"You're clear off, first crack," retorted Barney. "It's nine days, instead of a week." Again the men were awed to silence. "Yes, that's right--Barney's correct," presently admitted citizen Wooster. "You old ninnies!" said his daughter Sally, and she turned away to go to the house. "Well, anyway," said Slivers, after a brisk bit of widespread conversation with Tuttle, "we've got a scheme. Barney wants to match himself against the whole shebang in knowin' about a kid, and we're goin' to fetch a young un to the Hole and leave him prove his claim." "Not Sullivan's?" gasped Barney, suddenly overwhelmed at the prospect of proving his erudition on an infant so tender, with a father so brawny. "Never mind whose," replied the teamster. "You sit quiet and look pretty, and we'll provide the kid." 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." "What's the matter with putting pants on him fairly early in the fight?" inquired the next man of wisdom. "First thing my mother always done for us was to make us a bib," drawled one fidgety fellow, tentatively. "He'd orter be told never to drink, ner chew, ner smoke, ner swear, ner gamble, 'fore it gits too late," added a miner who carefully eschewed all and sundry of these virtues. "Stub-tailed idiots!" said Barney, in huge disgust. All eyes focussed on the fiery little cook. "Well, then," demanded Tuttle, "what is the first thing to do for a little kid like him?" "The first thing?" answered Barney. "The first thing is--Do you think I'm going to tell you lop-eared galoots all I know about a baby? What I want to know is if he's had a bite to eat?"