Bruvver Jim's Baby Part 8

"And I'll make him a lot of things. If only I had the stuff in me I'd make him a Noah's ark and a train of cars and a fat mince-pie. Would little Skeezucks like a train of cars?"

Again the little pilgrim shook his head.

"Then what more would the baby like?" coaxed the miner.

Again with his shy little cuddling up the wee man answered, "Moey--bwead--an'--milk."

"By jinks!" repeated the flabbergasted Keno, and he pulled at his sleeves with all his strength.

"Say, Keno," said Jim, "go find Miss Doc's goat and milk him for the boy."

"Miss Doc may be home by now," objected Keno, apprehensively.

"Well, then, sneak up and see if she has gone off real mad."

"S'posen she 'ain't?" Keno promptly hedged. "S'posen she seen me?"

"You've got all out-doors to skedaddle in, I reckon."

Keno, however, had many objections to any manner of venture with the wily Miss Dennihan. It took nearly half an hour of argument to get him up to the brow of the slope. Then, to his uncontainable delight, he beheld the disgusted and somewhat defeated Miss Doc more than half-way down the trail to Borealis, and making shoe-tracks with a.s.suring rapidity.

"Hoot! Hoot!" he called, in a cautious utterance. "She's went, and the cabin looks just the same--from here."

But Jim, when he came there, with his tiny guest upon his arm, looked long at the well-scrubbed floor and the tidy array of pots, pans, plates, and cups.

"We'll never find the salt, or nothin', for a week," he drawled. "It does take some people an awful long time to learn not to meddle with the divine order of things."

CHAPTER VI

THE BELL FOR CHURCH

What with telling little Skeezucks of all the things he meant to make, and fondling the grave bit of babyhood, and trying to work out the story of how he came to be utterly unsought for, deserted, and parentless, Jim had hardly more than time enough remaining, that day, in which to entertain the visiting men, who continued to climb the hill to the house.

Throughout that Sat.u.r.day there was never more than fifteen minutes when some of the big, rough citizens of Borealis were not on hand, attempting always to get the solemn little foundling to answer some word to their efforts at baby conversation. But neither to them, for the strange array of presents they offered, nor to Jim himself, for all his gentle coaxing, would the tiny chap vouchsafe the slightest hint of who he was or whence he had come.

It is doubtful if he knew. By the hour he sat where they placed him, holding his doll with something more deep and hungry than affection, and looking at Jim or the visitors in his pretty, baby way of gravity and questioning.

When he sat on old Jim's knee, however, he leaned in confidence against him, and sighed with a sweet little sound of contentment, as poignant to reinspire a certain ecstasy of sadness in the miner's breast as it was to excite an envy in the hearts of the others.

Next to Jim, he loved Tintoretto--that joyous, irresponsible bit of pup-wise gladness whose tail was so utterly inadequate to express his enthusiasm that he wagged his whole fuzzy self in the manner of an awkward fish. Never was the tiny man seated with his doll on the floor that the pup failed to pounce upon him and push him over, half a dozen times. Never did this happen that one of the men, or Jim himself, did not at once haul Tintoretto, growling, away by the tail or the ear and restore their tiny guest to his upright position. Never did such a good Samaritan fail to raise his hand for a cuff at the pup, nor ever did one of them actually strike. It ended nearly always in the pup's attack on the hand in question, which he chewed and pawed at and otherwise befriended as only a pup, in his freedom from worries and cares, can do.

With absolutely nothing prepared, and with nothing but promises made and forgotten, old Jim beheld the glory of Sunday morning come, with the bite and crystalline sunshine of the season in the mountain air.

G.o.d's thoughts must be made in Nevada, so lofty and flawless is the azure sky, so utterly transparent is the atmosphere, so huge, gray, and pa.s.sionless the mighty reach of mountains!

Man's little thought was expressed in the camp of Borealis, which appeared like a herd of small, brown houses, pitifully insignificant in all that immensity, and gathered together as if for company, trustfully nestling in the hand of the earth-mother, known to be so gentle with her children. On the hill-sides, smaller mining houses stood, each one emphasized by the blue-gray heap of earth and granite--the dump--formed by the labors of the restless men who burrowed in the rock for precious metal. The road, which seemed to have no ending-place, was blazed through the brush and through the hills in either direction across the miles and miles of this land without a people. The houses of Borealis stood to right and left of this path through the wilderness, as if by common consent to let it through.

Meagre, unknown, unimportant Borealis, with her threescore men and one decent woman, shared, like the weightiest empire, in the smile, the care, the yearning of the ever All-Pitiful, greeting the earth with another perfect day.

Intelligence of what could be expected, in the way of a celebration at the blacksmith-shop of Webber, had been more than merely spread; it had almost been flooded over town. Long before the hour of ten, scheduled by common consent for church to commence, Webber was sweeping sundry parings of horse-hoof and sc.r.a.ps of iron to either side of his hard earth floor, and sprinkling the dust with water that he flirted from his barrel. He likewise wiped off the anvil with his leathern ap.r.o.n, and making a fire in the forge to take off the chill, thrust in a huge hunk of iron to irradiate the heat.

Many of the denizens of Borealis came and laid siege to the barber-shop as early as six in the morning. Hardly a man in the place, except Parky, the gambler, had been dressed in extravagance so imposing since the 4th of July as was early apparent in the street. Bright new shirts, red, blue, and even white, came proudly to the front. Trousers were dropped outside of boots, and the boots themselves were polished.

A run on bear's-grease and hair-oil lent a shining halo to nearly every head the camp could boast. Then the groups began to gather near the open shop of the smith.

"We'd ought to have a bell," suggested Lufkins, the teamster.

"Churches always ring the bell to let the parson know it's time he was showin' up to start the ball."

"Well, I'll string up a bar of steel," said Webber. "You can get a crackin' fine lot of noise out of that."

He strung it up in a framework just outside the door, ordinarily employed for hoisting heavy wagons from the earth. Then with a hammer he struck it sharply.

The clear, ringing tone that vibrated all through the hills was a stirring note indeed. So the bell-ringer struck his steel again.

"That ain't the way to do the job," objected Field. "That sounds like scarin' up voters at a measly political rally."

"Can you do it any better?" said the smith, and he offered his hammer.

"Here comes Doc Dennihan," interrupted the barkeep. "Ask Doc how it's done. If he don't know, we'll have to wait for old If-only Jim hisself."

The brother of the tall Miss Doc was a small man with outstanding ears, the palest gray eyes, and the quietest of manners. He was not a doctor of anything, hence his t.i.tle. Perhaps the fact that the year before he had quietly shot all six of the bullets of his Colt revolver into the body of a murderous a.s.sailant before that distinguished person could fall to the earth had invested his townsmen and admirers with a modest desire to do him a t.i.tular honor. Howsoever that might have been, he had always subsequently found himself addressed with sincere respect, while his counsel had been sought on every topic, possible, impossible, and otherwise, mooted in all Borealis. The fact that his sister was the "boss of his shack," and that he, indeed, was a henpecked man, was never, by any slip of courtesy, conversationally paraded, especially in his hearing.

Appealed to now concerning the method of ringing the bar of steel for worshipful purposes, he took a bite at his nails before replying. Then he said:

"Well, I'd ring it a little bit faster than you would for a funeral and a little bit slower than you would for a fire."

"That's the stuff!" said Field. "I knowed that Doc would know."

But Doc refused them, nevertheless, when they asked if he would deign to do the ringing himself. Consequently Field, the father of the camp, made a gallant attempt at the work, only to miss the "bell" with his hammer and strike himself on the knee, after which he limped to a seat, declaring they didn't need a bell-ringing anyhow. Upon the blacksmith the duty devolved by natural selection.

He rang a l.u.s.ty summons from the steel, that fetched all the dressed-up congregation of the town hastening to the scene. Still, old Jim, the faithful Keno, little Skeezucks, and Tintoretto failed to appear. A deputation was therefore sent up the hill, where Jim was found informing his household that if only he had the celerity of action he would certainly make a Sunday suit of clothing for the tiny little man.

For himself, he had washed and re-turned his shirt, combed his hair, and put on a better pair of boots, which the pup had been chewing to occupy his leisure time.

The small but impressive procession came slowly down the trail at last, Jim in the lead, with the grave little foundling on his arm.

"Boys," said he, as at last he entered the dingy shop and sat his quaint bit of a man on the anvil, over which he had thoughtfully thrown his coat--"boys, if only I'd had about fifteen minutes more of time I'd have thought up all the tricks you ever saw in a church."

The men filed in, awkwardly taking off their hats, and began to seat themselves as best they could, on anything they found available.

Webber, the smith, went stoutly at his bellows, and blew up a fire that flamed two feet above the forge, fountaining fiercely with sparks of the iron in the coal, and tossing a ruddy light to the darkest corners of the place. The incense of labor--that homely fragrance of the smithy all over the world--spread fresh and new to the very door itself. Old Jim edged closer to the anvil and placed his hand on the somewhat frightened little foundling, sitting there so gravely, and clasping his doll in fondness to his heart.

Outside, it was noted, Field had halted the red-headed Keno for a moment's whispered conversation. Keno nodded knowingly. Then he came inside, and, addressing them all, but princ.i.p.ally Jim, he said:

"Say, before we open up, Miss Doc would like to know if she kin come."

A silence fell on all the men. Webber went hurriedly and closed the ponderous door.

"Wal, she wouldn't be apt to like it till we get a little practised up," said the diplomatic Jim, who knew the tenor of his auditors.