"Well, then," demanded Tuttle, "what is the first thing to do for a little kid like him?"

"The first thing?" answered Barney. "The first thing is--Do you think I'm going to tell you lop-eared galoots all I know about a baby? What I want to know is if he's had a bite to eat?"

"What did you think we'd feed him?" asked Slivers. "Do we look like his mother?"

"Git away, you venomous sc.u.m, and let me have him!" demanded Barney.

"Hold on," interrupted Tuttle. "The first day he goes to the feller he picks out himself, only you come last, bein' the challenger. We'll arrange things alphabetical. Adams, you git first shot, to find out if you're popular with the little skeesicks."

Adams turned redder than usual, which is saying much.

"Ah--I don't know nuthin' about kids," he confessed. "Catherwood--see what he can do."

Catherwood also proved to be modest. After him Farnham and Lane waived their alphabetical privilege.

Moody, as nervous as a girl, approached the dumb little man on the floor, and twisting the corner of his coat, inquired in a trembling voice, "Does Bunny love old Goo-goo?"

The child looked up with a frightened little query in his eyes.

"I'd hate to scare him," Moody added. "I don't mind seein' how he takes to Barney."

"Yes, give Barney a show," said Wooster.

Something had been happening to the cook. The tenseness had gone from his usually wiry little body; his eyes were milder; a curve was softening his mouth. Kneeling before the child, he held forth his arms.

"Baby want to go by-by?" he said, and tenderly lifting the little man, he bore him away, while the men looked on in silence.

Half an hour later the man who peeked through the keyhole reported that Barney was singing the youngster to sleep. The words of the song are not readily conveyed, but they sounded like--

"Allonsum sum-sum bill-din, Allonsum sum-sum bill-din, Allonsum sum-sum bill-din,"

repeated times without number. Barney called it an Indian lullaby. As sung it was equally good Cherokee, Chinese, or Russian, being Barney's clearest recollection and interpretation of a song which his mother once had droned.

On the third day following, Slivers, Tuttle, and others held a council of war.

"Barney's goin' to clean up the whole works of us," said the mule-driver, "unless we can manage to work some better combination."

"What can we do?" inquired Tuttle. "The kid sure likes him best."

"That wasn't the point. It's a game of how much we all know about a young un as against little Barney. Now, Moody, on the square, do you think you know as much as him?"

"He knows more than you'd think," confessed Moody. "The--the only little kid I ever had--she died--ten months old."

"Oh."

"Well--that was h.e.l.l, sure."

Some of the men puckered their lips as if to whistle, but made no sound.

"If only we could paint Barney's face an Irish green, or do something so's the kid would be scared to see him, we might win out yet, perhaps," resumed Slivers, presently. "Got any ideas?"

"I don't think Barney could scare him if he tried," answered Wooster.

"Anyhow the pore little scamp ain't cried since he come."

"He ain't laughed any, either," added Moody.

There was neither a cry nor a smile that day, though Barney yearned to hear either one of these baby sounds. The little brown captive clung as always to his tiny shirt, and watched Barney's face with big, brown, questioning eyes. The cook had forgotten his boast. To hold the wee bit of babyhood against his heart, to coax him to eat, to yearn over him, love him, fondle him--these were his pa.s.sions. A fierce parental jealousy grew in Barney's nature.

But the hour arrived when jealousy changed to a deeper emotion--to worry. All Barney actually knew of a child came through the intuitions of a natural father's heart, but little as this amounted to, Barney was aware that a tiny scamp like this should eat and sleep and creep about and crow. And the little brown "Bunny" had done not one of the pretty baby tricks.

The fiery little cook's new concern was at first concealed. With growing reluctance every time, he resigned the little man to Moody's care as the "contest" required. One night, however, when the dumb, sad bit of an Indian was with Moody, the man was aroused from his dreams by some one's presence. It was Barney, too worried to sleep, surrept.i.tiously come to the tiny captive's fruit-box cradle, and gently urging the wee bronze man to eat of some gruel prepared at that silent hour of the darkness. He was willing that Moody should have the credit of taking good care of the motherless baby, if only the child could be made a little more happy. Thereafter, by night and day, the cook was hovering about the uncomplaining little chieftain; and Moody understood.

By some of the mystic workings of nature, Barney's love and worry extended to Sally. Hiding her feelings from all the men, even from Barney himself, she could not quell the upgush of emotion in her bosom, as she s.n.a.t.c.hed the little Indian once, in secret, to her heart. Without the courage, as yet, to hear the men ridicule her weakness, she nevertheless contrived to place a hundred little comforting things in Barney's path, as he went his rounds of mothering his sad little wild thing from the hills. Her heart began to ache, as it swelled to take in the child and Barney Doon.

The men had lost all spirit of fun in the contest, even to Slivers, who strove, however, to see it through in a bluff, rough-hearted way.

Unexpectedly all of it came to a crisis. It was early in the morning.

After a sleepless night Barney had gone in desperate parent-care to receive his foundling back from Moody. In one keen glance he had finally perceived what all their folly was leading to, at last.

With the dumb little chap on his arm he hastened to the dining-shed, where all the men, save Tuttle, were awaiting breakfast.

"You brutes had no right to steal this child!" he cried out, pa.s.sionately. "He's starving! He's pining away! Look at his thin little legs! Look at his poor little eyes--getting hollow!" Tears were streaming from his own tired eyes as he spoke. "Slivers, you did this!" he charged, angrily. "You tell me where you got him, or I'll shoot you down like a dog!" He had hastened up to the teamster, against whose very breast he thrust a pistol a foot in length.

"By G.o.d! he'd do it!" said Slivers, unmoved by the push of the loaded weapon. "Unc.o.c.k it, Barney. You'd ought to know I wouldn't harm the kid, any quicker than you. I'd do as much as any man if we had to save his life."

"He may not live through the day!" cried Barney. "I'm going to take him home--back to his mother! And if you don't tell me where she is--"

"Hold on, now; I call," interrupted Slivers. "We'll see if you've got any sand. The Injun camp is over across the desert, in Thimbleberry Cove.... Do you reckon you've got the nerve to pack him across?"

A peculiar silence followed this announcement. Barney stood like an animal at bay. His face became deathly white. He fully comprehended the awfulness of that great white dead-land just outside.

Wooster broke the silence. "It looks as if the wind is going to blow harder to-day," he said. "It's stirring up the desert some already. A man could never get two miles out from here, unless the breeze goes down."

Barney, with a crazed, wild look on his face, hastened away to the kitchen.

"I'm glad he didn't take you up on that," said Moody, gazing forth from a window. "Get on to the way the whirlwinds are kickin' up the smoke already."

"I reckon it won't blow no worse than yesterday," replied Slivers.

"But I knowed he wouldn't tackle it anyhow. He'll be back here in a minute, to squirm out of the game."

They drummed on the table for fifteen minutes, as they waited. A brisk wind was blowing; the desert began to deliver up its cohorts of dust-clouds, where powdered alkali billowed and eddied and swept across the valley in ever-increasing volumes.

"Peek in the kitchen and see what Barney's up to now," prompted Slivers, nudging Adams as he spoke.

"Oh, he'll be back directly," said Adams.

"Here's somebody comin' now," added Catherwood, presently. "Maybe it's--"

"Sally," muttered Slivers, who meditated proposing for the hand of the buxom Miss Wooster.