Ben Blair | Page 6

tingled with an ominous quiet,--a silence such
as one who has lived through a cyclone connects instinctively with a
whirling oncoming black funnel.
The new-comer was first to make a move. Walking over to the centre
of the room, he stopped and looked upon his subjects.
"Well, of all the infernally lazy people I ever saw!" he commented,
"you beat them, Jennie! Get up and cook something to eat; it's way
after noon, and I'm hungry."
The woman said nothing, but the boy slid to his feet, facing the

intruder.
"Mamma's sick and can't get up," he explained as impersonally as to a
stranger. "Besides, there isn't anything to cook. She said so."
The man's brow contracted into a frown.
"Speak when you're spoken to, young upstart!" he snapped. "Out with
you, Jennie! I don't want to be monkeyed with to-day!"
He hung up his coat and cap, and loosened his belt a hole; but no one
else in the room moved.
"Didn't you hear me?" he asked, looking warningly toward the bunk.
"Yes," she replied.
Autocrat under his own roof, the man paused in surprise. Never before
had a command here been disobeyed. He could scarcely believe his
own senses.
"You know what to do, then," he said sharply.
For the first time a touch of color came into the woman's cheeks, and
catching the man's eyes she looked into them unfalteringly.
"Since when did I become your slave, Tom Blair?" she asked slowly.
The words were a challenge, the tone was that of some wild thing,
wounded, cornered, staring death in the face, but defiant to the end.
"Since when did you become my owner, body and soul?"
Any sportsman, any being with a fragment of admiration for even
animal courage, would have held aloof then. It remained for this man,
bred amid high civilization, who had spent years within college halls,
to strike the prostrate. As in the frontier saloon, so now his hand went
involuntarily to his throat, clutched at the binding collar until the button
flew; then, as before, his face went white.

"Since when!" he blazed, "since when! I admire your nerve to ask that
question of me! Since six years ago, when you first began living with
me. Since the day when you and the boy,--and not a preacher within a
hundred miles--" Words, a flood of words, were upon his lips; but
suddenly he stopped. Despite the alcohol still in his brain, despite the
effort he made to continue, the gaze of the woman compelled silence.
"You dare recall that memory, Tom Blair?" The words came more
slowly than before, and with an intensity that burned them into the
hearer's memory. "You dare, knowing what I gave up for your sake!"
The eyes blazed afresh, the dark head was raised on the pillows. "You
know that my son stands listening, and yet you dare throw my coming
to you in my face?"
White to the lips went the scarred visage of the man, but the madness
was upon him.
"I dare?" To his own ears the voice sounded unnatural. "I dare? To be
sure I dare! You came to me of your own free-will. You were not a
child!" His voice rose and the flush returned to his face. "You knew the
price and accepted it deliberately,--deliberately, I say!"
Without a sound, the figure in the rough bunk quivered and stiffened;
the hand upon the coverlet was clenched until the nails grew white,
then it relaxed. Slowly, very slowly, the eyelids closed as though in
sleep.
Impassive but intent listener, an instinct now sent the boy Benjamin
back to his post.
"Mamma," he said gently. "Mamma!"
There was no answer, nor even a responsive pressure of the hand.
"Mamma!" he repeated more loudly. "Mamma! Mamma!"
Still no answer, only the limp passivity. Then suddenly, although never
before in his short life had the little lad looked upon death, he

recognized it now. His mamma, his playmate, his teacher, was like this;
she would not speak to him, would not answer him; she would never
speak to him or smile upon him again! Like a thunderclap came the
realization of this. Then another thought swiftly followed. This
man,--one who had said things that hurt her, that brought the red spots
to her cheeks,--this man was to blame. Not in the least did he
understand the meaning of what he had just heard. No human being had
suggested to him that Blair was the cause of his mother's death; but as
surely as he would remember their words as long as he lived, so surely
did he recognize the man's guilt. Suddenly, as powder responds to the
spark, there surged through his tiny body a terrible animal hate for this
man, and, scarcely realizing the action, he