Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/312

 her struggling to pull the unconscious man's shirt away from the wound below the heart, Zang got out his knife and cut away the cloth from shoulder to waist. The man's great torso was exposed; an ugly looking blackened hole bored through the white flesh on the left side. Hilma dipped cloths in water and began to bathe the wound. All the while she kept whispering in mother tones to the ears that could not hear,—disjointed, passionate heart calls they were. Whistler was a thousand miles out of the scene.

The big outlaw realized this after a few moments. From somewhere out of the deeps of his heart a curious sense of delicacy rose up to check the questions he would ask. He tiptoed back and pointed to the form of Timberline Todd where it lay beneath the window. Four of his men picked it up and carried it out of the cabin.

An hour Zang waited while men were busy with a shovel up on the flower-blown knoll where the clay on another grave, that of Old Man Ring, still was fresh. There they buried Timberline Todd, a fighter who had come to his rest as he would. Then, the sun being low and Whistler having grave doubts as to how he