"
"I wisht he'd come," said Miss Doc. "I wisht that he was home."
The three men waited near the house for half an hour more, but in vain.
It was then within an hour of midnight. Slowly, at last, they turned
away, but had gone no more than half a dozen rods when they met the
bar-keep, Doc Dennihan, Lufkins the teamster, and four other men of the
camp, who were coming to see if Jim had yet returned.
"I thought he mebbe hadn't come," said Bone, when Webber gave his
report, "but Parky's goin' to try to jump his claim at twelve o'clock,
and we ain't goin' fer to stand it! Come on down to my saloon fer
extry guns and ammunition. We're soon goin' up on the hill to hold the
ledge fer Jim and the poor little kid."
With ominous coupling of the gambler's name with rough and emphatic
language, the ten men marched in a body down the street.
The wind was howling, a door of some deserted shed was dully,
incessantly slamming.
Helplessly Miss Dennihan sat by the bed whereon the tiny pilgrim lay,
now absolutely motionless. The fever had come to its final stage. Dry
of skin, burning through and through, his little mouth parched despite
the touch of cooling water on his lips, the wee mite of a man without a
name, without a home, or a mother, or a single one of the baby things
that make the little folks so joyous, had ceased to struggle, and
ceased at last to call for "Bruvver Jim.
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