Philip Verrill Mighels - Bruvver Jim\'s Baby
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Philip Verrill Mighels >> Bruvver Jim\'s Baby
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10 BRUVVER JIM'S BABY
BY
PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS MCMIV
Copyright, 1904, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Published May, 1904.
This Volume is
Dedicated, with much affection, to
My Mother
CONTENTS
I. A MIGHTY LITTLE HUNTER
II. JIM MAKES DISCOVERIES
III. THE WAY TO MAKE A DOLL
IV. PLANNING A NEW CELEBRATION
V. VISITORS AT THE CABIN
VI. THE BELL FOR CHURCH
VII. THE SUNDAY HAPPENINGS
VIII. OLD JIM DISTRAUGHT
IX. THE GUILTY MISS DOC
X. PREPARATIONS FOR CHRISTMAS
XI. TROUBLES AND DISCOVERIES
XII. THE MAKING OF A CHRISTMAS-TREE
XIII. THEIR CHRISTMAS-DAY
XIV. "IF ONLY I HAD THE RESOLUTION"
XV. THE GOLD IN BOREALIS
XVI. ARRIVALS IN CAMP
XVII. SKEEZUCKS GETS A NAME
XVIII. WHEN THE PARSON DEPARTED
XIX. OLD JIM'S RESOLUTION
XX. IN THE TOILS OF THE BLIZZARD
XXI. A BED IN THE SNOW
XXII. CLEANING THEIR SLATE
XXIII. A DAY OF JOY
BRUVVER JIM'S BABY
CHAPTER I
A MIGHTY LITTLE HUNTER
It all commenced that bright November day of the Indian rabbit drive
and hunt. The motley army of the Piute tribe was sweeping tremendously
across a sage-brush valley of Nevada, their force two hundred braves in
number. They marched abreast, some thirty yards apart, and formed a
line that was more than two miles long.
The spectacle presented was wonderful to see. Red, yellow, and indigo
in their blankets and trappings, the hunters dotted out a line of color
as far as sight could reach. Through the knee-high brush they swept
ahead like a firing-line of battle, their guns incessantly booming,
their advance never halted, their purpose as grim and inexorable as
fate itself. Indeed, Death, the Reaper, multiplied two-hundred-fold
and mowing a swath of incredible proportions, could scarcely have
pillaged the land of its conies more thoroughly.
Before the on-press of the two-mile wall of red men with their smoking
weapons, the panic-stricken rabbits scurried helplessly. Soon or late
they must double back to their burrows, soon or late they must
therefore die.
Behind the army, fully twenty Indian ponies, ridden by the
youngster-braves of the cavalcade, were bearing great white burdens of
the slaughtered hares.
The glint of gun-barrels, shining in the sun, flung back the light,
from end to end of the undulating column. Billows of smoke,
out-puffing unexpectedly, anywhere and everywhere along the line,
marked down the tragedies where desperate bunnies, scudding from cover
and racing up or down before the red men, were targets for fiercely
biting hail of lead from two or three or more of the guns at once.
And nearly as frightened as the helpless creatures of the brush was a
tiny little pony-rider, back of the army, mounted on a plodding horse
that was all but hidden by its load of furry game. He was riding
double, this odd little bit of a youngster, with a sturdy Indian boy
who was on in front. That such a timid little dot of manhood should
have been permitted to join the hunt was a wonder. He was apparently
not more than three years old at the most. With funny little trousers
that reached to his heels, with big brown eyes all eloquent of doubt,
and with round, little, copper-colored cheeks, impinged upon by an old
fur cap he wore, pulled down over forehead and ears, he appeared about
as quaint a little man as one could readily discover.
But he seemed distressed. And how he did hang on! The rabbits secured
upon the pony were crowding him backward most alarmingly. At first he
had clung to the back of his fellow-rider's shirt with all the might
and main of his tiny hands. As the burden of the rabbits had
increased, however, the Indian hunters had piled them in between the
timid little scamp and his sturdier companion, till now he was almost
out on the horse's tail. His alarm had, therefore, become
overwhelming. No fondness for the nice warm fur of the bunnies, no
faith in the larger boy in front, could suffice to drive from his tiny
face the look of woe unutterable, expressed by his eyes and his
trembling little mouth.
The Indians, marching steadily onward, had come to the mountain that
bounded the plain. Already a score were across the road that led to
the mining-camp of Borealis, and were swarming up the sandy slope to
complete the mighty swing of the army, deploying anew to sweep far
westward through the farther half of the valley, and so at length
backward whence they came.
The tiny chap of a game-bearer, gripping the long, velvet ears of one
of the jack-rabbits tied to his horse, felt a horrid new sensation of
sliding backward when the pony began to follow the hunters up the hill.
Not only did the animal's rump seem to sink beneath him as they took
the slope, but perspiration had made it amazingly smooth and insecure.
The big fat rabbits rolled against the desperate little man in a
ponderous heap. The feet of one fell plump in his face, and seemed to
kick, with the motion of the horse. Then a buckskin thong abruptly
snapped in twain, somewhere deep in the bundle, and instantly the ears
to which the tiny man was clinging, together with the head and body of
that particular rabbit, and those of several others as well, parted
company with the pony. Gracefully they slid across the tail of the
much-relieved creature, and, pushing the tiny rider from his seat, they
landed with him plump upon the earth, and were left behind.
Unhurt, but nearly buried by the four or five rabbits thus pulled from
the load by his sudden descent from his perch, the dazed little fellow
sat up in the sand and solemnly noted the rapid departure of the Indian
army--pony, companion, and all.
Not only had his fall been unobserved by the marching braves, but the
boy with whom he had just been riding was blissfully unaware of the
fact that something behind had dismounted. The whole vast line of
Piute braves pressed swiftly on. The shots boomed and clattered, as
the hill-sides were startled by the echoes. Red, yellow, indigo--the
blankets and trappings were momentarily growing less and less distinct.
More distant became the firing. Onward, ever onward, swung the great,
long column of the hunters. Dully, then even faintly, came the noise
of the guns.
At last the firing could be heard no more. The two hundred warriors,
the ponies, the boys that rode--all were gone. Even the rabbits, that
an hour before had scampered here and there in the brush with their
furry feet, would never again go pattering through the sand. The sun
shone warmly down. The great world of valley and mountains, gray,
severe, unpeopled, was profoundly still, in that wonderful way of the
dying year, when even the crickets and locusts have ceased to sing.
Clinging in silence to the long, soft ears of his motionless bunny, the
timid little game-bearer sat there alone, big-eyed and dumb with wonder
and childish alarm. He could see not far, unless it might be up the
hill, for the sage-brush grew above his head and circumscribed his
view. Miles and miles away, however, the mountains, in majesty of rock
and snow, were sharply lifting upward into blue so deep and cloudless
that its intimate proximity to the infinite was impressively manifest.
The day was sweet of the ripeness of the year, and virginal as all that
mighty land itself.
With two of the rabbits across his lap, the tiny hunter made no effort
to rise. It was certainly secure to be sitting here in the sand, for
at least a fellow could fall no farther, and the good, big mountain was
not so impetuous or nervous as the pony.
An hour went by and the mere little mite of a man had scarcely moved.
The sun was slanting towards the southwest corner of the universe. A
flock of geese, in a great changing V, flew slowly over the valley,
their wings beating gold from the sunlight, their honk! honk! honk! the
note of the end of the year.
How soon they were gone! Then indeed all the earth was abandoned to
the quiet little youngster and his still more quiet company of rabbits.
There was no particular reason for moving. Where should he go, and how
could he go, did he wish to leave? To carry his bunny would be quite
beyond his strength; to leave him here would be equally beyond his
courage.
But the sun was edging swiftly towards its hiding place; the frost of
the mountain air was quietly sharpening its teeth. Already the long,
gray shadow of the sage-brush fell like a cooling film across the
little fellow's form and face.
Homeless, unmissed, and deserted, the tiny man could do nothing but sit
there and wait. The day would go, the twilight come, and the night
descend--the night with its darkness, its whispered mysteries, its
wailing coyotes, cruising in solitary melancholy hither and thither in
their search for food.
But the sun was still wheeling, like a brazen disk, on the rim of the
hills, when something occurred. A tall, lanky man, something over
forty years of age, as thin as a hammer and dusty as the road itself--a
man with a beard and a long, gray, drooping mustache, and with drooping
clothes--a man selected by shiftlessness to be its sign and mark--a
miner in boots and overalls and great slouch hat--came tramping down a
trail of the mountain. He was holding in his dusty arms a yellowish
pup, that squirmed and wriggled and tried to lap his face, and
comported himself in pup-wise antics, till his master was presently
obliged to put him down in self-defence.
The pup knew his duty, as to racing about, bumping into bushes,
snorting in places where game might abide, and thumping everything he
touched with his super-active tail. Almost immediately he scented
mysteries in plenty, for Indian ponies and hunters had left a fine,
large assortment of trails in the sand, that no wise pup could consent
to ignore.
With yelps of gladness and appreciation, the pup went awkwardly
knocking through the brush, and presently halted--bracing abruptly with
his clumsy paws--amazed and confounded by the sight of a frightened
little red-man, sitting with his rabbits in the sand.
For a second the dog was voiceless. Then he let out a bark that made
things jump, especially the tiny man and himself.
"Here, come here, Tintoretto," drawlingly called the man from the
trail. "Come back here, you young tenderfoot."
But Tintoretto answered that he wouldn't. He also said, in the
language of puppy barks, that important discoveries demanded not only
his but his master's attention where he was, forthwith.
There was nothing else for it; the mountain was obliged to come to
Mohammed--or the man to the pup. Then the miner, no less than
Tintoretto, was astonished.
To ward off the barking, the red little hunter had raised his arm
across his face, but his big brown eyes were visible above his hand,
and their childish seriousness appealed to the man at once.
"Well, cut my diamonds if it ain't a kid!" drawled he. "Injun
pappoose, or I'm an elk! Young feller, where'd you come from, hey?
What in mischief do you think you're doin' here?"
The tiny "Injun" made no reply. Tintoretto tried some puppy addresses.
He gave a little growl of friendship, and, clambering over rabbits and
all, began to lick the helpless child on the face and hands with
unmistakable cordiality. One of the rabbits fell and rolled over.
Tintoretto bounded backward in consternation, only to gather his
courage almost instantly upon him and bark with lusty defiance.
"Shut up, you anermated disturbance," commanded his owner, mildly.
"You're enough to scare the hair off an elephant," and, squatting in
front of the wondering child, he looked at him pleasantly. "What you
up to, young feller, sittin' here by yourself?" he inquired. "Scared?
Needn't be scared of brother Jim, I reckon. Say, you 'ain't been left
here for good? I saw the gang of Injuns, clean across the country,
from up on the ridge. It must be the last of their drives. That it?
And you got left?"
The little chap looked up at him seriously and winked his big, brown
eyes, but he shut his tiny mouth perhaps a trifle tighter than before.
As a matter of fact, the miner expected some such stoical silence.
The pup, for his part, was making advances of friendship towards the
motionless rabbits.
"Wal, say, Piute," added Jim, after scanning the country with his
kindly eyes, "I reckon you'd better go home with me to Borealis. The
Injuns wouldn't look to find you now, and you can't go on settin' here
a waitin' for pudding and gravy to pass up the road for dinner. What
do you say? Want to come with me and ride on the outside seat to
Borealis?"
Considerably to the man's amazement the youngster nodded a timid
affirmative.
"By honky, Tintoretto, I'll bet he savvies English as well as you,"
said Jim. "All right, Borealis or bust! I reckon a man who travels
twenty miles to git him a pup, and comes back home with you and this
here young Piute, is as good as elected to office. Injun, what's your
name?"
The tiny man apparently had nothing to impart by way of an answer.
"'Ain't got any, maybe," commented Jim. "What's the matter with me
namin' you, hey? Suppose I call you Aborigineezer? All in favor, ay!
Contrary minded? Carried unanimously and the motion prevails."
The child, for some unaccountable reason, seemed appalled.
"We can't freight all them rabbits," decided the miner. "And,
Tintoretto, you are way-billed to do some walkin'."
He took up the child, who continued to cling to the ears of his one
particular hare. As all the jacks were tied together, all were lifted
and were dangling down against the miner's legs.
"Huh! you can tell what some people want by the way they hang right
on," said Jim. "Wal, no harm in lettin' you stick to one. We can eat
him for dinner to-morrow, I guess, and save his hide in the bargain."
He therefore cut the buckskin thong and all but one of the rabbits fell
to the earth, on top of Tintoretto, who thought he was climbed upon by
half a dozen bears. He let out a yowp that scared himself half into
fits, and, scooting from under the danger, turned about and flung a
fearful challenge of barking at the prostrate enemy.
"Come on, unlettered ignoramus," said his master, and, holding the
wondering little foundling on his arm, with his rabbit still clutched
by the ears, he proceeded down to the roadway, scored like a narrow
gray streak through the brush, and plodded onward towards the
mining-camp of Borealis.
CHAPTER II
JIM MAKES DISCOVERIES
It was dark and there were five miles of boot-tracks and seven miles of
pup-tracks left in the sand of the road when Jim, Tintoretto, and
Aborigineezer came at length to a point above the small constellation
of lights that marked the spot where threescore of men had builded a
town.
From the top of the ridge they had climbed, the man and the pup alone
looked down on the camp, for the weary little "Injun" had fallen
asleep. Had he been awake, the all to be seen would have been of
little promise. Great, sombre mountains towered darkly up on every
side, roofed over by an arch of sky amazingly brilliant with stars.
Below, the darkness was the denser for the depth of the hollow in the
hills. Vaguely the one straight street of Borealis was indicated by
the lamps, like a thin Milky Way in a meagre universe of lesser lights,
dimly glowing and sparsely scattered on the rock-strewn acclivities.
From down there came the sounds of life. Half-muffled music, raucous
singing, blows of a hammer, yelpings of a dog, hissing of steam
escaping somewhere from a boiler--all these and many other disturbances
of the night furnished a microcosmic medley of the toiling, playing,
hoping, and fearing, where men abide, creating that frailest and yet
most enduring of frailties--a human community.
The sight of his town could furnish no novelties to the miner on top of
the final rise, and feeling somewhat tired by the weight of his small
companion, as well as hungry from his walking, old Jim skirted the
rocky slope as best he might, and so came at length to an isolated
cabin.
This dark little house was built in the brush, quite up on the hill
above the town, and not far away from a shallow ravine where a trickle
of water from a spring had encouraged a straggling growth of willows,
alders, and scrub. Some four or five acres of hill-side about the
place constituted the "Babylonian Glory" mining-claim, which Jim
accounted his, and which had seen about as much of his labor as might
be developed by digging for gold in a barrel.
"Nobody home," said the owner to his dog, as he came to the door and
shouldered it open. "Wal, all the more for us."
That any one might have been at home in the place was accounted for
simply by the fact that certain worthies, playing in and out of luck,
as the wheel of fate might turn them down or up, sometimes lived with
Jim for a month at a time, and sometimes left him in solitude for
weeks. One such transient partner he had left at the cabin when he
started off to get the pup now tagging at his heels. This
house-partner, having departed, might and might not return, either now,
a week from now, or ever.
The miner felt his way across the one big room which the shack
afforded, and came to a series of bunks, built like a pantry against
the wall. Into one of these he rolled his tiny foundling, after which
he lighted a candle that stood in a bottle, and revealed the smoky
interior of the place.
Three more of the bunks were built in the eastern end of the room; a
fireplace occupied a portion of the wall against the hill; a table
stood in the centre of the floor, and a number of mining tools littered
a corner. Cooking utensils were strewn on the table liberally, while
others hung against the wall or depended from hooks in the chimney.
This was practically all there was, but the place was home.
Tintoretto, beholding his master preparing a fire to heat up some food,
delved at once into everything and every place where a wet little nose
could be thrust. Having snorted in the dusty corners, he trotted to
the bench whereon the water-bucket stood, and, standing on his hind
legs, gratefully lapped up a drink from the pail. His thirst appeased,
he clambered ambitiously into one of the bunks, discovered a nice pair
of boots, and, dragging 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 TO MAKE A DOLL
For a moment after the quaint little pilgrim had spoken, the miner
stared at him almost in awe. Had a gold nugget dropped at his feet
from the sky his amazement could scarcely have been greater.
"What's that?" he said. "Nobody wants you, little boy? What's the
matter with me and the pup?" And taking the tiny chap up in his arms
he sat in the doorway and held him snugly to his rough, old heart and
rocked back and forth, in a tumult of feeling that nothing could
express.
"Little pard," he said, "you bet me and Tintoretto want you, right
here."
For his part, Tintoretto thumped the house and the step and the miner's
shins with the clumsy tail that was wagging his whole puppy body. Then
he clambered up and pushed his awkward paws in the little youngster's
face, and licked his ear and otherwise overwhelmed him with attentions,
till his master pushed him off. At this he growled and began to chew
the big, rough hand that suppressed his demonstrations.
In lieu of the ears of the rabbit to which he had clung throughout the
night, the silent little man on the miner's knee was holding now to
Jim's enormous fist, which he found conveniently supplied. He said
nothing more, and for quite a time old Jim was content to watch his
baby face.
"A white little kid--that nobody wants--but me and Tintoretto," he
mused, aloud, but to himself. "Where did you come from, pardner,
anyhow?"
The tiny foundling made no reply. He simply looked at the thin, kindly
face of his big protector in his quaint, baby way, but kept his solemn
little mouth peculiarly closed.
The miner tried a score of questions, tenderly, coaxingly, but never a
thing save that confident clinging to his hand and a nod or a shake of
the head resulted.
By some means, quite his own, the man appeared to realize that the
grave little fellow had never prattled as children usually do, and that
what he had said had been spoken with difficulties, only overcome by
stress of emotion. The mystery of whence a bit of a boy so tiny could
have come, and who he was, especially after his baby statement that
nobody wanted him, anywhere, remained unbroken, after all the miner's
queries. Jim was at length obliged to give it up.
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