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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.

But early that night the teamster, Lufkins, was startled by the neighing of a horse, and when he came to the stable, there was the half-blinded animal on which old Jim and tiny Skeezucks had ridden away in the morning the empty saddle still upon his back. The great stout ore-wagons stood in the snow that lay on the Borealis street, with never a horse or a mule to keep them company.

"Seems to me," said Bone, "a candle or just a plain, unvarnished light, would 'a' went out. It must have bin a lantern." "Objection well taken," responded Jim, gravely. "I reckon I got it turned 'round a minute ago. It was more like: "'Lead me on, kindly lantern, For I am far from home, And the night is dark." "It don't sound like a song not exactly," ventured Lufkins.

"I know," responded the blacksmith, squatting down before the anvil. "Little Skeezucks, who made you?" The quaint little fellow looked at the brawny man timidly. How pale, how wee he appeared in all that company, as he sat on the great lump of iron, solemnly winking his big, brown eyes and clinging to his make-shift of a doll! "Aw, say, give him something easy," said Lufkins.

A run on bear's-grease and hair-oil lent a shining halo to nearly every head the camp could boast. Then the groups began to gather near the open shop of the smith. "We'd ought to have a bell," suggested Lufkins, the teamster. "Churches always ring the bell to let the parson know it's time he was showin' up to start the ball." "Well, I'll string up a bar of steel," said Webber.

"It ain't so much that," said Field, "but I shouldn't wonder if his father, or some other feller just as good, came and took him off." "Of course his father would have the right," said Jim, haltingly, "but I wish he hadn't let me find him first. You fellows are sure you ain't a-foolin'?" "We couldn't have done it not on Sunday after church," said Lufkins. "No, Jim, we wouldn't fool that way."

"Well, I can't make so much in the way of fancy fixin's, but you jest wait and see," said another. The blacksmith darkly hinted at wonders evolving beneath the curly abundance of his hair, and Lufkins likewise kept his purposes to himself. "I s'pose we'd ought to have a tree," said Jim. "We could make a Christmas-tree look like the Garden of Eden before Mrs. Adam began to eat the ornaments."

Then at last a shout, and a shot from a pistol, sped to the farthest limits of the line of searching riders and prodded every drop of sluggish blood within them to a swift activity. The shout and signal had come from Webber, the blacksmith, riding a big, bay mare. Instantly Field, Bone, and Lufkins galloped to where he was swinging out of his saddle.

"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."

Webber, the blacksmith; Lufkins, the teamster; Bone, the "barkeep"; Dunn, the carpenter, and Field, who had first discovered precious ore at Borealis, and sold out his claims for a gold watch and chain which subsequently proved to be brass all these and many another shining light of the camp could be counted in the modest assemblage gathered together to have a look at the "kid" just reported by Keno.