Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/310

 every shuffling foot. Bedding, trunk and table that had been a barricade were kicked into an ungainly heap.

None paid attention by so much as a passing glance at the two sprawled bodies by the far wall.

Zang, freed, made a tentative step toward the girl. But, unseeing, she passed through the crowd of men and came slowly to the place where Original Bill lay, head across the rifle. As one walking in hypnosis Hilma moved, and dully she looked down at the black head pillowed on the crooked arm. A full minute she stood thus, bereft of impulse, seeming numbed against all impression from the trash of bleak tragedy about her.

Then husks that had stifled and sealed against every impulse save a selfish one these many years of her soul's hermit isolation dissolved in a great sob, and the heart of Hilma Ring winged free.

She knelt by the side of the man who had conquered her and took his head in her arms. She whispered softly: "My man—my man!" Her voice crooned like the voice of a mother in cradle song. Her free hand fluttered about the white forehead, tucking back a black raven