Suddenly—whether it was an hour or a minute afterwards, he did not know—he awoke and sat up listening. Some sound had caught and held his sub-conscious attention. He waited a moment, intent, scarcely breathing, and then sprang swiftly to his feet. The sound now came definitely from the sheds at the left. It was the deep chesty groan of a horse in pain.
Once upon his feet, Ben Blair ran toward the barn, not cautiously but precipitately. He had not grown to maturity amid animals without learning something of their language; but even if such had been the case, he could scarcely have mistaken that sound. Mortal pain and mortal terror vibrated in those tones. No human being could have cried for help more distinctly. The frozen snow squeaked under the rancher's feet as he ran. "Stop there!" he shouted. "Stop there!" and throwing open the nearest door, unmindful of danger, he dashed into the interior darkness.
The barn was eighty odd feet in length, and as Ben swung open the door at the east corner there was a flash of fire from the extreme west end, and a bullet splintered the wood just back of his head. His precipitate entry had been his salvation. He groped his way ahead, the groans of the horses in his ears—for now he detected more than one voice. A growing realization of what he would find was in his mind, and then a dark form shot through the west door, and he was alone. Impulse told him to follow, but the sound of pain and struggle kept him back. He struck a match, held it like a torch above him, moved ahead, stopped. The flame burned down the dry pine until it reached his fingers, blackened them, went out; but he did not stir. He had expected the thing he saw, expected it at the first cry he heard; yet infinitely more horrible than a picture of imagination was the reality. He did not light another match, he did not wish to see. To hear was bad enough—to hear and to know. He started for the door; and behind him three great horses, hopelessly maimed and crippled, struggled to rise, and failing, groaned anew.
It seemed Ben's fate this night to be just too late for service. Before he reached the exit there sounded, spattering and intermittent, like the first popping kernels of corn in a pan, a succession of pistol-shots from the ranch-house. There was no answer, and as he stepped out into the air the sound ceased. As he did so, the kitchen of the house sprang alight from a lamp within. There was a moment of apparent inactivity, and then, the door swinging open, fair against the lighted background, shading his eyes to look into the outer darkness, stood Rankin. Instantly a wave of premonition flooded the watching Benjamin.
"Go back!" he shouted. "Go back! Back, quick!" and careless of personal danger, he started running for the ranch-house as before he had raced for the barn.
The warning might as well have been ungiven. Almost before the last words were spoken there came from the darkness at Ben's right the sound he had been expecting—a single vicious rifle report; and as though a mighty invisible weight were crushing him down, Rankin sank to the floor.
Then for the first time in his history Ben Blair lost self-control. Quick as thought he changed his course from the house to the direction from which the shot had come. The great veins of his throat swelled until it seemed he could scarcely breathe. Curses, horrible, blighting curses, combinations of malediction which had never even in thought entered his mind before, rolled from his lips. His brain seemed afire. But one idea possessed him—to lay hands upon this intruding being who had in cold blood done that fiendish deed in the barn, and now had shot his best friend on earth. The rage of primitive man who knew not steel or gunpowder was his; the ferocity of the great monkey, the aborigine's predecessor, whose means of offence were teeth and nails. Straight ahead the man rushed, seeming not to run, but fairly to bound, turned suddenly the angle at the corner of the machinery shed, stumbled over a snow-plough drawn up carelessly by one of the men, fell, regained his feet, and heard in his ears the thundering hoof-beats of a horse urged away at full speed.
For a moment Ben Blair stood as he had risen, gazing westward where the other had departed, but seeing nothing, not even a shadow. Clouds had formed over the sky, and the night was of intense darkness. To attempt to follow a trail now was waste of time; and gradually, as he stood there, the unevolved fury of the man transformed. His tongue became silent; not a human being had heard the outburst. The physical paroxysm relaxed. As he returned to the ranch-house no observer would have detected in him other than the usual matter-of-fact rancher; yet beneath that calm was a purpose infinitely more terrible than the animal blaze of a few minutes before, a tenacity more relentless than a tiger on the trail of its quarry, than an Indian stalking his enemy; a formulated purpose which could patiently wait, but eventually and inevitably would grind its object to powder.
Meanwhile, back at the scene of the tragedy, there had been feverish action. Many of the cowboys were already about the barns, and lanterns gleamed in the horse corral. Within the house, in the nearest bunk where they had laid him, stretched the proprietor of the ranch. About him were grouped Grannis, Graham, and Ma Graham. The latter was weeping hysterically—her head buried in her big checked apron, the great mass of her body vibrating with the effort. As Ben approached, her husband glanced up. Upon his face was the dull unreasoning indecision of a steer which had lost its leader; an animal passivity which awaited command.
"Rankin's dead," he announced dully. "He's hit here." A withered hand indicated a spot on the left breast. "He went quick."