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"I tell ye, I'm not done with ye yet," he threatened, shaking his bony forefinger in Orde's face. "I'll sue ye for damages, and I'll GIT 'em, too." "See here, you old mossback," said Orde, thrusting his bulky form to the fore, "you sue just as soon as you want to. You can't get at it any too quick to suit us. But just now you get out of this camp, and you stay out.
The orderly told me that he was to arrest me for ordering an escort. I told the orderly to "fire away," I would go over and see the old "mossback." Their quarters was a little dugout in the side of the hill along the river bank.
"Yes, sir; and I bore it so well that every one there agreed that I was the best one in the Tribe," said Little Beaver, omitting to mention the fact that he was the only one in it. "I was unanimously named 'Howling Sunrise." "Well, I want to be 'Howling Sunrise," piped Guy in his shrill voice. "You? You don't know whether you can pass at all, you Yaller Mossback."
I also have sympathy for the mossback particularly because he is the man that needs attention. The new farmer takes the initiative. He patronizes these opportunities that we have been talking about. But the mossback, because he is discouraged, or because he is ignorant, or perhaps merely because he is conservative, takes little interest in these things.
I have no doubt but that I could have eaten as much tobacco as Matches did, and escaped with only a short illness, but the sickly little mossback didn't have the constitution that we ring-tails have. She was a poor delicate creature that the least thing affected. I couldn't help feeling sorry for her, and yet I was so glad to be rid of her that I capered around for sheer joy.
When the drive was down in the spring, Bob looked back on his mossback campaign with a little grieved surprise that men could think it worth their self-respect to try to take such contemptible advantage of quibbles for the purpose of defeating what was certainly customary and fair, even if it might not be technically legal.
Again the mossback appeared in the doorway, shivering a little in his night-shirt. The Porcupine was at the foot of the steps. He had stopped chewing when the door opened, and now he lifted his forepaws and sat half-erect, his yellow teeth showing between his parted lips, and his little eyes staring at the lamp which the mossback carried.
Especially was this true in dealing with the riverman's arch-enemy, the mossback. The mossback follows the axe. When the timber is cut, naturally the land remains. Either the company must pay taxes on it, sell it, or allow it to revert to the state.
Within a year he could rope and tie a mossback with the best, and in scraps with Mancos Jim's Pah-Ute horse raiders had proved himself as careless a dare-devil as the oldest and toughest trigger-twitcher of the lot.
"That old mossback Reed was right on deck with his rope," remarked Johnny Simms. "That was pretty decent of him." "Old skunk!" growled North. "He lost us two days with his damn nonsense. You let him off too easy, Jack." "Oh, he's a poor old devil," replied Orde easily. "He means well enough. That's the way the Lord made him. He can't help how he's made."
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