LITMIR.BIZ

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but with the lips alone.

      "Well, you picked a good one when you chose Zang Whistler of Teapot Spout," he retorted hardily. "He 's one of the politest outlaws and all-round bad men we have in our midst, which is saying something."

      Hilma made no answer save through her eyes, which flashed like feldspar in the sun. She took a backward step as if to close the door in the visitor's face.

      "An' I take it I did n't miss meeting Zang Whistler right here in your dooryard by a very long time," Original pursued with studied ​coldness. "Those yearlin' calves, now, they 've still got the lather on 'em from hard runnin'."

      This roused her. What knowledge was this stranger advertising by veiled hints? The prick of danger loosed her tongue:

      "I don't know what you 're talking about—Zang Whistler—calves. If you have any questions to ask I can answer them as well as my father."

      Just a flicker of triumph about Original's mouth. He plumped his challenge at her before she could recover the vantage of silence:

      "Zang Whistler rode up here not more 'n an hour ago, driving a bunch of four yearlin' calves. The calves are wearing a skillet-of-snakes brand over their rightful S O Bar, which is so new you can smell the burnt hide. After Zang penned those burnt calves in that tidy little corral you have down in the draw—you directing him from the back of a smallish horse with one skelped hoof—you and him rode up to the house, and Zang sat his horse right here," Original pointed to three tiny damp spots on the dooryard's hardened 'dobe, "while you gave him a goord of water. Then he rode off yonder to Teapot Spout to join his merry companions."

      ​Hilma had unconsciously lifted one hand away from the door frame to bring its fingers playing about her lips while Original delivered this smooth flow of magic. Now she burst forth in hot anger:

      "I always heard you cow inspectors were crawling Indians, dodging and twisting in the grass to spy on folks. If you saw all this why did n't you come right out and talk about it then? Afraid of Zang Whistler's gun?" This last shot with a wintry smile.

      "Got me wrong, Miss Corntossel," he teased, no spite, but a secret attempt at provocation registering in his voice. "I saw all this, as you say, on the ground. Tracks tell no lies. Zang Whistler rides a horse with one notched hoof; he 's fair in love with that little horse and won't give him up, howbe it leaves a wide trail everywhere. A calf with a healing brand limps on the leg he 's favoring; that 's easy to see in any middlin' soft ground. Anyway, I mostly find cattle with sore brands clustering round the tracks Zang Whistler's horse makes. It 's a funny habit they have."

      She stood irresolute for the space of two breaths looking up to the smiling eyes under the shadowing hat brim. Then without hurry ​she stepped back into the house and closed the door. Original heard a bar sliding into place behind the heavy slabs. He gazed at the shut door with mingled amusement and chagrin; the situation had not been at all distasteful despite the girl's churlishness. That he set down as but of a part with the bad manners of the sheep people. But the chill glory of her face upon which the heavy rope of hair cast a reflected golden sheen! Girls with looks like that were scarce upon the range.

      Tige turned to the pressure of a knee and trotted down to the scars of the creek bank behind the ranch house through which the questing trail had led. This track Original pursued up the secret draw to the hidden corral where the stolen yearlings were penned. He dropped the bars and rode in among them.

      "Hi! Yip—yip!" The calves milled about the pen foolishly, then plunged out through the opening; wise little Tige nosed and nudged them into a close core of galloping flesh. Down the draw and on to where the Teapot spread its waters wide for a ford Original drove the bunch.

      A clean, sharp crack sounded from over where the cliff of the coulee lifted above the ​scars of winter freshets. A puff of dust kicked up twenty feet or more ahead of the foremost calf. Original whipped his eyes to the right. He saw the clean, chiseled shape of the girl he had just left against the raw blue of the sky on the brink of the gorge a hundred and fifty yards away. She was mounted on a scrubby horse. Even as he looked she raised her rifle again and covered him. A full half minute before smoke jetted from the barrel; the bullet struck many yards too short.

      Just as the first calf plunged into the shallows of the ford Original turned in his saddle and with elaborate gesture of politeness lifted his hat. He made a sweeping bow which carried him low over his saddle horn. Then he suddenly reined Tige to his haunches, whirled him about to face the distant figure on the coulee bank and held him steady. Horse and rider presented a fair, wide mark.

      Original saw the girl drop the rifle down to her side, eject the empty shell, then slowly lift the shining lance of light once more to her shoulder. Her vivid golden head tipped as she laid her eye along the sights. He sat moveless, smiling, curiously stirred by the deliberate workings of a murder impulse. It flashed ​upon him that the girl behind that rifle was different from any girl he had ever met. She was a regular stinger—that is what she was—a stinger.

      Just as light struck from the far-away barrel lanced itself fair in the man's eyes the trigger was pressed. High over his head the bullet sang. Once more Original swept his hat in a mocking arc, then turned and dashed across the ford to round the scattering yearlings into a traveling unit. He did not even look back. No more shots came. But as he rode the range inspector chuckled deep down in his throat.

      "Bluffed, by criminy—bluffed! Original, boy, I reckon the pot 's yours."

      For Original Bill Blunt knew that even poor shooting could not excuse that last shot so far over his head. A hand had elevated the rifle barrel at the last saving quarter second.

      Chapter 2

       Table of Contents

      Layout 4

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      CHAPTER II

      A saddle-colored horse, dust streaked and weary, topped the long rise of the Poison Spider Divide and, willing enough to obey the slight tug at bridle, shambled to a halt on the crest. The rider, a shrunken figure in overall blue under a flapping black hat, straightened a bit in his seat and looked down on the town of Two Moons in the hill pocket. Always in the Big Country there is this pleasurable prick of surprise when the last billowing divide of an interminable succession falls below horse's hoofs to reveal destination. After thirty miles of desolation—ranked buttes like organ pipes shooting into the blue; bald mesas; leprous waves of alkali hills—first sight of town crashes on the dulled senses like smitten iron.

      Shabby, both horse and rider. No pride of the sleek-limbed cutting horse, aristocrat of the cow outfit's remuda, showed in the beast's slack neck and limp ears; in his dull eye no spark of deviltry awaiting opportunity to flare ​into open revolt. Christian—for that was his name—was earth-born in a land where the horse is long. The man who rode him was plebeian, loutish even in the careless sag of his overalls tucked into square-toed boots, the hump of his collar high round his ears. His wizened face was all fallen into hollows and crevasses beneath protuberant cheek bones and outstanding ears; skin above the scraggy gray beard baked a pipestone red; blue eyes which never cleansed themselves of dazedness. His features seemed to be set in a perpetual substrata of frost.

      This was Old Man Ring, the sheepman of Teapot Creek come to Two Moons to tell the sheriff of Broken Horn something important.

      Never before in his drab life of grubbing had Old Man Ring anything important to tell anybody. Never, even, had he been important in himself except in a limited way and that a bread-winning way—a hard-necessity way. The Big Country round about distinguished him above his fellow sheepmen only because he was the father of Hilma Ring. And Hilma Ring was counted a peach—a loo-loo.

      "You, Christian!" Old Man Ring laid blame for the halt on his horse and querulously ​jerked at the bit. Christian sighed and took the down grade at what long years of service had established as a courtesy trot. They drew nigh the Thirst Cutter Saloon, outpost of Two

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