If the men thought to have their curiosity concerning the youngster satisfied by word of mouth, however, they were doomed to be disappointed; for when Rankin himself entered it was as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.  He hung up his coat methodically, and, with the boy by his side, partook of the hastily prepared meal impassively, as was his wont.  It could not have escaped him that the small Benjamin ate and ate until it seemed marvellous that one stomach could accommodate so much food; but he made no comment, and when at last the boy succumbed to a final plateful, he tilted back against the wall for his last smoke for the day.  This was the usual signal of dismissal, and the hands put on their hats and filed silently out.

Without more words the foreman and his wife prepared for the night.  The dishes were cleared away and piled in the lean-to.  From either end of the room bunks, broad as beds, were let down from the wall, and the blankets that formed their linings were carefully smoothed out.  Along the pole extending across the middle of the room, another set was drawn, dividing the room in two.  Then the two disappeared with a simple “Good-night.”

Rankin and the boy sat alone looking at each other.  From across the blanket partition there came the muffled sound of movement, the impact of Graham’s heavy boots, as they dropped to the floor, and then silence.

“Better go to bed, Ben,” suggested Rankin, with a nod toward the bunk.

The boy at once went through the process of disrobing, and, crawling in between the blankets, pulled them up about his chin.  But the blue eyes did not close.  Instead, they rested steadily upon the man’s face.  Rankin returned the look, and then the stubby pipe left his mouth.

“What is it, Ben?”

The boy hesitated.  “Am I to—­to stay with you?” he asked at last.

“Yes.”

For an instant the questioner seemed satisfied; then the peculiar inquiring look returned.

“Anything else, son?”

The lad hesitated longer than before.  Beneath the coverings his body moved restlessly.

“Yes, sir, I want to know why nobody would come to help my mamma if she’d sent for them.  She said they wouldn’t.”

The pipe left Rankin’s mouth, his great jaws closing with an audible click.

“You wish to know—­what did you say, Ben?”

The boy repeated the question.

For a minute, and then another, Rankin said nothing; then he knocked the ashes from the bowl of his brier and laid it upon the table.

“Never mind now why they wouldn’t, son.”  He arose heavily and drew off his coat.  “You’ll find out for yourself quickly enough—­too quickly, my boy.  Now go to sleep.”

CHAPTER V

THE EXOTICS

Some men acquire involuntary prominence by being democratic amid aristocratic surroundings.  Others, on the contrary, but with the same result, continue to live the life to which they were born, even when placed amid surroundings that make their actions all but grotesque.  An example of this latter class was Scotty Baker, whose ranch, as the wild goose flies, was thirteen miles west of the Box R.