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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch, by Henry
+Wallace Phillips, Illustrated by F. Graham Cootes
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch
+
+
+Author: Henry Wallace Phillips
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 16, 2008  [eBook #25809]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
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+
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+
+
+
+
+
+THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH
+
+by
+
+HENRY WALLACE PHILLIPS
+
+Author of Red Saunders
+Plain Mary Smith
+etc.
+
+With Illustrations by F. Graham Cootes
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+
+Copyright 1908
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+October
+
+
+
+THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH
+
+
+The gulch ran in a trough of beauty to the foot of Jones's Hill, which
+rose in a sweeping curve into the clouds.
+
+Wild flowers, trees in profuse leaf, and mats of vines covered the
+scarred earth, and the sky was as limpid as spring water; the air carried
+a weight of heart-stirring odors, yet Jim Felton, sitting on the
+door-step of his cabin in the brilliant sunshine, was not a happy man.
+
+He looked at the hollow of the gulch and cursed it manfully and bitterly.
+The gold should be there--Jim had figured it all out. The old wash cut at
+right angles to the creek, and at the turn was where its freight of
+yellow metal should have been deposited, but when you got down to the
+bed-rock, the blasted stuff was either slanted so nothing could stay on
+it, or was rotten--crumbling in your fingers, and that kind of bed will
+hold nothing.
+
+Therefore Jim had sunk about fifty prospect holes; got colors under the
+grass-roots, as evidence that pay should be there--and nothing but ashy
+wash beneath it.
+
+When a man is alone, and thinks things are wrong, optimism comes down on
+the run, the shades of pessimism gather fast and furious--more especially
+if a man does his own cooking, and the raw material is limited, at that.
+
+The sun had not moved the shadows three inches before Jim had reached the
+conclusion that this world was all a practical joke, of so low an order
+that no sensible man would even laugh at it, and he drew a letter from
+his pocket in proof thereof. It was a thin letter, written on delicate
+paper in a delicate hand, and it showed much wear. He read for the
+thousandth time:
+
+  Dearest Jim--And again I must say "no." Of course you will not
+  understand, for which foolish reason I like you all the better, but
+  you must try to take my point of view. You say that we can be
+  married on nothing and take our chances.
+
+  So we can, old simple-heart--but aren't those chances all against
+  us? Would you like to be forced to work in some office for just
+  enough to live on? You know you would not, and you know how you
+  would suffer in such slavery.
+
+  Nevertheless we can not live on air, and I doubt if I would stand
+  transplanting to the wild life you love, better than you to a
+  clerk's desk. You have that fancy which gilds the tin cans in the
+  back yard; I have that unfortunate eye which would multiply their
+  number by three, and their unsightliness by ten. I don't want
+  riches, dear; I only want a modest assurance that I can have enough
+  to live on.
+
+  Really, is your way of doing a guarantee of even bread and butter? In
+  the Garden of Eden you would be the most delightful of companions,
+  but in this world as it is, you will not fight for your own. You
+  would risk your life to save a dog, but you couldn't stay at a
+  continued grind--I mean it would kill you, actually, physically,
+  dead, dead--to save all of us. At first I thought that a fault in
+  you, but now, being older, having compared you to other men, I see it
+  is merely a missing faculty.
+
+  I could stick to the desk, and would gladly, if you would let me,
+  yet I could not even fancy behaving as you did at the factory fire,
+  which is still the symbol in the town for manly courage and presence
+  of mind.
+
+  They talk now of the way you laughed and joked with those poor
+  frightened girls (who had such good cause to be frightened) and
+  brought them back to sanity with a jest. I feel that if I had the
+  least atom of heroism in me I would marry you for that feat alone,
+  and let cold facts go hang; but, ah, Jim! magnificent as you are on
+  the grand occasions, they come but seldom, and in the meantime,
+  Jim--I'll leave that to your own honesty.
+
+  I'm plebeian, Jim, and you're a nobleman, with a beautiful but
+  embarrassing disregard for vulgar necessities.
+
+  However, I can say this for myself--for surely I may brag a little
+  to my lover--I can try to match your splendid physical bravery by
+  my own moral courage.
+
+  You may rest your soul in peace on one point. If I am not for you,
+  I'm for no man, no, not so much as a half-glance of the eye. I
+  wouldn't hold myself a bit more straitly if I were your wife.
+
+  You'll be angry at this letter. Well, I'll stand your anger. I have
+  caused it, and I'll bear the blame. I know that we could not be
+  happy without some visible means of support, yet I do not blame you
+  in the least for thinking otherwise.
+
+  Be as kind to me as you can, Jim, for I love you very much in my
+  commonplace way. I'll admit, too, that I had rather have your fire
+  than my refrigerator--oh, if you could only make some money--not a
+  great deal, but enough for a little house of our own, and enough in
+  the bank to buy groceries!
+
+  With my best love, and an aching lump in my throat,
+
+  Your mother, sister, and sweetheart,
+
+                                                               Anne.
+
+Jim dropped the letter, and his lips trembled a little. Parts of it
+touched him deeply, and he was the more enraged and hurt at the rest
+because of that.
+
+He could not call her mercenary. He knew better. More than one very
+comfortable income was at her disposal.
+
+Poor fellow! He could only grind his teeth and curse Sweet Briar gulch
+from the deepest pot-hole in the bed-rock to the top of its loftiest
+pine. He drew out her photograph, and obtained much sweet consolation by
+thinking how happy they two would be in Sweet Briar gulch together, even
+if there wasn't a cent of pay in the gravel.
+
+Sick of this ingenious torture, he lit his pipe and drew savagely upon
+it. With a mocking gurgle, about a dram of "slumgullion" passed into his
+mouth. It was the last touch. He spat out the biting, nauseating stuff,
+hurled the pipe upon the rocks and danced on it.
+
+And yet the colors frolicked in the gulch; the pines toned the air with
+healthy breath.
+
+From afar came the th-r-r-up! th-r-r-up! th-r-r-up of a galloping horse.
+It was Bud, the mail-carrier, coming, modestly and quietly, at a decent
+gait, down a trail where most would prefer to walk, and to "hang on" to
+something at that.
+
+At first Jim felt irritated by the interruption. He wanted to luxuriate
+in misery: still he was a vigorous, healthy man, and the cheery
+good-fellowship of Bud soon made away with that feeling.
+
+"Well, how they coming, Jimmy?" queried the young giant. "Hit her yet?"
+
+"Hit--well, much caloric,"--replied Jim. "I've begun to believe there
+ain't a durned thing here."
+
+"You're looking kind of owly, old man--what's up? Don't you feel well?"
+
+"Oh, Bud I I'm sick of everything this day--I don't believe in the
+constitution of the United States, including the thirteenth amendment,
+nor the ten commandments, nor the attraction of gravitation, nor anything
+else--it's all a damned lie."
+
+"No wonder you get like that, mousing around here without a chance to
+yappi with a feller critter. 'Nough to make you locoed.
+
+"Jump it for a spell. Go up town. Get loaded. Get horribly loaded. Break
+somebody's window, and tell the folks you're a Sweet Briar zephyr come to
+blow out their lights. Go ahead and do it. When your hair stops pulling
+you'll feel like a new man."
+
+Jim thought the advice sound, yet a strange feeling had developed in him,
+in his isolation; it was that the eye of Anne was always on him. He had
+fallen into a habit, which becomes a superstition when a man is alone, of
+acting as though she were there in person.
+
+However, he didn't feel called upon to offer Bud that explanation of his
+refusal. He conveyed the idea in one brief word.
+
+"Busted," said he.
+
+"Busted?" retorted Bud warmly. "Busted? Not much, you ain't busted whilst
+that little package is there, bet cher life! You call for what you want,
+and the cashier will make good."
+
+"Ah, Bud! How'll I ever pay you back? Keep it, man, keep it," replied Jim
+in a disheartened voice.
+
+"Say, you ain't got no call to worry about that part of it--there's where
+my troubles begin," returned Bud. "Now, you take these two bucks and jab
+'em in your jeans--Go on, now! Do as I tell you, or damned if I don't
+lick you and make you take 'em! What's the good of money if it ain't to
+help a friend out with? I don't care who gets drunk on it, just so long
+as they have a good time.
+
+"Boy, you'll be sailing up the track regardless of orders, with your
+boiler full of suds, if you don't get out in the scramble for a while."
+
+"Lord! I'd like to see a railroad train! Haven't heard a whistle for two
+years! How far is it to the nearest station, Bud?"
+
+"Plattsburg--fifty mile--due south."
+
+"Christmas! Little far to walk."
+
+"Say, you take this horse, Jim,--go ahead! I can walk just as well as
+not, I'm getting too fat, anyhow. Go on, you take the horse and have a
+ride to Plattsburg!"
+
+"Yes, take the shirt off your back, and never mind if a bit of the skin
+goes with it. I'll see you far away first. Tell you what you could do for
+me, Buddy; the herd of burros is around now, if you'd round up one of
+them for me?"
+
+"Sure thing! You sit on the mail sack till I come back. There's a heap of
+registered stuff in it this trip. Oh say! What do you think? I was held
+up t'other side of the Bulldog. Bang! Zipp! says a little popper from the
+bushes. I climbed for them bushes, and out goes a beggar like a rabbit. I
+was after him like a coyote, bet cher life. Who do you suppose it was,
+Jim?"
+
+"Hang it, how should I know?"
+
+"That little down-east cuss with the crook in his back. He begged hard.
+Poor devil, he was up against the sandpaper side, all right. He heard
+from the postmaster that there was a lot of valuable mail going out, so
+he thought he'd make a try for it. Then what do you think he had the
+cold, cold nerve to do?"
+
+"Pass it up--'most anything, I reckon."
+
+"Worse'n that. Struck me for fifty!"
+
+"And got it."
+
+"Got it? No, not much he didn't, sonny! He drew just ten, and he was
+lucky to get that. I've done a favor or two for that feller, first and
+last, and to have him shoot at me made me sore--although he missed me by
+several locations, I'll say that for him--so I gave him the ten and told
+him I'd kick the hump on his back so high up on his shoulders he could
+wear it for a hat, if he ever shoved into my daylight again. And you
+never in your life saw a humpback make better time than he did.
+
+"Well here's for your jack-ass--which way's the herd?"
+
+"Right up over the hill."
+
+Jim sat patiently on the sack until Bud returned with the burro.
+
+"Here's your thoroughbred!" holloed Bud. "Get ap, there, Mary. Look at
+the knowing ears of him, will you? You bet cher life, you've got an
+animile there that'll go when he gets ready, and as fast as he pretty
+well damn pleases--nail him!"
+
+Jim tied a gunny sack on his noble mount, and the two rode on together to
+the fork in the trail. Jim tried to thank his friend, who knocked his hat
+over his eyes, and said, "Aw, write it down when you've got more time.
+Never see a feller in my life I cottoned to more'n you, Jim. First I
+thought you was too smooth for my kind of traveling, but later, I see it
+was only the grain of the wood. I believe in my friends, I do. Here we go
+hopping around this little world for a small time, and then that's done.
+S'pose you ain't got any real friends for the trip? Rotten, I say. You go
+ahead and rip Plattsburg up the back. Wisht I could be there with you.
+Don't you mind consequences. So long, old man! Hike! You beggar!" The
+buckskin pony was off with a snort and a splashing of gravel as the irons
+touched his sides, and Bud vanished down the road without a look behind
+him.
+
+The next day Jim was in Plattsburg. One does not know what an alluring
+quality, what a hazy enchantment can linger around even a small town,
+until an absence in a real wilderness has given man's work a new flavor.
+
+The people coming and going, the traffic of the stores, the dwellings
+with small cultivated plots around them warmed Jim like a fire. He had
+been very lonely, without knowing it. In the afternoon he went down to
+the depot to see the eastern train come in.
+
+Here again absence played a part, and restored the locomotive to its
+proper proportions of a miracle.
+
+As the engine glided in, shaking the ground beneath it, it seemed
+impossible to Jim that man really made it. What! Bend those mighty rods
+of steel to his will? Twist and shape those others? Cast those great
+drivers? And after, to drive the monster with a hand?
+
+He drew back as the buzzing engine passed him, with something like awe.
+Then the moving village came to a stop and the passengers sallied forth
+to test their legs, wearied with long sitting.
+
+There was humanity of all shades, from the haughty aristocrat of the
+Pullman, to the peasant of the immigrant car.
+
+Jim had a sense of pleasure in beholding well-dressed folk again; yet it
+was merely an æsthetic pleasure, for he found, when he began to
+speculate on the possibilities of the throng before him, that he was more
+interested in those whose all was staked on the trip, than in those to
+whom it was only an excursion.
+
+People of widely differing nationalities occupied the immigrant car. Jim
+wondered whether they would ever become Americans, according to his ideas
+of Americans, a people in which he had great pride and delight; and he
+shook his head doubtfully as he took them in.
+
+Suddenly a small boy darted out of a car; an exceedingly small boy, thin
+to emaciation, who made his way through the crowd with that sprawling,
+active, dancing manner peculiar to thin small boys and spiders.
+
+Jim half laughed at the little chap until he saw his face; then he
+realized at a glance that the matter was no laughing one for the boy.
+
+At the same time he saw the shocking thinness of the little face, made
+into a wolf's face by hunger; the mingled horror and desperation of the
+eyes; the big man would not have believed a child's face could express
+emotions of such magnitude. He was wonder-stricken at the sight, and felt
+an instinctive sympathy for the fugitive.
+
+It is a strange thing how fortune will sometimes guide with certainty,
+when reason shows no path.
+
+The boy came unerringly toward Jim; Jim had a sort of prophetic insight
+that he would. Back behind him the urchin ran. "Don't cher give me away,
+Mister!" he pleaded. Jim flapped a hand in answer.
+
+At the time he was leaning against a corner of the station; a little back
+of him was a small lean-to shed where various truck was stored.
+
+Out of the car came a burly brute of a man, who stared about him rapidly.
+
+"Dat's der ol' man," whispered the boy. "If he gits holt of me, there
+won't be a hull bone left in me body."
+
+The man walked up to the conductor and spoke to him.
+
+"Aggh!" said the boy. "Now dey'll get me sure--der jig is up--dey'll have
+der hull gang ertop o' me!" the voice trailed off into a strangled sob,
+and then continued in a fierce whisper: "Aggh! If I had me growth, I'd
+show 'em! I'd show 'em!" and then a burst of hair-raising profanity.
+
+The argument was growing loud between the man, who was urging something,
+and the conductor, who was declining; others were walking toward the
+moderate excitement.
+
+Jim wheeled and caught the boy in his arms. "Up you go!" he said, and
+tossed him on top of the shed. "Lie low behind the wood there, and you
+are all right."
+
+Then came the conductor's voice: "Say, my friend, if you think I'm going
+to hold my train while you hunt up a lost kid, there's something in you
+that don't work right! Why didn't you take care of him while you had him?
+Now you've got just four minutes by the watch; either hustle around and
+hunt, or drop off the train and hunt--what's that? Now don't you give me
+any slack, you black-muzzled tarrier, or I'll have the fear of God thrown
+into you too quick. Get out of here now! Get out of my way!"
+
+The man slouched off, and made a hasty search around the station. A
+woman's face--scarcely an improvement on the man's--leaned out of the car
+window and jeered at the hunter, who cursed her back savagely.
+
+The man walked up to Jim. "Say, did yer see a kid go by here, Mister?"
+
+With a shrug of his shoulders, Jim asked him that question in Mr.
+Ollendorf's French method, about the pink-and-green overcoat of the
+shoemaker's wife's sister.
+
+The man showered low abuse on what he supposed was a foreigner, until
+Jim's ribs rose with the desire to kill him.
+
+"Ayr, wot are yer wastin' time wid th' Dago fur?" called the woman. "Th'
+kid's on the roof!" Jim's heart almost stopped, so thoroughly had he
+identified himself with this quarrel. He made up his mind to fight for
+the boy, right or wrong.
+
+But he was saved the trouble. It was only a jest of the woman's, for she
+suddenly called, so earnestly that even Jim was fooled. "No he ain't
+neither; I see him! I see him! There he is." It was the perfection of
+acting, voice and gesture.
+
+The man ran out to see where she was pointing. "Where is he?" he asked,
+looking wildly around.
+
+"On top der flag-pole, like er monkey! You're it!" she cried, with a
+shriek of laughter at the black brows of her dupe.
+
+"I'll show yer der joke, when I git in dere!" he threatened.
+
+The woman leaned her chin on her hands and smiled. Jim never forgot the
+utter undauntedness, impudence and malice of that face. "Yer allus goin'
+to do sumpin', Pete!" she retorted. "Yer'll be a man yet."
+
+A more amiable man than "Pete" might have been provoked by such conduct.
+He strode forward with white-knuckled fists and a very unpleasant
+expression on his face. Several men started to interfere, but it wasn't
+necessary.
+
+The woman quietly looked at her bully, chewing a straw with the utmost
+nonchalance. "Give us a kiss," said she. The man's crest dropped. He said
+something in an undertone, and got on the car.
+
+Jim needed no further knowledge of this delightful couple to be
+thoroughly on the boy's side. It seemed to him that the man was quite
+capable of keeping a small animal at hand, for the fun of torturing it,
+and as for the woman--well, if there was her like in hell, Jim determined
+to be good for the rest of his days.
+
+"All aboard!" cried the conductor, and with a few mighty breaths the iron
+giant whisked its load out in the open again.
+
+"Stay where you are, son, till I see whether that fellow is playing a
+trick," said Jim, and not until he had looked under the platform, up and
+down the track, and in the waiting rooms, did he give the command, "Come
+down!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The passenger agent saw the performance with astonishment. "So you had
+the boy tucked away all the time?" said he. "Just what kind of a game is
+this?"
+
+"Dunno," returned Jim. "Let the boy speak for himself. Now, young man,
+what's the matter?"
+
+The urchin stood before them, taking them in thoroughly with his sharp
+little eyes. More big men strolled up. As a particularly fine foil to the
+boy's diminutive form, Benny, the baggage smasher, whose overhanging
+shoulders testified whence came the power that had reduced many a proud
+Saratoga to elemental conditions, and "Happy Jack," the mammoth,
+soot-black, loose-jointed negro porter, placed themselves on either side
+of him. They made the boy look more like an insect than ever.
+
+"Wot's de matter?" he cried in a voice at once hoarse and shrill, with a
+cursing note in it, and accompanying the words with an extravagant,
+dramatic gesture of his skinny claw. "I'll tell yer wot's der matter--dey
+beat me--dey beat me bad. I don't ast youse to take me word fur it--look
+at me back--dat's all I ast yer--jes' look at dat!"
+
+He ripped the shirt from his shoulders. An angry growl went up from all
+those big-bearded men when they saw the horrible stripes and welts--raw,
+blue and swollen--on the poor little back.
+
+Happy Jack threw up both his gorilla arms. "Lord Jesus! Who done you like
+dat, boy?" he cried. "'F I got m' hookers on him, cuss me 'f I wudden'
+put bumps on him bigger'n yer hull body."
+
+"Now yer talkin'," shrieked the boy. He raised himself to the tips of his
+toes, bared his teeth to the gum, and with clutching talons, gripping at
+the air, yelled: "Aggh! If I had me growth! I'd bite his heart out! I'd
+tear his neck for 'im!"
+
+The men looked astounded on this mighty fury, pent in so small and
+miserable a cage. The voice had a peculiar alarming call to it, like the
+note of a fire-gong.
+
+Suddenly the boy's head dropped on the crook of his arm. "Treated me
+wuss'n a dog," he sobbed out. "Done me so it makes even dat nigger holler
+when he sees it."
+
+Happy Jack was taken aback. The other men smoothed down their faces
+forcibly.
+
+"Say, lil' boy, you think dat's a p'lite way to talk to people?" inquired
+Jack.
+
+The boy wiped his eyes on his sleeve and went over to him. "Say, don't
+yer holt nothin' ag'in me fur der word," said he. "Dey've got me
+looney--dat's wot--yer've used me liker fren'; and if it hoits yer, yer
+can kick me pants fur me, and I won't say nuthin'."
+
+"Well, there's two-pound-and-a-half of dead game sport for you, all
+right!" cried Benny. "Good eye, kid!"
+
+Happy Jack smiled a mollified smile eight inches wide. "You is all right,
+beau," said he. "An' as fur as my bein' a nigger's concerned, I'll admit
+my kerplection ain't light." He slapped his ham and brought down a foot
+on the platform. "Hyah, hyah!" he roared, "you bet dere ain't no dam'
+blond 'bout me!"
+
+The infectious darky laugh started the others off, and brought matters to
+a common-sense footing.
+
+The passenger agent took up the interrogation. Was the man the boy's real
+father? Answer: "How'd I know? Dat's der song he guv me." Were there any
+relatives? Friends? Answer: "Naw!" Well, what did the boy propose to do?
+Answer, digging his toes into the boards: "Didn't know--anyt'ing!" What
+was his name? "Jim." Jim what? "Didn't know. Sometimes der gun callt
+himself 'Darragh,' an' sometimes 'Mullen,' an' sometimes 'Smit.' Aggh! He
+callt himself the foist t'ing dat come to his tongue--he didn't have no
+real name."
+
+The agent talked to him a bit more, winding up by saying kindly: "You've
+had a pretty rough time of it, Jimmy, and we'd all like to give you a
+lift--now, just say what you'd like to do, and maybe we can fix it."
+
+"I'd like to go along wid dat feller, 'f he'll take me," replied the boy,
+tossing a thumb toward Jim Felton. There was a becoming access of shyness
+in his manner; moreover, Felton had an increased interest in him when he
+knew they bore the same name--a sort of kinship, as it were.
+
+"Well, it's up to you, Mister--" said the passenger agent, with a smile.
+
+"Felton," said Jim. "I'm in. I'll take the boy. Hard rustling down my
+way, but I guess we can make out somehow. Sure you want to go, kid?"
+
+"Yessir!" very heartily.
+
+"Done, then!"
+
+Happy Jack snatched off his uniform cap, spat on a bill, and flapped it
+into the bottom thereof.
+
+"Good-by, fren'!" said he. He shook the cap in front of the others.
+"Here's fur the lil' rooster; step up to the capen's office an' settle,
+gents!" he called. "'Member what de Bible says, 'Fool an' his money soon
+parted.' Come up! Come up!"
+
+They came up generously.
+
+"Stick a five in there for me, Bill," said Benny to the passenger agent,
+"I'm strapped."
+
+"How much you got, boy?" asked the agent, as Happy counted the money.
+
+"Fo'ty dollars, even money, Misto' Breckenridge." The agent was a
+bachelor with a fat salary. "Here, that makes it fifty," said he. He
+turned to Felton. "Now, what do you say if we go across the street
+and--er--discuss this matter a little further?"
+
+"Go you," replied Felton.
+
+"Now, Jimmy, you sit here for a moment. We're going on some business."
+
+The boy glanced at them sharply. "Youse fellers is goin' to get a drink,"
+said he.
+
+Those big men put their hands on their sides and roared.
+
+"You'll find that kid worse than a wife, Felton!" said the agent.
+
+"No use of our being hypocrites to the little chap. I reckon he's seen
+worse things than the inside of a saloon. Come along, laddybuck."
+
+They lined up and partook. The agent told the story of the waif. "And we
+started him off with fifty, Mac," he said to the saloon-keeper. "Suppose
+you break away from some of your ill-gotten gains in the good cause."
+
+The saloon-keeper opened his cash drawer without words and slid over a
+five-dollar bill. He seemed very glad to part with it.
+
+"Confound it! Now we're upsticks again," said the agent. "Tell you what
+let's do. Here's ten of us. Each man put up a two, and we'll shake the
+dice to see who gives it to the kid--winner to set 'em up. That'll make
+seventy-five--a very respectable figure."
+
+They played a new interesting dice-game, in which the figure of a pig
+drawn in chalk upon the bar furnished the "lay-out." It is a game which
+increases in interest to the last throw. They stuck the saloon-keeper,
+and were gleeful.
+
+"We ought to name the boy," said Felton, under the inspiration of the
+second refreshment. "My name's Jim, and I want something else to call him
+by. I'll make him a present of my last name."
+
+"Gad, that's so!" replied the agent.
+
+"Call him Chescheela Jim," put in a cow-man. "That's Injun for 'little
+Jim.' 'Ches' ain't a bad nickname."
+
+"Mac, hand over one of those toy sample bottles of California fizz," said
+the agent. "We'll put this craft down the ways in shape."
+
+Felton broke the neck off the bottle with a tack-hammer and poured the
+wine on the boy's head. "I christen thee Chescheela James Felton--may you
+become a good seaworthy craft, and not fill your skin with this stuff
+when you grow up," said he dramatically.
+
+The small boy squinted up his eyes to keep the wine out; then he shook
+the liquid from his hair, looked up and grinned.
+
+"Youse fellers is reg'lar kids," said he.
+
+"Lord, that's a great boy!" said the agent. "He's the oldest man in the
+crowd. Say, let's give him a white man's start, beginning with a bath."
+
+The whole party went to the barbershop and made the darky proprietor
+dispense a bath and a hair-cut for nothing.
+
+"Shave, sir?" asked the latter, when the hair had been properly trimmed.
+
+"No," replied the youth. "I t'ink I'll let me whiskers grow. Dere's enuff
+wind in dis country ter keep der moths outen 'em."
+
+Then they raided the clothing store, and abused the Hebrew owner until he
+reduced the price. "Oof der lodt--everyding, shennelmun! Sigsdy ber zent.
+Dere's no broffit left--it doaned bay fur the freight."
+
+"Look here, Sol! Will you swear that on a piece of pork?" demanded the
+agent. The Hebrew moaned.
+
+"Doaned dalk to me!" he cried. "My heardt iss prooken!"
+
+Clean, trimmed and clothed, Chescheela James Felton was a different
+looking boy. Months only could take those animal lines out of his face,
+and fresh air and wholesome food fill out the hollows of the cheeks, but,
+all in all, he was not a bad-looking youngster.
+
+Jim Felton bought some supplies for his camp, and prepared to start for
+home that afternoon, as they could yet make fifteen miles before dark.
+
+The new friends of the morning saw them off with hearty good-bys. The boy
+quite unexpectedly thanked them for their treatment and the money. The
+poor little soul had heard few words of gratitude, and had less chance to
+employ them.
+
+His speech was curious, but the generous big men saw behind the words,
+and felt really touched by the old-child's attempt to express himself.
+
+The two Jims soon pushed on, through the rolling foot-hills near the town,
+into the broken country. The boy kept watching, watching, but said little,
+until at last they came to the stupendous cliffs of Paha-Sahpedon,
+overhanging the trail with dark majesty. Jim happened to glance at the
+boy, and saw him looking up, mouth and eyes wide open.
+
+"Say, Mister!" gasped Ches. "Who built them!"
+
+"Built?" repeated Jim, puzzled. Then he understood. "The hand of God, my
+boy," he replied.
+
+The urchin shivered. "I feel's if dey was comin' ertop o' me," he gasped.
+"Let's hook it outer here."
+
+Jim spanked the burro, and they flew out of the Paha-Sahpedon at a
+canter.
+
+They camped that night in the spruces of Silver Creek, in one of the
+prettiest little places that ever lay out of doors. As they prepared the
+supper and ate it, sharing plate, cup and spoon, the boy was fairly
+ecstatic.
+
+"Dis is der bulliest ol' time dat ever I had," said he. "I didn't know
+dere was places like dis 'tall, 'cept Cintral Park. Yer can run aroun'
+here all yer like, can't yer, Mister? Nobuddy'll stop yer?"
+
+"Not if you ran a thousand miles, Ches. This is the free land, boy. You
+can do what you like." Jim spoke with warmth, for, although he felt that
+the child could not understand, yet the love of the country swelled in
+him so hot that he could never speak of it carelessly.
+
+"Dat's prutty damn good," responded Ches.
+
+"It is," replied Jim. "Now, Ches, will you do something to oblige me?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"Well, then, don't swear. I don't like to hear boys swear."
+
+"I won't cuss another cuss, if I kin help it. Dey'll come out too quick
+for me sometimes, but I'll try to do dat, now."
+
+"Thank you. Now, let's get the stuff cleared up and roll in."
+
+In the middle of the night Jim heard a strange noise, a puzzling sound he
+could not trace. Becoming wider awake, it resolved itself into a stifled
+weeping.
+
+"Hello there, Ches! What's the matter?" he cried.
+
+The boy flung himself into Jim's arms with a cry. "Ar, I'm scart to
+deat'," said he. "Take holt uf me, Mister! Take holt uf me! Dere ain't
+anyt'ing but you and me here 'tall!"
+
+Jim gathered up the trembling figure. "Nothing will hurt you, Ches," he
+said. "You're safe here."
+
+"I wasn't t'inkin' of gettin' hurted," retorted the boy, with shaky
+indignation. "Did youse t'ink I'd weaken fur dat? Yer don't know me, den.
+Dat ain't bodderin' me--I've been hurted plenty. I'm just scart, dat's
+wat's der matter."
+
+"Well, now, you cuddle right up in my arms, like a little puppy dog, and
+you'll feel all right."
+
+"Say, you're prutty good stuff, Mister Felton," whimpered the little
+voice. "Dis is der bulliest time I ever had, even if I am scart."
+
+"I think you're a brave boy, Ches. Now go to sleep."
+
+A small hand reached timidly around until it found the man's and gave it
+an affectionate squeeze. "Good night, sir," said Ches.
+
+Jim lay awake, thinking dreamily, long after the boy's regular breathing
+showed that he was at peace again. The man felt a tenderness for the waif
+so abruptly put in his care that only a lonely man can feel. He
+speculated about the boy's future; he wondered what kind of a man he
+would make. Surely, with a foundation of such courage, the better part
+could be brought out.
+
+Then he wondered what Anne would say to the adoption, or rather what
+advice she would give, for he felt entirely sure of her broad humanity,
+outside of their one difference. He felt the need of her practical sense.
+Soon he had drifted into thinking of Anne entirely. Not bitterly now, but
+with a steady longing. The gray light of the waning moon, sifting through
+the boughs, was the true lumina for reverie. Why had he not answered her
+letter? Perhaps by this time--
+
+What was that moving in the grass? He had noticed a sort of something
+before. He threw up his right hand in a threatening gesture, to frighten
+the intruder away.
+
+Instantly he got his answer, and an icy wind seemed to ruff his
+hair--that insistent, dry, shrilling sound that will make a man's blood
+turn cold if anything will--the whirring defiance of a rattlesnake!
+
+Jim thought quick and hard, with chills and fever coursing over him _ad
+libitum_. He did not want to waken and frighten the boy. He managed to
+slip his arm out without disturbing the sleeper. But now! There wasn't a
+club around except the short sticks of the fire. A two-foot stick is not
+the proper equipment for rattler hunting, except to those born with
+nerves so strong that they do not hesitate to catch Mr. Crotalus by the
+tail and snap his head off.
+
+Jim thought of the rope he had used for a cinch, and made for it with his
+eye on the snake, lest the latter should approach closer to the boy.
+
+With a deep thankfulness for the heft of the rope, he returned and struck
+with all the strength of his big body, and pounded away in a sort of
+crazy rage, although the first stroke had done the business.
+
+He snapped the sweat from his brow as he looked down at the still
+writhing reptile.
+
+"My God! What might have happened if the boy hadn't waked me?" he
+thought. The superstition of the miner rose in him rampant. "I believe
+that kid's going to bring me good luck," he said. "Darned if I don't.
+Well, I could stand some."
+
+He took up the body of the rattler on a stick and heaved it far away,
+then lit his pipe.
+
+"I don't think I care for any more sleep to-night," he laughed. "Like
+Ches, it ain't that anything will hurt me out here, but I'm everlastingly
+scared."
+
+He watched the night out, revelling in his enjoyment of the mystery of
+the coming morning, that phase of the day which never ceases to be
+unreal, and which calls out of the watcher sentiments and emotions he is
+a stranger to for the rest of the day.
+
+The sun hung on the sharp point of Old Dog-Tooth like a portent, before
+he woke the boy.
+
+Ches was all amazement for a second; then he gave a glad cry.
+
+"Gee! Yer still here, ain't yer? No pipe in dis." He looked all around
+him. "Say! Dis is a reg'lar teeayter uf er place, ain't it?" he remarked.
+"Dis is der scene where der villun almost gits der gent wid der sword, if
+der stage mannecher didn't send sumun ter help 'im out."
+
+Jim laughed at the sophisticated infant. "You don't believe in the
+theater much, then, Ches?"
+
+"Aggh!" replied Ches. "If it ain't seven it's 'leven on der stage--but
+it's mostly craps in der street."
+
+"Well, son, there are such points on the dice," admitted Jim. "But let's
+have something to eat and we'll feel better."
+
+Ches rustled around after sticks in his funny, angularly active style,
+singing a song the while from the gladness of his heart. It was a merry
+song, about mother slowly going down the hectic path of phthisis
+pulmonalis, and sister, who has--one is led to believe--taken to small
+bottles, small hours and undesirable companions, refusing to come home
+and lift the mortgage which is shortly to be foreclosed--all in the
+narrow confines of twenty-five verses.
+
+Jim listened to the inspiriting ditty in astonishment.
+
+          "'Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and cumberless,
+          Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!'"
+
+he quoted. "For Heaven's sake, child," he continued, in some irritation,
+"where did you learn that echo of the morgue?"
+
+"Don't you like 'er?" asked Ches, in his turn astonished at such a lack
+of taste. "W'y, dat's er gig in der city--everybuddy an' der ginnies wid
+der organs is givin' dat out all day long."
+
+"Well, let 'em," commanded Jim. "Don't introduce it to this part of the
+country. As you render it, through the nose, and with the wail at the
+end, it is a thing to make a strong man lie down and give up the ghost in
+sheer disgust. Ches, does it really make you feel good to sing it?"
+
+"Yessir--kinder," replied Ches hesitatingly.
+
+"Lord!" thought Jim. "What a life, to make a song like that a
+recreation!" Then aloud: "It's bad luck to sing before breakfast, Ches.
+I'll teach you a livelier song than that when we hit the trail again."
+
+So it came to pass that during the first miles of their day's journey the
+way was enlivened by the notes of _The Arkansas Traveler_, _Garry Owen_,
+_Where's My Linda-Cinda Gone?_, _Baltimore Girls_, and other songs of a
+lively character.
+
+Ches approved of these in moderation. Then Jim tried an experiment. With
+a serious face, but half an eye on the boy, he howled, moaned and grunted
+_The Cow-boy's Lament_, which still presents the insoluble problem of
+whether the words or the music are drearier. "OooooOOO!!! Pla-a-ay your
+fifes l-o-o-w-l-y, a-a-nd beee-eat your drums sl-o-o-o-wly, and play the
+dead m-a-arch as you carry me o-o-o-on!" mourned Jim. Ches was all
+attention. "For I'm o-o-o-nly a p-o-o-o-r cow-boy, and I know I've done
+w-r-o-o-o-o-o-ng!" wailed the singer, in conclusion. "How'd you like
+that, Ches?"
+
+"Say, dat's a ringer!" cried the boy enthusiastically.
+
+Jim sat him down by the roadside and laughed his fill. "I think you're
+hopeless," he gasped.
+
+The boy was hurt in a way he could not understand. Something pained
+him--a new sensation, of not being up to the requirements of another's
+view. His forced acute intelligence made a bull's-eye shot.
+
+"P'r'aps w'en I've got er chist and t'umpers on me like you, I'll like
+der udder kin' er song," he said.
+
+Jim looked at the pathetic little figure on the burro, and his conscience
+smote him. "That's right, boy," he replied very kindly. "I was only
+joking--ought not to be any ill feeling between friends over a joke, you
+know. Now, you sing ahead all you plenty please."
+
+"Don't say nuttin' more about it," replied Ches. "It's all square."
+
+A little farther on Jim noticed a piece of quartz outcrop with a metal
+stain on it. Now, a miner can no more pass such a thing than some others
+could refuse to pick up the pin shining at their feet, so he took a stone
+and hammered off a specimen for future reference. In the meantime Ches,
+on the burro, got around the turn of the trail.
+
+Suddenly the boy set up a shout of excitement. "Oh, Mister!" he yelled,
+with a string of profanity, his promise forgotten in his heat. "Come
+quick, an' look at der cat! Come quick, quick, quick! What a cat! You
+never see sich a cat!"
+
+Jim dashed forward. "Well, I should say cat!" he remarked, as he took in
+the situation. On a ledge about fifty feet above the road crouched a
+full-grown mountain lion, ears back, eyes furtively glimpsing every
+avenue of escape, yaggering at the intruders savagely.
+
+The small boy in Jim Felton rose on the instant. "Pelt him, Ches! Pelt
+him!" he cried, and let fly the rock in his hand by way of illustration.
+A wild animal seems to have little idea of a missile.
+
+The lion held his ground and let the stone strike him in the side. Then,
+with a screech like the vital principle of forty thousand tom-cat
+fights--a screech that left a sediment in the ear-drums of the listeners
+for the balance of the morning--he fairly flew up the straight side of
+the cliff, followed by a rain of projectiles.
+
+"Ches, we oughtn't to have done that," said Jim soberly. "If that fellow
+had been of another mind, he'd have made this the warmest day of our
+lives."
+
+"W'y! Will dey fight?" asked Ches, his eyes wide open.
+
+"They will that, son, sometimes," replied Jim. Then he launched into the
+tales of wild beast hunts, drifted from that to the romance of the gold
+field, the riches coming in a day--the whole glamour of it.
+
+Never did narrator have more attentive listener. There was a sort of
+white joy in the boy's face.
+
+"Oh, ain't I glad to git in dis!" he cried. "Here's just wot I been
+lookin' fur." Suddenly he struck Jim on the shoulder with a tightly
+clenched fist. "I made fur youse der first t'ing--didn't yer see me? I
+know me man all right. Der secont I put me peeps on yer I ses ter meself,
+'Dat feller won't t'row yer down, Chimmy'--ain't I right, hey? Ain't I
+right, Mister?"
+
+Jim patted him on the back. "I think you're right, old man," he said.
+"I'll do anything I can for you."
+
+"Yer don't hafter tell me dat--I know it," replied the boy. A sudden sob
+gathered in his throat and choked him. "Yer don't know wot I been
+t'rough, Mister--it 'ud laid out many er big stiff ten times me size.
+I'd--don't youse laugh at me now, becus I'm only a kid--I'd give me
+heart's blood fur youse, s' help me, I would, now!"
+
+"Shake hands, pardner," said Jim, his own voice a trifle hoarse. "We'll
+do fine together--I know we will."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+They crested the last sharp rise, and looked down upon the little cabin
+huddling in the spruces--an island of humanity in the beautiful sea of
+the wilderness.
+
+It seemed to Jim as if the small house brightened in appearance at the
+return of its soul; his heart in turn rose with a home feeling; his
+belief in the treasure which lay where the new channel cut across the old
+wash--that treasure which would make the world so different--came back to
+him like a renewed love. His hands ached for a grip on pick and shovel.
+His strong muscles twitched with eagerness to be at work again.
+
+Suddenly a ponderous and gross sound, out of all proportion to the size
+of its source, smashed the mountain silence into slivers. It was the
+burro's greeting to his companions, and the echoes fluttered it from
+cliff to cliff until it faded into the merest tint.
+
+"Kerissmus! How many of dem is dere?" asked Ches, astonished at the
+demonstration. At that instant the herd welcomed the returned one.
+
+The caņon was full of brays; colliding, rising, falling and swelling in
+a tumult of noise against which the dreadful shouting of the gods at the
+fall of Troy would have seemed as the wail of a kitten.
+
+"Say, I don't like dat!" said Ches. "What's loose?"
+
+Jim had watched the growing astonishment of the boy's face with
+suppressed emotion, but now he hugged himself and uproariously laughed
+his laugh out.
+
+"That, Ches," he replied, "is a matter of fifteen or twenty donkeys and
+an echo--did you think it was the end of the world?"
+
+"I t'ought it was gittin' on well past der middle, all right," retorted
+Ches. "What 'ud yer expeck of a man dat never heerd der like before?"
+
+"I knew what to expect. I never heard them either till I came out here. I
+was digging a hole up the side of that hill yonder, and had begun to feel
+that there was something behind me, and that it was almost time to go
+home, when old Jack, who has the voice of his family, poured out his soul
+about twenty rods away. I was half way home, Ches, before I got sand
+enough to go back and investigate. But now listen, and you'll hear
+something prettier than that."
+
+He put his fingers to his lips and whistled a bugle call.
+
+                  "I can't get 'em up,
+                  I can't get 'em up,
+                  I can't get 'em up in the morning,"
+
+sounded Jim. And back came the pretty reveille in a fabric of music,
+indescribably interwoven; sharp and staccato from the neighboring walls;
+the lightest of whispers from the distance, turning and twisting upon
+itself and starting afresh when all seemed still.
+
+"Say, dat _is_ prutty!" said Ches enthusiastically. "Hit her again!"
+
+"Young man, you can come up here whenever you feel like it in the future,
+but as for now, I'm for home and grub."
+
+"Dat ain't so bad, neither. Der animile's jumped me up an' down till I
+cud hold more'n a man. Dis spook's hang-out business won't quit, will
+it?"
+
+"No, sir; that's a fixture. Hang on tight now, and I'll race you to the
+cabin--one, two, three!" and away sprinted Jim down the hill trail, the
+burro lumbering after.
+
+"No fair! No fair!" yelled Ches. "Yer've got me skate doped! T'row us a
+tow!"
+
+Jim wheeled at the doorway and took in the excited, happy little figure
+bumping on the burro's back. For once in his life he had the satisfaction
+of an indisputable proof that he had done well. With a sudden access of
+affection he caught the boy in his arms and stood him on the ground.
+"Well, here's our home, Ches," he said.
+
+Home! The street Arab filled his puny chest, took a long, devouring look
+about him, and sought a definition of the word to make sound the lift of
+pride and hope that rose within him.
+
+"Yer mean nobuddy kin chase us out of dis?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"It's our'n!" the boy went on with curious vehemence. "Like dis here,"
+snatching an old knife from his pocket and shaking it in his tight fist,
+"ter t'row away, ter sell, er ter keep, and nobuddy got nuttin' ter say
+about it?"
+
+"Just that, laddybuck. That and nothing else."
+
+"No more slinkin' an' snoopin' aroun' dodgin' der coppers; no more
+stallin' fer der push; no more dirt of no kind--say, I can't git dat jus'
+in a minute."
+
+He stood grappling with the new idea. In the search an old one came to
+the top. His face changed rapidly. The furtive, hunted look returned. In
+a tone, the odd quiet of which contrasted with the former heat, he spoke
+again. "Yer for _me_, now, ain't yer, Jim? If--if der Gun should happen
+ter come here, yer wouldn't t'row me down at dis stage of der game?"
+
+The big man answered him with an equal soberness. He thrust a hand before
+the boy's eyes--a splendid hand, massive and corded at the base, running
+out to long, shapely, intelligent fingers, and every line in it spoke of
+power.
+
+"Do you see that hand, Ches?"
+
+"Yessir."
+
+"If the 'Gun' shows his face where that hand can get a grip on him, it
+will do the business for him in one squeeze, and if the hand can't reach,
+there's a rifle inside that can. Now get that out of your mind once for
+all."
+
+"Well--" said the boy, "well--aw, I'll be damned, dat's all I kin say,
+Jim," and rushed into the house.
+
+The miner leaned back and laughed, and blew his nose; and laughed again
+and blew his nose again; then he wiped the dust out of his eyes, swore a
+few words himself, and followed the boy within.
+
+The next day Jim started on his work in earnest. Before, he had sunk a
+hole here or there in the broad smooth surface of the bar of gravel that
+he felt certain hid his bonanza.
+
+Now, he determined to begin at the creek bank and drift straight across
+the bar. That meant six hundred feet of tunnel at the best, unless
+fortune was much kinder than she had hinted at before--quite an
+undertaking for one man, considering the timbering and all.
+
+It must have been a miner who wrote, that hope springs eternal in the
+human breast. Surely in no place other than the mines is the fact so
+manifest. There was once a man seventy-three years old who was sinking
+through a cap of cement two hundred feet thick. The stuff was just this
+side of powderwork, barely to be loosened with a pick. The old man had to
+climb down sixty feet of ladder, fill his bucket, climb up again and dump
+it, and so on and so on and so on. Besides, he had to walk thirty miles
+and back again with his load, whenever he ran out of provisions. It had
+taken him a year to put his shaft down the sixty feet. There was one
+hundred and forty more to go, each foot getting harder, the Lord only
+knew what would be at the bottom when he got there; yet to sit in that
+old man's cabin for an hour was to obtain a complete exposition of the
+theory and practice of optimism. It is an unbelievable story and would be
+senseless, were it not entirely true.
+
+Beside that effort, Jim's task took on the tint of an avocation, but the
+man who runs six hundred feet of tunnel single-handed earns whatever may
+be at the end of it.
+
+The tunnel was the one thing that Ches abhorred in his new surroundings.
+Whether it was that it reminded him of the dingy holes of his city life,
+or whether it was a natural antipathy, Ches was one of those who can
+never enter a confined space without the sensation of smothering--at any
+rate, neither argument nor coaxing could get him to put a foot within its
+dark mouth.
+
+An old miner would have shared his feelings in this instance, for Jim, so
+thorough in some things, was a careless workman. Your old miner would
+have shaken his head at the weak caps and recklessly driven lagging;
+frames out of plumb and made of any stick that came to hand--more
+especially as they were to support loose dirt of the most treacherous
+sort.
+
+Ches worked outside, dumping the car that Jim had made of four tree
+sections for wheels, and sluice-box boards for sides. Jim, the ingenious,
+had rigged up a pulley system, whereby Ches could run the car out and in
+without interrupting the work on the face.
+
+It was hard labor for Ches at first, but he gritted his teeth and stuck
+it out manfully.
+
+"Bime-by," he would say to himself, "I'll have er muscle on me like Jim,
+an' den I'll yank dis cussed ol' car right out in der middle of der
+crik," and he examined the small bunch on his arm critically a dozen
+times every day.
+
+Meanwhile, his hero and idol was outdoing the human in his exertions. The
+effort he put forth would have killed an ordinary man. He fought the
+stubborn earth as though it were an enemy. Stripped to the waist, bent
+over in the low tunnel, hour after hour Jim plied the pick and shovel
+with the regularity and power of a machine. There was at once something
+fascinating and heroic in the rippling glide of the muscles over his
+broad back, and in the supple swing that sent the pick to join the packed
+dirt.
+
+It all looked so easy. It was as if the dirt were very soft, and not the
+striker very strong. Nevertheless, fourteen hours a day of this, varied
+occasionally by cutting timbers and carrying them by hand to the
+tunnel--some of them a weight enough for a horse, others not adequate,
+"just as they came" being careless Jim's motto--told even on his engines.
+
+They had a certain mark on the caņon side--a wild-cat's hole it was--and
+when the sun threw the shadow of the western wall upon the mark, the
+day's work was finished.
+
+Ches used to watch this with attention. "Yer move along all right till
+yer gits half way up, den yer jus' crawls, yer ol' beggar!" was his
+standing remark on the progress of the shadow. Still, he always gave good
+measurement.
+
+Toward the last of the month Jim grew an interest in their clock.
+
+"Where's the blame thing now, Ches?" would come hollowly out of the
+tunnel.
+
+"Three more cars away, Jim,--jus' tippin' the white rock."
+
+Then the cheery shout of "All over!" and the worker stepping out into the
+fresh air, soft and cool in the twilight, hooking the sweat from his
+forehead, and wishing that supper would cook itself. Sometimes the
+wild-cat looked down upon them from his eyrie.
+
+"Ches," said weary Jim, "if that lad thinks at all, he must think we're
+awful fools."
+
+"He wouldn't be so tur'ble off his guess, neider," replied the equally
+weary Ches.
+
+After supper, however, the world seemed different. There was Jones's
+Hill--(a man of large ideas, was Jones, to call that mass of rock a
+hill)--shining red-hot in the last light against a topaz or turquoise
+sky, and the gulch that ran up to it in a mystery of dark green gloom
+offering up an evening prayer of indescribable odors--those appeals to a
+life in former spheres which no other sense remembers; the ceaseless roar
+of the wind in the pines, so steady that it formed a background for other
+sounds almost as good as silence itself; the evening pipe, and the talk
+of what had been done and what was to be done--all these made amends.
+
+And then the sleeping--such sleeping! And waking up in the morning in the
+exact attitude one went to sleep the night before! Sleep that washed out
+all the former day's fatigue, and started them as eager as hounds for
+that of the new day. That is, within limits, for, when a man overworks as
+continually as Jim had done, no paradise sleep nor balsam air can turn
+him right perpetually.
+
+And for that reason the claim declared a holiday, consisting of a hunting
+trip. It was a curious hunting trip. Not one "bang!" went the clean and
+polished rifle. They stalked four deer, crawling on their bellies,
+quivering with the chase, rounding behind rocks. Then when the game was
+within range, up went the rifle, Jim squinted along the sights--then
+dropped it.
+
+"What's der matter?" whispered Ches. He had been waiting for a long time
+to hear the gun go off.
+
+"They seem to be having a pretty good time by themselves there, Ches."
+
+"Yes--dat's so--but I've heard deer-meat was good." Ches was disappointed
+at this manner of hunting.
+
+"So it is," replied Jim, "probably nobody has that notion stronger than
+the deer." He followed the four pretty animals below them with tense
+eyes. He loved to hunt but he hated to kill.
+
+"See here, boy," he said, sitting down and pulling off his boots, "I
+think I can show you some fun--do you notice they're feeding up to that
+nose of rock? Well I used to be rather quick on my feet once, and I think
+if I can slip down behind there without their winding me, if one gets
+close enough I can catch him with my hands--which is a trick I'd like
+muchly to accomplish. Now you sit here and watch, and for your life,
+don't make a move or sound! By Jiminy! if I could do that!" He trotted
+light-footed down the slope out of sight.
+
+The boy soon saw him reappear behind the sharp rock-wall that jutted out
+into the valley, rubbing crushed pine-needles upon himself with the idea
+of overpowering the human odor, although, whether effective in its
+purpose or not, it was not necessary--a strong up-wind from deer to man
+making it impossible that they could scent him.
+
+They waited and they waited, a big man crouched like a tiger below, and a
+highly excited small boy above, while the deer did every exasperating
+thing that animals could do.
+
+They started straight for the rock, grazing along, and then for no reason
+in the world beat back on their tracks, or turned to right or left. They
+even went so far as to lie down, chewing most contentedly.
+
+One hour went by--two--when suddenly the buck rose and walked straight up
+the caņon in a course that would take him within twenty feet of the
+rock. Jim heard him snort and prepared for action, laying hold of a
+corner of stone to get a spring from all-fours.
+
+The deer's shadow floated black on the grass before him, and Jim
+leaped--to the biggest surprise of his life, for instead of making the
+least effort to escape, the buck charged, and that with such sudden fury
+it was all the man could do to lay hold of him anywhere as they came to
+dirt together.
+
+The next ten seconds was delirium, each combatant doing something as
+quick as he could without any definite aim. Jim received a painful rake
+across the chest from the antlers, and a jab in the leg from the sharp
+hoofs, while the deer was the worse for several bangs over the head and
+an ear nearly pulled off, as they rolled over together.
+
+It came over Jim with the force of a revelation that he had got into a
+very different business from that which he had intended. Instead of the
+"timid deer" whose capture was the difficulty, he found himself engaged
+with a horned and hoofed demon, and the problem was how to get away.
+
+Meanwhile, Ches had legged it down the hill-side at his best speed,
+enthusiastically cheering what he supposed was a prearranged performance.
+Jim had promised him fun, and that whirling heap below supplied plenty of
+it.
+
+"Hooray!" yelled Ches. "Hooray! Hold him dere, Jim, till I get down!"
+
+Jim heard the shrill voice, as he succeeded, after a desperate effort, in
+getting an arm around the deer's neck, so that he could do something in
+the choking line, and he smiled grimly in the heat of battle. "All right,
+Ches!" he gasped. "Don't--hurry!"
+
+"Keep out of this!" he yelled a moment later as Ches burst out from the
+bushes. "You'll get killed!"
+
+But Ches was not to be denied. He danced around the pushing, tugging,
+straining storm-center, and the moment opportunity offered, slipped in
+and seized the buck by a hind leg.
+
+If he had touched an electric battery, the effect could not have been
+more instant. The deer fanned that muscular hind leg, with its boy
+attachment, at the rate of seven hundred strokes to the minute. Poor
+Ches' head was nearly snapped off his shoulders, and the breath was
+literally jerked out of his body, but he hung on, with all the strength
+that pulling the car had given him.
+
+It was not much help, but it was a diversion. Jim gulped a lungful of
+air, gathered his powers and came down with all his might. Slowly the
+stubborn neck, bent--so slowly that Jim feared he would give out before
+gaining the mastery. As it yielded, his leverage increased, and at last,
+exerting every ounce of strength that was in him, he downed the foe and
+held him there, his leg over the front legs whose armament he had felt
+before, and was not desirous of feeling again.
+
+But the deer gave up the struggle, and lay quiet, looking up with great
+pleading eyes.
+
+"Yes, you devil!" cried Jim, "you look meek enough now, but if you
+weren't a handful of hard luck ten seconds ago I never ran across one.
+You hurt, Ches?"
+
+"I got a lovely t'ump on me smeller, but I'm in it yet--do I let go or
+don't I?"
+
+"Not on your life--wait a moment!" He worked his weight over on the
+deer's body. "Now!" he said. "Quick! Jump loose!" Again the deer glanced
+up reproachfully, as though to say, "How suspicious you are!"
+
+The instant Ches jumped clear, so did Jim. They watched their late
+antagonist, who sprang to his feet and went off with frisky leaps,
+apparently as fresh as ever.
+
+Then they looked at each other. Ches was rubbing his stomach with his
+left hand, while he wiped the blood from his nose with the right. Jim's
+coat and trousers were torn; he had a deep scratch across his chest, a
+gouge in his leg, and he trembled from the exertion.
+
+"Well--Ches!" he panted, "we've--had--a--nice--rest--haven't we?"
+
+"Wouldn't it 'a' been tur'ble if yer hadn't caught him?" replied Ches.
+And then they simply whooped.
+
+A good incident is an opal among gems in a lonely life. You can turn it
+over and over and always get new colors.
+
+On the home trip, as Nimrod Jim stalked along with his follower trotting
+beside, they rehearsed every detail of the unexpected encounter. Jim
+crouched and leaped again, giving his sensations when the buck did
+likewise. Then he waited while Ches ran down a side hill and threw
+himself upon a sapling, which for the time was a deer's hind leg.
+
+They were just of an age--any one would have said so, on seeing them
+approach the cabin, arms flying, tongues wagging, bruised, tired and
+happy.
+
+"Jim," said a very sleepy little boy after supper, gorged like an
+anaconda, "yer don't see t'ings like dat in N'york--not much yer don't. If
+dat racket had come off in der Bowery, dere'd be head-lines--'dlines--on
+der extries--more'n a mile--"
+
+Jim picked him up and tucked him into his bunk. "More'n a mile long--g'
+nigh'," sighed Ches.
+
+Jim lit his pipe and went out for an evening smoke. It was some little
+time the next morning before he could realize what he was doing out there
+under the tree.
+
+He had been in some ways a graver man of late. What he had undertaken as
+an experiment, a generous impulse, had been turned into a lasting
+responsibility.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+On the second day after Ches' arrival, Bud had come through with the
+mail, and before leaving, drew Jim aside, out of the boy's hearing.
+
+"The little feller's yours agin all comers now, Jim," he said.
+
+"What's that?" asked Jim, surprised by the meaning in the tone.
+
+"He's _yours_," repeated Bud. "That sweet-scented blossom that called
+himself the boy's dad, filled his skin with red-eye farther up the line
+and settled the fuss he had with his dame."
+
+"Hurt her?"
+
+"Man!" said Bud slowly, "he used a knife a foot long--gave it to her a
+dozen times as hard as he could drive--what's your opinion?"
+
+"Lord Almighty! Did he get away? But no, of course he couldn't, being on
+the train--"
+
+"He didn't get away. The Con. wired the news to Kimballs. What was he to
+do when a small army of punchers boarded the train and took the prisoner?
+He couldn't do nothing, and he never loved that black-muzzled whelp from
+the time he sassed him in the depot. The punchers took our friend out and
+tried him."
+
+"Tried him?"
+
+"With a rope. In three minutes by; the watch he was found wanting--your
+boy now, Jim, as I was telling you. Going to say anything to him about
+it?"
+
+"Why," said Jim, bewildered, "why, I don't know, Bud--guess not, just
+yet, on general principles. What do you think?"
+
+"Think you're right," said Bud. "The poor little rooster couldn't help
+but feel glad to hear the news, but it would sound kind of awful to hear
+a kid like that say he was glad two people were killed. Better wait till
+he's been with you a while, Jim, and learned something different."
+
+Jim flushed at the implied compliment. "You're right, Bud, I will."
+
+"Great little papoose, ain't he?" said Bud, turning in his saddle before
+his starting rush. "Makings of a man there, all right. The boys in town
+are dead stuck on him. I'll have to give a complete history when I get
+back. I must get a gait on, or I'll have Uncle Sammy on my neck
+again--inspector started out with me this morning."
+
+"The devil he did!" cried Jim indignantly, well knowing the hardships and
+dangers of the big rider's route.
+
+"Oh, it's all right!" replied Bud with a wave of his hand. "Come out
+fine. When the lad first told me he'd been sent out to see why the mails
+was so late on this line, I told him I'd show him right on the spot, but
+he said there was no use getting hot about it, as he was only doing his
+duty, so I quieted down.
+
+"He was a decent sort of feller. I thought to myself before we got under
+way, 'Now, there won't nothing happen this day--everything'll go as
+smooth and slick as grease, and this feller will report that I'm
+sojering,' that's the way it usually works, you know. But this time I
+played in luck.
+
+"Two miles out of town we ran into a wild-eyed gang from somewhere, who
+was going to make us dance. We didn't dance, and I'll say for that
+inspector that he stood by me like a man, but he was awful sick at his
+stomach later on from the excitement.
+
+"Next thing, the bridge was down at Squaw Creek, and we swum her. He'd
+have gone down the flume, if I hadn't got hold of his bridle. 'Nice mail
+route, this,' says he, as he got ashore. 'Oh, you'd like it,' says I, 'if
+you got used to it.' I'd begun to wonder what was next myself. Ain't many
+people swimming Squaw Creek, as you perhaps know.
+
+"Well, next was about ten mile along, just before you come to the old
+Tin-cup Camp. We was passing the bluff there, and all of a sudden, rip,
+thump, biff! Down comes what looked like the whole side a-top of us. It
+weren't though. It was only a cinnamon had lost his balance, leaning over
+too far to see what we was. That bear landed right agin brother
+inspector's horse, and brother inspector's horse tried to climb a tree.
+Inspector himself fell a-top of the bear. I dassent shoot, for the devil
+himself couldn't have told which was inspector and which bear. Finally
+bear shakes himself loose and telescopes himself up the caņon, the worst
+scared animile in the country. 'If you'll ketch my horse, I'll amble back
+again,' says the inspector. 'I've investigated this route pretty
+thorough, and find it's just as you say. Lamp-posts'll do me all right
+for a while.' Come out fine, didn't it?
+
+"Whish there! Untie yourself, you yaller bone-heap!" And the mail was a
+quarter of a mile up the trail.
+
+Jim pondered the information concerning Ches carefully, only to adhere to
+his original determination. He could not see any way in which the boy
+would be benefited by hearing the news. Still, the miner hated anything
+that savored of concealment or deception.
+
+"I wish Anne was here to help me," he thought; "she'd know what to do."
+
+He sat long, looking down, his hands clasped about his knees, drinking
+with old Tantalus. But the reverie ended as it always did--in action.
+There was nothing for it but the claim. Success there meant success
+everywhere.
+
+It was the knowledge that Anne, the boy, and all he wished to do for both
+depended on the pay-streak which had urged him to such a fury of effort.
+
+His carelessness of his own life, that led him to slap his timbering up
+any way, was born of that same fury. And the consequences came like most
+consequences, without a moment's warning.
+
+It was a still and beautiful noon. Ches had pulled out the last car
+before dinner, and started for the cabin.
+
+A curious groaning and snapping from the tunnel halted him. It was the
+giving of the tortured timbers. On the heels of that came a dull,
+crushing roar. A blast of dust shot from the tunnel-mouth, like smoke
+from a cannon, preceded by a shock that nearly threw the boy off his
+feet.
+
+Then all was still again. The sun shone as brilliantly as before, blazing
+down upon the ghastly face of a little boy, who, after one heart-broken
+cry of "Jim! Oh, Jim's killed!" sank down upon the ground, chewing the
+fingers thrust in his mouth, that the pain might make the black wave keep
+its distance.
+
+For Ches knew that he was alone; that there was no human being within
+miles to help the man caught in the hand of that mischance but himself,
+so frantically willing, but so impotent.
+
+"I must git me wits tergedder--I must!" and down came the teeth with all
+the strength of the boy's jaw. "Oh, what will I do? What will I do?" The
+little head waved from side to side in its agony, and a sudden sob struck
+him in the throat.
+
+After that one small weakness rose Ches Felton, hero. To the mouth of the
+tunnel he went. Above the tumbled pile of dirt and timber ran a sort of
+passage, between it and the roof.
+
+A way along which a boy might crawl and find out if all the frames were
+down--to which the silence of the tunnel gave a bitter assent--or if by
+some most lucky chance one or two had held, and Jim be safe within.
+
+Ches climbed to the top and thrust his head into the gloom. "Jim!" he
+called, "Jim!" No answer.
+
+Before him lay the ruin of his pardner's work. It was over this that his
+path lay, as deadly dangerous a path as could be found. The slightest
+disturbing of the roof above might bring down a thousand tons of dirt
+upon the one who ventured, slowly and hideously to crush his life out,
+there in the dark, beyond sight and sound of the cheerful world without.
+With this knowledge before him, and his inborn fear of the dark hole, as
+daunting as the hand of death itself, he took his soul in his gripe, and
+wormed his way within.
+
+Sometimes his back grazed a stone in the roof, and the touch of white-hot
+iron could not have been so terrible; sometimes a falling stone near him
+would make his heart leap and stop as he waited for the hill above to
+follow. Foot by foot he made it, twisting around the end of a post,
+scooping out the dirt most cautiously where the hole was too small for
+even his slight body.
+
+Once the sharp end of a broken piece of lagging caught in his clothes,
+and he could go neither forward nor back. There, for a second, he broke
+down. Bracing up again, he managed somehow to get the old knife out of
+his pocket and cut himself free.
+
+He could see little.
+
+A gray spectral light filtered in here and there that defined nothing,
+even when his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness.
+
+It was an endless journey. In places where the dirt closed in he would be
+a full minute progressing a foot, and a minute of such mortal terror as
+seldom falls to the lot of man of peace or soldier.
+
+But it ended.
+
+Suddenly the boy's outstretched hand encountered only emptiness below.
+That frame had held. He dove into the space head first, and landed on
+something soft and warm--the body of his pardner.
+
+He had found him. In a paroxysm of joy, he flung himself upon the
+motionless figure and cried his heart out. This, too, he soon conquered.
+Jim had just so much show--any delay might wipe it out. He searched the
+man's pockets until he found a match. By its light he saw the candle
+stuck into the post, and lit it. Then he knelt beside his pardner again.
+
+It was a curious picture within that gloomy chamber underground. The
+miner lying stark, stretched to his full great length, appearing enormous
+in the flickering candle-light, and the child, white-faced, big-eyed, but
+steady as a veteran, wiping the blood from the ragged cut in the man's
+head.
+
+Ches realized what had happened the instant before the calamity. Jim,
+startled by the noise of the yielding timbers, had made a rush, only to
+be struck down by the rock, that now lay within an inch of him; yet
+struck into safety for all that. Had he gone a yard farther, the life
+would have been smashed out of him instantly.
+
+But now, what? The flowing blood sent a sickening chill through the boy.
+Had he done this much only to be able to see his pardner die? He drove
+his teeth into his hand again at the thought. What was that? Was it a
+trick of the tunnel, his heart sounding in his own ears, or a rhythmic
+beat from outside? Hollow and dull fell that "clatter-clum-clatter-clum."
+
+"Bud!" screamed Ches, "T'ank God, dat's Bud!"
+
+After half a dozen efforts he climbed the dirt pile and went back through
+the treacherous holes. The rider came so fast! "Oh!" groaned the boy,
+"I'll never make it! Bud'll t'ink we're off somewheres an' pull
+on!--_Bud_! BUD!" he called at the top of his lungs; but the tunnel
+swallowed the little voice.
+
+Desperation made him entirely reckless. It was any way to get out before
+the mail-man was beyond call. Glairy with sweat, he pulled, tugged,
+squirmed and wriggled along, until a dirty, small bundle rolled down
+almost under the mail-rider's feet.
+
+"Whoa!" shouted Bud with an astonished oath. "What's the--why boy, what's
+the matter? Damn it! how you scart me!"
+
+One look at him froze the man; he said no more, but waited, watching the
+working face of the child, who was mastering himself once more, in order
+to tell a quick, straight story, that no time might be lost.
+
+"Der tunnel's fell in, Bud; Jim's in dere where der frame's held. He's
+livin' yet, but he's got a tur'ble cut in his head."
+
+The mail-rider drew out paper and tobacco, and rolled a cigarette. It was
+his method of biting his hand. He loved the man inside that dark blotch
+on the hill-side with an affection only known where men are few and
+strong. And because he loved him, Bud was going to keep his head cool and
+clear, to find the right thing to do and do it the right way.
+
+For all his calm outer man the mind within was whirling. He turned to the
+tense little face before him for help, and with an admiration that knew
+no bounds.
+
+"How far back?" he asked.
+
+"T'ree frames was held--dere was seven, ten foot apart--how much is dat?"
+
+"Forty feet--ten foot apart! No wonder! Oh, Jim! How could you have been
+so careless?"
+
+The boy's shoulders shook once. "He worked like er horse--now it's all
+gone an' he's in dere--" The face was contorted out of all humanity, but
+he held the tears back.
+
+Bud leaped from his horse. "Never you mind, Chessy lad!" he cried,
+hugging up the little figure, "we'll get him out of that, by God!--Could
+we haul him out the way you went?"
+
+"No, dere ain't room--an' if you touch dat roof hard--" he shuddered.
+
+Bud sucked in his breath. "If you weren't the sandy little man to try
+it!" he said. He stood a moment in silence going over it all.
+
+"Ches," he said, "there ain't any time to lose. If Jim's cut like that he
+may bleed to death in there when we could save him all right if we had
+him outside.
+
+"There's a party of miners down the road eight mile. They was having
+their grub as I went by. Chances are they'll be there yet. They've got
+four men and a team. I _could_ ride back, but I ought to be here working.
+Do you think you could stick on old Buck and ride there?"
+
+"I kin."
+
+"By God! I hate to do it--but there ain't any other way!" The big man
+ground his teeth together. "I hate to do it--damned if I'll do it!"
+
+Ches caught his hand. "I kin make it, Bud," he pleaded; "I cuddent do
+nothin' if I stayed here, an' you could do a heap. Put me up and let me
+try."
+
+"All right," said Bud. "The good Lord kept you from getting hurt in the
+tunnel, perhaps He'll see you through again. Shut your eyes and hold on
+tight when you strike the high places, and don't touch a rein--leave it
+all to old Buck."
+
+He stepped forward and caught the horse by the bit.
+
+"Buck!" he said, as though talking to a human being, "you and me have
+been through a heap together--don't fall down on me, now!--Take the kid
+safe, old boy!" He caught Ches up and threw him across the saddle.
+"You'll only have to tell 'em what's happened--the Lord send nothing
+happens to you! Good-by, you brave little devil--we'll win out yet. Go
+it, Buck!"
+
+And while one of Jim's friends plied pick and shovel like a mad man, the
+other was swaying on top of a galloping horse, gripping the pommel of the
+saddle with all the strength he had, and shutting his eyes when he came
+to the high places.
+
+Captain Hanrahan's party were miners of substance. They were working
+their way out to a new country to suit their inclinations. It had just
+been suggested that it was perhaps time to hit the trail again when the
+captain saw a figure on a horse flying athwart the mountain side--the
+regular road was bad enough, but Bud had short cuts of his own, and Buck
+followed his usual way.
+
+"Huh!" said the captain, "that man's drunk or crazy?"
+
+"Holy sufferin'!" gasped the man next him, as the yellow horse slipped on
+a turn and sent a shower of gravel a thousand feet below. "That was a
+near touch," as the horse caught himself and swept on.
+
+"Looks to me like a case of trouble, Cap," said a third speaker. "That
+ain't no man, anyhow--it's only a boy."
+
+"Horse running away with him, probably--his folks ought to be clubbed for
+letting him out on such an animal. Well, spread out, boys, and we'll
+catch him."
+
+But Buck stopped in two jumps, at Ches' command of "Whoa!"
+
+"Fren's!" cried the boy, "me pardner's caught in a tunnel dat caved in on
+him. Kin yer help us out? Three mile above Jones's Hill."
+
+He had not finished the sentence before two men sprang for the horses.
+The rest grabbed picks and shovels and hurled them into the wagon.
+
+"We'll be there, hell-a-whooping," said Captain Hanrahan.
+
+"T'anks!" replied Ches weakly, and then the world went out. The captain
+caught him as he fell.
+
+"Poor little cuss! He rid hard to help his pardner!" said the captain.
+"Hump yourselves, boys--all ready! Got the whisky, Pete? Picks enough?
+Stick the axes where they won't jump loose and cut a leg off some of us.
+Tie the horse behind--good animal, that. All right, let 'em go!"
+
+They went. Over stones and gulleys, the tools clanging and banging fit to
+leap from the wagon, the men clinging to the side-boards for dear life.
+
+Down hill-sides like the slant of a roof, the horses keeping out of the
+way of the wagon; up the other side with the reeking animals straining
+every fiber; over bridges that bent fearfully beneath the shock of their
+onset; swaying around curves with the wheels sluing and sparks flying,
+and over the level as though the devil himself were behind them.
+
+It was the record trip for eight miles in a wagon in that country. The
+driver stood up, a foot braced on either side, the reins thrown loose,
+the whip plied hard, and every urging that voice could give shrieked out
+by his powerful lungs.
+
+It was like the rush of a fire-engine, plus twice the speed, and twenty
+times the danger. Above the pounding of hoofs, the din of rattling metal,
+the crash, smash and roar of the wheels and the yells of the driver could
+be heard the man Pete, ex-cowpuncher, cheerfully singing,
+
+                  "Roll your tails, and roll 'em high,
+                  We'll all be angels by-and-by."
+
+Braced in the back corner sat Captain Hanrahan, his leg keeping some of
+the tools from going overboard, holding Ches in his arms.
+
+"Curse it all, Billy!" he screamed to the driver, "miss _some_ of them
+bumps, will you? I've got on a new pair of pants."
+
+"I'll take 'em clean off you the next time, Cap!" retorted the driver.
+
+They joked, which may seem heartless; but they risked their necks a
+hundred times, and that isn't very heartless.
+
+"That's the place, I reckon, Cap!" said the driver, pointing. "Somebody
+working there now!"
+
+"Give 'em a hoot!" replied the captain.
+
+Bud stepped out and held up his hand in answer to the yell. The wave of
+thanksgiving at the sight of this most efficient help took all the
+stiffness out of the knees of the mail-rider. The tears rolled down his
+face unnoticed.
+
+"You're welcome, boys," he cried, as the driver sawed the frenzied team
+to a standstill and the men sprang out.
+
+"Reckon we are," said the captain. "Now what's up?"
+
+"Is the boy hurt? Good God! He ain't hurt himself, has he?"
+
+"Naw; pore little cuss is used up, that's all. He'll be around all right
+in a minute. Now tell me, what's loose."
+
+Bud answered briefly, but completely.
+
+"Pete and Billy, get to cutting wood--the rest of you come here,"
+commanded the captain.
+
+"You ain't going to stop to timber, are you?" asked Bud in an agony of
+haste.
+
+"I sure am," replied the captain. "All this trouble's come of
+carelessness. Now you just keep your clothes on, and let me run this
+thing.
+
+"We'll have your friend out in no time, and there won't be no more men
+stuck in there with a hill a-top of 'em in the doing of it. What you've
+done there is a help all right, but it might easy have meant that we'd
+had two men instead of one to hunt for."
+
+"You're dead right," said Bud. "Tell me what I'm to do."
+
+The captain took hold as only a man can who has the genius for it. He
+knew by long practice what size of a relief tunnel meant real speed of
+progress--the least dirt to be removed to make it possible that men could
+work to advantage. And his tunnel, safely rough-ceiled, went in at the
+rate of a foot a minute.
+
+When at last they pulled the insensible man out into the light of day,
+and found that while his wound, though severe, and if neglected mortal,
+was not likely to be dangerous with good attention, the captain said that
+he must be getting about his business.
+
+"Oh, stay a little longer, fellers, till he comes to," remonstrated Bud.
+"He'd like to have a chance to say 'Thank you.'"
+
+"Bugs!" replied the captain. "You tell him he owes us a drink, and as a
+particular favor to me, please not to put his frames over four foot apart
+in that ground.
+
+"We're likely to be back here shortly, anyhow, because I think your
+friend has got hold of the right idea from what you tell me of his plans;
+but it'll take more'n one man to really prospect it. If we don't hit it
+where we're going, we'll sure come back."
+
+"Well, boys, _I_ can thank you and I'm going to," said Bud. "That man is
+my friend, and if you hadn't come as you did--"
+
+"Say, let go," interrupted the captain. "You'd have done the same thing
+if you'd been us, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Yes," admitted Bud reluctantly.
+
+"And you wouldn't want to be thanked for it a white chip more'n we do,"
+concluded the captain. "If there's any thanks coming it is to that little
+two-foot chunk of man yonder. Snaking over that fall was a thing to put a
+crimp in anybody. You was bound to help your pardner, wasn't you, son?"
+
+The boy looked up into the captain's eagle face. "I'd 'er got to Jim," he
+answered simply, "'f I'd had ter chew me way in like a rat."
+
+The captain stepped back and looked at him.
+
+"By the Lord!" he said slowly, "I believe you would!" A change came over
+the thin, arrogant face. He stooped suddenly, raised the boy and kissed
+him. "Now, get out o' this!" he roared at the driver, as he leaped into
+the wagon.
+
+They waved their hands as long as the miners were in sight, and stood
+staring until Pete's statement that they'd all be angels by-and-by was
+lost in the distance.
+
+"Pretty good folks when you're in trouble, ain't they, Ches?" said Bud.
+
+"What 'ud we have done, if dey hadn't come?--Ain't it 'mos' time Jim was
+moving, Bud?"
+
+"I'll give him another spoonful of whisky, but you can't expect him to
+start right up and hop around. He got an awful crack, boy."
+
+For all that, as the dose of strong liquor went down Jim's throat, he
+opened his eyes.
+
+"Hello, Bud! Hello, Ches!" he said wonderingly. "Have I been
+asleep?--Why, what the devil's the matter with my head?" he raised his
+hand to the spruce-gum bandage. "Phew! But I feel weak!" he sighed as his
+hand dropped. "Something's happened--what is it?"
+
+There, with a friend on each side holding a hand, they told him the
+story. It was a sacred reunion.
+
+The gratitude of the man saved, and the protestations of the others that
+they would have done all they did a thousand times again would only seem
+childish in repetition. They cried, too, which is excusable in a child,
+but not in two big men. Men don't cry. It is the monopoly of women.
+Nevertheless, Bud and Jim and Ches cried and swore, and shook hands and
+cried again until it was a pitiful thing to see.
+
+"Well," said Bud at last, "this makes you feel better, but it won't get
+the work done. I've got to go out and fix old Buck and get in some
+firewood."
+
+"Oh, I'll do that!" cried Jim, raising himself on his elbow.
+
+"You?" jeered Bud. "You look like it! Now, you lie right down there and
+get well--that's your play. It would make us feel as if we'd wasted our
+time if we had to turn to and bury you after all the trouble we've had.
+You're good for two weeks in that bunk, old horse."
+
+"Two weeks! I can't, Bud; I can't! I must get up before that!"
+
+"You lie down there--hear me?"
+
+"But I'll have to see to things around--you can't stay."
+
+"I stay right here till you're well."
+
+"But the mail?"
+
+"The devil take the mail--or anybody else that wants the job. Uncle Sammy
+won't hop on to my collar button, because of the fine send-off my friend
+the inspector'll give. And somebody will get orry-eyed up in town, and
+come down to find what's loose. He'll take the bags then. It's all
+settled."
+
+"But there are other things--"
+
+"Let 'em rest. Now I'm off to do the chores--oh, say, speaking of mail,
+here's a letter for you I forgot all about in the excitement--here you
+go. Come along, Ches, and help me carry wood."
+
+The miner looked at the letter in his hand, and a tinge of blood crept
+into his white cheeks, then ebbed, leaving them whiter than before.
+
+Suppose there were other men who wanted her; men with money, learning,
+wit and influence. Was this bitterest of blows to fall upon him when he
+was already down? He looked at his hands, green from loss of blood. "I
+tried," he muttered, "I tried."
+
+Still the very touch of the paper seemed to have something warm and
+heartening in it. It was from _her_, anyhow. With sudden strength he tore
+it open and read:
+
+  Dearest, Dearest Jim--I yield the whole case. You are right.
+
+  It is to my shame that clear-sightedness came from no source within
+  me, but from a brave example set.
+
+  My little cousin married the man she loved last week, and, of
+  course, Miss Anne was a high functionary.
+
+  Oh, what a stirring there was in me, Jim, watching them and thinking
+  of you!
+
+  They will be as poor as church mice, but they do not care, and
+  theirs is the wise economy.
+
+  Life is too short to waste, Jim, I see it now. I put it all in your
+  hands, dearest; if you can not come to me, I shall come to you.
+
+  I believe I'm only lukewarm by habit, not by nature.
+
+  I wish I could tell you how sorry I am for the time I have squandered.
+
+  I'll show you, that will be better.
+
+  Any time, or any place and no conditions now, Jim. That's all, my
+  dear brave lover. Good night.
+
+                                                     Your own, Anne.
+
+He was sitting bolt upright. Once more he devoured the letter. Then he
+sank back and closed his eyes.
+
+"Thank you, my darling, I can rest now," he said.
+
+The golden sunset light played in riotous joyousness on the cabin walls;
+the little creek laughed out loud; so did Ches and Bud, approaching the
+cabin. It was a beautiful and happy world.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH***
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