Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/114

 the wrist suddenly appeared symbolical; it was the steel that locked against liberty.

Hilma, now on her feet and with the clubbed revolver in her hand, followed, stooping, the course of the writhing men on the floor. Her lips were drawn back over feline teeth, her blue-black eyes were narrowed by hard-drawn lids into the eyes of a hunting panther. The will to slay possessed her wholly. For an instant a tousled black head was uppermost. She smote it hard with the heavy revolver butt—smote again, yet once again.

A metallic click, a long sigh and the shape of what had been a fighting one hundred and sixty pounds of virile, tricky thews and springs of tempered steel lay sprawled inert, nerveless. Zang Whistler, very white and shaking, slowly rose from the floor. His hands, held ashamedly at arm's length, were linked together by steel bands on a short steel chain.

Hilma's eyes were not for him. They were fixed upon the prone figure of Original Bill and the glint of pantherlike ferocity in them was undimmed. Zang's gun she had turned with the butt firm in her right hand; her left thumb was slowly pushing up the hammer.

The outlaw saw the movement of that thumb.