But
this by no means implies any excessive activity. On the contrary.
These spells of activity lasted just as long as their accomplishment
required. In the interim its citizens returned to a slumber little
less profound than that which supervened at night after the last
roysterer had been ejected, by force, or persuasion, from the
salubrious precincts of Ju Penrose's saloon.
Orrville was a ranching township in the northwestern corner of Montana
lying roughly some twenty miles west of the foothills of the Cathill
Mountains, which, in turn, formed a projecting spur of the main range
of the Rockies.
Orrville was the township and Ju Penrose was the pioneer of its
commerce. He was a man of keen instincts for commerce of his own
especial brand, and rejoiced in a disreputable past. He possessed a
thin, hooked nose of some dimensions, which never failed to cut a way
for its owner into the shady secrets of his neighbors. He possessed a
temper as amiable and mild as a spring lamb when the stream of
prosperity and profit flowed his way, and as vitriolic as a she-wolf in
winter, when that stream chanced to become diverted into a neighbor's
direction.
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