The news had been brought in later by a
farmhand.
Terry O'Ryan had really struck oil, and his ranch was a scene of decent
revelry, of which Gow Johnson was master. But the central figure of it
all, the man who had, in truth, risen like a star, had become to La
Touche all at once its notoriety as well as its favourite, its great man
as well as its friend, he was nowhere to be found. He had been seen
riding full speed into the prairie towards the Kourmash Wood, and the
starlit night had swallowed him. Constantine Jopp had also disappeared;
but at first no one gave that thought or consideration.
As the night went on, however, a feeling began to stir which it is not
good to rouse in frontier lands. It is sure to exhibit itself in forms
more objective than are found in great populations where methods of
punishment are various, and even when deadly are often refined. But
society in new places has only limited resources, and is thrown back on
primary ways and means. La Touche was no exception, and the keener
spirits, to whom O'Ryan had ever been "a white man," and who so rejoiced
in his good luck now that they drank his health a hundred times in his
own whiskey and cider, were simmering with desire for a public reproval
of Constantine Jopp's conduct.
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