Ben Blair | Page 3

who seldom made a mistake, had sized his man correctly.
"What do I owe you altogether, Mick?" asked a changed and subdued
voice. "Make it as easy as you can."
Kennedy relaxed into his lounging position.
"Thirty-five dollars. We'll call it thirty. You've been setting them up to
everybody here for a week on your face."
"Can't you give me just a little more credit, Mick?" An expression
meant to be a smile formed upon the haggard face. "Just for old time's
sake? You know I've always been a good customer of yours, Kennedy."
"Not a cent."

"But I've got to have liquor!" One hand, ill-kept, but long of fingers and
refined of shape, steadied the speaker. "I can't get along without it!"
"Sell something, then, and pay up."
The man thought a moment and shook his head.
"I haven't anything to sell; you know that. It's the wrong time of the
year." He paused, and the travesty of a smile reappeared. "Next
Winter--"
"You've got a horse outside."
For an instant Blair's gaunt face darkened at the insult; he grew almost
dignified; but the drink curse had too strong a grip upon him and the
odor of whiskey was in the air.
"Yes, I've a good horse," he said slowly. "What'll you give for him?"
"Seventy dollars."
"He's a good horse, worth a hundred."
"I'm glad of that, but I'm not dealing in horses. I make the offer just to
oblige you. Besides, as you said, it's an off season."
"You won't give me more?"
"No."
Blair looked impotently about the room, but his former companions
had returned to their game. Filling in the silence, the dull clatter of
chips mingled with the drunken snores of the man on the floor.
"Very well, give me forty," he said at last.
"You accept, do you?"
"Yes."

"All right."
Blair waited a moment. "Aren't you going to give me what's coming?"
he asked.
Slowly the single eye fixed him as before.
"I didn't know you had anything coming."
"Why, you just said forty dollars!"
There was no relenting in Kennedy's face.
"You owe that gentleman over there at the table for forty blues. I'll
settle with him."
Instinctively, as before, Blair's thin hand went to his throat, clutching at
the coarse flannel. He saw he was beaten.
"Well, give me a drink, anyway!"
Silently Mick took a big flask from the shelf and set it with a decanter
upon the bar. Filling the glass, Blair drained it at a gulp, refilled and
drained it--and then again.
"A little drop to take along with me," he whined.
Kennedy selected a pint bottle, filled it from the big flask, and silently
proffered it over the board.
Blair took the extended favor, glanced once more about the room, and
stumbled toward the exit. Mick busied himself wiping the soiled bar
with a towel, if possible, even more filthy. At the threshold, his hand
upon the knob, Blair paused, stiffened, grew livid in the face.
"May Satan blister your scoundrel souls, all of you!" he cursed.
Not a man within sound of his voice gave sign that he had heard, as the
opened door returned to its casing with a crash.

CHAPTER II
DESOLATION
Ten miles out on the prairies,--not lands plane as a table, as they are
usually pictured, but rolling like the sea with waves of tremendous
amplitude--stood a rough shack, called by courtesy a house. Like many
a more pretentious domicile, it was of composite construction, although
consisting of but one room. At the base was the native prairie sod, piled
tier upon tier. Above this the superstructure, like the bar of Mick
Kennedy's resort, was of warping cottonwood. Built out from this
single room and forming a part of it was what the designer had called a
woodshed; but as no tree the size of a man's wrist was within ten miles,
or a railroad within fifty, the term was manifestly a misnomer. Wood in
any form it had never contained; instead, it was filled with that
providential fuel of the frontiersman, found superabundantly upon the
ranges,--buffalo chips.
From the main room there was another and much smaller opening into
the sod foundation, and below it,--a dog-kennel. Slightly apart from the
shack stood a twin structure even less assuming, its walls and roof
being wholly built of sod. It was likewise without partition, and was
used as a barn. Hard by was a corral covering perhaps two acres,
enclosed with a barbed-wire fence. These three excrescences upon the
face of nature comprised the "improvements" of the "Big B Ranch."
Within the house the furnishings accorded with their surroundings.
Two folding bunks, similar in conception to the upper berths of a
Pullman car, were built end to end against the wall; when they were
raised