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.