"Hard-hearted ole sea-serpent!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Field. "No wonder he looks like cryin'."

"Oh, he ain't goin' to cry," said the blacksmith, roughly patting the frightened little pilgrim's cheek with his great, s.m.u.tty hand. "What's he got to cry about, now he's here in Borealis?"

"Well, leave him cry, if he wants to," said the fat little Keno. "I 'ain't heard a baby cry fer six or seven years."

"Go off in a corner and cry in your pocket, and leave it come out as you want it," suggested Bone. "Jim, you said the little feller kin talk?"

"Like a greasy dictionary," said Jim, proudly.

"Well, start him off on somethin' stirrin'."

"You can't start a little youngster off a-talkin' when you want to, any more than you can start a turtle runnin' to a fire," drawled Jim, sagely.

"Then, kin he walk?" insisted the bar-keep.

Jim said, "What do you s'pose he's wearin' pants for, if he couldn't?"

"Put him down and leave us see him, then."

"This ain't no place for a child to be walkin' 'round loose," objected the gray old miner. "He'll walk some other time."

"Aw, put him down," coaxed the smith. "We'd like to see a little feller walk. There's never bin no such a sight in Borealis."

"Yes, put him down!" chorused the crowd.

"We'll give him plenty of elbow-room," added Webber. "Git back there, boys, and give him a show."

As the group could be satisfied with nothing less, and Jim was aware of their softer feelings, he disengaged the tiny hand that was closed on his collar and placed his tiny charge upon his feet in the road.

How very small, indeed, he looked in his quaint little trousers and his old fur cap!

Instantly he threw the one little arm not engaged with the furry doll about the big, dusty knee of his known protector, and buried his face in the folds of the rough, blue overalls.

"Aw, poor little tike!" said one of the men. "Take him back up, Jim.

Anyway, you 'ain't yet told us his name, and how kin any little shaver walk which ain't got a name?"

Jim took the mere little toy of a man again in his arms and held him close against his heart.

"He 'ain't really got any name," he confessed. "If only I had the poetic vocabulary I'd give him a high-cla.s.s out-and-outer."

"What's the matter with a good old home-made name like Si or Hank or Zeke?" inquired Field, who had once been known as Hank himself.

"They ain't good enough," objected Jim. "If only I can git an inspiration I'll fit him out like a barn with a bran'-new coat of paint."

"Well, s'pose--" started Keno, but what he intended to say was never concluded.

"What's the fight?" interrupted a voice, and the men shuffled aside to give room to a well-dressed, dapper-looking man. It was Parky, the gambler. He was tall, and easy of carriage, and cultivated a curving black mustache. In his scarf he wore a diamond as large as a marble.

At his heels a shivering little black-and-tan dog, with legs no larger than pencils and with a skull of secondary importance to its eyes, followed him mincingly into the circle and stood beside his feet with its tail curved in under its body.

"What have you got? Huh! Nothing but a kid!" said the gambler, in supreme contempt.

"And a pup!" said Keno, aggressively.

The gambler ignored the presence of the child, especially as Tintoretto bounded clumsily forward and bowled his own shaking effigy of a canine endways in one glad burst of friendship.

The black-and-tan let out a feeble yelp. With his boot the gambler threw Tintoretto six feet away, where he landed on his feet and turned about growling and barking in puppywise questioning of this sudden manoeuvre. With a few more staccato yelps, the shivering black-and-tan retreated behind the gambler's legs.

"Of all the ugly brutes I ever seen," said Parky, "that's the worst yellow flea-trap of the whole caboose."

"Wal, I don't know," drawled Jim, as he patted his timid little pilgrim on the back in a way of comfort. "All dogs look alike to a flea, and I reckon Tintoretto is as good flea-feed as the next. And, anyhow, I wouldn't have a dog the fleas had deserted. When the fleas desert a dog, it's the same as when the rats desert a ship. About that time a dog has lost his doghood, and then he ain't no better than a man who's lost his manhood."

"Aw, I'd thump you and the cur together if you didn't have that kid on deck," sneered the gambler.

"You couldn't thump a drum," answered Jim, easily. "Come back here, Tintoretto. Don't you touch that skinny little critter with the shakes. I wouldn't let you eat no such a sugar-coated insect."

The crowd was enjoying the set-to of words immensely. They now looked to Parky for something hot. But the man of card-skill had little wit of words.

"Don't git too funny, old boy," he cautioned. "I'd just as soon have you for breakfast as not."

"I wish the fleas could say as much for you or your imitation dog,"

retorted Jim. "There's just three things in Borealis that go around smellin' thick of perfume, and you and that little two-ounce package of dog-degeneration are maybe some worse than the other."

Parky made a belligerent motion, but Webber, the blacksmith, caught his arm in a powerful grip.

"Not to-day," he said. "The boys don't want no gun-play here this mornin'."

"You're a lot of old women and babies," said Parky, and pushing through the group he walked away, a certain graceful insolence in his bearing.

"Speakin' of catfish," said Field, "we ought to git up some kind of a celebration to welcome Jim's little skeezucks to the camp."

"That's the ticket," agreed Bone. "What's the matter with repeatin'

the programme we had for the Fourth of July?"

"No, we want somethin' new," objected the smith. "It ought to be somethin' we never had before."

"Why not wait till Christmas and git good and ready?" said Jim.

The argument was that Christmas was something more than four weeks away.

"We've got to have a rousin' big Christmas fer little Skeezucks, anyhow," suggested Bone. "What sort of a celebration is there that we 'ain't never had in Borealis?"

"Church," said Keno, promptly.

This caused a silence for a moment.

"Guess that's so, but--who wants church?" inquired the teamster.

"We might git up somethin' worse," said a voice in the crowd.