The mother had been watching him, although she gave no sign. "Where are you going, sonny?" she asked.
"To town, mamma. Someone ought to know you're sick."
There was a moment's pause, wherein the mongrel whined impatiently.
"Aren't you going to kiss me first, Benjamin?"
The little lad retraced his steps, until, bending over, his lips touched those of his mother. As he did so, the hand which had lain upon the coverlet shifted to his arm detainingly.
A look of surprise crept into the boy's blue eyes. A question like this, with its obvious answer, was unusual from his matter-of-fact mother. He glanced at her gravely.
"But you and I walked it once together. Don't you remember?"
An expression the lad did not understand flashed over the white face of Jennie Blair. Well she remembered that other occasion, one of many like the present, when she and the little lad had gone in company to the settlement of which Mick Kennedy's place was a part, in search of someone whom after ten hours' delay they had succeeded in bringing home,--the remnant and vestige of what was once a man.
The boy waited a moment longer, then straightened himself.
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.
"Because, Benjamin, it's too late now. Besides, there wouldn't be a person there who would come out to help me."
"Not if they knew you were very sick, mamma?"
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.