Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/174



had the gate of the prison yard closed against the crowd when Hilma swayed in her saddle and would have fallen had Zang not pushed his horse to her side and caught her in his unwounded arm. The strain of that ride through town, following more than twelve hours in the saddle, had sapped the girl's resistance to the last nerve volt. For a minute she wavered on the border line of hysteria, then she straightened with a scowl stamped between her eyes, a scowl for her own weakness.

"That comes of being a woman," she whispered fiercely as Zang helped her to dismount. Sheriff Agnew's wife—a florid giantess with the features of a nursing sister—was now in the yard; she urged Hilma to "come in and get a bracer right this minute", but the girl would not quit the scene until she knew what might be the Sheriff's disposition not only of the prisoner but of Zang and herself. The