“Keno, I reckon I’ll wander quietly down and see if Doc will let me buy a little milk,” said Jim.  “You’d better come along to see that his sister don’t interfere.”

Keno expressed his doubts immediately, not only as to the excellence of goat’s milk generally, but likewise as to any good that he could do by joining Jim in the enterprise suggested.

“Anyway,” he concluded, “Doc has maybe went on shift by this time.  He’s workin’ nights this week again.”

Jim, however, prevailed.  “You don’t get another bite of grub in this shack, nor another look at the little boy, if you don’t come ahead and do your share.”

Therefore they presently departed, shutting Tintoretto in the cabin to “watch.”

In half an hour, having interviewed Doc Dennihan himself on the hill-side quite removed from his cabin, the two worthies came climbing up towards their home once again, Jim most carefully holding in his hands a large tin cup with half an inch of goat’s milk at the bottom.

While still a hundred yards from the house, they were suddenly startled by the mad descent upon them of the pup they had recently left behind.

“Huh! you young galoot,” said Jim.  “You got out, I see!”

When he entered the cabin it was dark.  Keno lighted the candle and Jim put his cup on the table.  Then he went to the berth to awaken the tiny foundling and give him a supper of bread and milk.

Keno heard him make a sound as of one in terrible pain.

The miner turned a face, deadly white, towards the table.

“Keno,” he cried, “he’s gone!”

CHAPTER VIII

OLD JIM DISTRAUGHT

For a moment Keno failed to comprehend.  Then for a second after that he refused to believe.  He ran to the bunk where Jim was desperately turning down the blankets and made a quick examination of that as well as of the other beds.

They were empty.

Hastening across the cabin, the two men searched in the berths at the farther end with parental eagerness, but all in vain, the pup meantime dodging between their legs and chewing at their trousers.

“Tintoretto!” said Jim, in a flash of deduction.  “He must have got out when somebody opened the door.  Somebody’s been here and stole my little boy!”

“By jinks!” said Keno, hauling at his sleeves in excess of emotion.  “But who?”

“Come on,” answered Jim, distraught and wild.  “Come down to camp!  Somebody’s playin’ us a trick!”

Again they shut the pup inside, and then they fairly ran down the trail, through the darkness, to the town below.

A number of men were standing in the street, among them the teamster and Field, the father of Borealis.  They were joking, laughing, wasting time.

“Boys,” cried Jim, as he hastened towards the group, “has any one seen little Skeezucks?  Some one’s played a trick and took him off!  Somebody’s been to the cabin and stole my little boy!”