Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/212

 another and another. The fusillade seemed to come from the other side of the courthouse building—from the street side. Hilma decided she had let herself out of a room at the rear of the sheriff's quarters, for there was no fence in sight, just prairie.

Now a single hoarse cry and two more shots; then the sound of rapid hoofs.

Hilma bent double and started on a run for the distant line of willows marking the creek's course. She had no definite plan except that of the instant, which was to put as much ground as possible between herself and the jail. Her fear-goaded imagination credited the shots to the sheriff's discovery of her escape; he was summoning a posse or something like that to scour the town in search of her.

She came stumbling through the dark to the first fringe of willows and fell panting into their black shadows. Momentary relief was hers, but when, on looking back to the dark pile she had just quit, the girl saw a light flashing from window to window on the ground floor, black terror engulfed her again. Now she was certain Agnew had discovered the untenanted bedroom, the opened window.