__noTOC__
Bill Burton slept late and awakened hungry; but late as it was, Martin, huddled into a lump under the blanket, still snored. The big miner shook him out of the blanket. Martin awakened with groping gestures, pawing about him to make sure that he had not merely dreamed of winning from Stewart Dawes' table.
He tried to tell Burton about it, but Burton was hungry, interested in the story, but more interested in beefsteak and eggs. Having gold, winning or losing it, was an old story to him.
Burton, taking strides as if he wore seven league boots instead of cowhide, led the way. The little cockney, with repeated rushes, tried to keep by his side, but could do hardly more than follow with a sort of hurried stumbling over the rough ground.
From somewhere thin piercing cries reached them. Burton stopped with a jerk, his heels planted at the edge of a bank down which he was ready to jump. He turned his head all about, curious, uncertain, trying to tell from where the sound came.
"Wot's up?"
"Don't you hear it?"
"Blimey,'ow yer goin' 'elp earin'of it! I 'ear a baby squallin'!"
Burton turned and walked uncertainly in the direction that Martin pointed; and after a few steps stopped.
"That's a baby sure! Wonder what's the matter with it?"
"Bellyhake," said Martin, as if he knew about babies.
"Down here somewhere."
Burton went forward with an air of awkward caution, as if not quite sure whether or not he ought to go; then, pointing with a gesture of discovery at a lean-to affair of pine boards.
"In there!"
The baby wailed as if in the pain that is greater than death.
"What's wrong, you reckon?" Burton asked, peering hard as if sure that Martin was better informed about babies than himself.
"It's sick."
Burton swore in vague protest, then went close to the lean-to, bent his head, listened. He raised a fist that could have smashed in a barrel, hesitated, knocked timidly. He stepped back quickly as if a little afraid of what he had done.
With scrape and tug the ill-fitting door opened and a woman peered out.
Her hair was down her back. She was young, but her face had the weariness of hard work and privation. Her gray eyes stared anxiously. The baby continued with wail on wail. She held a wet cloth in her hand. Her dress was torn, worn, dirty.
From within the shack a man's voice, now weak, but suggesting a powerful voice diminished by sickness, asked:
"Who be it, Betty?"
"What you folks want?" she asked doubtfully, with the harsh nasal inflection of the backwoods.
"Ma'am, we ain't wanting—we just— Ma'am, is there anything us fellows can do?"
"Who be it, Betty? What he be wantin' of us?"
The baby screamed, scream on scream.
"Ezekiel, these folks ask if they can help usens!" she said blankly, incredulous.
"Yes, ma' am, that's sure it!" Burton affirmed loudly.
The voice of Ezekiel proclaimed as if to a congregation:
"The merciful man doeth good to his own soul." Then in weak eagerness—"Ask 'em in, Betty. 'Vite em right in!"
She stepped aside, nervously glancing about the small rude shelter, and Burton, crouching as if to enter a low cave, came in with embarrassed slowness.
A thin gaunt man, of powerful, bony frame, lay on two boards placed on boxes. His eyes were dark and sunken. He was bearded like a young prophet. One thin blanket was his covering. The baby, amid some clothing in a crate, waved tiny fists and, with eyes tightly shut, yelled as if in fury at the in justices of this world.
"Just look at that little dickens!" said Burton, admiringly.
"My good man is powerful sick," the woman answered.
"Neighbor, you do looked pretty peak-ed."
"Friend," answered the sick man, "it is the punishment of the Lord."
"He's a preacher," said the wife wistfully, glancing toward him. Then, abruptly—"We're Methodist."
"You look damn hard up too," the miner blurted.
The Rev. Ezekiel Preble, with passionate fervor answered—
"He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house!"
He lay on his back, and could not move. He was full of fever, but filled too with the deep inner fire that has inflamed prophets.
"He's a powerful good man," the woman muttered anxiously, looking at Martin.
In the midst of the baby's crying the preacher, pitching his voice as if from a pulpit, explained:
"I come to Californy drawn more by the lust of harlot gold than by a burnin' to do the work of Goda'mighty"; and, in a tone of approval, added, "His wrath has visited me!"
"What's you need's a doctor, neighbor."