Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/218

 their eyes. Woolly Annie herself, minus her skirt of courtesy and with a borrowed shotgun in her hands, was in the fore; her boy Dolphus she had put to bed in the Occidental, and his trousers she had carried off and cached to insure his keeping out of trouble.

Slowly the blot in Main Street moved toward the black loom of the courthouse at the street's far end. No light there; just the indistinct picket line of the deputies drawn across the approach to the building.

A flying horseman, like some restless night bird of the wilderness, swerved round a corner ahead of the mob, dragged his mount to his haunches, spun him round as on a dollar and was thundering down a side street almost before those in the front rank of the marchers could be aware of his presence. This scout shot down a dark alley and came to the feed lot behind the Capitol Saloon. The dim, barred yard was populous with other mounted men. Here had gathered the riders in from the cattle ranges,—hardy men, desperate men of the clan who had caught under the banners of the sunset away out yonder word of big doings in town and had come winging in to see what they could see. Men of the rear guard