured the carpenter—"good and thick and rich and brown."

"We could rig up a big, long table in the shop," planned the blacksmith, "and put a hundred candles everywhere, and have the tree all blazin' with lights, and you bet things would be gorgeous."

"If we git the tree," said Lufkins.

"And the rabbit fer a turkey," added a friend.

"Well, by jinks! you'll git the lemon-pie all right, if you don't git nuthin' else," declared little Keno.

"If only I can plan it out I'll fetch the tree," said Jim. "I'd like to do that for the little boy."

"Jim's an awful clever ole cuss," said Field, trusting to work some benefit by a judicious application of flattery. "It ain't every man which knows the kind of a tree to chop. Not all trees is Christmas-trees. But ole Jim is a clever ole duck, you bet."

"Wal," drawled Jim, "I never suspect my own intelligence till a man begins to tell me I'm a clever old duck. Still, I reckon I ain't over-likely to cut no cherry-trees over to the Pinyon hills."

"The celebration's comin' to a head in bully style, that's the main concern," said the teamster. "I s'pose we'd better begin to invite all the boys?"

"If all of 'em come," suggested a listener, "that one jack-rabbit settin' up playin' turkey will look awful sick."

"I'd hate to git left on the gravy," added the carpenter—"if there's goin' to be any gravy."

"Aw, we'll have buckets of grub," said the smith. "We'll ask 'em all to 'please bring refreshments,' same as they do in families where they never git a good square meal except at surprise-parties and birthday blow-outs. Don't you fear about the feed."

"Well, we ought to git the jig to goin'," suggested Field. "Lots of the boys needs a good fair warnin' when they're goin' to tackle cookin' grub for a Christmas dinner. I vote we git out of here and go down hill and talk the racket up."

This motion was carried at once. The boys filed out with hearty good-nights, and wended their way down the slope, with the bite of the frosted air at their ears.

Then Jim, at the very thought of travelling forty miles to fetch a tree for Christmas gayeties, sat down before his fire to take a rest.



CHAPTER XI

TROUBLES AND DISCOVERIES

For the next ten days the talk of the camp was the coming celebration. Moreover, man after man was surrounding himself with mystery impenetrable, as he drew away in his shell, so to speak, to undergo certain throes of invention and secret manufacture of presents for the tiny boy at the cabin on the hill. Knowing nods, sly winks, and jealous guarding of their cleverness marked the big, rough fellows one by one. And yet some of the most secretive felt a necessity for consulting Jim as to what was appropriate, what would please little Skeezucks, and what was worthy to be tied upon the tree.

That each and every individual thus laboring to produce his offering should be eager to excel his neighbor, and to win the greatest appreciation from the all-unknowing little pilgrim for his own particular toy or trinket, was a natural outcome of the Christmas spirit actuating the manoeuvres. And all the things they could give would have to be made, since there was not a shop in a radius of a hundred miles where baubles for youngsters could be purchased, while Borealis, having never had a baby boy before in all its sudden annals of being, had neglected all provision for the advent of tiny Skeezucks.

The carpenter came to the cabin first, with a barley-sack filled with the blocks he had made for the small foundling's Christmas ecstasy. Before he would show them, however, Keno was obliged to leave the house and the tiny pilgrim himself was placed in a bunk from which he could not see.

"I want to surprise him," explained the carpenter.

He then dumped out his blocks.

As lumber was a luxury in Borealis, he had been obliged to make what shift he could. In consequence of this the blocks were of several sizes, a number were constructed of several pieces of board nailed together—and split in the process—no two were shaped alike, except for generalities, and no one was straight. However, they were larger than a man's two fists, they were gaudily painted, and the alphabet was sprinkled upon them with prodigal generosity. There were even hieroglyphics upon them, which the carpenter described as birds and animals. They were certainly more than any timid child could ever have demanded.

"Them's it," said Dunn, watching the face of Jim with what modest pride the situation would permit. "Now, what I want you to do is to give me a genuine, candid opinion of the work."

"Wal, I'll tell you," drawled the miner, "whenever a man asks you for a candid opinion, that's the time to fill your shovel with guff. It's the only safe proceedin'. So I won't fool around with candid opinions, Dunn, I'll just admit they are jewels. Cut my diamonds if they ain't!"

"I kind of thought so myself," confessed the carpenter. "But I thought as you was a first-class critic, why, I'd like to hear what you'd say."

"No, I ain't no critic," Jim replied. "A critic is a feller who can say nastier things than anybody else about things that anybody else can do a heap sight better than he can himself."

"Well, I do reckon, as who shouldn't say so, that nobody livin' into Borealis but me could 'a' made them blocks," agreed Dunn, returning the lot to his sack. "But I jest wanted to hear you say so, Jim, fer you and me has had an eddication which lots of cusses into camp 'ain't never got. Not that it's anything agin 'em, but—you know how it is. I'll bet the little shaver will like them better'n anything else he'll git."

"Oh, he'll like 'em in a different way," agreed the miner. "No doubt about that."

And when the carpenter had gone old Jim took his little foundling from the berth and sat him on his knee.

In the tiny chap's arms the powder-flask-and-potato doll was firmly held. The face of the lady had wrinkled with a premature descent of age upon her being. One of her eyes had disappeared, while her soot-made mouth had been wiped across her entire countenance.

The quaint bit of a boy was dressed, as usual, in the funny little trousers that came to his heels, while his old fur cap had been kept in requisition for the warmth it afforded his ears. He cuddled confidingly against his big, rough protector, but he made no sound of speaking, nor did anything suggestive of a smile come to play upon his grave little features.

Jim had told him of Christmas by the hour—all the beauty of the story, so old, so appealing to the race of man, who yearns towards everything affording a brightness of hope and a faith in anything human.

"What would little Skeezucks like for his Christmas?" the man inquired, for the twentieth time.

The little fellow pressed closer against him, in baby shyness and slowly answered:

"Bruv-ver—Jim."

The miner clasped him tenderly against his heart. Yet he had but scanty intimation of the all the tiny pilgrim meant.

He sat with him throughout that day, however, as he had so many of these fleeting days. The larder was neglected; the money contributed at "church" had gone at once, to score against a bill at the store, as large as the cabin itself, and only the labors of Keno, chopping brush for fuel, kept the home supplied even with a fire. Jim had been born beneath the weight of some star too slow to move along.

When Keno came back to the cabin from his work in the brush it was well along in the afternoon. Jim decided to go below and stock up the pantry with food. On arriving at the store, however, he met a new manner of reception.

The gambler, Parky, was in charge, as a recent purchaser of the whole concern.

"You can't git no more grub-stake here without the cash," he said to Jim. "And now you've come, you can pony up on the bill you 'ain't yet squared."

"So?" said Jim.

"You bet your boots it's so, and you can't begin to pungle up a minute too soon!" was the answer.

"I reckon you'd ask a chicken to pungle up the gravel in his gizzard if you thought he'd picked up a sliver of gold," Jim drawled, in his lazy utterance. "And an ordinary chicken, with the pip thrown in, could pungle twice to my once."

"Ain't got the stuff, hey?" said Parky. "Broke, I s'pose? Then maybe you'll git to work, you old galoot, and stop playin' parson and goody-goody games. You don't git nothing here without the chink. So perhaps you'll git to work at last."

A red-nosed henchman of the gambler's put in a word.

"I don't see why you 'ain't gone to work," he said.

"Don't you?" drawled Jim, leaning on the counter to survey the speaker. "Well, it looks to me as if you found out, long ago, that all work and no play makes a man a Yankee."

"I ain't no Yankee, you kin bet on that!" said the man.

"That's pretty near incredible," drawled Jim.

"And I ain't neither," declared the gambler, who boasted of being Canadian. "Don't you forget that, old boy."

"No," Jim slowly replied, "I've often noticed that all that glitters ain't American."

"Well, you can clear out of here and notice how things look outside," retorted Parky.

Jim was slowly straightening up when the blacksmith and the teamster entered the place. They had heard the gambler's order and were thoroughly astounded. No man, howsoever poor and unprepared to pay a wretched bill, had ever been treated thus in Borealis before.

"What's the matter?" said Webber.

"Nuthin', particularly," answered Jim, in his slow, monotonous way, "only a difference of opinion. Parky thinks he's brainy, and a gentleman—that's all."

"I can see you don't git another snack of grub in here, my friend," retorted Parky, adding a number of oaths. "And for just two cents I'd break your jaw and pitch you out in the street."

"Not with your present flow of language," answered Jim.

The teamster inquired, "Why don't Jim git any more grub?"

"Because I'm running this joint and he 'ain't got the cash," said Parky. "You got anything to say about the biz?"

"Jim's got a call on me and my cash," replied the brawny Webber. "Jim, you tell him what you need, and I'll foot the bill."

"I'll settle half, myself," added Lufkins.

"Thanks, boys, not this evenin'," said Jim, whose pride had singular moments for coming to the surface. "There's only one time of day when it's safe to deal with a gambler, and that's thirteen o'clock."

"I wouldn't sell you nothing, anyway," said Parky, with a swagger. "He couldn't git grub here now for no money—savvy?"

"I wonder why you call it grub, now that it's come into your greasy hands!" drawled the miner, as he slowly started to leave the store. "I'd be afraid you'd deal me a dirty ace of spades instead of a decent slice of bacon." And, hands in pockets, he sauntered away, vaguely wondering what he should do.

The blacksmith hung for a moment in the balance of indecision, rapidly thinking. Then he followed where the gray old Jim had gone, and presently overtook him in the road.

"Jim," he said, "what about poor little Skeezucks? Say, I'll tell you what we'll do: I'll wait a little, and then send Field to the store and have him git whatever you need, and pretend it's all for himself. Then we'll lug it up the hill and slide it into the cabin slick as a lead two-bits."

"Can't let you do it," said Jim.

"Why not?" demanded Webber.

Jim hesitated before he drawled his reply.

"If only I had the resolution," said he, "I wouldn't take nothing that Parky could sell."

"When we git you once talkin' 'if-only,' the bluff is called," replied the smith, with a grin. "Now what are you needin' at the shack?"

"You rich fellers want to run the whole shebang," objected Jim, by way of an easy capitulation. "There never yet was a feller born with a silver spoon in his mouth that didn't want to put it in every other feller's puddin'. . . . I was goin' to buy a can or two of condensed milk and a slab of bacon and a sack of flour and a bean or two and a little 'baccy, and a few things about like that."

"All right," said the blacksmith, tabulating all these items on his fingers. "And Field kin look around and see if there ain't some extrys for little Skeezucks."

"If only I had the determination I wouldn't accept a thing from Parky's stock," drawled the miner, as before. "I'll go to work on the claim and pay you back right off."

"Kerrect," answered Webber, as gravely as possible, thinking of the hundred gaudy promises old Jim had made concerning his undeveloped and so far worthless claim. "I hope you'll strike it good and rich."

"Wal," drawled Jim; "bad luck has to associate with a little good luck once in a while, to appear sort of half-way respectable. And my luck—same as any tired feller's—'ain't been right good Sunday-school company for several years."

So he climbed back up the hill once more, and, coming to his cabin, had a long, earnest look at the picks, bars, drills, and other implements of mining, heavy with dust, in the corner.

"If only the day wasn't practically gone," said he, "I'd start to work on the claim this afternoon."

But he touched no tools, and presently instead he took the grave little foundling on his knee and told him, all over, the tales the little fellow seemed most to enjoy.

When the stock of provisions was finally fetched to the house by Webber himself, the worthy smith was obliged to explain that part of the money supplied to Field for the purchase of the food had been confiscated for debt at the store. In consequence of this the quantity had been cut to a half its intended dimensions.

"And the worst of it is," said the blacksmith, in conclusion, "we all owe a little at the store, and Parky's got suspicious that we're sneakin' things to you."

Indeed, as he left the house, he saw that certain red-nosed microbe of a human being attached to the gambler, spying on his visit to the hill. Stopping for a moment to reflect upon the nearness of Christmas and the needless worry that he might inflict by informing Jim of his discovery, Webber shook his head and went his way, keeping the matter to himself.

But with food in the house old Jim was again at ease, so much so, indeed, that he quite forgot to begin that promised work upon his claim. He had never worked except when dire necessity made resting no longer possible, and then only long enough to secure the wherewithal for sufficient food to last him through another period of sitting around to think. If thinking upon subjects of no importance whatsoever had been a lucrative employment, Jim would certainly have accumulated the wealth of the whole wide world.

He took his pick in his hands the following day, but placed it again in its corner, slowly, after a moment's examination of its blunted steel.

Three days went by. The weather was colder. Bitter winds and frowning clouds were hastening somewhere to a conclave of the wintry elements. It was four days only to Christmas. Neither the promised Noah's ark to present to tiny Skeezucks nor the Christmas-tree on which the men had planned to hang their gifts was one whit nearer to realization than as if they had never been suggested.

Meantime, once again the food-supply was nearly gone. Keno kept the pile of fuel reasonably high, but cheer was not so prevalent in the cabin as to ask for further room. The grave little pilgrim was just a trifle quieter and less inclined to eat. He caught a cold, as tiny as himself, but bore its miseries uncomplainingly. In fact, he had never cried so much as once since his coming to the cabin; and neither had he smiled.

In sheer concern old Jim went forth that cold and windy afternoon of the day but four removed from Christmas, to make at least a show of working on his claim. Keno, Skeezucks, and the pup remained behind, the little red-headed man being busily engaged in some great culinary mystery from which he said his lemon-pie for Christmas should evolve.

When presently Jim stood beside the meagre post-hole he had made once upon a time, as a starter for a mining-shaft, he looked at it ruefully. How horridly hard that rock appeared! What a wretched little scar it was he had made with all that labor he remembered so vividly! What was the good of digging here? Nothing!

Dragging his pick, he looked for a softer spot in which to sink the steel. There were no softer spots. And the pick helve grew so intensely cold! Jim dropped it to the ground, and with hands thrust into his armpits, for the warmth afforded, he hunched himself dismally and scanned the prospect with doleful eyes. Why couldn't the hill break open, anyhow, and show whether anything worth the having were contained in its bulk or not?

A last summer's mullen stock, beating incessantly in the wind, seemed the only thing alive on all that vast outbulging of the earth. The stunted brush stiffly carded the breeze that blew so persistently.

From rock to rock the gray old miner's gaze went wandering. So undisturbed had been the surface of the earth since he had owned the claim that a shallow channel, sluiced in the earth by a freshet of the spring long past, remained as the waters had cut it. Slowly up the course of this insignificant cicatrice old Jim ascended, his hands still held beneath his arms, his long mustache and his grizzled beard blown awry in the breeze. The pick he left behind.

Coming thus to a deeper gouge in the sand of the hill, he halted and gazed attentively at a thick seam of rock outcropping sharply where the long-gone freshet had laid it bare. In mining parlance it was "quartzy." To Jim it appeared even more. He stooped above it and attempted to break away a fragment with his fingers. At this he failed. Rubbing off the dust and sand wherewith old mother nature was beginning to cover it anew, he saw little spots, at which he scratched with his nails.

"Awful cold it's gittin'," he drawled to himself, and sitting down on the meagre bank of earth he once more thrust his hands beneath his coat and looked at the outcropping dismally.

He had doubtless been gone from the cabin half an hour, and not a stroke had he given with his pick, when, as he sat there looking at the ground, the voice of Keno came on the wind from the door of the shack. Arising, Jim started at once towards his home, leaving his pick on the hill-side a rod or two below.

"What is it?" he called, as he neared the house.

"Calamerty!" yelled Keno, and he disappeared within the door.

Jim almost made haste.

"What kind of a calamity?" said he, as he entered the room. "What's went wrong?"

"The lemon-pie!" said Keno, whose face was a study in the art of expressing consternation.

"Oh," said Jim, instantly relieved, "is that all?"

"All?" echoed Keno. "By jinks! I can't make another before it's Christmas, to save my neck, and I used all the sugar and nearly all the flour we had."

"Is it a hopeless case?" inquired Jim.

"Some might not think so," poor Keno replied. "I scoured out the old Dutch oven and I've got her in a-bakin', but—"

"Well, maybe she ain't so worse."

"Jim," answered Keno, tragically, "I didn't find out till I had her bakin' fine. Then I looked at the bottle I thought was the lemon extract, and, by jinks! what do you think?"

"I don't feel up to the arts of creatin' lemon-pies," confessed the miner, warming himself before the fire. "What happened?"

"You have to have lemon extract—you know that?" said Keno.

"All right."

"Well, by jinks, Jim, it wasn't lemon extract after all! It was hair-oil!"

A terrible moment of silence ensued.

Then Jim said, "Was it all the hair-oil I had?"

"Every drop," said Keno.

"Wal," drawled the miner, sagely, "don't take on too hard. Into each picnic some rain must fall."

"But the boys won't eat it," answered Keno, inconsolably.

"You don't know," replied Jim. "You never can tell what people will eat on Christmas till the follerin' day. They'll take to anything that looks real pretty and smells seasonable. What did I do with my pick?"

"You must have left it behind," said Keno. "You ain't goin' to hit the pie with your pick?"

"Wal, not till Christmas, anyway, Keno, and only then in case we've busted all the knives and saws trying to git it apart," said Jim, reassuringly.

"Would you keep it, sure, and feed it to 'em all the same?" inquired Keno, forlornly, eager for a ray of hope.

"I certainly would," replied the miner. "They won't know the diff between a lemon-pie and a can of tomatoes. So I guess I'll go and git my pick. It may come on to snow, and then I couldn't find it till the spring."

Without the slightest intention of working any more, Jim sauntered back to the place where the pick was lying on the hill and took it up. By chance he thought of the ledge of quartz above in the rain-sluiced channel.

"Might as well hit her a lick," he drawled to himself, and climbing to the spot he drove the point of his implement into a crevice of the rock and broke away a piece of two or three pounds in weight. This he took in his big, red hands, which were numbing in the cold.

For a moment he looked at the fragment of quartz with unbelieving eyes. He wet it with his tongue. Then a something that answered in Jim to excitement pumped from his heart abruptly.

The rock was flecked all through with tiny specks of metal that the miner knew unerringly.

It was gold.



CHAPTER XII

THE MAKING OF A CHRISTMAS-TREE

Despite the snow that fell that night, despite the near approach of Christmas, old Jim's discovery aroused a great excitement in the camp. That very evening the news was known throughout all Borealis, and all next day, in the driving storm, the hill was visited, the ledge was viewed, and the topic was discussed at length in all its amazing features.

Teamsters, miners, loiterers—all, even including the gambler—came to pay their homage at the hiding-place of one of Mammon's family. All the mountain-side was taken up in claims. The calmest man in all the hills was Jim himself.

Parky made him an offer without the slightest hesitation.

"I'll square off your bill at the store," he said, "and give you a hundred dollars' worth of grub for the claim and prospect just as she stands."

"Not to-day," old Jim replied. "I never do no swapping at the other's feller's terms when I'm busy. We've got to get ready for Christmas, and you don't look to me like Santy Claus hunting 'round for lovely things to do."

"Anyway, I'll send up a lot of grub," declared the gambler, with a wonderful softening of the heart. "I was foolin'—just havin' a joke—the last time you was down to the store. You know you can have the best we've got in the deck."

"Wal, I 'ain't washed the taste of your joke clean out of my mouth just yet, so I won't bother you to-day," drawled Jim; and with muttered curses the gambler left, determined to have that ledge of gold-bearing rock, let the cost be what it might.

"I guess we'll have to quit on that there Christmas-tree," said the blacksmith, who was present with others at the cabin. "Seems you didn't have time to go to the Pinyon hills and fetch one back."

"If only I hadn't puttered 'round with the work on the claim," said Jim, "we might have had that tree as well as not. But I'll tell you what we can do. We can cut down the alders and willows at the spring, and bind a lot together and tie on some branches of mountain-tea and make a tree. That is, you fellers can, for little Skeezucks ain't a-feelin' right well to-day, and I reckon I'll stay close beside him till he spruces up."

"What about your mine?" inquired Lufkins.

"It ain't agoin' to run away," said the old philosopher, calmly. "I'll let it set there for a few more days, as long as I can't hang it up on the tree. It's just my little present to the boy, anyhow."

If anything had been needed to inject new enthusiasm into the plans for a Christmas celebration or to fire anew the boyhood in the men, the find of gold at Jim's very door would have done the trick a dozen times over.

With hearts new-created for the simple joys of their labor, the big rough fellows cut the meagre growth of leafless trees at the spring in the small ravine, and gathered evergreen mountain-tea that grew in scrawny clusters here and there on the mountains.

Armful after armful of this, their only possible material, they carried to the blacksmith's shop below, and there wrought long and hard and earnestly, tying together the wisps of green and the boughs and trunks of tender saplings.

Four of the stalks, the size of a lady's wrist, they fastened together with twisted wire to form the main support, or body, of their tree, To this the reconstructed, enlarged, and strengthened branches were likewise wired. Lastly, the long, green spikes of the mountain shrub were tied on, in bunches, like so many worn-out brooms. The tree, when completed and standing in its glory in the shop, was a marvellous creation, fully as much like a fir from the forest as a hair-brush is like a palm.

Then began the scheme of its decoration. One of the geniuses broke up countless bottles, for the red and green glass they afforded, and, tying the pieces in slings of cord, hung them in great profusion from the tree's peculiar arms. From the ceiling of his place of business, Bone, the barkeep, cut down a fluffy lot of colored paper, stuck there in a great rosette, and with this he added much original beauty to the pile. Out of cigar-boxes came a great heap of bright tin-foil that went on the branches in a way that only men could invent.

The carpenter loaded the structure with his gaudy blocks. The man who had promised to make a "kind of kaliderscope" made four or five instead of one. They were white-glass bottles filled with painted pebbles, buttons, dimes, chopped-up pencils, scraps of shiny tin, and anything or everything that would lend confusion or color to the bottle's interior as the thing was rolled about or shaken in the hands. These were so heavy as to threaten the tree's stability. Therefore, they had to be placed about its base on the floor.

The blacksmith had made a lot of little axes, shovels, picks, and hammers, all of which had been filed and polished with the greatest care and affectionate regard for the tiny man whose tree and Christmas all desired to make the finest in the world.

The teamster had evolved, from the inside lining of his winter coat, a hybrid duck-dog-bear that he called a "woolly sheep."

One of the men had whittled out no less than four fat tops, all ringed with colors and truly beautiful to see, that he said were the best he had ever beheld, despite the fact that something was in them that seemed to prevent them from spinning.

Another old fellow brought a pair of rusty skates which were large enough for a six-foot man. He told of the wonderful feats he had once performed on the ice as he hung them on the tree for little Skeezucks.

The envy of all was awakened, however, by Field, the father of the camp, who fetched a drum that would actually make a noise. He had built this wonder out of genuine sheep-skin, stretched over both of the ends of a bright tin can of exceptional size, from which he had eaten the contents solely with the purpose in view of procuring the metal cylinder.

There were wooden animals, cut-out guns, swords and daggers, wagons—some of them made with spools for wheels—a sled on which the paint was still wet, and dolls suspiciously suggestive of potato-mashers and iron spoons, notwithstanding their clothing. There were balls of every size and color, coins of gold and silver, and books made up of pasted pictures, culled for the greater part from cans of peaches, oysters, tomatoes, lobsters, and salmon.

Nearly every man had fashioned something, and hardly anything had been left unpainted. The clumsy old "boys" of the town had labored with untold patience to perfect their gifts. Their earnestness over the child and the day was a beautiful thing to see. Never were presents more impressive as to weight. The men had made them splendidly strong.

The gifts had been ticketed variously, many being marked "For Little Skeezucks," but by far the greatest number bore the inscription: "For Bruvver Jim's Baby—Merry Christmas."

The tree, by the time the things had been lashed upon its branches, needed propping and guying in every direction. The placing of big, white candles upon it, however, strained the skill and self-control of the men to the last degree. If a candle prefers one set of antics to another, that set is certainly embodied in the versatile schemes for lopping over, which the wretched thing will develop on the best-behaving tree in the world. On a home-made tree the opportunities for a candle's enjoyment of this, its most diverting of accomplishments, are increased remarkably. The day was cold, but the men perspired from every pore, and even then the night came on before the work was completed.

When at length they ceased their labors for the day, there was still before them the appalling task of preparing the Christmas banquet.

In the general worry incident to all such preparations throughout the world, Parky, the gambler, fired an unexpected shot. He announced his intention of giving the camp a grand celebration of his own. The "Palace" saloon would be thrown wide open for the holiday, and food, drink, music, and dancing would be the order of the memorable occasion.

"It's a game to knock our tree and banquet into a cocked hat," said the blacksmith, grimly. "Well—he may get some to come, but none of old Jim's friends or the fellers which likes little Skeezucks is goin' to desert our own little festival."

Nevertheless, the glitter of the home-made tree in the dingy shop was dimmed.



CHAPTER XIII

THEIR CHRISTMAS-DAY

The day before Christmas should, by right of delights about to blossom, be nearly as happy as the sweet old carnival itself, but up at the cabin on the hill it was far from being joyous.

The tiny mite of a foundling was not so well as when his friends had left him on the previous afternoon.

He was up and dressed, sitting, in his grave little way, on the miner's knee, weakly holding his crushed-looking doll, but his cold had increased, his sweet baby face was paler, the sad, dumb look in his eyes was deeper in its questioning, the breakfast that the fond old Jim had prepared was quite untasted.

"He ain't agoin' to be right down sick, of course?" said the blacksmith, come to report all the progress made. "Natchelly, we'd better go on, gittin' ready fer the banquet? He'll be all right fer to-morrow?"

"Oh yes," said Jim. "There never yet was a Christmas that wouldn't get a little youngster well. He'll come to the tree, you bet. It's goin' to be the happiest time he ever had."

Outside, the red-headed Keno was chopping at the brush. The weather was cold and windy, the sky gray and forbidding. When the smith had gone, old Jim, little Skeezucks, and the pup were alone. Tintoretto, the joyous, was prancing about with a boot in his jaws. He stumbled constantly over its bulk, and growled anew at every interference with his locomotion.

"Does little pardner like the pup?" said Jim, patting the sick little man on the back with his clumsy but comforting hand. "Do you want him to come here and play?"

The wee bit of a parentless, deserted boy slowly shook his head.

"Don't you like him any more?" said Jim.

A weak little nod was the answer.

"Is there anything the baby wants?" inquired the miner, tenderly. "What would little Skeezucks like?"

For the very first time since his coming to the camp the little fellow's brown eyes abruptly filled with tears. His tiny lip began to tremble.

"Bruv-ver Jim," he said, and, leaning against the rough old coat of the miner, he cried in his silent way of passionate longing, far too deep in his childish nature for the man to comprehend.

"Poor little man ain't well," said Jim, in a gentle way of soothing. "Bruvver Jim is here all right, and goin' to stay," and, holding the quiet little figure to his heart, he stood up and walked with him up and down the dingy cabin's length, till the shaking little sobs had ceased and the sad little man had gone to sleep.

All day the miner watched the sleeping or the waking of the tiny pilgrim. The men who came to tell of the final completion of the tree and the greater preparations for the feast were assured that the one tiny guest for whom their labors of love were being expended would surely be ready to enjoy the celebration.

The afternoon gave way to night in the manner common to wintry days. From time to time a gust of wind tore the fleece from the clouds and hurled it in snow upon the silent earth. Dimly the lights of the cabins shone through the darkness and the chill.

At the blacksmith's shop the wind went in as if to warm itself before the forge, only to find it chill and black, wherefore it crept out again at the creaking door. A long, straight pencil of snow was flung through a chink, across the earthen floor and against the swaying Christmas-tree, on which the, presents, hanging in readiness for little Skeezucks, beat out a dull, monotonous clatter of tin and wood as they collided in the draught.

The morning—Christmas morning—broke with one bright gleam of sunlight, shining through the leaden banks before the cover of clouds was once more dropped upon the broken rim of mountains all about.

Old Jim was out of his bunk betimes, cooking a breakfast fit, he said, "to tempt a skeleton to feast."

True to his scheme of ensnaring the gray old miner in an idleness with regard to his mine which should soon prove a fatal mistake, Parky, the gambler, had sent a load of the choicest provisions from the store to the cabin on the hill. Only too glad of the daintier morsels thus supplied for his ailing little guest, old Jim had made but feeble protest when the things arrived, and now was preparing a meal from the nicest of the packages.

Little Skeezucks, however, waked in a mood of lethargy not to be fathomed by mere affection. Not only did he turn away at the mere suggestion of eating, but he feebly hid his face and gave a little moan.

"He ain't no better," Jim announced, putting down a breakfast-dish with its cargo quite untasted. "I wish we had a little bit of medicine."

"What kind?" said the worried Keno.

"It wouldn't make much difference," answered the miner. "Anything is medicine that a doctor prescribes, even if it's only sugar-and-water."

"But there ain't a doctor into camp," objected Keno, hauling at his sleeves. "And the one they had in Bullionville has went away, and he was fifty miles from here."

"I know," said Jim.

"You don't think he's sick?" inquired Keno, anxiously.

Jim looked long at his tiny foundling dressed in the nightie that came below his feet. A dull, heavy look was in the little fellow's eyes, half closed and listless.

"He ain't no better," the miner repeated. "I don't know what to do."

Keno hesitated, coughed once or twice, and stirred the fire fiercely before he spoke again. Then he said, "Miss Doc is a sort of female doctor. She knows lots of female things."

"Yes, but she can't work 'em off on the boy," said Jim. "He ain't big enough to stand it."

"No, I don't suppose he is," agreed Keno, going to the window, on which he breathed, to melt away the frosty foliage of ice. "I think there's some of the boys a-comin'—yep—three or four."

The boots of the men could be heard, as they creaked on the crisply frozen snow, before the visitors arrived at the door. Keno let them in, and with them an oreole of chill and freshness flavored spicily of winter. There were three—the carpenter, Bone, and Lufkins.

"How's the little shaver?" Bone inquired at once.

"About the same," said Jim. "And how's the tree?"

"All ready," answered Lufkins. "Old Webber's got a bully fire, and iron melting hot, to warm the shop. The tree looks great. She's all lit up, and the doors all shut to make it dark, and you bet she's a gem—a gorgeous gem—ain't she, fellers?"

The others agreed that it was.

"And the boys are nearly all on deck," resumed the teamster, "and Webber wanted to know if the morning—Christmas morning—ain't the time for to fetch the boy."

"Wal, some might think so," Jim replied, unwilling to concede that the tiny man in the bunk was far too ill to join in the cheer so early in the day. "But the afternoon is the regular parliamentary time, and, anyway, little Skeezucks 'ain't had his breakfast, boys, and—we want to be sure the shop is good and warm."

"The boys is all waitin' fer to give three cheers," said the carpenter, "and we're goin' to surprise you with a Christmas song called 'Massa's in the Cole, Cole Ground.'"

"Shut up!" said Bone; "you're givin' it all away. So you won't bring him down this mornin'?"

"Well, we'll tell 'em," agreed the disappointed Lufkins. "What time do you think you'll fetch the little shaver, then, this afternoon?"

"I guess about twelve," said Jim.

"How's he feelin'?" inquired the carpenter.

"Wal, he don't know how to feel on Christmas yet," answered the miner, evasively. "He doesn't know what's a-comin'."

"Wait till he sees them blocks," said the carpenter, with a knowing wink.

"I ain't sayin' nothin'," added Lufkins, with the most significant smile, "but you jest wait."

"Nor me ain't doin' any talkin'," said Bone.

"Well, the boys will all be waitin'," was the teamster's last remark, and slowly down the whitened hill they went, to join their fellows at the shop of the smith.

The big, rough men did wait patiently, expectantly, loyally. Blowing out the candles, to save them for the moment when the tiny child should come, they sat around, or stood about, or wandered back and forth, each togged out in his very best, each with a new touch of Christmas meaning in his heart.

Behind the tree a goodly portion of the banquet was in readiness. Keno's pie was there, together with a mighty stack of doughnuts, plates on plates of pickles, cans of fruit preserves, a mighty pan of cold baked beans, and a fine array of biscuits big as a man's two fists. From time to time the carpenter, who had saved up his appetite for nearly twenty-four hours, went back to the table and feasted his eyes on the spread. At length he took and ate a pickle. From that, at length, his gaze went longingly to Keno's pie. How one little pie could do any good to a score or so of men he failed to see. At last, in his hunger, he could bear the temptation no longer. He descended on the pie. But how it came to be shied through the window, practically intact, half a moment later, was never explained to the waiting crowd.

By the time gray noon had come across the mountain desolation to the group of little shanties in the snow, old Jim was thoroughly alarmed. Little Skeezucks was helplessly lying in his arms, inert, breathing with difficulty, and now and again moaning, as only a sick little mite of humanity can.

"We can't take him down," said the miner, at last. "He ought to have a woman's care."

Keno was startled; his worry suddenly engulfed him.

"What kin we do?" he asked, in helplessness.

"Miss Doc's a decent woman," answered Jim, in despair. "She might know what to do."

"You couldn't bring yourself to that?" asked Keno, thoroughly amazed.

"I could bring myself to anything," said Jim, "if only my little boy could be well and happy."

"Then you ain't agoin' to take him down to the tree?"

"How can I?" answered Jim. "He's awful sick. He needs something more than I can give. He needs—a mother. I didn't know how sick he was gettin'. He won't look up. He couldn't see the tree. He can't be like the most of little kids, for he don't even seem to know it's Christmas."

"Aw, poor little feller!" said Keno. "Jim, what we goin' to do?"

"You go down and ask Miss Doc if I can fetch him there," instructed Jim. "I think she likes him, or she wouldn't have made his little clothes. She's a decent woman, and I know she's got a heart. Go on the run! I'm sorry I didn't give in before."

The fat little Keno ran, in his shirt-sleeves, and without his hat.

Jim was afraid the motionless little foundling was dying in his arms. He could presently wait no longer, either for Keno's return or for anything else. He caught up two of the blankets from the bed, and, wrapping them eagerly, swiftly about the moaning little man, left his cabin standing open and hastened down the white declivity as fast as he could go, Tintoretto, with puppy whinings of concern, closely tagging at his heels.

Lufkins, starting to climb once more to the cabin, beheld him from afar. With all his speed he darted back to the blacksmith-shop and the tree.

"He coming!" he cried, when fifty yards away. "Light the candles—quick!"

In a fever of joy and excitement the rough fellows lighted up their home-made tree. The forge flung a largess of heat and light, as red as holly, through the gloom of the place. All the men were prepared with a cheer, their faces wreathed with smiles, in a new sort of joy. But the moments sped away in silence and nothing of Jim and the one small cause of their happiness appeared. Indeed, the gray old miner was at Dennihan's already. Keno had met him on the hill with an eager cry that welcome and refuge were gladly prepared.

With her face oddly softened by the news and appeal, Miss Doc herself came running to the gate, her hungry arms outstretched to take the child.

"Just make him well," was Jim's one cry. "I know a woman can make him well."

And all afternoon the men at the blacksmith's-shop kept up their hope. Keno had come to them, telling of the altered plans by which little Skeezucks had found his way to Miss Doc, but by special instruction he added that Jim was certain that improvement was coming already.

"He told me that evenin' is the customary hour fer to have a tree, anyhow," concluded Keno, hopefully. "He says he was off when he said to turn it loose at noon."

"Does he think Miss Doc can git the little feller fixed all up to celebrate to-night?" inquired Bone. "Is that the bill of fare?"

"That's about it," said Keno, importantly. "I'm to come and let you know when we're ready."

Impatient for the night to arrive, excited anew, when at last it closed in on the world of snow and mountains, the celebrators once more gathered at the shop and lighted up their tree. The wind was rushing brusquely up the street; the snow began once more to fall. From the "Palace" saloon came the sounds of music, laughter, song, and revelry. Light streamed forth from the window in glowing invitation. All day long its flow of steaming drinks and its endless succession of savory dishes had laded the air with temptation.

Not a few of the citizens of Borealis had succumbed to the gayer attractions of Parky's festival, but the men who had builded a Christmas-tree and loaded its branches with presents waited and waited for tiny Skeezucks in the dingy shop.

The evening passed. Night aged in the way that wintry storm and lowering skies compel. Dismally creaked the door on its rusted hinges. Into the chink shot the particles of snow, and formed again that icy mark across the floor of the shop. One by one the candles burned away on the tree, gave a gasp, a flare, and expired.

Silently, loyally the group of big, rough miners and toilers sat in the cheerless gloom, hearing that music, in its soullessness, come on the gusts of the storm—waiting, waiting for their tiny guest.

At length a single candle alone illumined their pitiful tree, standing with its meagre branches of greenery stiffly upheld on its scrawny frame, while the darkness closed sombrely in upon the glint of the toys they had labored to make.

Then finally Keno came, downcast, pale, and worried.

"The little feller's awful sick," he said. "I guess he can't come to the tree."

His statement was greeted in silence.

"Then, maybe he'll see it to-morrow," said the blacksmith, after a moment. "It wouldn't make so very much odds to us old cusses. Christmas is for kids, of course. So we'll leave her standing jest as she is."

Slowly they gave up their final hopes. Slowly they all went out in the storm and night, shutting the door on the Christmas celebration now abandoned to darkness, the creak of the hinges, the long line of snow inside that pointed to the tree.

One by one they bade good-night to Webber, the smith, and so went home to many a cold little cabin, seemingly hunched like a freezing thing in the driving storm.



CHAPTER XIV

"IF ONLY I HAD THE RESOLUTION"

For the next three or four days the tiny bit of a man at Miss Doc's seemed neither to be worse nor better of his ailment. The hand of lethargy lay with dulling weight upon him. Old Jim and Miss Dennihan were baffled, though their tenderness increased and their old animosity disappeared, forgotten in the stress of care.

That the sister of Doc could develop such a spirit of motherhood astounded nearly every man in the camp. Accustomed to acerbities of criticism for their many shortcomings from her ever-pointed tongue, they marvelled the more at her semi-partnership with Jim, whom of all the population of the town she had scorned and verbally castigated most frequently.

Resupplying their tree with candles, the patient fellows had kept alive their hope of a great day of joy and celebration, only to see it steadily receding from their view. At length they decided to carry their presents to the house where the wan little foundling lay, trusting the sight of their labors of love might cheer him to recovery.

To the utter amazement of her brother, Miss Doc not only permitted the big, rough men to track the snow through her house, when they came with their gifts, but she gave them kindly welcome. In her face that day they readily saw some faint, illusive sign of beauty heretofore unnoticed, or perhaps concealed.

"He'll come along all right," she told them, with a smile they found to be singularly sweet, "for Jim do seem a comfort to the poor little thing."

Old Jim would surely have been glad to believe that he or anything supplied a comfort to the grave little sick man lying so quietly in bed. The miner sat by him all day long, and far into every night, only climbing to his cabin on the hill when necessity drove him away. Then he was back there in the morning by daylight, eager, but cheerful always.

The presents were heaped on the floor in sight of the pale little Skeezucks, who clung unfailingly, through it all, to the funny makeshift of a doll that "Bruvver Jim" had placed in his keeping. He appeared not at all to comprehend the meaning of the gifts the men had brought, or to know their purpose. That never a genuinely happy Christmas had brightened his little, mysterious life, Miss Dennihan knew by a swift, keen process of womanly intuition.

"I wisht he wasn't so sad," she said, from time to time. "I expect he's maybe pinin'."

On the following day there came a change. The little fellow tossed in his bed with a fever that rose with every hour. With eyes now burning bright, he scanned the face of the gray old miner and begged for "Bruvver Jim."

"This is Bruvver Jim," the man assured him repeatedly. "What does baby want old Jim to do?"

"Bruv-ver—Jim," came the half-sobbed little answer. "Bruv-ver—Jim."

Jim took him up and held him fast in his arms. The weary little mind had gone to some tragic baby past.

"No-body—wants me—anywhere," he said.

The heart in old Jim was breaking. He crooned a hundred tender declarations of his foster-parenthood, of his care, of his wish to be a comfort and a "pard."

But something of the fever now had come between the tiny ears and any voice of tenderness.

"Bruv-ver—Jim; Bruv-ver—Jim," the little fellow called, time and time again.

With the countless remedies which her lore embraced, the almost despairing Miss Doc attempted to allay the rising fever. She made little drinks, she studied all the bottles in her case of simples with unremitting attention.

Keno, the always-faithful, was sent to every house in camp, seeking for anything and everything that might be called a medicine. It was all of no avail. By the time another day had dawned little Skeezucks was flaming hot with the fever. He rolled his tiny body in baby delirium, his feeble little call for "Bruvver Jim" endlessly repeated, with his sad little cry that no one wanted him anywhere in the world.

In his desperation, Jim was undergoing changes. His face was haggard; his eyes were ablaze with parental anguish.

"I know a shrub the Injuns sometimes use for fever," he said to Miss Doc, at last, when he suddenly thought of the aboriginal medicine. "It grows in the mountains. Perhaps it would do him good."

"I don't know," she answered, at the end of her resources, and she clasped her hands. "I don't know."

"If only I can git a horse," said Jim, "I might be able to find the shrub."

He waited, however, by the side of the moaning little pilgrim.

Then, half an hour later, Bone, the bar-keep, came up to see him, in haste and excitement. They stood outside, where the visitor had called him for a talk.

"Jim," said Bone, "you're in fer trouble. Parky is goin' to jump your claim to-night—it bein' New Year's eve, you know—at twelve o'clock. He told me so himself. He says you 'ain't done assessment, nor you can't—not now—and you 'ain't got no more right than anybody else to hold the ground. And so he's meanin' to slap a new location on the claim the minute this here year is up."

"Wal, the little feller's awful sick," said Jim. "I'm thinkin' of goin' up in the mountains for some stuff the Injuns sometimes use for fever."

"You can't go and leave your claim unprotected," said Bone.

"How did Parky happen to tell you his intentions?" said Jim.

"He wanted me to go in with him," Bone replied, flushing hotly at the bare suggestion of being involved in a trick so mean. "He made me promise, first, I wouldn't give the game away, but I've got to tell it to you. I couldn't stand by and see you lose that gold-ledge now."

"To-morrow is New Year's, sure enough," Jim replied, reflectively. "That mine belongs to little Skeezucks."

"But Parky's goin' to jump it, and he's got a gang of toughs to back him up."

"I'd hate to lose it, Bone. It would seem hard," said Jim. "But I ought to go up in the hills to find that shrub. If only I had a horse. I could go and git back in time to watch the claim."

Bone was clearly impatient.

"Don't git down to the old 'if only' racket now," he said, with heat. "I busted my word to warn you, Jim, and the claim is worth a fortune to you and little Skeezucks."

Jim's eyes took on a look of pain.

"But, Bone, if he don't git well," he said—"if he don't git well, think how I'd feel! Couldn't you get me a horse? If only—"

"Hold on," interrupted Bone, "I'll do all I kin for the poor little shaver, but I don't expect I can git no horse. I'll go and see, but the teams has all got the extry stock in harness, fer the roads is mighty tough, and snow, down the canon, is up to the hubs of the wheels. You've got to be back before too late or your claim goes up, fer, Jim, you know as well as me that Parky's got the right of law!"

"If only I could git that shrub," said Jim, as his friend departed, and back to the tossing little man he went, worried to the last degree.

Bone was right. The extra horses were all in requisition to haul the ore to the quartz-mill through a stretch of ten long miles of drifted snow. Moreover, Jim had once too often sung his old "if-only" cry. The men of Borealis smiled sadly, as they thought of tiny Skeezucks, but with doubt of Jim, whose resolutions, statements, promises, had long before been estimated at their final worth.

"There ain't no horse he could have," said Lufkins, making ready himself to drive his team of twenty animals through wind and snow to the mill, "and even if we had a mule, old Jim would never start. It's comin' on to snow again to-night, and that's too much for Jim."

Bone was not at once discouraged, but in truth he believed, with all the others, that Jim would no more leave the camp to go forth and breast the oncoming snow to search the mountains for a shrub than he would fetch a tree for the Christmas celebration or work good and hard at his claim.

The bar-keep found no horse. He expected none to be offered, and felt his labors were wasted. The afternoon was well advanced when he came again to the home of Miss Doc, where Jim was sitting by the bed whereon the little wanderer was burning out his life.

"Jim," he said, in his way of bluntness, "there ain't no horse you can git, but I warned you 'bout the claim, and I don't want to see you lose it, all fer nothin'."

"He's worse," said Jim, his eyes wildly blazing with love for the fatherless, motherless little man. "If only I had the resolution, Bone, I'd go and git that shrub on foot."

"You'd lose yer claim," said Bone.

Miss Doc came out to the door where they stood. She was wringing her hands.

"Jim," she said, "if you think you kin, anyhow, git that Injun stuff, why don't you go and git it?"

Jim looked at her fixedly. Not before had he known that she felt the case to be so nearly hopeless. Despair took a grip on his vitals. A something of sympathy leaped from the woman's heart to his—a something common to them both—in the yearning that a helpless child had stirred.

"I'll get my hat and go," he said, and he went in the house, to appear almost instantly, putting on the battered hat, but clothed far too thinly for the rigors of the weather.

"But, Jim, it's beginning to snow, right now," objected Bone.

"I may get back before it's dark," old Jim replied.

"I can see you're goin' to lose the claim," insisted Bone.

"I'm goin' to git that shrub!" said Jim. "I won't come back till I git that shrub."

He started off through the gate at the back of the house, his long, lank figure darkly cut against the background of the white that lay upon the slope. A flurry of blinding snow came suddenly flying on the wind. It wrapped him all about and hid him in its fury, and when the calmer falling of the flakes commenced he had disappeared around the shoulder of the hill.



CHAPTER XV

THE GOLD IN BOREALIS

The men to whom the bar-keep told the story of Jim and his start into the mountains smiled again. The light in their eyes was half of affection and half of concern. They could not believe the shiftless old miner would long remain away in the snow and wind, where more than simple resolution was required to keep a man afoot. They would see him back before the darkness settled on the world, perhaps with something in his hand by way of a weed, if not precisely the "Injun" thing he sought.

But the darkness came and Jim was not at hand. The night and the snow seemed swirling down together in the gorge, from every lofty uprise of the hills. It was not so cold as the previous storm, yet it stung with its biting force.

At six o'clock the blacksmith called at the Dennihans', in some anxiety. Doc himself threw open the door, in response to the knock. How small and quiet he appeared, here at home!

"No, he 'ain't showed up," he said of Jim. "I don't know when he'll come."

Webber reported to the boys.

"Well, mebbe he's gone, after all," said Field.

"He looked kind of funny 'round the eyes when he started," Bone informed them. "I hope he'll git his stuff," and they wandered down the street again.

At eight o'clock the bar-keep returned once more to Miss Doc's.

No Jim was there. The sick little foundling was feebly calling in his baby way for "Bruvver Jim."

The fever had him in its furnace. Restlessly, but now more weakly weaving, the tiny bit of a man continued as ever to cling to his doll, which he held to his breast with all that remained of his strength. It seemed as if his tired baby brain was somehow aware that Jim was gone, for he begged to have him back in a sweet little way of entreaty, infinitely sad.

"Bruvver Jim?" he would say, in his questioning little voice—"Bruvver Jim?" And at last he added, "Bruvver Jim—do—yike—'ittle Nu—thans."

At this Miss Doc felt her heart give a stroke of pain, for something that was almost divination of things desolate in the little fellow's short years of babyhood was granted to her woman's understanding.

"Bruvver Jim will come," she said, as she knelt beside the bed. "He'll come back home to the baby."

But nine o'clock and ten went by, and only the storm outside came down from the hills to the house.

Hour after hour the lamp was burning in the window as a beacon for the traveller; hour after hour Miss Dennihan watched the fever and the weary little fellow in its toils. At half-past ten the blacksmith, the carpenter, and Kew came, Tintoretto, the pup, coldly trembling, at their heels. Jim was not yet back, and the rough men made no concealment of their worry.

"Not home?" said Webber. "Out in the hills—in this?"

"You don't s'pose mebbe he's lost?" inquired the carpenter.

"No, Jim knows his mountains," replied the smith, "but any man could fall and break his leg or somethin'."

"I wisht he'd come," said Miss Doc. "I wisht that he was home."

The three men waited near the house for half an hour more, but in vain. It was then within an hour of midnight. Slowly, at last, they turned away, but had gone no more than half a dozen rods when they met the bar-keep, Doc Dennihan, Lufkins the teamster, and four other men of the camp, who were coming to see if Jim had yet returned.

"I thought he mebbe hadn't come," said Bone, when Webber gave his report, "but Parky's goin' to try to jump his claim at twelve o'clock, and we ain't goin' fer to stand it! Come on down to my saloon fer extry guns and ammunition. We're soon goin' up on the hill to hold the ledge fer Jim and the poor little kid."

With ominous coupling of the gambler's name with rough and emphatic language, the ten men marched in a body down the street.

The wind was howling, a door of some deserted shed was dully, incessantly slamming.

Helplessly Miss Dennihan sat by the bed whereon the tiny pilgrim lay, now absolutely motionless. The fever had come to its final stage. Dry of skin, burning through and through, his little mouth parched despite the touch of cooling water on his lips, the wee mite of a man without a name, without a home, or a mother, or a single one of the baby things that make the little folks so joyous, had ceased to struggle, and ceased at last to call for "Bruvver Jim."

Then, at a quarter-past eleven, the outside door was suddenly thrown open, and in there staggered Jim, a haggard, wild-eyed being, ghastly white, utterly exhausted, and holding in his hand a wretched, scrawny branch of the mountain shrub he had gone to seek.

"Oh, Jim! Jim!" cried Miss Doc, and, running forward, she threw her arm around his waist to keep him up, for she thought he must fall at every step,

"He's—alive?" he asked her, hoarsely. "He's alive? I only asked to have him wait! Hot water!—get the stuff in water—quick!" and he thrust the branch into her hand.

Beside the bed, on his great, rough knees, he fairly fell, crooning incoherently, and by a mighty effort keeping his stiff, cold hands from the tiny form.

Miss Doc had kept a plate of biscuit warm in the stove. One of these and a piece of meat she gave to the man, bidding him eat it for the warmth his body required.

"Fix the shrub in the water," he begged.

"It's nearly ready now," she answered. "Take a bite to eat."

Then, presently, she came again to his side. "I've got the stuff," she said, awed by the look of anguish on the miner's face, and into his hands she placed a steaming pitcher, a cup, and a spoon, after which she threw across his shoulders a warm, thick blanket, dry and comforting.

Already the shrub had formed a dark, pungent liquor of the water poured upon it. Turning out a cupful in his haste, old Jim flowed the scalding stuff across his hands. It burned, but he felt no pain. The spoonful that he dipped from the cup he placed to his own cold lips, to test. He blew upon it as a mother might, and tried it again.

Then tenderly he fed the tea through the dry little lips. Dully the tiny man's unseeing eyes were fixed on his face.

"Take it, for old Bruvver Jim," the man gently coaxed, and spoonful after spoonful, touched every time to his own mouth first, to try its heat, he urged upon the little patient.

Then Miss Doc did a singular thing. She put on a shawl and, abruptly leaving the house, ran with all her might down the street, through the snow, to Bone's saloon. For the very first time in her life she entered this detested place, a blazing light of joy in her eyes. Six of the men, about to join the four already gone to the hill above, where Jim had found the gold, were about to leave for the claim.

"He's come!" cried Miss Doc. "He's home—and got the weed! I thought you boys would like to know!"

Then backing out, with a singular smile upon her face, she hastened to return to her home with all the speed the snow would permit.

Alone in the house with the silent little pilgrim, who seemed beyond all human aid, the gray old miner knew not what he should do. The shrub tea was failing, it seemed to him. The sight of the drooping child was too much to be borne. The man threw back his head as he knelt there on the floor, and his stiffened arms were appealingly uplifted in prayer.

"God Almighty," he said, in his broken voice of entreaty, "don't take this little boy away from me! Let him stay. Let him stay with me and the boys. You've got so many little youngsters there. For Christ's sake, let me have this one!"

When Miss Doc came quietly in, old Jim had not apparently moved. He was once more dipping the pungent liquor from the cup and murmuring words of endearment and coaxing, to the all-unhearing little patient. The eager woman took off her shawl and stood behind him, watching intently.

"Oh, Jim!" she said, from time to time—"oh, Jim!"

With a new supply of boiling water, constantly heated on her stove, she kept the steaming concoction fresh and hot.

Midnight came. The New Year was blown across those mighty peaks in storm and fury. Presently out of the howling gale came the sound of half a dozen shots, and then of a fusillade. But Jim, if he heard them, did not guess the all they meant to him.

For an hour he had only moved his hands to take the pitcher, or to put it down, or to feed the drink to the tiny foundling, still so motionless and dull with the fever.

One o'clock was finally gone, and two, and three. Jim and the yearning Miss Doc still battled on, like two united parents.

Then at last the miner made a half-stifled sound in his throat.

"You—can go and git a rest," he said, brokenly. "The sweat has come."

All night the wind and the storm continued. All through the long, long darkness, the bitter cold and snow were searching through the hills. But when, at last, the morning broke, there on the slope, where old Jim's claim was staked, stood ten grim figures, white with snow, and scattered here and there around the ledge of gold. They were Bone and Webber, Keno and Field, Doc Dennihan, the carpenter, the teamster, and other rough but faithful men who had guarded the claim against invasion in the night.



CHAPTER XVI

ARRIVALS IN CAMP

There is something fine in a party of men when no one brags of a fight brought sternly to victory.

Parky, the gambler, was badly shot through the arm; Bone, the bar-keep, had a long, straight track through his hair, cleaned by a ball of lead. And this was deemed enough of a story when the ten half-frozen men had secured the claim to Jim and his that New-Year's morning.