"Yes, I know we did, Bennie."
The boy waited a moment longer, then straightened himself.
"I think I'd better be starting now."
But instead of loosening its hold, the hand upon the boy's shoulder tightened. The eyes of the two met.
"You're not going, sonny. I'm glad you thought of it, but I can't let you go."
Again there was silence for so long that the waiting dog, impatient of the delay, whined in soft protest.
"Why not, mamma?"
"Because, Benjamin, it's too late now. Besides, there wouldn't be a person there who would come out to help me."
The boy's look of perplexity returned.
"Not if they knew you were very sick, mamma?"
"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 passed out of range, Blair stood pulling at the trigger of the empty repeater and cursing louder than before because it would not "pop."