"
"Can the leopard change his spots?" asked Colonel Barrington, with a
grim smile.
The little white-haired lady glanced at him as she said quietly, "When
the wicked man--"
CHAPTER IX
COURTHORNE DISAPPEARS
Supper was cooking when Lance Courthorne sat beside the glowing stove
in the comfortless general room of a little wooden hotel in a desolate
settlement of Montana. He had a good many acquaintances in the
straggling town, where he now and then ran a faro game, though it was
some months since he had last been there, and he had ridden a long way
to reach it that day. He was feeling comfortably tired after the
exposure to the bitter frost, and blinked drowsily at the young rancher
who sat opposite him across the stove. The latter, who had come out
some years earlier from the old country, was then reading a somewhat
ancient English newspaper.
"What has been going on here lately?" asked Courthorne.
The other man laughed. "Does anything ever happen in this place? One
would be almost thankful if a cyclone or waterspout came along, if it
were only to give the boys something to talk about. Still, one of the
girls here is going to get married. I'm not sure old man Clouston
finds it helps his trade quite as much as he fancied it would when he
fired his Chinamen and brought good-looking waitresses in. This is the
third of them who has married one of the boys and left him."
"What could he expect!" and Courthorne yawned.
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