Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/50

 burden which showed he had set himself for a wild outburst of grief. None came. The girl looked down at the pitiful bundle; her hand strayed out to touch her father's head. Dark lights lay deep in her eyes when she raised them to Uncle Alf's.

"Where did you find him?" she asked.

"By the roadside just t'other side of Twenty Mile Crick. And right between his eyes"

"A little stone," Hilma supplied. "A little stone—yes, I knew." She turned her horse to the homeward stretch.

"The Killer!" Uncle Alf roared in his diapason thunder. "That son of Baal who kills for the cattlemen and marks his pride in blood with a stone. He lies in wait like the thief and the spoiler, and his hand is red in the dawn."

They rode a distance with no further word between them. Hilma was looking off to the mighty battlements of the mountains, warders over her great lonesomeness,—now without respite. The lanky man by her side muttered in his beard. She spoke her thoughts aloud:

"He shot dad because dad knew who he was. Dad rode to Two Moons to tell the sheriff he saw the Killer shoot Jed Monk. I reckon