Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/16

 the trailer. As he rode he crooned to himself—and to Tige, his little cutting horse, who was always an appreciative listener—a mournful ballad of the Black Hills:

He sang because the trail was plain, because it carried to him intelligence he eagerly sought and there was every chance trouble lay ahead.

So he descended from the high lands round Bad Water and came into the valley of the Teapot, a rough and tumble stream dropping straight down from the Spout, back in the Broken Horns. The dim trail he followed cut through some rough land, over a ford and up the tortuous alleys of coulees straight for a ranch house and corral set on the edge of hayfields. Before he came to the ranch house Original made a detour up a broad draw and drew rein at the rough poplar bars of a smaller corral,—an inclosure not more than twenty feet square neatly hidden away in an alder thicket. Four yearling calves in the corral eyed him askance, shifting restlessly after the silly fashion of their kind.