“You can’t go and leave your claim unprotected,” said Bone.

“How did Parky happen to tell you his intentions?” said Jim.

“He wanted me to go in with him,” Bone replied, flushing hotly at the bare suggestion of being involved in a trick so mean.  “He made me promise, first, I wouldn’t give the game away, but I’ve got to tell it to you.  I couldn’t stand by and see you lose that gold-ledge now.”

“To-morrow is New Year’s, sure enough,” Jim replied, reflectively.  “That mine belongs to little Skeezucks.”

“But Parky’s goin’ to jump it, and he’s got a gang of toughs to back him up.”

“I’d hate to lose it, Bone.  It would seem hard,” said Jim.  “But I ought to go up in the hills to find that shrub.  If only I had a horse.  I could go and git back in time to watch the claim.”

Bone was clearly impatient.

“Don’t git down to the old ‘if only’ racket now,” he said, with heat.  “I busted my word to warn you, Jim, and the claim is worth a fortune to you and little Skeezucks.”

Jim’s eyes took on a look of pain.

“But, Bone, if he don’t git well,” he said—­“if he don’t git well, think how I’d feel!  Couldn’t you get me a horse?  If only—­”

“Hold on,” interrupted Bone, “I’ll do all I kin for the poor little shaver, but I don’t expect I can git no horse.  I’ll go and see, but the teams has all got the extry stock in harness, fer the roads is mighty tough, and snow, down the canon, is up to the hubs of the wheels.  You’ve got to be back before too late or your claim goes up, fer, Jim, you know as well as me that Parky’s got the right of law!”

“If only I could git that shrub,” said Jim, as his friend departed, and back to the tossing little man he went, worried to the last degree.

Bone was right.  The extra horses were all in requisition to haul the ore to the quartz-mill through a stretch of ten long miles of drifted snow.  Moreover, Jim had once too often sung his old “if-only” cry.  The men of Borealis smiled sadly, as they thought of tiny Skeezucks, but with doubt of Jim, whose resolutions, statements, promises, had long before been estimated at their final worth.

“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.”

Bone was not at once discouraged, but in truth he believed, with all the others, that Jim would no more leave the camp to go forth and breast the oncoming snow to search the mountains for a shrub than he would fetch a tree for the Christmas celebration or work good and hard at his claim.

The bar-keep found no horse.  He expected none to be offered, and felt his labors were wasted.  The afternoon was well advanced when he came again to the home of Miss Doc, where Jim was sitting by the bed whereon the little wanderer was burning out his life.