CHAPTER XXIII
The morning swift events were going forward in the Spout found Hilma Ring, ten miles away on the lower reaches of Teapot, preparing to flee from the loneliness and the oppression of conflicting doubts which had been ever at her elbow since that day, a week gone, when she had ridden back to her cabin after the encounter with Original in the wild country by Crazy Squaw.
Seven days and nights the girl had been alone, seeing but one human soul and that the livery-man who had brought her horse, Christian, out from town in exchange for the one Original had forced her to mount when he recovered the stolen Tige from her. Seven days and nights had she groped in the dark labyrinth called life, seeking a sure path out of all the bewildering perplexities that encompassed her. The steady espionage of the wilderness upon her—blank, impersonal stare of the mountains by
