Robert Welles Ritchie

“ She rode her sorry pony into the corral, unsaddled him and threw him an armful of hay, for the beast was her sole companion in much lonesomeness and there was love between them. Then she carried her rifle to the doorstep and, sitting there, fired many shots at the rusty butt of a tomato can a hundred paces away. Every shot missed and at each miss her anger increased—that curious double anger linking the smiling stranger and her own self for its object. Hilma only stopped her savage practice shooting when the growing clutter of empty shells at her feet suddenly aroused her to the waste. ”

“ Zang Whistler's sweeping bow—and a fetching figure of a horseman he was—was answered by a grave nod. The visitor's careless masculine grace and bold features, a little raffish and devil-may-care, carried no sex challenge to Hilma. She counted men, especially youngish men, merely as a variant of her own species—queer creatures and a little akin to bull calves in their antics.
"Old Man Ring got you working for him again?" Zang hailed, curbing his pony near the shallow trench wherein the girl stood.
"Yes," Hilma answered, and she squared her shoulders for another pick drive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hot love is suddenly confronted by bitter hate; in the winking of an eye a man's little moment of ecstasy is transformed into one of violence, trembling upon the pull of a trigger finger. And the genius of the Big Country, having wrought thus, veils a laugh with the sleeve of her garment.
Hilma was the first of the twain the range inspector interrupted to coördinate impulse and action. Even as Zang Whistler's hand dropped to his holster she leaped in front of him, attempting to sweep him behind her with a powerful backward stroke of her arm. ”

“ When, baffled by bars, the mob in the Two Moons jail had sent a shot at a flickering candle flame and the life of him known as the Killer had gone out with a chauvinistic grace strangely at variance with the record that had won his grim sobriquet, the cry went up: "Where's Zang Whistler? Turn loose Zang Whistler." Every remaining cell in the block was searched from without; all were empty. Then the mob broke into segments, scouring the courthouse and the living quarters contiguous to the jail for Sheriff Agnew and the prisoner believed by him to have been smuggled to a secret hiding place. ”

“ Slowly the blot in Main Street moved toward the black loom of the courthouse at the street's far end. No light there; just the indistinct picket line of the deputies drawn across the approach to the building.
A flying horseman, like some restless night bird of the wilderness, swerved round a corner ahead of the mob, dragged his mount to his haunches, spun him round as on a dollar and was thundering down a side street almost before those in the front rank of the marchers could be aware of his presence. This scout shot down a dark alley and came to the feed lot behind the Capitol Saloon. ”

“ Cattlemen had slaughtered twelve hundred sheep in a night, half of them belonging to the Ring girl; Hilma Ring, alone on Teapot Creek, had been visited by the Killer and had battled him into subjection. Hilma had been wounded. The Killer had been wounded. Somebody had been wounded; had not Woolly Annie's boy Dolphus seen blood all over the place?
Two Moons itched and burned with a fever of curiosity. Yes, and deeper—away down in the throbbing heart of the town—a lava lake of bitter hatred began to heave and glow with fiery incandescence. ”

“ The pallid east flushed its first harebell pink while all the remaining sweep of celestial lights glowed as if night were to be eternal. Bit by bit the blot of the Big Country became a blur; the blur took dim form. Hills rose from nothingness. Buttes were conjured out of the void. The long sleepy waves of the divides stirred under the first breath of dawn, their frozen tides restless to be freed.
Deeper flushed the pink in the east. Down in the line of alders that marked the course of a stream faint chitterings and flutterings betokened the waking of the wilderness things. ”

“ Beneath the hard surface of the girl's complete selfishness a faint stirring of conscience began to make itself felt as she rode in silence by the side of this man who had sworn to protect her. Night was falling and nights brought stark loneliness to her. Perhaps this was the circumstance provoking belated protest of conscience; perhaps just the feminine instinct always to appear at the best in the eyes of a man. Hilma was faintly surprised that she should feel necessity to say more on a subject closed the instant Zang had dropped her bridle. ”

“ She lifted one off its peg, threw across her arm the saddle blanket resting beneath and started back to pick her horse. It required all her strength to hold the saddle high so that dragging stumps would not betray her. She turned into one pitch-black stall at the rearmost end of the alley, whispered soothing words to the beast that resented her intrusion with a whiffling snort and prancing hoofs, then spread the blanket across its back. Just as Hilma was lifting the saddle into place the sound of footsteps at the entrance of the stable sent a stab through her heart. ”

“ From that moment when he had looked down out of his window upon the cavalcade escorting the Killer to jail the little scout of the range understood that now the two grappling forces, the barons of the horned cattle and the owners of the sheep, with their allies of the town, had come to a death lock. The blundering of Von Tromp had clinched upon the cattle clan the onus of murder suborned by gold, however clean might be the hands of the faithful retainers in the saddle,—the riders of the plains. ”

“ There she had contrived a blood reckoning on the tally of little pebbles found on dead men's foreheads; a Killer had received in full the harvest of his sowing. A desperate rallying of the range clan had hurled itself in a wave against the wall of its enemies and fallen back broken; even now hurrying groups of horsemen coursed the divides to find refuge from the wrath that seethed under the town's yellow lights. Unstable law, newly come to the Big Country, had been harried and scorned and made a mockery. ”

“ Dwellers in the Basin knew no distinction between cattlemen and sheepmen, hated them both because their coming inevitably spelt the peopling of the wilderness and the destruction of a solitude which asked no questions. Uncle Alf boiled righteous wrath over the utter baseness of those who were deaf to his exhortings.
"Let fire come down from heaven and utterly destroy 'em," was the prophet's parting valedictory for the recalcitrants who now lay shut behind him by the gate of the mountains. Then he let his rapt eye sweep the noble expanse of the Big Country like an unfolded scroll at his feet. ”

“ A more dangerous man never ranged Two Moons' single street.
Zang Whistler was looking for Original Bill Blunt. Haply found, the issues of life and death between them would hang on the balance of a hair. But at that hour the object of the outlaw's search was riding alone the salt-lick trail away out under the stars where somewhere in the bad lands beyond Crazy Squaw Hilma Ring blundered in the mazes of the night and the illimitable labyrinth of the Big Country. ”

“ The mob bayed. Still from the pitchy blackness beyond the inner fence of steel not a sound.
For ten minutes the steel forest of the cell block was clangorous with the crash of sledge. Then the lock gave and the gate bounded open. A snarling cheer and the foremost of the mob pushed into the narrow corridor which ran four sides round the central block of cells.
"Hey, you Killer! We got you now!"
Slowly, inexorably, the lantern marched at the head of a shadowy rank of men, pausing at each door to be upheld, that its light might fall through bars. ”

“ Hilma Ring did not obey Ma Agnew's injunction to sleep round the clock. On the contrary, long before the dictated span, she came broad awake with that wrenching jar back to consciousness which leaves one trembling and with a fear shadow inherited from our ancestors, the tree folk,—a vague terror of things unseen in a half-formed world. Suffocating darkness engulfed her. Not a ray of light anywhere. Not a sound. No tangible bound of demarcation between the world of unconsciousness and the domain of sentient life. ”

“ He saw in the leagues of tumbling divides stretching to purpling distances creation of Genesis fresh from the Hand that labored. All the heaving world below him and the pure depths of the sky rimmed over it seemed vibrant with the vitality of God. Only man was vile.
Uncle Alf turned his horse to the downward trail. From the depths of his chest came rumbling a song. Head back, eyes staring raptly at the blazing ball of the sun, the evangelist sent a great voice booming out into the silence:
That heavenly music! ”

“ Then the trail launches its culminating surprise. Suddenly the heavy curtains of the hills are parted, and the wayfarer stands upon the very proscenium of the Big Country displayed in its entirety.
A world of crystal light stretching out and out to unmeasured distances; light that is flawless and sparkling as a quartz spear; light which seems to carry a taste like water from a mountain spring. As Noah looked upon a clean, washed world so the rider on the high bib of the Pass's exit sees a universe untarnished, virginal in its fleckless beauty. ”

“ Nothing within to justify thrills. Just a sheaf of papers, a yellow-bound bank book, a portentous document with the arms of the United States graven in the midst of a frilled and curlicued border,—and a photograph. Hilma snatched at the latter the instant she spied it and let the hot sunshine fall on its dimmed surface while she gazed at it many minutes without movement. A woman—a very young woman—gazed back at her from the glossed surface. ”

“ Just this figure of a horseman visible for a minute against the sky line, then disappearing. Hilma saw it; she watched it with intentness until it was swallowed by the black shadow of a butte. Long she sat, waiting for the tiny silhouette to reappear. The dark came, but the specter of the afterglow did not show itself again. The girl found herself idly wondering about it. That would be on the road to Two Moons where the horseman appeared,—on the road over which her father would be traveling homeward. No ranches lay over there; no cow outfits were located between Teapot and town. ”

“ For a while Hilma gave herself to a delicious lassitude,—weakness coming in the train of long nerve strain. Then, as one by one the hay vents into the stalls below glowed golden with the passing of a lantern beneath, curiosity battled with her fear. Through a square in the floor not many feet distant the light shone steadily, indicating that the lantern had come to a stop in the stall below. ”

“ The mounting pillar of flame put the whole band of eight hundred at the mercy of the riders. Swiftly they coursed round the rim of the cup, stationing themselves at wide intervals. Then, at an opening shot from their leader, the six rode slowly down on to the sheep band, each emptying the magazine of his rifle into the clotted mass as he descended.
It was slaughter. The scum of woolly bodies tossed and boiled wildly, rushing from side to side to seek escape from the whiplashes of fire all about. Individuals leaped upon the backs of their fellows and hobbled across a moving pavement to death. ”