“Stole him?” said Field.  “Why, where was you and Keno?”

“Down to Doc’s to get some milk.  He wanted bread and milk,” Jim explained, in evident anguish.  “You fellows might have seen, if any one fetched him down the trail.  You’re foolin’.  Some of you took him for a joke!”

“It wouldn’t be no joke,” answered Lufkins, the teamster.  “We ’ain’t got him, Jim, on the square.”

“Of course we ’ain’t got him.  We ’ain’t took him for no joke,” said Field.  “Nobody’d take him away like that.”

“Why don’t we ring the bar of steel we used for a bell,” suggested one of the miners.  “That would fetch the men—­all who ’ain’t gone back on shift.”

“Good idea,” said Field.  “But I ought to get back home and eat some dinner.”

He did not, however, depart.  That Jim was in a fever of excitement and despair they could all of them see.  He hastened ahead of the group to the shop of Webber. and taking a short length of iron chain, which he found on the earth, he slashed and beat at the bar of steel with frantic strength.

The sharp, metallic notes rang out with every stroke.  The bar was swaying like a pendulum.  Blow after blow the man delivered, filling all the hollows of the hills with wild alarm.

Out of saloons and houses men came sauntering, or running, according to the tension of their nerves.  Many thought some house must be afire.  At least thirty men were presently gathered at the place of summons.  With five or six informers to tell the news of Jim’s bereavement, all were soon aware of what was making the trouble.  But none had seen the tiny foundling since they bade him good-bye in the charge of Jim himself.

“Are you plum dead sure he’s went?” said Webber, the smith.  “Did you look all over the cabin?”

“Everywhere,” said Jim.  “He’s gone!”

“Wal, maybe some mystery got him,” suggested Bone.  “Jim, you don’t suppose his father, or some one who lost him, come and nabbed him while you was gone?”

They saw old Jim turn pale in the light that came from across the street.

Keno broke in with an answer.

“By jinks!  Jim was his mother!  Jim had more good rights to the little feller than anybody, livin’ or dead!”

“You bet!” agreed a voice.

Jim spoke with difficulty.

“If any one did that”—­he faltered—­“why, boys, he never should have let me find him in the brush.”

“Are you plum dead sure he’s went?” insisted the blacksmith, whom the news had somewhat stunned.

“I thought perhaps you fellows might have played a joke—­taken him off to see me run around,” said Jim, with a faint attempt at a smile.  “’Ain’t you got him, boys—­all the time?”

“Aw, no, he’d be too scared,” said Bone.  “We know he’d be scared of any one of us.”

“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.”