nder sent Gregor Lang, who, owing to Lady
Pender's scruples, was without employment, to report to Gorringe in
New York and then proceed to Little Missouri.

What a somewhat precise Scotch Presbyterian thought of that
gathering-place of the wicked, the Presbyterian himself did not see
fit to divulge. He established himself at the Cantonment, set to work
with European thoroughness to find out all there was to find out about
the cattle business, and quietly studied the ways of Frank Vine. Those
ways were altogether extraordinary. Where he had originally come from
no one exactly knew. His father, whom the new superintendent promptly
established as manager of the Pyramid Park Hotel, had been a Missouri
steamboat captain and was regarded far and wide as a terror. He was,
in fact, a walking arsenal. He had a way of collecting his bills with
a cavalry saber, and once, during the course of a "spree," hearing
that a great Irishman named Jack Sawyer had beaten up his son Frank,
was seen emerging from the hotel in search of the oppressor of his
offspring with a butcher-knife in his boot, a six-shooter at his belt,
and a rifle in his hand. Frank himself was less of a buccaneer and was
conspicuous because he was practically the only man in Little Missouri
who did not carry arms. He was big-hearted and not without charm in
his nonchalant disregard of the moralities, but there was no truth in
him, and he was so foul-mouthed that he became the model for the youth
of Little Missouri, the ideal of what a foul-mouthed reprobate should
be.

"Frank was the darndest liar you ever knew," remarked, long after, a
man who had authority on his side. "And, by jinx, if he wouldn't
preface his worst lies with 'Now this is God's truth!'"

He had an older brother named Darius who was famous as "the champion
beer-drinker of the West," having the engaging gift of being able to
consume untold quantities without ever becoming drunk. In their way
they were a notable family.

Gregor Lang, with the fortunes of his employer at heart, watched
Frank's activities as storekeeper with interest. During the military
regime, Frank had been post-trader, a berth which was an eminent
article of barter on the shelves of congressional politicians and for
which fitness seemed to consist in the ability to fill lonely soldiers
with untold quantities of bad whiskey. Frank's "fitness," as the term
was understood, was above question, but his bookkeeping, Lang found,
was lar