Ben Blair | Page 7

rushed at him.
"She's dead and you killed her!" he screamed. "Mamma's dead, dead!"
and the little doubled fists struck at the man's legs again and again.
Oblivious to the onslaught, Tom Blair strode over to the bunk.
"Jennie," he said, not unkindly, "Jennie, what's the matter?"
Again there was no response, and a shade of awe crept into the man's
voice.
"Jennie! Jennie! Answer me!" A hand fell upon the woman's shoulder
and shook it, first gently, then roughly. "Answer me, I say!"
With the motion, the head of the dead shifted upon the pillow and
turned toward the man, and involuntarily he loosened his grasp. He had
not eaten for twenty-four hours, and in sudden weakness he made his
way to one of the rough chairs, and sat down, his face buried in his
hands.
Behind him the boy Benjamin, his sudden hot passion over, stood
watching intently,--his face almost uncanny in its lack of childishness.
For a time there was absolute silence, the hush of a death-chamber;
then of a sudden the boy was conscious that the man was looking at
him in a way he had never looked before. Deep down below our

consciousness, far beneath the veneer of civilization, there is an instinct,
relic of the vigilant savage days, that warns us of personal danger. By
this instinct the lad now interpreted the other's gaze, and knew that it
meant ill for him. For some reason which he could not understand, this
man, this big animal, was his mortal enemy; and, in the manner of
smaller animals, he began to consider an avenue of escape.
"Ben," spoke the man, "come here!"
Tom Blair was sober now, and wore a look of determination upon his
face that few had ever seen there before; but to his surprise the boy did
not respond. He waited a moment, and then said sharply:
"Ben, I'm speaking to you. Come here at once!"
For answer there was a tightening of the lad's blue eyes and an added
watchfulness in the incongruously long childish figure; but that was all.
Another lagging minute passed, wherein the two regarded each other
steadily. The man's eyes dropped first.
"You little devil!" he muttered, and the passion began showing in his
voice. "I believe you knew what I was thinking all the time! Anyway,
you'll know now. You said awhile ago that I was to blame for your
mother being--as she is. You're liable to say that again." A horror
greater than sudden passion was in the deliberate explanation and in the
slow way he rose to his feet. "I'm going to fix you so you can't say it
again, you old-man imp!"
Then a peculiar thing happened. Instead of running away, the boy took
a step forward, and the man paused, scarcely believing his eyes.
Another step forward, and yet another, came the diminutive figure,
until almost within the aggressor's reach; then suddenly, quick as a cat,
it veered, dropped upon all fours to the floor, and head first, scrambling
like a rabbit, disappeared into the open mouth of the dog-kennel.
Too late the man saw the trick, and curses came to his lips,--curses fit
for a fiend, fit for the irresponsible being he was. He himself had built

that kennel. It extended in a curve eight feet into the solid sod
foundation, and to get at the spot where the boy now lay he would have
to tear down the house itself. The temper which had made the man
what he now was, a drunkard and fugitive in a frontier country, took
possession of him wholly, and with it came a madman's cunning; for at
a sudden thought he stopped, and the cursing tongue was silent. Five
minutes later he left the place, closing the door carefully behind him;
but before that time a red jet of flame, like the ravenous tongue of a
famished beast, was lapping at a hastily assembled pile of tinder-dry
furniture in one corner of the shanty.
CHAPTER III
THE BOX R RANCH
Mr. Rankin moved back from a well-discussed table, and, the room
being conveniently small, tilted his chair back against the wall. The
protesting creak of the ill-glued joints under the strain of his ponderous
figure was a signal for all the diners, and five other men likewise drew
away from around the board. Rankin extracted a match and a stout
jack-knife from the miscellaneous collection of useful articles in his
capacious pocket, carefully whittled the bit of wood to a point, and
picked his teeth deliberately. The five "hands," sun-browned, unshaven,
dissimilar in face as in dress, waited in expectation; but the
housekeeper, a shapeless, stolid-looking woman, wife of the foreman,
Graham, went methodically about the work of clearing the table.
Rankin watched her a moment indifferently;