"IF ONLY I HAD THE RESOLUTION"
For the next three or four days the tiny bit of a man at Miss Doc's
seemed neither to be worse nor better of his ailment. The hand of
lethargy lay with dulling weight upon him. Old Jim and Miss Dennihan
were baffled, though their tenderness increased and their old animosity
disappeared, forgotten in the stress of care.
That the sister of Doc could develop such a spirit of motherhood
astounded nearly every man in the camp. Accustomed to acerbities of
criticism for their many shortcomings from her ever-pointed tongue,
they marvelled the more at her semi-partnership with Jim, whom of all
the population of the town she had scorned and verbally castigated most
frequently.
Resupplying their tree with candles, the patient fellows had kept alive
their hope of a great day of joy and celebration, only to see it
steadily receding from their view. At length they decided to carry
their presents to the house where the wan little foundling lay,
trusting the sight of their labors of love might cheer him to recovery.
To the utter amazement of her brother, Miss Doc not only permitted the
big, rough men to track the snow through her house, when they came with
their gifts, but she gave them kindly welcome. In her face that day
they readily saw some faint, illusive sign of beauty heretofore
unnoticed, or perhaps concealed.
"He'll come along all right," she told them, with a smile they found to
be singularly sweet, "for Jim do seem a comfort to the poor little
thing."
Old Jim would surely have been glad to believe that he or anything
supplied a comfort to the grave little sick man lying so quietly in
bed. The miner sat by him all day long, and far into every night, only
climbing to his cabin on the hill when necessity drove him away. Then
he was back there in the morning by daylight, eager, but cheerful
always.
The presents were heaped on the floor in sight of the pale little
Skeezucks, who clung unfailingly, through it all, to the funny
makeshift of a doll that "Bruvver Jim" had placed in his keeping. He
appeared not at all to comprehend the meaning of the gifts the men had
brought, or to know their purpose. That never a genuinely happy
Christmas had brightened his little, mysterious life, Miss Dennihan
knew by a swift, keen process of womanly intuition.
"I wisht he wasn't so sad," she said, from time to time. "I expect
he's maybe pinin'."
On the following day there came a change. The little fellow tossed in
his bed with a fever that rose with every hour. With eyes now burning
bright, he scanned the face of the gray old miner and begged for
"Bruvver Jim."
"This is Bruvver Jim," the man assured him repeatedly. "What does baby
want old Jim to do?"
"Bruv-ver--Jim," came the half-sobbed little answer. "Bruv-ver--Jim."
Jim took him up and held him fast in his arms. The weary little mind
had gone to some tragic baby past.
"No-body--wants me--anywhere," he said.
The heart in old Jim was breaking. He crooned a hundred tender
declarations of his foster-parenthood, of his care, of his wish to be a
comfort and a "pard."
But something of the fever now had come between the tiny ears and any
voice of tenderness.
"Bruv-ver--Jim; Bruv-ver--Jim," the little fellow called, time and time
again.
With the countless remedies which her lore embraced, the almost
despairing Miss Doc attempted to allay the rising fever. She made
little drinks, she studied all the bottles in her case of simples with
unremitting attention.
Keno, the always-faithful, was sent to every house in camp, seeking for
anything and everything that might be called a medicine. It was all of
no avail. By the time another day had dawned little Skeezucks was
flaming hot with the fever. He rolled his tiny body in baby delirium,
his feeble little call for "Bruvver Jim" endlessly repeated, with his
sad little cry that no one wanted him anywhere in the world.
In his desperation, Jim was undergoing changes. His face was haggard;
his eyes were ablaze with parental anguish.
"I know a shrub the Injuns sometimes use for fever," he said to Miss
Doc, at last, when he suddenly thought of the aboriginal medicine. "It
grows in the mountains. Perhaps it would do him good."
"I don't know," she answered, at the end of her resources, and she
clasped her hands. "I don't know."
"If only I can git a horse," said Jim, "I might be able to find the
shrub."
He waited, however, by the side of the moaning little pilgrim.
Then, half an hour later, Bone, the bar-keep, came up to see him, in
haste and excitement. They stood outside, where the visitor had called
him for a talk.
"Jim," said Bone, "you're in fer trouble. Parky is goin' to jump your
claim to-night--it bein' New Year's eve, you know--at twelve o'clock.
He told me so himself. He says you 'ain't done assessment, nor you
can't--not now--and you 'ain't got no more right than anybody else to
hold the ground. And so he's meanin' to slap a new location on the
claim the minute this here year is up."
"Wal, the little feller's awful sick," said Jim. "I'm thinkin' of
goin' up in the mountains for some stuff the Injuns sometimes use for
fever."
"You can't go and leave your claim unprotected," said Bone.
"How did Parky happen to tell you his intentions?" said Jim.
"He wanted me to go in with him," Bone replied, flushing hotly at the
bare suggestion of being involved in a trick so mean. "He made me
promise, first, I wouldn't give the game away, but I've got to tell it
to you. I couldn't stand by and see you lose that gold-ledge now."
"To-morrow is New Year's, sure enough," Jim replied, reflectively.
"That mine belongs to little Skeezucks."
"But Parky's goin' to jump it, and he's got a gang of toughs to back
him up."
"I'd hate to lose it, Bone. It would seem hard," said Jim. "But I
ought to go up in the hills to find that shrub. If only I had a horse.
I could go and git back in time to watch the claim."
Bone was clearly impatient.
"Don't git down to the old 'if only' racket now," he said, with heat.
"I busted my word to warn you, Jim, and the claim is worth a fortune to
you and little Skeezucks."
Jim's eyes took on a look of pain.
"But, Bone, if he don't git well," he said--"if he don't git well,
think how I'd feel! Couldn't you get me a horse? If only--"
"Hold on," interrupted Bone, "I'll do all I kin for the poor little
shaver, but I don't expect I can git no horse. I'll go and see, but
the teams has all got the extry stock in harness, fer the roads is
mighty tough, and snow, down the cañon, is up to the hubs of the
wheels. You've got to be back before too late or your claim goes up,
fer, Jim, you know as well as me that Parky's got the right of law!"
"If only I could git that shrub," said Jim, as his friend departed, and
back to the tossing little man he went, worried to the last degree.
Bone was right. The extra horses were all in requisition to haul the
ore to the quartz-mill through a stretch of ten long miles of drifted
snow. Moreover, Jim had once too often sung his old "if-only" cry.
The men of Borealis smiled sadly, as they thought of tiny Skeezucks,
but with doubt of Jim, whose resolutions, statements, promises, had
long before been estimated at their final worth.
"There ain't no horse he could have," said Lufkins, making ready
himself to drive his team of twenty animals through wind and snow to
the mill, "and even if we had a mule, old Jim would never start. It's
comin' on to snow again to-night, and that's too much for Jim."
Bone was not at once discouraged, but in truth he believed, with all
the others, that Jim would no more leave the camp to go forth and
breast the oncoming snow to search the mountains for a shrub than he
would fetch a tree for the Christmas celebration or work good and hard
at his claim.
The bar-keep found no horse. He expected none to be offered, and felt
his labors were wasted. The afternoon was well advanced when he came
again to the home of Miss Doc, where Jim was sitting by the bed whereon
the little wanderer was burning out his life.
"Jim," he said, in his way of bluntness, "there ain't no horse you can
git, but I warned you 'bout the claim, and I don't want to see you lose
it, all fer nothin'."
"He's worse," said Jim, his eyes wildly blazing with love for the
fatherless, motherless little man. "If only I had the resolution,
Bone, I'd go and git that shrub on foot."
"You'd lose yer claim," said Bone.
Miss Doc came out to the door where they stood. She was wringing her
hands.
"Jim," she said, "if you think you kin, anyhow, git that Injun stuff,
why don't you go and git it?"
Jim looked at her fixedly. Not before had he known that she felt the
case to be so nearly hopeless. 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.