Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/230



was not one of the wild horsemen who played a hundred-to-one chance against the mob before the jail. Though the instinct of the clan had pulled him that way and the old devil call of the range—which was only the adventure spirit of the boy magnified in the man—shouted that he join his fellows in the desperate sally, a saving sense of strategy kept him away from the mêlée. For one thing, the range inspector was perforce a resident of Two Moons; the town was his headquarters, and it would not be meet for him to be found among the raiders from the range. But overtopping that consideration was the heavier one of expediency.

The day's events carried to Original a broader significance than to the harum-scarum cow-punchers who had seized the golden opportunity for a run, in their pat phraseology. From that moment when he had looked down