Ben Blair Part 3

"Not if they knew I was dying, my son."

The boy took off hat, mittens, and coat, and returned them to their places. Never in his short life had he questioned a statement of his mother's, and such heresy did not occur to him now. Coming back to the bunk, he laid his cheek caressingly beside hers.

"Is there anything I can do for you, mamma?" he whispered.

"Nothing but what you are doing now, laddie."

Tired of standing, the mongrel dropped within his tracks flat upon his belly, and, his head resting upon his fore-paws, lay watching intently.

When the door of Mick Kennedy's saloon closed with an emphasis that shook the very walls, it shut out a being more ferocious, more evil, than any beast of the jungle. For the time, Blair's alcohol-saturated brain evolved but one chain of thought, was capable of but one emotion--hate. Every object in the universe, from its Creator to himself, fell under the ban. The language of hate is curses; and as he moved out over the prairie there dripped from his lips continuously, monotonously, a trickling, blighting stream of malediction. Swaying, stumbling, unconscious of his physical motions, instinct kept him upon the trail; a Providence, sometimes kindest to those least worthy, preserved him from injury.

Half way out he met a solitary Indian astride a faded-looking mustang, and the current of his wrath was temporarily diverted by a surly "How!"

Even this measure of friendliness was regretted when the big revolver came out of the rancher's holster like a flash, and, head low on the neck of the mustang, heels in the little beast's ribs, the aborigine retreated with a yell, amid a shower of ill-aimed bullets. Long after the figure on the pony had pa.s.sed out of range, Blair stood pulling at the trigger of the empty repeater and cursing louder than before because it would not "pop."

Two hours later, when it was past noon, an uncertain hand lifted the wooden latch of the Big B Ranch-house door, and, heralded by an inrush of cold outside air, Tom Blair, master and dictator, entered his domain.

The pa.s.sage of time, the physical exercise, and the prairie air, had somewhat cleared his brain. Just within the room, he paused and looked about him with surprise. With premonition of impending trouble, the mongrel bristled the yellow hair of his neck, and, retreating to the mouth of his kennel, stood guard; but otherwise the scene was to a detail as it had been in the morning. The woman lay pa.s.sive within the bunk. The child by her side, holding her hand, did not turn. The very atmosphere of the place 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 b.u.t.ton 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.

Impa.s.sive 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 pa.s.sivity. 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 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed, wherein the two regarded each other steadily. The man's eyes dropped first.

"You little devil!" he muttered, and the pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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!"