"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 shifted 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 passion 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 passed, wherein the two regarded each other steadily. The man's eyes dropped first.
"You little devil!" he muttered, and the passion 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 passion 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!"