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It was fully two hours later before the other chuck wagons lumbered info view. Mr. Hammond appeared, and Rhoda told him at once about the cavalcade of horsemen that she and her friends had seen riding over the saddle of the old Spanish Trail so early in the morning. The ranchman betrayed considerable interest in the matter. "Did you count 'em?" he asked his daughter.
"The loud clapping of the shears" at once filled the shed, and it was not five minutes before a light fleece was tossed upon the burring-table, and a grinning fellow came running up to the ranchman seated in a chair thereon, the better to supervise affairs, and called out, "Check-e!" amid vivas for the first sheep shorn.
Once I used to be a crack shot, but lack of experience plays hob with a man's nerves," replied Mr. Mabie, as he sat upon his steed and played with the repeating rifle he held. "I see you are enjoying the situation, boys. Would one of you like to wind him up?" and the ranchman turned to Frank. "I don't believe I would, sir," laughed that worthy. "How about you, Jerry?"
At first Bob failed, but he was soon able to drop the noose over. So much accomplished, the ranchman ordered him to get his pony and try to rope the stake while riding past. This, however, was more difficult, and Bob made more misses than "ringers." "You can practice that on the range, Bob. We won't waste any more time here. I want to take you over to the short-horns to-night."
And Elden's life in the West had been a treasury of experience, in which he now dipped for the first time in years, regaling his guest with tales of the open range long before barbed wire had stuck its poisoned fang into the heart of the ranchman; tales of horse-stealing and cattle-rustling, with glimpses of sudden justice unrecorded in the official documents of the territory; of whiskey-running and excess and all those large adventures that drink the red blood of the wilderness.
He turned away with a sob in his throat and looked into Verdayne's eyes with such an expression of utter hopelessness that the older man felt his own eyes moisten with the fervor of his sympathy. That poor, humble ranchman possessed something that was denied the Boy, prince of the blood though he was.
Her husband grew more and more restive under the rising tide of social exactions in dress and deportment; and spent more and more time behind his fast horses, or on the stock-ranch where he raised them. As a neighbor and fellow ranchman, he scraped acquaintance with Ross Warden, and was able to render him many small services in the process of settling. Mrs.
The ranchman, so the letter stated, had passed through Little Butte early in the day, on his way to Red Butte. He would be returning by the accommodation late in the afternoon, and would stop at the Wire-Silver mine, where he had stabled his horses.
Those parts not exposed directly to the elements were in a good state of preservation, while those pieces exposed to the weather were brittle and would crumble like chalk. In the picture of the Pecos church you will note the pieces of fallen timbers. Kosloski was a Polish ranchman whose ranch was traversed by the Old Trail.
Something must have happened out of the usual order," said the ranchman. When he learned what Frank had to say Mr. Mabie proved himself just such a man as the others had believed him to be. He advanced to the Indian, who was standing there in stoical silence, with his blanket thrown over his shoulder, and held out his hand.
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