Chapter 2

The boy glanced at them sharply. "Youse fellers is goin' to get a drink," said he.

Those big men put their hands on their sides and roared.

"You'll find that kid worse than a wife, Felton!" said the agent.

"No use of our being hypocrites to the little chap. I reckon he's seen worse things than the inside of a saloon. Come along, laddybuck."

They lined up and partook. The agent told the story of the waif. "And we started him off with fifty, Mac," he said to the saloon-keeper. "Suppose you break away from some of your ill-gotten gains in the good cause."

The saloon-keeper opened his cash drawer without words and slid over a five-dollar bill. He seemed very glad to part with it.

"Confound it! Now we're upsticks again," said the agent. "Tell you what let's do. Here's ten of us. Each man put up a two, and we'll shake the dice to see who gives it to the kid--winner to set 'em up. That'll make seventy-five--a very respectable figure."

They played a new interesting dice-game, in which the figure of a pig drawn in chalk upon the bar furnished the "lay-out." It is a game which increases in interest to the last throw. They stuck the saloon-keeper, and were gleeful.

"We ought to name the boy," said Felton, under the inspiration of the second refreshment. "My name's Jim, and I want something else to call him by. I'll make him a present of my last name."

"Gad, that's so!" replied the agent.

"Call him Chescheela Jim," put in a cow-man. "That's Injun for 'little Jim.' 'Ches' ain't a bad nickname."

"Mac, hand over one of those toy sample bottles of California fizz," said the agent. "We'll put this craft down the ways in shape."

Felton broke the neck off the bottle with a tack-hammer and poured the wine on the boy's head. "I christen thee Chescheela James Felton--may you become a good seaworthy craft, and not fill your skin with this stuff when you grow up," said he dramatically.

The small boy squinted up his eyes to keep the wine out; then he shook the liquid from his hair, looked up and grinned.

"Youse fellers is reg'lar kids," said he.

"Lord, that's a great boy!" said the agent. "He's the oldest man in the crowd. Say, let's give him a white man's start, beginning with a bath."

The whole party went to the barbershop and made the darky proprietor dispense a bath and a hair-cut for nothing.

"Shave, sir?" asked the latter, when the hair had been properly trimmed.

"No," replied the youth. "I t'ink I'll let me whiskers grow. Dere's enuff wind in dis country ter keep der moths outen 'em."

Then they raided the clothing store, and abused the Hebrew owner until he reduced the price. "Oof der lodt--everyding, shennelmun! Sigsdy ber zent. Dere's no broffit left--it doaned bay fur the freight."

"Look here, Sol! Will you swear that on a piece of pork?" demanded the agent. The Hebrew moaned.

"Doaned dalk to me!" he cried. "My heardt iss prooken!"

Clean, trimmed and clothed, Chescheela James Felton was a different looking boy. Months only could take those animal lines out of his face, and fresh air and wholesome food fill out the hollows of the cheeks, but, all in all, he was not a bad-looking youngster.

Jim Felton bought some supplies for his camp, and prepared to start for home that afternoon, as they could yet make fifteen miles before dark.

The new friends of the morning saw them off with hearty good-bys. The boy quite unexpectedly thanked them for their treatment and the money. The poor little soul had heard few words of gratitude, and had less chance to employ them.

His speech was curious, but the generous big men saw behind the words, and felt really touched by the old-child's attempt to express himself.

The two Jims soon pushed on, through the rolling foot-hills near the town, into the broken country. The boy kept watching, watching, but said little, until at last they came to the stupendous cliffs of Paha-Sahpedon, overhanging the trail with dark majesty. Jim happened to glance at the boy, and saw him looking up, mouth and eyes wide open.

"Say, Mister!" gasped Ches. "Who built them!"

"Built?" repeated Jim, puzzled. Then he understood. "The hand of God, my boy," he replied.

The urchin shivered. "I feel's if dey was comin' ertop o' me," he gasped. "Let's hook it outer here."

Jim spanked the burro, and they flew out of the Paha-Sahpedon at a canter.

They camped that night in the spruces of Silver Creek, in one of the prettiest little places that ever lay out of doors. As they prepared the supper and ate it, sharing plate, cup and spoon, the boy was fairly ecstatic.

"Dis is der bulliest ol' time dat ever I had," said he. "I didn't know dere was places like dis 'tall, 'cept Cintral Park. Yer can run aroun' here all yer like, can't yer, Mister? Nobuddy'll stop yer?"

"Not if you ran a thousand miles, Ches. This is the free land, boy. You can do what you like." Jim spoke with warmth, for, although he felt that the child could not understand, yet the love of the country swelled in him so hot that he could never speak of it carelessly.

"Dat's prutty damn good," responded Ches.

"It is," replied Jim. "Now, Ches, will you do something to oblige me?"

"Sure!"

"Well, then, don't swear. I don't like to hear boys swear."

"I won't cuss another cuss, if I kin help it. Dey'll come out too quick for me sometimes, but I'll try to do dat, now."

"Thank you. Now, let's get the stuff cleared up and roll in."

In the middle of the night Jim heard a strange noise, a puzzling sound he could not trace. Becoming wider awake, it resolved itself into a stifled weeping.

"Hello there, Ches! What's the matter?" he cried.

The boy flung himself into Jim's arms with a cry. "Ar, I'm scart to deat'," said he. "Take holt uf me, Mister! Take holt uf me! Dere ain't anyt'ing but you and me here 'tall!"

Jim gathered up the trembling figure. "Nothing will hurt you, Ches," he said. "You're safe here."

"I wasn't t'inkin' of gettin' hurted," retorted the boy, with shaky indignation. "Did youse t'ink I'd weaken fur dat? Yer don't know me, den. Dat ain't bodderin' me--I've been hurted plenty. I'm just scart, dat's wat's der matter."

"Well, now, you cuddle right up in my arms, like a little puppy dog, and you'll feel all right."

"Say, you're prutty good stuff, Mister Felton," whimpered the little voice. "Dis is der bulliest time I ever had, even if I am scart."

"I think you're a brave boy, Ches. Now go to sleep."

A small hand reached timidly around until it found the man's and gave it an affectionate squeeze. "Good night, sir," said Ches.

Jim lay awake, thinking dreamily, long after the boy's regular breathing showed that he was at peace again. The man felt a tenderness for the waif so abruptly put in his care that only a lonely man can feel. He speculated about the boy's future; he wondered what kind of a man he would make. Surely, with a foundation of such courage, the better part could be brought out.

Then he wondered what Anne would say to the adoption, or rather what advice she would give, for he felt entirely sure of her broad humanity, outside of their one difference. He felt the need of her practical sense. Soon he had drifted into thinking of Anne entirely. Not bitterly now, but with a steady longing. The gray light of the waning moon, sifting through the boughs, was the true lumina for reverie. Why had he not answered her letter? Perhaps by this time--

What was that moving in the grass? He had noticed a sort of something before. He threw up his right hand in a threatening gesture, to frighten the intruder away.

Instantly he got his answer, and an icy wind seemed to ruff his hair--that insistent, dry, shrilling sound that will make a man's blood turn cold if anything will--the whirring defiance of a rattlesnake!

Jim thought quick and hard, with chills and fever coursing over him _ad libitum_. He did not want to waken and frighten the boy. He managed to slip his arm out without disturbing the sleeper. But now! There wasn't a club around except the short sticks of the fire. A two-foot stick is not the proper equipment for rattler hunting, except to those born with nerves so strong that they do not hesitate to catch Mr. Crotalus by the tail and snap his head off.

Jim thought of the rope he had used for a cinch, and made for it with his eye on the snake, lest the latter should approach closer to the boy.

With a deep thankfulness for the heft of the rope, he returned and struck with all the strength of his big body, and pounded away in a sort of crazy rage, although the first stroke had done the business.

He snapped the sweat from his brow as he looked down at the still writhing reptile.

"My God! What might have happened if the boy hadn't waked me?" he thought. The superstition of the miner rose in him rampant. "I believe that kid's going to bring me good luck," he said. "Darned if I don't. Well, I could stand some."

He took up the body of the rattler on a stick and heaved it far away, then lit his pipe.

"I don't think I care for any more sleep to-night," he laughed. "Like Ches, it ain't that anything will hurt me out here, but I'm everlastingly scared."

He watched the night out, revelling in his enjoyment of the mystery of the coming morning, that phase of the day which never ceases to be unreal, and which calls out of the watcher sentiments and emotions he is a stranger to for the rest of the day.

The sun hung on the sharp point of Old Dog-Tooth like a portent, before he woke the boy.

Ches was all amazement for a second; then he gave a glad cry.

"Gee! Yer still here, ain't yer? No pipe in dis." He looked all around him. "Say! Dis is a reg'lar teeayter uf er place, ain't it?" he remarked. "Dis is der scene where der villun almost gits der gent wid der sword, if der stage mannecher didn't send sumun ter help 'im out."

Jim laughed at the sophisticated infant. "You don't believe in the theater much, then, Ches?"

"Aggh!" replied Ches. "If it ain't seven it's 'leven on der stage--but it's mostly craps in der street."

"Well, son, there are such points on the dice," admitted Jim. "But let's have something to eat and we'll feel better."

Ches rustled around after sticks in his funny, angularly active style, singing a song the while from the gladness of his heart. It was a merry song, about mother slowly going down the hectic path of phthisis pulmonalis, and sister, who has--one is led to believe--taken to small bottles, small hours and undesirable companions, refusing to come home and lift the mortgage which is shortly to be foreclosed--all in the narrow confines of twenty-five verses.

Jim listened to the inspiriting ditty in astonishment.

"'Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!'"

he quoted. "For Heaven's sake, child," he continued, in some irritation, "where did you learn that echo of the morgue?"

"Don't you like 'er?" asked Ches, in his turn astonished at such a lack of taste. "W'y, dat's er gig in der city--everybuddy an' der ginnies wid der organs is givin' dat out all day long."

"Well, let 'em," commanded Jim. "Don't introduce it to this part of the country. As you render it, through the nose, and with the wail at the end, it is a thing to make a strong man lie down and give up the ghost in sheer disgust. Ches, does it really make you feel good to sing it?"

"Yessir--kinder," replied Ches hesitatingly.

"Lord!" thought Jim. "What a life, to make a song like that a recreation!" Then aloud: "It's bad luck to sing before breakfast, Ches. I'll teach you a livelier song than that when we hit the trail again."

So it came to pass that during the first miles of their day's journey the way was enlivened by the notes of _The Arkansas Traveler_, _Garry Owen_, _Where's My Linda-Cinda Gone?_, _Baltimore Girls_, and other songs of a lively character.

Ches approved of these in moderation. Then Jim tried an experiment. With a serious face, but half an eye on the boy, he howled, moaned and grunted _The Cow-boy's Lament_, which still presents the insoluble problem of whether the words or the music are drearier. "OooooOOO!!! Pla-a-ay your fifes l-o-o-w-l-y, a-a-nd beee-eat your drums sl-o-o-o-wly, and play the dead m-a-arch as you carry me o-o-o-on!" mourned Jim. Ches was all attention. "For I'm o-o-o-nly a p-o-o-o-r cow-boy, and I know I've done w-r-o-o-o-o-o-ng!" wailed the singer, in conclusion. "How'd you like that, Ches?"

"Say, dat's a ringer!" cried the boy enthusiastically.

Jim sat him down by the roadside and laughed his fill. "I think you're hopeless," he gasped.

The boy was hurt in a way he could not understand. Something pained him--a new sensation, of not being up to the requirements of another's view. His forced acute intelligence made a bull's-eye shot.

"P'r'aps w'en I've got er chist and t'umpers on me like you, I'll like der udder kin' er song," he said.

Jim looked at the pathetic little figure on the burro, and his conscience smote him. "That's right, boy," he replied very kindly. "I was only joking--ought not to be any ill feeling between friends over a joke, you know. Now, you sing ahead all you plenty please."

"Don't say nuttin' more about it," replied Ches. "It's all square."

A little farther on Jim noticed a piece of quartz outcrop with a metal stain on it. Now, a miner can no more pass such a thing than some others could refuse to pick up the pin shining at their feet, so he took a stone and hammered off a specimen for future reference. In the meantime Ches, on the burro, got around the turn of the trail.

Suddenly the boy set up a shout of excitement. "Oh, Mister!" he yelled, with a string of profanity, his promise forgotten in his heat. "Come quick, an' look at der cat! Come quick, quick, quick! What a cat! You never see sich a cat!"

Jim dashed forward. "Well, I should say cat!" he remarked, as he took in the situation. On a ledge about fifty feet above the road crouched a full-grown mountain lion, ears back, eyes furtively glimpsing every avenue of escape, yaggering at the intruders savagely.

The small boy in Jim Felton rose on the instant. "Pelt him, Ches! Pelt him!" he cried, and let fly the rock in his hand by way of illustration. A wild animal seems to have little idea of a missile.

The lion held his ground and let the stone strike him in the side. Then, with a screech like the vital principle of forty thousand tom-cat fights--a screech that left a sediment in the ear-drums of the listeners for the balance of the morning--he fairly flew up the straight side of the cliff, followed by a rain of projectiles.

"Ches, we oughtn't to have done that," said Jim soberly. "If that fellow had been of another mind, he'd have made this the warmest day of our lives."

"W'y! Will dey fight?" asked Ches, his eyes wide open.

"They will that, son, sometimes," replied Jim. Then he launched into the tales of wild beast hunts, drifted from that to the romance of the gold field, the riches coming in a day--the whole glamour of it.

Never did narrator have more attentive listener. There was a sort of white joy in the boy's face.

"Oh, ain't I glad to git in dis!" he cried. "Here's just wot I been lookin' fur." Suddenly he struck Jim on the shoulder with a tightly clenched fist. "I made fur youse der first t'ing--didn't yer see me? I know me man all right. Der secont I put me peeps on yer I ses ter meself, 'Dat feller won't t'row yer down, Chimmy'--ain't I right, hey? Ain't I right, Mister?"

Jim patted him on the back. "I think you're right, old man," he said. "I'll do anything I can for you."

"Yer don't hafter tell me dat--I know it," replied the boy. A sudden sob gathered in his throat and choked him. "Yer don't know wot I been t'rough, Mister--it 'ud laid out many er big stiff ten times me size. I'd--don't youse laugh at me now, becus I'm only a kid--I'd give me heart's blood fur youse, s' help me, I would, now!"

"Shake hands, pardner," said Jim, his own voice a trifle hoarse. "We'll do fine together--I know we will."

III

They crested the last sharp rise, and looked down upon the little cabin huddling in the spruces--an island of humanity in the beautiful sea of the wilderness.

It seemed to Jim as if the small house brightened in appearance at the return of its soul; his heart in turn rose with a home feeling; his belief in the treasure which lay where the new channel cut across the old wash--that treasure which would make the world so different--came back to him like a renewed love. His hands ached for a grip on pick and shovel. His strong muscles twitched with eagerness to be at work again.

Suddenly a ponderous and gross sound, out of all proportion to the size of its source, smashed the mountain silence into slivers. It was the burro's greeting to his companions, and the echoes fluttered it from cliff to cliff until it faded into the merest tint.

"Kerissmus! How many of dem is dere?" asked Ches, astonished at the demonstration. At that instant the herd welcomed the returned one.

The cañon was full of brays; colliding, rising, falling and swelling in a tumult of noise against which the dreadful shouting of the gods at the fall of Troy would have seemed as the wail of a kitten.

"Say, I don't like dat!" said Ches. "What's loose?"

Jim had watched the growing astonishment of the boy's face with suppressed emotion, but now he hugged himself and uproariously laughed his laugh out.

"That, Ches," he replied, "is a matter of fifteen or twenty donkeys and an echo--did you think it was the end of the world?"

"I t'ought it was gittin' on well past der middle, all right," retorted Ches. "What 'ud yer expeck of a man dat never heerd der like before?"

"I knew what to expect. I never heard them either till I came out here. I was digging a hole up the side of that hill yonder, and had begun to feel that there was something behind me, and that it was almost time to go home, when old Jack, who has the voice of his family, poured out his soul about twenty rods away. I was half way home, Ches, before I got sand enough to go back and investigate. But now listen, and you'll hear something prettier than that."

He put his fingers to his lips and whistled a bugle call.

"I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up in the morning,"

sounded Jim. And back came the pretty reveille in a fabric of music, indescribably interwoven; sharp and staccato from the neighboring walls; the lightest of whispers from the distance, turning and twisting upon itself and starting afresh when all seemed still.

"Say, dat _is_ prutty!" said Ches enthusiastically. "Hit her again!"

"Young man, you can come up here whenever you feel like it in the future, but as for now, I'm for home and grub."

"Dat ain't so bad, neither. Der animile's jumped me up an' down till I cud hold more'n a man. Dis spook's hang-out business won't quit, will it?"

"No, sir; that's a fixture. Hang on tight now, and I'll race you to the cabin--one, two, three!" and away sprinted Jim down the hill trail, the burro lumbering after.

"No fair! No fair!" yelled Ches. "Yer've got me skate doped! T'row us a tow!"

Jim wheeled at the doorway and took in the excited, happy little figure bumping on the burro's back. For once in his life he had the satisfaction of an indisputable proof that he had done well. With a sudden access of affection he caught the boy in his arms and stood him on the ground. "Well, here's our home, Ches," he said.

Home! The street Arab filled his puny chest, took a long, devouring look about him, and sought a definition of the word to make sound the lift of pride and hope that rose within him.

"Yer mean nobuddy kin chase us out of dis?"

"Nobody."

"It's our'n!" the boy went on with curious vehemence. "Like dis here," snatching an old knife from his pocket and shaking it in his tight fist, "ter t'row away, ter sell, er ter keep, and nobuddy got nuttin' ter say about it?"

"Just that, laddybuck. That and nothing else."

"No more slinkin' an' snoopin' aroun' dodgin' der coppers; no more stallin' fer der push; no more dirt of no kind--say, I can't git dat jus' in a minute."

He stood grappling with the new idea. In the search an old one came to the top. His face changed rapidly. The furtive, hunted look returned. In a tone, the odd quiet of which contrasted with the former heat, he spoke again. "Yer for _me_, now, ain't yer, Jim? If--if der Gun should happen ter come here, yer wouldn't t'row me down at dis stage of der game?"

The big man answered him with an equal soberness. He thrust a hand before the boy's eyes--a splendid hand, massive and corded at the base, running out to long, shapely, intelligent fingers, and every line in it spoke of power.

"Do you see that hand, Ches?"

"Yessir."

"If the 'Gun' shows his face where that hand can get a grip on him, it will do the business for him in one squeeze, and if the hand can't reach, there's a rifle inside that can. Now get that out of your mind once for all."

"Well--" said the boy, "well--aw, I'll be damned, dat's all I kin say, Jim," and rushed into the house.

The miner leaned back and laughed, and blew his nose; and laughed again and blew his nose again; then he wiped the dust out of his eyes, swore a few words himself, and followed the boy within.

The next day Jim started on his work in earnest. Before, he had sunk a hole here or there in the broad smooth surface of the bar of gravel that he felt certain hid his bonanza.

Now, he determined to begin at the creek bank and drift straight across the bar. That meant six hundred feet of tunnel at the best, unless fortune was much kinder than she had hinted at before--quite an undertaking for one man, considering the timbering and all.

It must have been a miner who wrote, that hope springs eternal in the human breast. Surely in no place other than the mines is the fact so manifest. There was once a man seventy-three years old who was sinking through a cap of cement two hundred feet thick. The stuff was just this side of powderwork, barely to be loosened with a pick. The old man had to climb down sixty feet of ladder, fill his bucket, climb up again and dump it, and so on and so on and so on. Besides, he had to walk thirty miles and back again with his load, whenever he ran out of provisions. It had taken him a year to put his shaft down the sixty feet. There was one hundred and forty more to go, each foot getting harder, the Lord only knew what would be at the bottom when he got there; yet to sit in that old man's cabin for an hour was to obtain a complete exposition of the theory and practice of optimism. It is an unbelievable story and would be senseless, were it not entirely true.

Beside that effort, Jim's task took on the tint of an avocation, but the man who runs six hundred feet of tunnel single-handed earns whatever may be at the end of it.

The tunnel was the one thing that Ches abhorred in his new surroundings. Whether it was that it reminded him of the dingy holes of his city life, or whether it was a natural antipathy, Ches was one of those who can never enter a confined space without the sensation of smothering--at any rate, neither argument nor coaxing could get him to put a foot within its dark mouth.

An old miner would have shared his feelings in this instance, for Jim, so thorough in some things, was a careless workman. Your old miner would have shaken his head at the weak caps and recklessly driven lagging; frames out of plumb and made of any stick that came to hand--more especially as they were to support loose dirt of the most treacherous sort.

Ches worked outside, dumping the car that Jim had made of four tree sections for wheels, and sluice-box boards for sides. Jim, the ingenious, had rigged up a pulley system, whereby Ches could run the car out and in without interrupting the work on the face.

It was hard labor for Ches at first, but he gritted his teeth and stuck it out manfully.