Despair took a grip on his vitals. A
something of sympathy leaped from the woman's heart to his--a something
common to them both--in the yearning that a helpless child had stirred.
"I'll get my hat and go," he said, and he went in the house, to appear
almost instantly, putting on the battered hat, but clothed far too
thinly for the rigors of the weather.
"But, Jim, it's beginning to snow, right now," objected Bone.
"I may get back before it's dark," old Jim replied.
"I can see you're goin' to lose the claim," insisted Bone.
"I'm goin' to git that shrub!" said Jim. "I won't come back till I git
that shrub."
He started off through the gate at the back of the house, his long,
lank figure darkly cut against the background of the white that lay
upon the slope. A flurry of blinding snow came suddenly flying on the
wind. It wrapped him all about and hid him in its fury, and when the
calmer falling of the flakes commenced he had disappeared around the
shoulder of the hill.
CHAPTER XV
THE GOLD IN BOREALIS
The men to whom the bar-keep told the story of Jim and his start into
the mountains smiled again. The light in their eyes was half of
affection and half of concern. They could not believe the shiftless
old miner would long remain away in the snow and wind, where more than
simple resolution was required to keep a man afoot.
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