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Rascal, some sixty dollars, a rifle, and some well-tanned skins were offered for the sergeant's horse and refused, and in despair Billy knew not what to do, for he had gotten to the end of his personal fortune. "Sergeant," he suddenly cried, as a bright idea seized him. "Well, Billy?" "They say you are the crack shot in the fort." "I am too, Billy."
As he drew a chair noisily across the floor and sat down at the table, it was evident that he had a good though undeveloped face. His upper lip was deeply shadowed by a coming event, to which he looked forward with no little pride, and his well-tanned cheeks could not hide a faint glow of youthful color.
At night I reposed upon a large well-tanned cow-skin: the covering was formed of a number of small sheep-skins neatly sewed together, similar to those used in Nubia.
The light flickered over a cabin greatly improved in appearance and wonderfully snug. The floor, except directly in front of the hearth, where sparks and coals would pop out, was covered with the well-tanned skins of buffalo, elk, mule deer, bear, and wolf. The walls were also thickly hung with furs, while their extra weapons, tools, and clothing hung there on hooks.
"He's our boarder, an' th' likeliest young man in these parts." Then he added with conviction, "You two be goin' t' like each other." A girlish blush covered the well-tanned cheeks, and to hide her embarrassment Elizabeth said with a laugh: "Describe this beau ideal of yours." "Now, Si, do let th' child alone," Mrs. Chamberlain protested. "He's always got t' tease," she added deprecatingly.
His faded buckskin costume, beaded, fringed, and laced, was similar to that of the colonel's brother. Powder-flask and bullet-pouch were made from cow-horns and slung around his neck on deerhide strings. The hunting coat was unlaced, exposing, under the long, fringed borders, a tunic of the same well-tanned, but finer and softer, material.
"Next month," he was thinking to himself as he lay with his hands behind his head, not caring to shade his handsome and well-tanned face from the warm sun "next month I shall be twenty-one, and most folks will consider me a man. Anyhow, I don't know the man whom I wouldn't fight or run or ride or shoot against for any wager he liked.
Our visitors wore the official berretta, European shirts, that contrasted with coral necklaces and rings of zinc, brass, and copper, and handsome waistcoats, fronted by the well-tanned spoil of some "bush" animal, generally a wild cat, hanging like a Scotch sporran this is and has long been the distinctive sign of a "gentleman."
They are a company of Iberian slingers, enlisted among the tribes conquered in Spain by the Carthaginians. By them lie the heavy swords which they use in close quarters. The third body of men are more heavily armed. On the ground near the sleepers lie helmets and massive shields. They have tightly fitting jerkins of well-tanned leather, their arms are spears and battleaxes.
My offer yet stood untouched. 'And the women smiled, and said sly things one to the other. I wondered, for never had such a price been offered; and that night I added more to the pile, and put beside it a kayak of well-tanned skins which never yet had swam in the sea. But in the day it was yet there, open to the laughter of all men.
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