Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/244

 relief map in clay and putty under Original's feet.

Then he saw the girl. Just a slow moving dot of blue away off to the southeast where the Crazy Squaw feels its way toward Powder. He watched her for a while, watched her make a wide circle and come to a halt, circle again and stop in a swale between divides. That tiny dot of blue cried across crystal spaces "Lost—lost!"

A slow smile tugged at the corners of Original's mouth as he put his borrowed mount to the steep declivity of the butte and came jolting down into the tortuous alleys of the coulees. A little of pity in that smile; a little of sardonic humor. To him, who could traverse the most dangerous stretches of the Big Country in the dark and at full tilt, who knew this mountain-bound wilderness as a city dweller knows his flat, that wandering dot of blue was a bird in the net.

"Stranger hoss," he caroled, with the lilt of laughter in his voice, "you 're bound to meet up with a fightin' wild cat right soon. But she sure has lost some of her claws. She 'll have to pay some for holdin' up my game."

The wily trailer played his game so neatly