“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; then without turning his head, his eyes shifted in their narrow slits of sockets until they rested upon one of the cowboys.