Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/143

 the law, who had dared the agents of the law to come and shackle him, this man of the wilderness was turning over in his inept heart the problem that is woman. Gladly would Zang Whistler swap shots with a sheriff's posse behind the brink of a coulee; with the lightest heart in the world he would sally forth in the night to stampede a herd and cut out a string of beeves under the rifles of their protectors; but this woman business—this she-stuff, as Zang termed it—was not his game. Like a blind cripple trying to ride an unbroken bronc, so Zang in his complete bewilderment summed his incapacity to cope with or fathom this fair antagonist.

Beneath the hard surface of the girl's complete selfishness a faint stirring of conscience began to make itself felt as she rode in silence by the side of this man who had sworn to protect her. Night was falling and nights brought stark loneliness to her. Perhaps this was the circumstance provoking belated protest of conscience; perhaps just the feminine instinct always to appear at the best in the eyes of a man. Hilma was faintly surprised that she should feel necessity to say more on a subject closed the instant Zang had dropped her