Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/115

 Swiftly he stooped to where the girl sat back on her heels near the helpless head and his manacled hands swooped down to seize and wrest the weapon from her. She leaped to her feet, eyes blazing. The man's eyes, meeting her unspoken challenge, were filled with mingled wonder and abhorrence.

"In this country," he said slowly, "folks don't shoot a man when he 's helpless—least of all women folks don't. That 's counted murder."

"I hate him—I hate him!" Hilma gritted through clenched teeth. "Him and his whole tribe of swaggering, robbing cowmen. Why should n't I shoot him?" Zang nodded to the wounded hand with the white sliver of bone protruding from a round hole.

"You see what he did to me," he said simply. "When a man quick and surefire as he is might 's well have put that hole through the middle of my forehead. He gives me this when I—when I was shootin'—to kill. In this country that kind of a thing 's called white—plumb white."

A slow flush began to creep above the line of the blue frock at Hilma's throat; it colored her round neck and hung a flag of shame upon