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Updated: June 5, 2025
The latter bore it good-humoredly, and made a sign of recognition when Courthorne glanced at him. He was a big man, with pleasant blue eyes and a genial, weather-darkened face, though he was known as a daring rider and successful breaker of vicious horses.
Their faces were a trifle paler than usual. "You saw it?" asked Courthorne. "Yes, but not until you backed the beast and he commenced plunging." "He plunged once or twice before you caught the bridle." "Yes," said Winston quietly. Courthorne laughed. "You are a curious man. It would have cleared the ground for you." "No," said Winston dryly.
He had heard Shannon's story, and, remembering it, could fancy that Courthorne had planned the trooper's destruction with a devilish cunning that recognized by what means the blame could be laid upon a guiltless man. Winston's face became mottled with gray again as he realized that if he revealed his identity he had nothing but his word to offer in proof of his innocence.
The story had held his attention, and the frankness of the man who lay panting a little in his chair had its effect on him. There was no sound from the prairie, and the house was very still. "Why did you kill Shannon?" he asked, at length. "Is any one quite sure of his motives?" said Courthorne.
"I never saw a Courthorne who could not catch a woman's eye, or had any undue diffidence about making the most of the fact, and that is partly why they have brought so much trouble on everybody connected with them.
Then Courthorne loosed the bridle, reeled sideways from the saddle, rolled half round with one foot in the stirrup and his head upon the ground, and was left behind, while the riderless horse and pursuer swept past the two men who, avoiding them by a hairsbreadth, sat motionless a moment in the thin drifting smoke.
He also remembered that everything he now held belonged to this man. "You made the bargain," he said, less decisively. Courthorne nodded. "Still, I fancy one of the conditions could be modified.
Then the fact that Lance Courthorne has divided your inheritance and is going to settle here has been troubling him." "The first is the lesser evil," said the girl, with a little laugh. "I wore very short frocks when I last saw Lance in England, and so far as I can remember he had the face of an angel and the temper of a devil.
You see, the kind of life I've led out here has set its mark on me, and my folks in the old country were distinctly middle-class people. There is something in heredity." Courthorne did not parry the unexpressed question. "Oh yes," he said, with a little sardonic smile. "I know. The backbone of the nation solemn, virtuous and slow. You're like them, but my folks were different, as you surmise.
Winston, who knew at least as much about a horse as Lance Courthorne, however, bent them to his will, and the team were trotting quietly through the shadow of a big birch bluff a league from town, when he heard a faint clip-clop coming down the trail behind him.
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