Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/305

 of the Minnesota State capitol cross the glass of the clock's pendulum case dissolved into dust.

Zang Whistler, bound and manacled, sat propped against the fireplace stones, silent. A saturnine smile seemed fixed on his features. From the bunk behind the barricade where Hilma lay there was not a sound.

Original found his cartridges running low. Remembering the rifle he had wrested from the girl, he started on hands and knees on a search for ammunition to supply that weapon. Just as he was lifting himself cautiously toward a shelf where he had spied some paper cartridge boxes he heard a sharp metallic snap and, turning his head, he saw a round hole through the side of the blue zinc trunk he had upended to protect the girl.

He stepped quickly to the bunk where she lay and peered over the top of the pile of stuff there. In the shadow was the girl's face turned toward his. Her hair, tumbled in the fight, lay like a glory all round her head. But the eyes meeting his did not flash the defiance he expected. Instead there was something in their blue-black depths wholly startling to the man,—something of dawning wonder and a