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Sidcup glanced at him sharply. "You admire her? She's a great friend of yours, Mr. Green," he said, with a hint of significance in his tone. "Oh, yes," assented Derrick, in a matter-of-fact way. "No one could help admiring her. She's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. And her performance was wonderfully clever. Here she comes!"
Pioneer: A scout must have extra efficiency in pioneering in the following tests, or suitable equivalents: Fell a nine-inch tree or scaffolding pole neatly and quickly. Tie eight kinds of knots quickly in the dark or blindfolded. Lash spars properly together for scaffolding. Build model bridge or derrick. Make a camp kitchen. Build a hut of one kind or another suitable for three occupants.
Derrick hesitated uneasily for a minute; finally, with a humorous smile, he said: "Well, I can't exactly tell you, because, more or less, novels grow; but if you want a receipt, you might perhaps try after this fashion: Conceive your hero, add a sprinkling of friends and relatives, flavour with whatever scenery or local colour you please, carefully consider what circumstances are most likely to develop your man into the best he is capable of, allow the whole to simmer in your brain as long as you can, and then serve, while hot, with ink upon white or blue foolscap, according to taste."
I was rigging a kind of derrick to ease my sled up the sharp pitch from the crossing." "I see," said the operator thoughtfully, "and the sled broke through. Lost it and the outfit. But your dogs saved them, didn't you?" "All but two." Tisdale's brows contracted. "They were dragged under the ice before I could cut the traces.
I should not have liked you to have gone on thinking that I played practical jokes on my friends. That is all I have to say. I think it was kind of you to listen. Good-bye, Miss Derrick." I got up. "Are you going?" "Why not?" "Please sit down again." "But you wish to be alone " "Please sit down!" There was a flush on the cheek turned towards me, and the chin was tilted higher. I sat down.
Will you tell me what it is that you have done, the work you were accustomed to do?" "Well, I've been all sorts of things," said Derrick, reluctantly enough. "By profession I'm an engineer, I suppose; but " He paused. "Well, I had a stroke of bad luck in England, and I had to leave it and chuck up my profession. Since then I've been a jack-of-all-trades."
By that time the cargo-chain had been hooked to the broad canvas belt round the pony's body; the kalashes sprang off simultaneously in all directions, rolling over each other; and the worthy serang, making a dash behind the winch, turned the steam on. "Steady!" I yelled, in great apprehension of seeing the animal snatched up to the very head of the derrick.
Derrick replied, in broken Spanish, that he was looking for work. The cowboy said, "Inglés," and nodded to one of his companions, who, with a sudden flush, said "Thought you were a fellow-countryman. On the tramp, mate, eh? Well, I've done that myself, and, between you and me, there's many a better job." He filled up Derrick's mug and eyed him with friendly questioning. "What's your line?"
An occasional sword-glint in the mountains, an occasional gleam of white against the brown hillside; these were the only evidences of an active enemy. The women were released from durance in the club-house, with strict orders to return in the early evening. Derrick went restlessly through the camp, seeking Carlyon. He found him superintending the throwing-up of earthworks.
He had lost track: the days had slipped into nights and the nights into days; and he suddenly realized that his head pounded like a steel derrick; that the crackling of the dry sage brush leaves snapped something strung and irritable in his own nerves. There was no longer a drowsy hum in his ears. It was a wild rushing. Once, the horses shuffled to a dead stop.
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