LITMIR.BIZ

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into the tiny cubby-hole. She explored all the stones of the fireplace and chimney throat above until her bare arm was sooty to the shoulder, but not one of them was loose or ready to swing out to disclose the hoped for cache.

      "That old man!" Hilma caught herself ​exploding in anger; then she regretted the outburst. He was not here to answer back; it was unfair to quarrel with the dead. But even tolerance for the crotchet of a dead man yielded no dollars. The ransacked house was bare of coin as the sweep of the divide down to the dooryard. After several hours' searching Hilma went back to the mantel and, leaning her elbows on it, stood looking down at a little stack of silver piled thereon—three silver dollars, a quarter and two dimes. Yesterday Uncle Alf had put the money there; he said he had found it in her father's pockets.

      Three silver dollars, a quarter and two dimes! This was the available capital Hilma had to start a life alone. To be sure, there was that two thousand dollars in the Two Moons bank, thirty miles away. But the girl never had been inside a bank, knew nothing about banks. She was more than half convinced that nobody but the one who deposited that money would be recognized by the bank people as competent to withdraw it. Bankers were all sharks she had heard her father say many times.

      The girl went to the flour barrel, took stock of the sides of bacon on the nails over the wood ​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 ​along them lines?" He straddled a chair, though the girl still stood, back to the fireplace suggesting anything but hospitality by her pose of calm self-sufficiency. The leader of the Teapot Spout nest of outlaws spread out his hands with a giving gesture.

      "Look here, Miss Hilma, I did n't ride all the way over here from the Spout this morning just to have you play the old game of looking at me like I was some crop-eared coyote yap-yappin' for his supper. Your old game of makin' small of me 's sort of in the discard now that your pappy 's gone over, and looks to me from this side of the road like time 's come for you and Zang Whistler to have a man talk together—all cards on the table an' no sanded deck. How 'bout it?"

      This new line of attack, at such variance with Zang's accustomed rough gallantries on the occasions of his past visits to the Ring home ranch, caught Hilma with no matching strategy. She stared at the confident, smiling face of the cattle rustler with no attempt to dissimulate either surprise or curiosity.

      "It 's just this way, Miss Hilma," Zang ran on easily, "whether you know it or not—and I reckon not, because your pappy was ​tight-mouthed as any old porcupine—but since you all took up your claim here on Teapot, your pappy 's sorta th'owed in with me an' my boys over to the Spout. He used to give us information whenever he heard Original Bill, the inspector, had his war paint on an' was projectin' round to give us a run; now an' then we 'd leave a few weaned calves in that little hid corral you 've got. Long an' short of it all is your pappy was in pretty deep with Zang Whistler an' his outfit of blackballed cow-punchers—so you 're in, too." Zang's talking hands moved to show his cards were falling fairly on the table.

      "Well?" This from Hilma without enthusiasm.

      "Now your pappy's stake in this deal," Zang continued imperturbably, "was an occasional split when we managed to run some of our stock over to Niobrara for a sale, an' my promise to put every man an' gun I 've got in the Spout behind him come time when the big cow outfits and he came to a show-down on the range fight. That promise stands, Miss Hilma—for you just like it did for him."

      "You mean your boys stand ready to back up the sheep people with guns?" For the first ​time animation fired the girl's features and a light kindled in her eyes.

      "I did n't say we 'd back all the sheep people," Zang corrected. "I said you could count on us in case the cattle outfits start to move your sheep off the range. An' listen, girl, that time isn't far off as I reckon it. Here 's the layout. Five years ago, when ole Woolly Annie was the first to bring sheep into this country, the Hashknife an' the Flying O an' the Circle Y outfits drawed a line down along the spurs of the Broken Horns an' says, 'Everything east of this line 's cattle range; keep your woollies back in the high ground.'

      "But 'long comes old Hard Winter Peters up on Beaver, an' he runs his sheep across the dead line. Then your pappy breezes in with his band on Crazy Squaw, inside the cowmen's boundary, an' th'ows in with Woolly Annie. Not to mention Zang Whistler, who has ways of his own for invadin' the cow outfits' rights. Which it 's all made the big cow owners to Cheyenne and back in England plumb restless an' rollicky as a new-broke bronc. So they sets this shorthorn, Original Bill—which he an' me used to ride night herd together on many a drive up the ole Plummer Trail—they sets ​him on the trail of Zang Whistler an' a-snoopin' round keeping a lookout on the sheep people who 're invadin' the cattle range. Fact he called here other day shows you 're on his blacklist.

      "But still the sheep keep edgin' in an' edgin' in—your pappy's, ole Woolly Annie's an' all the rest—an' still Zang Whistler rides out of Teapot Spout to see what he can see. You 're followin' close?"

      Hilma nodded tensely. Her visitor was touching upon that subject which had called forth such fiery prophecies of woe from Uncle Alf, which had moved her to vow undying enmity against the barons of the Big Country; he revealed much she had only guessed under her father's tight-lipped dominion. Zang drove home his point with unconscious eloquence. He had risen from his chair and now stood facing the girl.

      "So you see, the big owners are gettin' mighty riled up; an' they hired the Killer to go through the range country an' do with his rifle—sneaking behind coulee banks an' pot-shotting from under bridges—and do with a rifle what they can't do with strong talk. They aim to scare the sheepmen an' homesteaders ​who 've busted up their range with fence lines—scare 'em out of the country by killings. Your pappy, ole Hard Winter Peters, Jay North—all lyin' with a stone on their heads so 's the Killer can collect for his tally from the big augers down to Cheyenne.

      "When they savvy murders an' killing in the dark won't work, what 's the next step? Just as sure as prairie dogs have chin whiskers, girl, the powerfulest men in the Stockmen's Alliance 'll play their last card. They 'll hire a gang of bad men and quick shots to come into this country an' clean up—just like those Montana Vigilantes did a few years ago. Then it 's goin' to be knock-down-an'-drag-out, an' hell's cinders flyin' every which way."

      "Sooner that comes the better," the girl gritted, her mouth pulled down in a hard bow of hate. Zang, who gloried in his new-found power finally to play upon the emotions of this baffling creature of cold beauty, permitted a new note to creep into his voice, one of tender solicitude:

      "What are you aimin' to do, girl? How 're you goin' to tackle life when all these things I 've been specifyin' are buildin' right up in front of you?" Hilma's eyes instantly became ​glazed over with their old defensive aloofness. Their cold stare seared like needles of liquefied air.

      "Me? Why, I 'm going to run my sheep; that's all." Zang's face suddenly went red; he took a swift step toward the girl.

      "No, you 're not, girl," came his hot words. "You 're not goin' to stand up against a cyclone alone—not when I 've got every claim on you a man can have." Hilma's lips were parted in a slow, teasing smile; her eyes mocked.

      "They

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