rve its later effect. That
which she now beheld was obviously satisfactory, and her smile deepened
contentedly.

CHAPTER II

CONFLICTING CURRENTS

They were busy days in Orrville. But business rarely yielded outward
display in its citizens. Men talked more. They perhaps moved about
more--in their customary leisurely fashion. But any approach to bustle
was as foreign to the rule of the township as it would be to a colony
of aged snails in a cyclone.

It was the custom of Orrville to rise early and go to bed late. But
this by no means implies any excessive activity. On the contrary.
These spells of activity lasted just as long as their accomplishment
required. In the interim its citizens returned to a slumber little
less profound than that which supervened at night after the last
roysterer had been ejected, by force, or persuasion, from the
salubrious precincts of Ju Penrose's saloon.

Orrville was a ranching township in the northwestern corner of Montana
lying roughly some twenty miles west of the foothills of the Cathill
Mountains, which, in turn, formed a projecting spur of the main range
of the Rockies.

Orrville was the township and Ju Penrose was the pioneer of its
commerce. He was a man of keen instincts for commerce of his own
especial brand, and rejoiced in a disreputable past. He possessed a
thin, hooked nose of some dimensions, which never failed to cut a way
for its owner into the shady secrets of his neighbors. He possessed a
temper as amiable and mild as a spring lamb when the stream of
prosperity and profit flowed his way, and as vitriolic as a she-wolf in
winter, when that stream chanced to become diverted into a neighbor's
direction.

He was considered a man of some importance in the place. But this was
probably the result of the nature of his trade, which, in the eyes of
the denizens of the neighborhood, certainly possessed an advantage over
such stodgy callings as "dry goods." But besides the all-important
thirst-quenching purpose of his establishment, it had become a sort of
bureau for large and small transactions of a ranching nature, and a
resort where every sort of card game could be freely indulged in,
without regard for the limit of the stakes, and had thus gained for
itself the subsidiary title amongst its clientele of "Ju's Poker Joint."

At the moment Ju's usually busy tongue was taking a well-earned rest,
and his hawk-like visage was shrouded in a deep, contemplat