Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/98

 uncinching their mounts. But as Timberline and Andy Dorson loafed so inconspicuously they passed a word,—just a word casually spoken into the ear of this man known to be true and that one counted daring. The word was carried with lengthening shadows out and out across purpling prairies to where cooks' fires gleamed in the falling darkness, signaling riders in from the ranges. And this was its substance—a moving; there would be a sheep moving on Poison Spider that night.

Night in Two Moons was joyous for Woolly Annie, the sheep queen. After dining gorgeously at the Rhinoceros Eating House, where Phenie, the grateful recipient of favors, paid in kind with an extra helping of saleratus biscuit and wild honey, the mistress of the Poison Spider domain hied her to a fair given by the Ladies' Loyal Aid of the First Church in Firemen's Hall. There the last of her double eagles took prodigal wings over the fishpond, the wheel of fortune and the whatnot booth. Woolly Annie's booming laughter shook the festoons of starred bunting on the rafters; she steered elderly gentlemen of her acquaintance into corners to retail to them behind a screening hand and in piercing whispers