the bare flanks of Jovita with his bared knees, and with a shout dashed
into the yellow water. A cry rose from the opposite bank as the head
of a man and horse struggled for a few moments against the battling
current, and then were swept away amidst uprooted trees and whirling
drift-wood.
*****
The Old Man started and woke. The fire on the hearth was dead, the
candle in the outer room flickering in its socket, and somebody was
rapping at the door. He opened it, but fell back with a cry before the
dripping half-naked figure that reeled against the doorpost.
"Dick?"
"Hush! Is he awake yet?"
"No,--but, Dick?--"
"Dry up, you old fool! Get me some whiskey QUICK!" The Old Man flew and
returned with--an empty bottle! Dick would have sworn, but his strength
was not equal to the occasion. He staggered, caught at the handle of the
door, and motioned to the Old Man.
"Thar's suthin' in my pack yer for Johnny. Take it off. I can't."
The Old Man unstrapped the pack and laid it before the exhausted man.
"Open it, quick!"
He did so with trembling fingers. It contained only a few poor
toys,--cheap and barbaric enough, goodness knows, but bright with paint
and tinsel. One of them was broken; another, I fear, was irretrievably
ruined by water; and on the third--ah me! there was a cruel spot.
"It don't look like much, that's a fact," said Dick, ruefully . . . .
"But it's the best we could do. . . . Take 'em, Old Man, and put 'em in
his stocking, and tell him--tell him, you know--hold me, Old Man--" The
Old Man caught at his sinking figure. "Tell him," said Dick, with a weak
little laugh,--"tell him Sandy Claus has come."
And even so, bedraggled, ragged, unshaven and unshorn, with one arm
hanging helplessly at his side, Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar and
fell fainting on the first threshold. The Christmas dawn came slowly
after, touching the remoter peaks with the rosy warmth of ineffable
love. And it looked so tenderly on Simpson's Bar that the whole mountain
as if caught in a generous action, blushed to the skies.
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