Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/36

 Also, he met friends. It was the sunset hour and all Main Street was blocked into indigo and pale lemon by fardels of waning light flung down from the crest of the Broken Horns. An hour for confidences.

"I was yust riding by the Bad Water Breaks," Old Man Ring was saying, back to bar and arms spread along the rail expansively, "when I hear a leetle shot—bim!—away off near Jed Monk's house"

Quick night fell and along the black channel of Main Street splashes of light sprayed out from saloon doors. Dark shapes of men waded through these fountains of light. Men met and one said to another: "Have you heard about it? Ye-ah, another murder. C'm on over to the Cloud's Rest and listen to Old Man Ring tell about it. He knows who done it."

"Soh I find Jed Monk like I tell you," Old Man Ring, firm as a jack pine upon his feet and with the liquor in him showing only by an increased dazedness in his eyes, was repeating for the twentieth time. Something of an oratorical quality had come into his voice. "And on his head, where it lies a leetle on the side, there is a stone 'bout as big as this"

Two Moons, alive, stirred by the tale of