This they did. The following morning, at daylight, Tuttle and Slivers reappeared at camp, from a pilgrimage, and the mule-driver held in his arms a little red Indian papoose, as fat, dimpled, and pretty as a cherub, and as frightened as a captive baby rabbit.
“Now, then,” said the man, placing his charge on the floor, in the midst of a circle of wondering citizens, “there’s your kid. Never mind where we got him—there he is. Barney takes charge of him every other day, and the rest of us by turns in between—all that cares to enter the race.”
The news having spread, Miss Sally Wooster was among the astonished spectators who beheld the tiny, half-naked, frightened little chieftain-to-be, gazing timidly about him as he sat on the planks, gripping his own little shirt as his one and only acquaintance.
“Lauk!” she said, and laughing immoderately, sped for the door.
“Sally, you ain’t to help neither Barney nor us!” called Tuttle.
“Don’t you worry,” she answered. “It ain’t no pie of mine.”
The men continued to look at their “young un” in no small quandary of helplessness.
“He’s a pretty little cuss,” said one of the miners, after a moment. “I wouldn’t guess him for more than a yearlin’.”
Moody coughed nervously. “One of the first things to do for a child,” he ventured, “is to git a thimble to rub on his teeth.”
“That’s right,” said a friend. “My mother used to do that regular.”