"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 a.s.sociate 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 quant.i.ty 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 acc.u.mulated 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.