Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/191

 steps. Fire was in her eye. As she trundled grandly down the steps she announced for all to hear that that pink-eyed little house rabbit, Orpheus C. Strayman, the district attorney, had said he was too busy to hear her complaint about the sheep moving, and that Red Agnew must be combing the kinks out of his whiskers somewhere because she could not find him. She opined that unless she got some action mighty pronto she 'd have to break into the jail.

The curiosity of the hundred before the courthouse was whetted more when the tall, frock-coated stranger with the numerous fraternal pins, who had come in on the stage that morning, elbowed his way up to the steps and entered the mute house of mystery. He was out of view longer than the sheep queen had been, and when he descended the steps a possum's smile betokened the charity he felt toward all mankind.

The crowd could not know that Warren Von Tromp's smile was a false signal set on the bleak cliffs of his countenance with purpose to deceive. The result of his fifteen stormy minutes with the district attorney had been a flat denial of access to the Killer and a terse