[Philip Verrill Mighels, A Little Pioneer, Harper's Monthly Magazine, May 1905]

 

A Little Pioneer

BY PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS

            ON the autumn day when Nick McKey came driving the bimonthly stage, full four days late, into Poco del Oro mining-camp, with a wee small child, hardly three years of age, on the seat up top beside his dusty knee, the trials, tribulations, and perplexities of the insignificant community were instantly augmented,—for the new-come little pilgrim was a girl.

            McKey approached the town in the late afternoon, when the toilers were nearly all come down from their hillside mining-holes and the major portion of the camp's inhabitants had focussed in and about the grocery-post-office-saloon.

            They took a quick, sharp look at a sight such as never had been seen in the camp before— the dusty Nick with a dusty little blue-clad figure at his side, as the four dusty horses and the dusty coach came toiling up the final climb of the highway to halt at length in their midst. And the tiny passenger was as smiling and winning a bit of innocent, delighted femininity as any one could desire.

            " Well," said a voice, " I'll be damned !"

            "Civilization!" yelled another. "Hurray fer McKey, a-fetchin' us civilization!"

            " Whoa!" commanded the driver, kicking on his brake. " Shut up, you Grigg; you're scarin' the team. What's eatin' you, man? This ain't nuthin' but that there William Scott's little gal, come by reg'lar express, accordin' to orders."

            " Scott's little— Oh!" said a small, bearded man at the wheel of the stage. " Why, Nick, I'd clean forgot. He sent to have her come, of course; he told me all about it, Nick; but, say—poor Scott!—he died a week ago, and natchelly you knowed nothin' about it."

            An inarticulate chorus of murmurs in the crowd made the silence that followed peculiarly intense.

            "Dead?" repeated McKey at last. "I've fetched her here, all alone in the world, and the little gal's father is dead! Scott? Then he wasn't as strong as he looked."

            " He was thin as a pick," imparted the small man, speaking with suppressed emotion. " It was pluck made him look kind of strong. . . . By gingerbread! Nick, I wonder what we're goin' for to do?"

            "'Bout what?" inquired a teamster. " He's buried, Tom, best we could on the money. What more can we do?"

            " I was thinkin' of this here little express passenger," answered Tom; " the little gal, arrove here all alone."

            Those of the men who were not already gazing at the child on the seat above their heads now directed their attention to her unanimously. From such a broadside of masculine glances as she now found herself receiving the little thing shrank a trifle against the arm of McKey, whom she seemed to regard as an institution of security and trust. Despite her slight confusion, however, she smiled upon every kindly-looking person in the group. And what a wonderful bright-brown pair of eyes they were from which she smiled !—roguish, challenging, trustful, unafraid, and lustrous as jewels newly fashioned. Her two little chubby hands were busily twisting the hem of her dusty blue dress, her two chubby legs were straight out before her, the worn little shoes projecting over the edge of the cushion. On her head she wore a faded brown woollen hood, beneath the edge of which the brightest and lightest old-gold curl of hair was prettily waiting to dance. Alone in the mountains with all these men, she seemed as happy and as friendly as if her one possible baby-wish had been granted at once by the goddess of chance. That she could not know of her losses and her plight, could not comprehend the talk of the men who blurted out the truth, was, as a matter of fact, the one touch of mercy so far vouchsafed her helpless babyhood.

SHE SMILED UPON EVERY KINDLY-LOOKING PERSON IN THE GROUP

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            "Kind of a bully little gal," ventured one of the miners.

            " Of course she's a bully little gal," replied the bearded Tom Devoe. " But, Scott bein' gone—"

            " That's it," interrupted the driver from his seat. " Scott bein' gone, who's a-goin' to take the kid and pay? There's two hundred dollars express charges for bringin' her in from that Utah camp, for it's near three hundred miles of stagin', and her sent forward by fast express, and ' handle with care' told every driver, special. Did Scott leave the money, Tom, for to pay the company's charges?"

            " He didn't leave money enough to pay for all we done to make the funeral look like the genuine article," imparted Devoe. "I don't know why be sent for the pore little gal, except I guess there was nothin' else to do; and of course he didn't reckon on cashin' in his stack so sudden. You see, he never had no luck, anyhow. Him and his pretty young wife struck out from down in Ohio, four years ago, for to emigrant acrost the plains and git to the mines with a load of things to sell and make a stake—and they jest about had a hell of a time, accordin' to some ways of thinkin'."

            "Don't be swearin' before the little gal," cautioned the driver, who had " cussed" his team over forty miles of mountain ruggedness. " Go kind of decent,—anyways for a starter. With a boy kid everybody knows it's diff'rent. That's all, Tom; go on with your rat-killin'."

            " Scuse me," answered Tom. "Well, as I was sayin', first Scott got sick, then his wife was kind of ailin', and up and had a little gal baby out on the plains. Then—"

            "This here little gal?" interrupted Grigg. "Little Civilization?"

            " Yep—same child. Then after that they lost two horses in the fordin', and some of their freight was burned at night by Injuns, and some was traded off for hay and grub, and a lot went to square off the doctor when the baby come along,— and Scott said they'd 'a' bin mighty glad to trade it all for her; and it took them near three years, after that, to git to a camp in Utah. and that's where they quit a-goin' for a while, till Scott got promise of a job out here in the Poco d'Oro mines, and—"

            "Rottonest 'pology for mines I ever see," interpolated a listener.

            " Well, I don't know," answered Tom. " Point is, Scott come on, leavin' his wife and little gal behind, fer safety and fam'ly comfort, over to that Utah camp—and it pretty soon no good to stay in, after the strike at Thunder River; and then he's gittin' news that Mrs. Scott was sick, and later she was dead, and the baby took by strangers. So Scott he sent to have her come, and here she is."

            " Yes—and two hundred dollars express charges, c. o. d.," added McKey. " And who's a-goin' to pungle up the same?"

            There were many " ahems " to break an otherwise impressive silence.

            " Well, I don't see how you can take her back—no place to take her," ventured Devoe. " Too pretty to take back, anyhow. I'd hate to see you takin' the little thing away," and he looked at the child with a species of hunger in his eyes. "I ain't jest got the money," Tom confessed. "If there's anybody else—" and he looked about in the knot of men, only to find the attention of each one suddenly engrossed with something personal.

            Unfortunately, Poco del Oro had been more or less of a false alarm. Its wealth was still to be uncovered. Its first excitement had been dead a year, and many of its early population had departed. There was not a single family of man, wife, and children in the place. There was one good young woman remaining—Mistress Nancy Dunn, the daughter of Dunn who hauled in wood from the habitable world,—and she had said her nay to the marriage proposal of nearly every man in town. To little Tom Devoe she had answered thus no less than thrice, on the last occasion lending a species of emphasis to her decision by dashing a bucketful of water in her suitor's face, —with water at ten cents a gallon.

            Tom was reflectively dwelling on Nancy's charms, despite his recent discouragements. He even saw new glimmerings of hope as he gazed fondly up at Scott's little gal, smiling in coyness down upon him.

            " Well—Nick—if only—I could borrow the money, why, perhaps—" he faltered, and again he left his sentence in the air.

            " Borry? Haw !" said a voice, and a few men guffawed.

A LITTLE PIONEER.            831

            " What's her name?" inquired a spectator.

            " Nancy," answered Tom, in his passing abstraction.

            " Haw!" repeated that raucous voice.

            " We know 'bout that old game; but I mean the little gal's," explained the interrogator. " What's the little gal's name?"

            "Her folks," said Devoe, " they named her Prairie, fer where she was born. She's a regular little pioneer; and I'd hate to see her took away from here."

            "Cash down, or return the shipment—them's the orders on all the c. o. d.'s," observed the driver, once again. " I ain't been drivin' long, perhaps, but I know the rules—sometimes. So, Tom, if you want to keep the little passenger—"

            "I'd like to see her stay, first rate," said Tom, whose hunger for children was growing apace. " There's no place to take her if you fetch her back. . . . Say, Nick, couldn't you leave her on thirty days' trial? Regular thing for every express to leave things on trial. You see, you could leave little Prairie that way, and after thirty days—why, either we'd pay the two hundred, or— We'd know more about things than we know jest now, dead sure. You see, Nick, it ain't like as if 'twas a boy. You never can tell about gals. But you jest leave her with me on thirty days' trial, for fun."

            Nick scratched the back of his head.

            " It sounds like it might be 'cordin' to some of the rules I've heard," said he. " I know I've heard 'bout sech an arrangement somewheres or other; but, Tom, I'd have to ask Barney to ask ole Pete to ask young Tomkins to ask the company's agent, down to the end of Stetson's run."

            " All right," Tom agreed. " You can leave her with me on that understandin'."

            The tiny passenger, sitting all this while at the driver's side, was duly removed from the seat. She stuck like a bur to McKey's dusty coat and had to be taken off with care. Nevertheless, as a bur will stick impartially to the very next garment presenting an opportunity, she adhered to the faded green of Devoe's old vest with ready cheer and friendliness, looking back at the driver without a reproach from her newly acquired situation.

            A subtle ecstasy spread throughout Tom Devoe's being as he felt the warm little burden on his arm; and away to his nine-by-eleven shack he trudged, in an atmosphere of ownership and triumph.

            The time for men to become solicitous concerning the management of property is the moment in which some other individual acquires the property in question. There were six worthy citizens of Poco del Oro whose growing anxiety over the rearing of little Prairie Scott became so acute, that very first evening of the tiny girl's arrival, that a visit to her newest home became absolutely imperative. They moved on the cabin in a body.

            The shack was half a dugout, half a structure, the front elevation being fashioned of barrel - staves, cleverly lapped and securely hammered to a framework of beams. It possessed a window with a broken glass, and a solid maple door, brought straight from New York by way of San Francisco and the isthmus, and sold to build a house around in any known style of the art. A dim red light was shown in the window as the men came boldly to the place. Just at the moment of their arrival a fearful din and clatter within the cabin abruptly assaulted the silence.

            " There!" said the muffled voice of Tom. " Ain't you busy ?"

            The men went in. Little Prairie was there. She had just succeeded in dragging down a large collection of pots and pans, all of them laden with rich, greasy soot. For herself, she was generously daubed with black from head to foot, particularly as to hands and face.

            Tom was looking at her helplessly. He seemed relieved at beholding the number and size of his visitors.

            " Darn'tlest little kid I ever saw," said he. " She's burned up one of my boots already, and spoiled my dress-up pants, and broke my gun. Awful healthy little kid—'awful ambitious and willin'. . . But she sort of likes old Tom."

            The little object of his summary appeared to comprehend that something was due to Tom by way of establishing her compensating virtues. She came towards him enthusiastically and threw her arms about his knees.

            " Baby—yoves — ole — Tom," she an-

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nounced, in broken accents of sincerity. " Baby—do—yove—ole—Tom."

            Tom caught her up, and she clutched his beard in both her sooty hands, and smiled in his eyes bewitchingly.

            "It's lucky your house is pretty strong," remarked one of the visiting contingent. "I kin see you're goin' to raise her up deestructive."

            " You can't begin readin' her nice gentle stories a minute too soon," added another. " Have you got the Bunion's Progress, by a feller named Mr. Christian ?"

            " Readin'?" said the camp's profoundest pessimist, scornfully. " What she wants is work. Leave her chop the wood; that 'll gentle her down."

            " Say! do you think this child is another of thenm ' dead-from-workin' wives of your'n ?" demanded Devoe, indignantly. "If you fellers came here to pesterfy and try to run the show, why, you're jest a mite too late, boys. Savvy? I reckon this here cat-hop kind of elects me general sup'intendent."

            Civilization Grigg was one of the visitors. He stood there in rapture, gazing on the child, his nature yearning for a small caress, such as Tom was now receiving.

            " We only come to offer a few kind and useful suggestions," he now explained. " That's all."

            " You can leave out the kind ones," Tom replied. " I never heard no ' kind ' suggestions yet that wasn't ground pretty sharp on two or three edges."

            " Biggest lot of cheek I ever see," grumbled the pessimist. " If it gits any bigger it'll crowd the mountains off the camp."

            " Well, don't you hang around and git made uncomfortable when it happens," answered Devoe. " How about that, little honey ?"

            " Baby—do—yove—ole—Tom," the tot repeated, smearing his neck with a sooty essence of her growing affection as she gave him an enviable hug.

            Those of the men who had not discovered seats upon arriving now sat in the bunk at the end of the room. Four of the half-dozen visitors were desperately seining their minds to net some small remark that would sound as if they really knew a baby from a grindstone.

            " Well—'hem !" said Billy Partridge, the smallest man in town,—" the only thing I thought of, Tom, was the climate. Are you dead-certain sure this climate is just exactly right to raise up a girl youngster into?"

            " Certain!" said Tom, with ready conviction. "Climate is generally pretty decent anywheres till it gits sort of sp'iled by too many people cussin' at it, night and day. But there ain't men or wimmin enough in all Nevady yet to swear this climate sour."

            " I ain't seen a baby for so long, I couldn't tell laughin' from cryin'," confessed big Dan White. " I used to know how to hold one, Tom, and maybe I ain't forgot." He came towards little Prairie tentatively. " Want to take an assay of me?" he inquired, and he held forth his arms invitingly.

            The youngster looked at him gravely, then snuggled coyly up to Tom and smiled like a born coquette.

            "Guess not," decided Dan; but no sooner were his arms again at his side than Prairie made overtures to lure him hack. He took her, somewhat clumsily, and yet with a knowledge of the business. Then, when he had her, he knew not what to say.

            " You're doin' pretty fancy, Miss Scott," he informed her presently, and carried her over to the window.

            Tom commenced to restore a semblance of order in the cabin.

            " A woman ain't never so young she can't raise hell in about two minutes," he observed, as a generalization, and sagely he added, " That's one of the reasons we like 'em."

" Bad sign when a gal kid takes too sudden to strangers," grumbled the pessimist. " When I was a child—"

            " You never was no child," interrupted Devoe. " You was born so old you was already gittin' fermented."

            Dan White had thought of another bit of information to impart to little Prairie.

            " Miss Scott, this weather is gen'ral throughout the United States and Canady," said he; "raw, with westerly wind."

            " Yes, and that reminds me, I've got to cut up some wearin' apparel and make her a warm woollen dress," said the practical Tom, who thereupon produced scissors, needles, thread, a sailmaker's

A LITTLE PIONEER.            833

"palm," in lieu of a thimble, and the faded magenta garment he had in his mind to convert to brand-new usefulness. "I long ago found out," he concluded, "that charity often begins at the tail of a shirt that's worn out higher up."

            He now had White place the youngster on the floor while he "sized her up" for the dress that was to be. She started away, when the measuring was finished, to make her fiftieth tour of the cabin.

            "Regular born prospector," Tom observed, as he watched her going. " Never saw her equal in the world. Samples everything in sight in about two bats of your eye."

            The small "pioneer" stumbled flat across some obstruction on the floor, but was not in the least disconcerted. She stood on her head and feet for a moment, regaining her perpendicular in youngster fashion, and finding that one of her shoes was holding down a soft, dark something that she wanted, she stood there solidly and pulled at the object with all her sturdy might. It presently tore, and so came up about her chubby leg, her foot having cleaved through the substance. Encased as it were in this ring that would not release her knee, she approached her foster-father laboriously.

            " Tate it off," she requested. " Tom, tate it off."

            " What is it, then ?" said the busy Tom. " Why—it must be somebody's hat !"

            The pessimist snatched it, somewhat excitedly. " Mine—and plumb ruined forever!" he said. "Stay here? me?—in your shack, with such a child as that? Not for a million in gold! A terrible, devastatin' scourge!" and out of the cabin, in anger, he went, and slammed the door behind him.

            But the others, when they finally departed from the shack, went forth with a quieter spirit.

            " You mark my word, the wonderful men was all of 'em little," said Partridge. " There was little old Bony Napoleon, and now here's Tom Devoe."

            No corner of the earth is so remote that a man may forever escape a visit from desperation. Even Tom Devoe was receiving marked attentions from this brother-in-fact of common worry.

            It was not in the matter of sewing, cooking, or amusing that Tom found his resources lacking; it all lay in something ascribable to things feminine that troubles seemed to hover over the cabin. Tom had made the dress, and made it well. He had a skill as fine as a woman's with his scissors and his threads, and he had the loving wish that prompts domestic energy. He had made little stockings and a " nightie," warm as toast. He was making little leather boots, already painted brilliant red, and as crude in construction as they were gaudy in decoration; and other things he had in process of planning; nevertheless there were family cares that baffled his " motherly " possibilities.

            For the fourth time he sought Miss Nancy's presence. She had heard all about the thirty-day trial of the child, and the look on the face of her suitor when he came was a sign she read with ease. The " trial " was growing intense.

            " You ain't been around to see the little pioneer," said be, by way of approaching his subject. " I kind of expected you'd sort of float around."

            " I ain't lost no double-orphan children," said Nancy, " and they ain't no great curiosity."

            " They are when they've got a single man for a father and mother," answered Tom. " And she'd be a curiosity anyhow, you bet! She's wonderful healthy and willin'. You really ought to see her, jest for fun."

            " It's more fun guessin' what you come here for to-night," she said, and her eyes were snappily bright.

            Tom wriggled on his chair uneasily. He knew her guessing of old.

            " Well, then—'hem!" he faltered, coloring yet more red beneath his florid complexion,—" are you—goin' for to say you'll up and do it, Nancy ?—hey ?"

            " No, I ain't goin' to up and do it, nor down and do it, neither," she told him, with decision. " I told you so before."

            "Yes, but this time you git a chance to be a mother right from the jump," he argued, soberly. " Ain't that something?"

            " No, it ain't. No second-hand mother for me," she said. " I reckon I'll be the mother of my own bawlin' kids when I start."

            " She ain't a great one to cry," Tom

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hastened to impart. "I'll guarantee to git up nights and walk her if she cries. Come on, Nancy, be a real nice gal and say you will. Your father's perfectly willin'."

            " Didn't I say no?" she demanded. " My father, hey? Because he can't git away with my little sack of money he'd let me marry any decent man in camp, and then sit down and wait to see if my lovely husband could git those three hundred dollars. No, sir, I won't. I won't, I won't, and that's where the story says F-i-n-i-s—with the h left off every time. So you might as well go home and forget you came."

            "If you'd seen the little gal you'd answer different," said Devoe, persistently. " Hadn't you better see her first ?"

            " I've seen her, don't you worry," answered Miss Dunn. " What do you think I am? And don't I know that seven days have gone already, and only twenty-three more is left of your thirty, and you thought you'd marry me and git my money to pay them two hundred dollars, c. o. d., at the end of the time. I said I won't, and now you git, Tom Devoe, for I ain't got time to bear you talk no more."

            " All right," said Tom; " but you're 'way off your boundaries concernin' your money. I never had no idea in the world of askin' you to pay up the charges."

            This was the truth. He had well-nigh forgotten that thirty-day condition and the price still due for retaining little Prairie. He went away from Nancy's with a large new collection of worries.

            It was raining and blowing together that night, but he seemed to be oblivious of everything. A warm little stove in his heart was glowing cheerily so soon as he came to his house.

            And inside the place big Dan White had the baby on his knee.

            " Miss Scott," he said, as Tom entered, " this storm is gen'ral throughout the United States and Canady."

            The following week there was snow on the ground, and little Miss Scott, not a whit less busy for the chill, got lost for an hour in the nearest drift, and nearly froze her tiny feet. She developed a cold and a croupy-sounding cough that frightened poor Torn half to death.

            It was when that tiny cold was two days old and Prairie was ill and listless and weak, no longer blithesomely " deestructive," but needing such a tender love and care as only a woman may bestow, that Tom's desperation reached its culminating - point. He feared the little pioneer was perhaps already dying; and then the man was suddenly prepared for any deed of daring.

            " My poor little gal has got to have a mother," he declared. " It ain't been fair ; it ain't been right; and now it's gone too far. She's goin' to have whatever there is in this here Poco d'Oro camp, if it takes a gun to clinch the point."

            He strapped on a mighty revolver, full of lead and dirty black powder, and marched him straight to the home of Nancy Dunn.

            " We're goin' to git married—right now," said he, "so, Nancy—put on your duds."

            Miss Dunn was tremendously amazed. She was also a little alarmed.

            " Why — you, Tom Devoe — you're crazy!" she stammered. " Why, what do you—mean? You know I—said I wouldn't, and—"

            " Yep! I know what you said," he interrupted, drawing his gun with a shaking hand, " but you're goin' to change your mind, and change it quick. That pore little motherless child, she's goin' to have a woman for to love. She's goin' to have some proper care. She's goin' to have a decent show to live and grow up proper—savvy that? And you are the one decent girl in the camp, and you and me is a-goin' to go and git married—that's the game. You put on your hat, or come along without, for we're goin' right now to Justice Knapp."

            Nancy had long been accustomed to pistols, but never before had she seen one in this awful threatening aspect, its bullets so terribly obvious, its muzzle so blankly centred on her face. She looked at it nervously, then at the eyes behind it—the two eyes grown desperate and marked with signs of worry.

            She feared the man more than the weapon—and she feared those bullets horribly. She put on her bonnet, shaking in fright all the while. Her impulse was to cry, but all her crying faculties

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were shrinking down in terror. As one no longer consulted by her own volition, she went from the door.

            " I ain't a-goin' to hold this gun on you constant," Tom informed her, indulgently, trembling himself, " but don't you try no shenanigan, not for a minute !"

            In silence they wended their way to the home of the justice of the peace. Briefly and promptly, despite Miss Nancy's reluctance, the old - fashioned, time-honored formula for making a unit out of two warring individuals was pronounced, after which, still awed and paralyzed with fear, the new-made wife was led quietly away.

            Convoyed by her armed and sinister husband, Nancy went with him quite to his shack. But she took not so much as a look at little Prairie, lying in a blanket before the open fire, engrossed as she was in watching Tom. No sooner had he laid off his huge revolver than she pounced upon it and threw it out of the window, where it disappeared in a drift of snow. Then ensued a brief, sharp dénouement, after which the door was wrenched wildly open and out ran the bride, leaving Tom, bewildered and dazed, sitting on the floor, with just a ragged piece of calico in his hand as a souvenir of a quick divorce.

            That night all the story was old in the camp; and big Dan White, when he came to Tom's, saw signs of resignation to a life of single blessedness depicted large upon the homely countenance of the whilom groom.

            " Have you heerd from Nancy this evenin'?" he said. " How was she at last accounts ?"

            "Pursuin' the even terror of her ways," said Tom, " jest about the same as before."

            " Well," reflected Dan, "you can take a horse to the crick, Tom, of course—"

            " I know," said Tom; " I know all about that part which says you can't make him drink—and, Dan, if the horse is a mare —she'll prob'ly throw you down and run away into the bargain."

            Miss Prairie Scott was only half-way her " healthy and willin" little self, after five long days of cold and fever and masculine care, and Tom was attempting to lighten her life with tales of her " mother's " shocking conduct, when the dark wing of fate was suddenly over the cabin, obscuring all the light.

            The bimonthly stage was once more in town, and with it had come a harsh decree. The mighty express corporation had forwarded a quick decision in the case of Tom's small pioneer. The two hundred dollars " charges" for her transportation as an express parcel must be paid without another day's delay, or the child must be immediately taken away and delivered to the company's agent, three hundred miles towards the east.

            Devoe heard the "sentence" like one in a trance. He had put off the thought of the whole affair till his full thirty days should be counted. He was dazed thus to find himself obliged to face the crisis prematurely. The driver now come was a man unknown to Tom or any of his friends. But, for that matter, friendship could hardly have availed to alter the company's attitude of relentlessness.

            "I'll try to hustle the money," said Devoe. " I couldn't let the baby go. Why, man, she'd die. She couldn't make a trip like that such weather as this, and her jest pickin' up a little after bein' pretty sick. I couldn't leave her go."

            As a matter of fact, he was suddenly sick throughout his entire system. It was one worry more than he could readily bear. His own little hoard contained exactly thirty-five dollars; and how many friends could he count on here in this poor little worked-out camp, where he and others were hanging on from sheer force of habit and hope?

            He thought of defiance, of thrusting a pistol in the driver's face and bidding him run for his life. He thought of flight, with the child in his arms, across the hills to a western town. The huge barrier of mountains, now white with snow and chill with icy blasts, rose before him, silent, forbidding.

            Of all the six worthy citizens who had taken an interest sufficient to cause them to visit the small pioneer, there were only four who could lend assistance in raising a fund to defray those appalling charges. Civilization Grigg, who builded with mud, had fifteen dollars in all the world. He gave the entire sum. Billy Partridge could spare but an even five. The pessimist, masking his feeling behind a growl,

A LITTLE PIONEER.            837

came along with eight silver dollars; and big Dan White gave all he would have for a month, and it counted twenty-two. The total amount in the fund was eighty-five dollars. It lacked just one hundred and fifteen dollars of sufficient—and resources thoroughly exhausted.

            Tom, Dan, Partridge—even the pessimist—all the worried clan spent the remainder of the day attempting to bribe the driver to take their all and leave the child in camp. He was harder than iron, in a quiet, decent way of unanswerable logic that left the group at the cabin baffled and hopeless.

            "I'll come here and git her in the morning," be said, and the long, cold night descended on the camp.

            The morning came, and with it no solution. Out of a flawless sky the sun was shining on a world of mountains dazzling white in the snow. The wheels of the swiftly approaching stage made creaking notes as crisp as those of a violin. The men inside the cabin heard the sound with dread.

            Out in his shirt-sleeves went Devoe, his eyes dull red from sleeplessness. Beside him stood his friends.

            " Shaw," he said to the driver, " the little gal's inside the shack—and that's where she ought to be left, or God Almighty's made a big mistake. God Almighty, I say. He gave this little kid to me, as sure as He ever done anything good on earth. He knowed she didn't have a decent friend in all this country, and He gave her to me to care for. You couldn't take her off, and maybe see her die; you ain't got the heart for to do it. Here's all the money we kin raise—it's eighty-five dollars, and nearly half the charges. Take that and ask the company if they can't let off a little kid for less than the whole two hundred. If she hadn't come by express, the stage fare wouldn't 'a' bin more than fifty dollars."

            " Devoe," replied the driver, " don't talk this all over again. I hate to tell you no a thousand times. And I've got to make a start."

            Tom looked weak and pale. His mind refused to conjure up another word of argument.

            " She'll have to be wrapped real warm," he said, and as one hard hit and no longer able to think or resist he turned towards the house.

            The pessimist growled at the driver in accents of biting sarcasm as vain as they were unique.

            When Tom came out of the house, with the child on his arm, she was lovingly patting his cheek.

            " Baby—do — yove — ole — Tom," she said, in her honest little coo.

            The man's knees nearly gave way beneath him.

            "I can't let her go—I can't give her up," he said to them all. " Boys—I'm goin' to pay my fare and go along. I'll work for her hard—I'll work ofF the charges—I'll git her all for my own—and some day maybe we'll come back. I'll—"

            He paused, and the baby lifted her pretty little head to listen to something in the passing breath of frost. It came from the rear of the cabin, a brisk creak, creak on the snow.

            Then suddenly, running in breathless haste, from around the corner of the shack came Nancy Dunn, her hair brownly flying in the crystal air, her eyes ablaze with eagerness.

            " Here," she panted at the driver" here's your two hundred dollars—here it is! Take it—take it—you can't—you can't have—the baby !"

            For a moment there was absolute silence.

            " Well—now—how's this ?" inquired the startled driver. " Who are you?"

            " I'm Tom's—I'm Mrs. Devoe," she said. "I'm his wife—and I've just come home." Her checks unfurled a rich and wholesome damask blush that made her positively handsome. She turned to Tom and took little Prairie in her arms.

            When he got his chance, big Dan White held the baby again on his knee. "Miss Scott," he said, " this sunshine is gen'ral throughout the United States and Canady."