ennel. It extended in a curve eight feet into the solid sod
foundation, and to get at the spot where the boy now lay he would have
to tear down the house itself. The temper which had made the man what he
now was, a drunkard and fugitive in a frontier country, took possession
of him wholly, and with it came a madman's cunning; for at a sudden
thought he stopped, and the cursing tongue was silent. Five minutes
later he left the place, closing the door carefully behind him; but
before that time a red jet of flame, like the ravenous tongue of a
famished beast, was lapping at a hastily assembled pile of tinder-dry
furniture in one corner of the shanty.

CHAPTER III

THE BOX R RANCH

Mr. Rankin moved back from a well-discussed table, and, the room being
conveniently small, tilted his chair back against the wall. The
protesting creak of the ill-glued joints under the strain of his
ponderous figure was a signal for all the diners, and five other men
likewise drew away from around the board. Rankin extracted a match and a
stout jack-knife from the miscellaneous collection of useful articles in
his capacious pocket, carefully whittled the bit of wood to a point, and
picked his teeth deliberately. The five "hands," sun-browned, unshaven,
dissimilar in face as in dress, waited in expectation; but the
housekeeper, a shapeless, stolid-looking woman, wife of the foreman,
Graham, went methodically about the work of clearing the table. Rankin
watched her a moment indifferently; then without turning his head, his
eyes shifted in their narrow slits of sockets until they rested upon one
of the cowboys.

"What time was it you saw that smoke, Grannis?" he asked.

The man addressed paused in the operation of rolling a cigarette.

"'Bout an hour ago, I should say. I was just thinking of coming in to
dinner."

The lids met over Rankin's eyes, then the narrow slit opened.

"It was in the no'thwest you say, and seemed to be quite a way off?"

Grannis nodded.

"Yes; I couldn't make out any fire, only the smoke, and that didn't last
long. I thought at first maybe it was a prairie fire, and started to
see; but it was getting thinner before I'd gone a mile, so I turned
round and by the time I got back to the corral there wasn't nothing at
all to see."

Two of the other hands solemnly exchanged a wink.

"Think you must have eaten too many of Ma Graham's pancakes this
morning, and had a blur over your eyes," commented one, slyly.