ly breathe; but he did not notice it. Reversing head and
feet, he started out of the kennel. It was certainly time to leave. The
roar he had heard must have been of the wind. Assuredly God had acted
before this. Head first, gasping, he moved on, reached the curve, and
looked out.

Indignation took possession of the little figure. The fingers clinched
until the nails bit deep into the soft palms. The whole body trembled in
impotent anger and outraged self-respect. Upon the face of the small man
was suddenly written the implacable defiance which one sees in carnivora
when wounded and cornered--intensified as an expression can only be
intensified upon a human face--as, almost unconsciously, he returned to
the hollow he had left, and fairly thrust his tousled head into the
kindly earth.

How long he remained there he did not know. The stifling atmosphere of
the place gradually overcame him. Anger, wonder, the multitude of
thoughts crowding his child-brain, slowly faded away; consciousness
lapsed, and he slept.

When he awoke it was with a start and a vague wonder as to his
whereabouts. Then memory returned, and he listened intently. Not a sound
could he distinguish save his own breathing, as he slowly made his way
to the mouth of the kennel. Before him was the opposite sod wall of the
house standing as high as his head; above that, the blue of the sky;
upon what had been the earthen floor, a strewing of ashes; over all,
calm, glorious, the slanting rays of the low afternoon sun. A moment the
boy lay gazing out; then he crawled to his feet, shaking off the dirt as
a dog does. One glance about, and the blue eyes halted. A moisture came
into them, gathered into drops, and then, breaking over the barrier of
the long lashes, tears flowed through the accumulated grime, down the
thin cheeks, leaving a clean pathway behind. That was all, for an
instant; then a look--terrible in a mature person and doubly so in a
child--came over the long face,--an expression partaking of both hate
and vengeance. It mirrored an emotion that in a nature such as that of
Benjamin Blair would never be forgotten. Some day, for some one, there
would be a moment of reckoning; for the child was looking at the
charred, unrecognizable corpse of his mother.

* * * * *

A half-hour later, Rankin, steaming into the yard of the Big B Ranch,
came upon a scene that savored much of a play. It was so dramatic that
the big man paus