Bruvver Jims Baby | Page 5

one out on the floor, proceeded to carry it under the table and to chew it as heartily as possible.
There was presently savory smoke, sufficient for an army, in the place, while sounds of things sizzling made music for the hungry. The miner laid bare a section of the table, which he set with cups, plates, and iron tools for eating. He then dished up two huge supplies of steaming beans and bacon, two monster cups of coffee, black as tar, and cut a giant pile of dun-colored bread.
"Aborigineezer," he said, "the banquet waits."
Thereupon he fetched his weary little guest to the board and attempted to seat him on a stool. The tiny man tried to open his eyes, but the effort failed. Had he been awake and sitting erect on the seat provided for his use, his head could hardly have come to the level of the supper.
"Can't you come to, long enough to eat?" inquired the much-concerned miner. "No? Wal, that's too bad. Couldn't drink the coffee or go the beans? H'm, I guess I can't take you down to show you off to the boys to-night. You'll have to git to your downy couch." He returned the slumbering child to the bunk, where he tucked him into the blankets.
Tintoretto did ample justice to the meal, however, and filled in so thoroughly that his round little pod of a stomach was a burden to carry. He therefore dropped himself down on the floor, breathed out a sigh of contentment, and shut his two bright eyes.
Old Jim concluded a feast that made those steaming heaps of food diminish to the point of vanishing. He sat there afterwards, leaning his grizzled head upon his hand and looking towards the bunk where the tiny little chap he had found was peacefully sleeping. The fire burned low in the chimney; the candle sank down in its socket. On the floor the pup was twitching in his dreams. Outside the peace, too vast to be ruffled by puny man, had settled on all that tremendous expanse of mountains.
When his candle was about to expire the miner deliberately prepared himself for bed, and crawled in the bunk with his tiny guest, where he slept like the pup and the child, so soundly that nothing could suffice to disturb his dreams.
The arrows of the sun itself, flung from the ridge of the opposite hills, alone dispelled the slumbers in the cabin.
The hardy old Jim arose from his blankets, and presently flung the door wide open.
"Come in," he said to the day. "Come in."
The pup awoke, and, running out, barked in a crazy way of gladness. His master washed his face and hands at a basin just outside the door, and soon had breakfast piping hot. By then it was time to look to Aborigineezer. To Jim's delight the little man was wide awake and looking at him gravely from the blankets, his funny old cap still in place on his head, pulled down over his ears.
"Time to wash for breakfast," announced the miner. "But I don't guarantee the washin' will be the kind that mother used to give," and taking his tiny foundling in his arms he carried him out to the basin by the door.
For a moment he looked in doubt at the only apology for a wash-rag the shanty afforded.
"Wal, it's an awful dirty cloth that you can't put a little more blackness on, I reckon," he drawled, and dipping it into the water he rubbed it vigorously across the gasping little fellow's face.
Then, indeed, the man was astounded. A wide streak, white as milk, had appeared on the baby countenance.
"Pierce my pearls!" exclaimed the miner, "if ever I saw a rag in my shack before that would leave a white mark on anything! Say!" And he took off the youngster's old fur cap.
He was speechless for a moment, for the little fellow's hair was as brown as a nut.
"I snum!" said Jim, wiping the wondering little face in a sort of fever of discovery and taking off color at every daub with the rag. "White kid--painted! Ain't an Injun by a thousand miles!"
And this was the truth. A timid little paleface, fair as dawn itself, but smeared with color that was coming away in blotches, emerged from the process of washing and gazed with his big, brown eyes at his foster-parent, in a way that made the miner weak with surprise. Such a pretty and wistful little armful of a boy he was certain had never been seen before in all the world.
"I snum! I certainly snum!" he said again. "I'll have to take you right straight down to the boys!"
At this the little fellow looked at him appealingly. His lip began to tremble.
"No-body--wants--me," he said, in baby accents, "no-body--wants--me--anywhere."
CHAPTER III
THE WAY