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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No-body--wants me--anywhere," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Jim," said Bone, "you're in fer trouble. Parky is goin' to jump your claim to-night--it bein' New Year's eve, you know--at twelve o'clock.

He told me so himself. He says you 'ain't done a.s.sessment, nor you can't--not now--and you 'ain't got no more right than anybody else to hold the ground. And so he's meanin' to slap a new location on the claim the minute this here year is up."

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

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

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

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

"To-morrow is New Year's, sure enough," Jim replied, reflectively.

"That mine belongs to little Skeezucks."

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

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

I could go and git back in time to watch the claim."

Bone was clearly impatient.

"Don't git down to the old 'if only' racket now," he said, with heat.

"I busted my word to warn you, Jim, and the claim is worth a fortune to you and little Skeezucks."

Jim's eyes took on a look of pain.

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

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

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

Bone was right. The extra horses were all in requisition to haul the ore to the quartz-mill through a stretch of ten long miles of drifted snow. Moreover, Jim had once too often sung his old "if-only" cry.

The men of Borealis smiled sadly, as they thought of tiny Skeezucks, but with doubt of Jim, whose resolutions, statements, promises, had long before been estimated at their final worth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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