Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
The others took to the fence buggies, buckboards, phaetons, single horses, and teams, an ominous picture. Not since my grandfather's funeral had I seen quite such a sight before our house, and my heart sank. Could death have come in my absence? On second thought I remembered how brief that absence had been, measured in hours, and I sought another reason for the gathering.
It was a heterogeneous array, where every unit, instead of being one of an army mobilized against a common foe, was the enemy of all the others, lined up beside him. There were men on foot, men on horses, mules, and burros, men in wagons, buckboards, and buggies, and men in automobiles. At half-past five the pressure of greed became too great to bear.
Vaqueros from the foot-hill ranches were tearing up and down the dusty road along Coyote Creek from Wilkins' ranch to the foot of the valley, buckboards loaded with Mexicans, Joe's stage creaking beneath the weight of half the roughs of Gold City, groups of excited miners on foot, were making their way as fast as possible to Wilkins' old hay barn, which had been turned into a combination of saloon and grand stand.
"How far do we go, and what do we do when we get there?" asked Frisbie of his chief, when the two buckboards, heaving and lurching over the rock-strewn talus at the foot of the canyon cliff, had passed beyond sight and sound of the headquarters camp at the mouth of Horse Creek. "I'm not guessing any more," said Ford crustily.
A quiet, amiable man was Calliope Catesby at other times quiet to indolence, and amiable to worthlessness. At best he was a loafer and a nuisance; at worst he was the Terror of Quicksand. His ostensible occupation was something subordinate in the real estate line; he drove the beguiled Easterner in buckboards out to look over lots and ranch property.
For some days, with a certain sense of isolation and a tinge of envy which she would not acknowledge, she had been watching a group of well-dressed, clean-looking people galloping off on horseback or filling the six-seated buckboards. They were from New York that she had discovered; and they did not mix with the others in the hotel.
Much chaffing and pleasant talk about the arrangements for to-morrow. A man to be sent off at daybreak to have two buckboards ready at the landing at seven for the drive to Tadousac. Then a reprehensible quantity of tobacco smoked in the book-room, and the tale of the season's angling told from the beginning with many embellishments and divagations.
Opposite and directly below the nearest of these shaft-houses the two leading buckboards had stopped; and the president was once more standing up and beckoning vigorously to the laggards in the single-seated vehicle. Ford spoke to his horses and grimaced as one who swallows bitter herbs. "I wonder what I've been doing now or leaving undone?" he queried. He was not kept long in suspense.
Inside he saw camp fires and a row of low wooden sheds built against three sides of the enclosing wall. He entered the enclosure. Under the sheds many horses were champing at their oats and corn. Many wagons and buckboards stood about with their teams' harness thrown carelessly upon the shafts and doubletrees.
It was outdoor exercise, incessant activity in driving, walking, boating, rowing and sailing bowling, tennis, and flirtation. There was always an excursion somewhere, by land or sea, watermelon parties, races in the harbor in which the girls took part, drives in buckboards which they organized indeed, the canoe and the buckboard were in constant demand.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking