Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/68

 box, opened the coffee canister and peered inside. Three dollars and forty-five cents Zang Whistler found her brooding thus when he rode up. Hilma had not heard his pony's hoof beats outside the door; she made a quick leap toward the rifle propped against one wall of the fireplace when the man from Teapot Spout appeared in the doorway.

"Sho, now, Miss Hilma, you 're not figurin' to pump lead at a good friend come to make good medicine for you." Zang swept off his hat with a cavalier's grace; his bold eyes, a little raffish and devil-may-care in their way of falling on women, were challenging the spirit of the feminine creature to tilt in the age-old tourney. Hilma's answering glance, impersonal and cleanly cold as light struck from crystal, was matched by her voice:

"You round here again? Yesterday you dropped in right timely when I needed you, but to-day"

"You 're past needing a little neighborly help, I suppose," Zang cut in with a disarming smile. "Don't need anybody to advise you how to run the sheep business, or what kind of a game to play in this war the cow outfits have started over the range question? All wised up