Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/88



the keen and competent Phenie—arbiter of fashion for Two Moons' younger set—to play sponsor for her taste and buffer between her buckskin bag of gold pieces and the cupidity of the storekeepers, Woolly Annie shopped gorgeously. For her numerous tribe out on Poison Spider, that is to say, rather than in her own interests. The sheep queen's sartorial needs were strictly Spartan; overalls for the range, with a calico skirt to wear over that bifurcated utility when she rode to town; certain shrieking red flannel substantiate which had a way of glowing like a blind fire through whatever print stuff covered her huge torso; a bonnet—always the same bonnet—for town wear. That was about all. But for her brood, numbering nine and stepladdered down from twenty to the comparatively tender age of eight—the last a posthumous child serving as a memento of a father who had eloped with a