Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/189

 morning's cavalcade through Main Street. Signs of a struggle in the girl's cabin! Then maybe she had caught the Killer single-handed when he came to complete his work of wiping out the Ring family and single-handed had overpowered him!

Supposition became cold fact before it had rolled from two tongues. From eating house to saloon and saloon to general store the electric report sped. Cattlemen had slaughtered twelve hundred sheep in a night, half of them belonging to the Ring girl; Hilma Ring, alone on Teapot Creek, had been visited by the Killer and had battled him into subjection. Hilma had been wounded. The Killer had been wounded. Somebody had been wounded; had not Woolly Annie's boy Dolphus seen blood all over the place?

Two Moons itched and burned with a fever of curiosity. Yes, and deeper—away down in the throbbing heart of the town—a lava lake of bitter hatred began to heave and glow with fiery incandescence. A feeling of climax pulsed through the air like the play of electricity before a thunderstorm. Even with none to proclaim it, all who were not of the cattle barony sensed that the time for settlement of