Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/45

 journeyed to Two Moons to tell the sheriff concerning the manner of Monk's taking off. The stone on the forehead,—she could see it, could see the unlovely face of their nearest neighbor with a pebble balanced grotesquely just above one lumpish jaw socket. This was very unusual and not a little disturbing. Hilma laid it all to the door of the impudent range inspector, her visitor of the afternoon. As she phrased it aloud—and Hilma always talked her thoughts when she was alone—he had started her thinking. It was not everybody who could start Hilma Ring thinking.

"Fool!" she chided herself, and she undressed and rolled herself in the blankets of her bunk. Sleep would not come. Instead a brooding formless something, which might have been the shape of fear or—had Hilma known it—a messenger of ill from the Norse god Frey, took substance of the dark about her. She shivered. Hours passed.

A noise brought her bounding to her feet by the bunk side. It was a stuttering whinny, and it came from the direction of the corral where the shabby little horse was penned. Hilma stood breathless for many minutes, then native courage pushed through her panic. She