"Not _exactly_."

Buck was not without intuition, and he shifted to safer ground.

"Got much of a herd, has he?"

Marcom rolled a fresh cigarette skilfully, and drew the string of the tobacco pouch taut with his teeth.

"He did have, one time, but I don't believe he's got many left now.

There's been a bunch lost there every storm I can remember. He don't keep any punchers to look after 'em, and he's never on hand himself. The woman and the kid," with a peculiar glance at the stout housekeeper, "saved 'em part of the time, but mostly they just drifted." The speaker blew a great cloud of smoke, and the veins at his temples swelled. "It's a shame, the way he neglects his stock and lets 'em starve and freeze!"

The blood coursed hot in the veins of Bud Buck.

"Why don't somebody step in?"

There was a meaning silence, broken at last by Graham.

"We would've--with a rope--if it hadn't been for the boss. He tried to help the fellow; went over there lots of times himself--weather colder than the devil, too, and with the wind and sleet so bad you couldn't see the team ahead of you--until one time last Winter Blair came home full, and caught him there." The narrative paused, and the black pipe puffed reminiscently. "The boss never said much, but I guess they must have had quite a session. Anyway, Rankin never went again, and from the way he looked when he got back here, half froze, and the mustangs beat out, I reckon Blair never knew how close he come to a necktie party that day."

Again silence fell, and remained unbroken until Graham suddenly sprang to his feet, and with "That's him now! I could tell that old buckboard if I was in my grave!" hurried on coat and hat and disappeared into the night. A minute more and the door through which he had pa.s.sed opened slowly, and the figure of a small boy, wrapped like an Indian in a big blanket, stepped timidly inside and stood blinking in the light.

In antic.i.p.ation of a very different arrival the housekeeper had risen to her feet, and now in surprise, arms akimbo, she stood looking curiously at the stranger. In this land at this time the young of every other animal native thereto was common, but a child, a white child, was a novelty indeed. Many a cow-puncher, bachelor among bachelors, could testify that it had been years since he had seen the like. But Ma Graham was not a bachelor, and in her the maternal instinct, though repressed, was strong. It was barely an instant before she was at the little lad's side, unwinding the blanket with deft hands.

"Who be you, anyway, and where'd you come from?" she exclaimed.

The child observed her gravely.

"Benjamin Blair's my name. I came with the man."

The husk was off the lad ere this, and the woman was rubbing his small hands vigorously.

"Cold, ain't you? Come right over to the fire!" herself leading the way.

"And hungry--I'll bet you're hungrier than a wolf!"

The lad nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

The woman straightened up and looked down at her charge.

"Of course you are. All little boys are hungry." She cast a challenging glance around the group of interested spectators.

"Fix the fire, one of you, while I get something hot for the kid," she said, and ambled toward the lean-to.

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 impa.s.sively, 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 succ.u.mbed 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 part.i.tion there came the m.u.f.fled 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 n.o.body 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 cla.s.s 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 Suss.e.x 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 a.s.s," 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 a.s.s, an egregious, abominable, blethering a.s.s!"

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 a.s.sertion that she "never, never would go any farther into this G.o.d-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.