Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/213

 Where could she hide? What was her next step? Like a trapped lynx the mind of the girl roved madly at the end of a short chain, a pitifully short chain of circumstance. She was afoot and more than thirty miles from that little cabin on Teapot recently abandoned so carelessly but this instant seeming precious sanctuary because beyond reach. She had not a friend in Two Moons; there was none in Two Moons she knew except Original Bill, and he was the author of her present abysmal distress. If she remained anywhere in the vicinity of the town she would be caught and locked up in a more secure restraint than what she had just escaped. But how to get back to her cabin, or even to Woolly Annie's home ranch on Poison Spider, where protection might be given her because of the business association that existed between the sheep queen and her father?

There was but one way—a desperate way. That one Hilma determined to pursue, come what might. She started to follow the stream's fringe of willows to that point where the creek made a wide bend in toward the town and passed under the bridge at the far end of Main Street. The intermittent popping of