Dane laughed. "None of us would be old enough for Miss Barrington when we were fifty. The trouble is, that we spend half our time in play, and I've a notion it's a man, and not a gentleman dilettante, she's looking for."
"Isn't that a curious way of putting it?" asked his companion.
Dane nodded. "It may be the right one. Woman is as she was made, and I've had more than a suspicion lately that a little less refinement would not come amiss at Silverdale. Anyway, I hope she'll find him, for it's a man with grit and energy, who could put a little desirable pressure on the Colonel occasionally, we're all wanting. Of course, I'm backing my leader, though it's going to cost me a good deal, but it's time he had somebody to help him."
"He would never accept assistance," said the lad thoughtfully. "That is, unless the man who offered it was, or became by marriage, one of the dynasty."
"Of course," said Dane. "That's why I'm inclined to take a fatherly interest in Miss Barrington's affair. It's a misfortune we've heard nothing very reassuring about Courthorne."
CHAPTER VII
WINSTON'S DECISION
Farmer Winston crossed the frontier without molestation and spent one night in a little wooden town, where several people he did not speak to apparently recognized him. Then he pushed on southwards, and passed a week in the especially desolate settlement he had been directed to. A few dilapidated frame houses rose out of the white wilderness beside the broad beaten trail, and, for here the prairie rolled south in long rises like the waves of a frozen sea, a low wooden building on the crest of one cut the skyline a league away. It served as outpost for a squadron of United States cavalry, and the troopers daily maligned the Government which had sent them into that desolation on police duty.
There was nothing else visible but a few dusky groves of willows and the dazzling snow. The ramshackle wooden hotel was rather more than usually badly-kept and comfortless, and Winston, who had managed to conciliate his host, felt relieved one afternoon when the latter flung down the cards disgustedly.