Ben Blair. Will Lillibridge
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.
Scotty was a very English Englishman, with an inborn love of fine horse-flesh and a guileless nature. Some years before he had fallen into the hands of a promoter, and had bartered a goodly proportion of his worldly belongings for a horse-ranch in Dakota, to be taken possession of immediately. Long indeed was the wail which went up from his home in Sussex when the fact was made known. Neighbors were fluent in denunciation, relatives insistent in expostulation; his wife, and in sympathy their baby daughter, copious in the argument of tears; but the die was irrevocably cast. Go he would,—not from voluntary stubbornness, but because he must.
The actual departure of the Bakers was much like the sailing of Columbus. Probably not one of the friends who saw them off for their new home expected ever to see the family again. Indians they were confident were rampant, and frantic for scalps. Should any by a miracle escape the savages, the tremendous herds of buffalo, running amuck, here and there, could not fail to trample the survivors into the dust of the prairie. By comparison, war was a benignant prospect; and sighs mingled until the sound was as the wailing of winds.
Scotty was very cheerful through it all, very encouraging even in the face of incontestibly unfavorable evidence, until, with the few remnants of civilization they had brought with them, the family arrived at the wind-beaten terminus, a hundred miles from his newly acquired property. Then for the first time he wilted.
"I've been an ass," he admitted bitterly, as he glanced in impotent contempt at the handful of weather-stained buildings which on the map bore the name of a town; "an ass, an egregious, abominable, blethering ass!"
But, notwithstanding his lack of the practical, Scotty was made of good stuff. It was not an alternative but a necessity that faced him now, and he arose right manfully to the occasion. Despite his wife's assertion that she "never, never would go any farther into this God-forsaken country," he succeeded in getting her into a lumber-wagon and headed for what he genially termed "the interior." At last he even succeeded in making her smile at his efforts to make the disreputable mule pack-team he had secured move faster than a walk.
Once in possession of his own, however, he returned to his customary easy manner of life. It took him a very short time to discover that he had purchased a gold brick. Horses, especially fine horses, were in no demand there; but this fact did not alter his course in the least. A horse-ranch he had bought, a horse-ranch he would run, though every man west of the Mississippi should smile. He enlarged his tiny shack to a cottage of three rooms; put in floor and ceiling, and papered the walls. Out of poles and prairie sod he fashioned a serviceable barn, and built an admirable horse paddock. Last of all he planted in his dooryard, in artistic irregularity, a wagon-load of small imported trees. The fact that within six months they all died caused him slight misgiving. He at least had done what he could to beautify the earth; that he failed was nature's fault, not his.
Once settled, he began to make acquaintances. Methodically, to the members of one ranch at a time, he sent invitations to dinner, and upon the appointed date he confronted his guests with a spectacle which made them all but doubt their identity, the like of which most of them had never even seen before. Fancy a cowboy rancher, clad in flannel and leather, welcomed by a host and hostess in complete evening dress, ushered into a room which contained a carpet and a piano, and had lace curtains at the windows; seated later at a table covered with pure linen and set with real china and cut-glass. The experience was like a dream to the visitor. Temporarily, as in a dream, the evening would pass without conscious volition upon the latter's part; and not until later, when he was at home, would the full significance of the experience assert itself, and his wonder and admiration find vent in words. Then indeed would the fame of Scotty Baker, his wife, and little daughter, be heard in the land.
Early in his career, Scotty began to cultivate the impassive Rankin. He fairly bombarded the big rancher with courtesies and invitations. No holiday (and Scotty was an assiduous observer of holidays) was complete unless Rankin was present to help celebrate. No improvement about the ranch was definitely undertaken until Rankin had expressed a favorable opinion concerning the project. Gradually, so gradually that the big man himself did not realize the change, he fell under Scotty's influence, and more and more frequently he was to be found headed toward the cosey Baker cottage. Now, for a year or more, scarcely a Sunday had passed without one or the other of the men finding it possible to traverse the thirty miles intervening between them, to spend a few hours in each other's company.
It was in pursuance of this laudable intention that on the second morning following Ben Blair's adoption into the Box R Ranch—a Sunday—the Englishman hitched a team of his best blooded trotters to the antiquated phaeton, which was the only vehicle he possessed, and started across country at a lively clip. Thus it came to pass that about two hours later, having tied his team at the barn and started for the ranch-house, the visitor saw squarely in his path upon the sunny south doorstep an object that made him pause and blink his near-sighted eyes. Under the concentration of his vision, the object resolved itself into a small boy perched like a frog upon a rock, his fingers locked across his shins, his chin upon his knees. For an instant the Englishman hesitated. Courtesy was instinctive with him.
"Can you tell me whether Mr. Rankin is at home?" he asked.
The lad calmly disentangled himself and stood up.
"You mean the big man, sir?"
Again Scotty was guilty of a breach of etiquette. He stared.
"Certainly," he replied at last.
Ben Blair stepped out of the way.
"Yes, sir, he is."
Within the ranch-house Scotty dropped into the nearest chair.
"Tell me, Rankin," he began, "who is the new-comer, and where did you get him?" A long leg swung comfortably over its mate. "And, by the way, while you're about it, is he six or sixty? By Jove, I couldn't tell!"
The host looked