Bruvver Jim's Baby Part 11

"Anyway," he concluded, "Doc has maybe went on shift by this time.

He's workin' nights this week again."

Jim, however, prevailed. "You don't get another bite of grub in this shack, nor another look at the little boy, if you don't come ahead and do your share."

Therefore they presently departed, shutting Tintoretto in the cabin to "watch."

In half an hour, having interviewed Doc Dennihan himself on the hill-side quite removed from his cabin, the two worthies came climbing up towards their home once again, Jim most carefully holding in his hands a large tin cup with half an inch of goat's milk at the bottom.

While still a hundred yards from the house, they were suddenly startled by the mad descent upon them of the pup they had recently left behind.

"Huh! you young galoot," said Jim. "You got out, I see!"

When he entered the cabin it was dark. Keno lighted the candle and Jim put his cup on the table. Then he went to the berth to awaken the tiny foundling and give him a supper of bread and milk.

Keno heard him make a sound as of one in terrible pain.

The miner turned a face, deadly white, towards the table.

"Keno," he cried, "he's gone!"

CHAPTER VIII

OLD JIM DISTRAUGHT

For a moment Keno failed to comprehend. Then for a second after that he refused to believe. He ran to the bunk where Jim was desperately turning down the blankets and made a quick examination of that as well as of the other beds.

They were empty.

Hastening across the cabin, the two men searched in the berths at the farther end with parental eagerness, but all in vain, the pup meantime dodging between their legs and chewing at their trousers.

"Tintoretto!" said Jim, in a flash of deduction. "He must have got out when somebody opened the door. Somebody's been here and stole my little boy!"

"By jinks!" said Keno, hauling at his sleeves in excess of emotion.

"But who?"

"Come on," answered Jim, distraught and wild. "Come down to camp!

Somebody's playin' us a trick!"

Again they shut the pup inside, and then they fairly ran down the trail, through the darkness, to the town below.

A number of men were standing in the street, among them the teamster and Field, the father of Borealis. They were joking, laughing, wasting time.

"Boys," cried Jim, as he hastened towards the group, "has any one seen little Skeezucks? Some one's played a trick and took him off!

Somebody's been to the cabin and stole my little boy!"

"Stole him?" said Field. "Why, where was you and Keno?"

"Down to Doc's to get some milk. He wanted bread and milk," Jim explained, in evident anguish. "You fellows might have seen, if any one fetched him down the trail. You're foolin'. Some of you took him for a joke!"

"It wouldn't be no joke," answered Lufkins, the teamster. "We 'ain't got him, Jim, on the square."

"Of course we 'ain't got him. We 'ain't took him for no joke," said Field. "n.o.body'd take him away like that."

"Why don't we ring the bar of steel we used for a bell," suggested one of the miners. "That would fetch the men--all who 'ain't gone back on shift."

"Good idea," said Field. "But I ought to get back home and eat some dinner."

He did not, however, depart. That Jim was in a fever of excitement and despair they could all of them see. He hastened ahead of the group to the shop of Webber. and taking a short length of iron chain, which he found on the earth, he slashed and beat at the bar of steel with frantic strength.

The sharp, metallic notes rang out with every stroke. The bar was swaying like a pendulum. Blow after blow the man delivered, filling all the hollows of the hills with wild alarm.

Out of saloons and houses men came sauntering, or running, according to the tension of their nerves. Many thought some house must be afire.

At least thirty men were presently gathered at the place of summons.

With five or six informers to tell the news of Jim's bereavement, all were soon aware of what was making the trouble. But none had seen the tiny foundling since they bade him good-bye in the charge of Jim himself.

"Are you plum dead sure he's went?" said Webber, the smith. "Did you look all over the cabin?"

"Everywhere," said Jim. "He's gone!"

"Wal, maybe some mystery got him," suggested Bone. "Jim, you don't suppose his father, or some one who lost him, come and nabbed him while you was gone?"

They saw old Jim turn pale in the light that came from across the street.

Keno broke in with an answer.

"By jinks! Jim was his mother! Jim had more good rights to the little feller than anybody, livin' or dead!"

"You bet!" agreed a voice.

Jim spoke with difficulty.

"If any one did that"--he faltered--"why, boys, he never should have let me find him in the brush."

"Are you plum dead sure he's went?" insisted the blacksmith, whom the news had somewhat stunned.

"I thought perhaps you fellows might have played a joke--taken him off to see me run around," said Jim, with a faint attempt at a smile.

"'Ain't you got him, boys--all the time?"

"Aw, no, he'd be too scared," said Bone. "We know he'd be scared of any one of us."

"It ain't so much that," said Field, "but I shouldn't wonder if his father, or some other feller just as good, came and took him off."

"Of course his father would have the right," said Jim, haltingly, "but--I wish he hadn't let me find him first. You fellows are sure you ain't a-foolin'?"

"We couldn't have done it--not on Sunday--after church," said Lufkins.

"No, Jim, we wouldn't fool that way."