Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/243

 At the salt lick little was revealed to the keen eye of the trailer. Tige had tried to stop. Once he had bucked in protest against the will of the rider which pushed him on, then he had compromised with his old racking gait. But he was following a dim, forgotten trail leaping cross country to Wild Horse Cañon in the wildest of the Powder River Country. The girl Hilma was lost in the Big Country.

So, after a night of slow traveling in the general direction of the trail Tige had taken—so faint it was that Original could only pick up familiar landmarks as they came out of the night's sack—he awaited the coming of the light on the highest pinnacle of Bad Water Breaks. He was on the highest ground for thirty miles around; Hilma could not move anywhere within that radius without eventually revealing herself to the trailer.

Strengthening light played upon the cathedral columns of the breaks all around—wind-and-water-hewn terrain all chopped and scarred into coulees and snaglike buttes. Light rolled back the night from all the waves of the divides between the breaks and Pumpkin Buttes far to the southward. Stronger became the contours until all the land lay like a