United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He would now be called upon to buy four or five teams of horses, and enough feed to last them the entire winter; he would have to arrange for provisions in abundance and variety for his men; he would have to figure on blankets, harness, cook-camp utensils, stoves, blacksmith tools, iron, axes, chains, cant-hooks, van-goods, pails, lamps, oil, matches, all sorts of hardware, in short, all the thousand and one things, from needles to court-plaster, of which a self-sufficing community might come in need.
One by one the spectators departed. At last only myself and the brown-faced young man remained. He sat on a stump, staring with sightless eyes into vacancy. I did not disturb his thoughts. The sun dipped. A cool breeze of evening sucked up the river. Over near the cook-camp a big fire commenced to crackle by the drying frames. At dusk the rivermen straggled in from the down-river trail.
For days, sometimes, he would ejaculate nothing but monosyllables, looking steadily on the things about him. He had walked in ahead of the tote-team late one evening in the autumn, after the Rough Red and his devils had been at work a fortnight. The camp consisted quite simply of three buildings, which might have been identified as a cook-camp, a sleeping-camp, and a stable.
"Yo' and yore Old Fellows is robbers alike!" cried one of the men. FitzPatrick turned on his heel and resumed his work. The men ceased theirs and began to talk. That night was Christmas Eve. After supper the Rough Red went directly from the cook-camp to the men's camp.
The lioness was an unusually large one, probably about as big as the female ever grows, measuring nine feet six inches in length, and three feet eight inches tail at the shoulder. Billy had her funny times housekeeping. The kitchen department never quite ceased marvelling at her. Whenever she went to the cook-camp to deliver her orders she was surrounded by an attentive and respectful audience.
Others followed in procession: those near sharp and well defined, those in the background more or less obscured by the dust, now appearing plainly, now fading like ghosts. The leader turned unhesitatingly into the corral. After him poured the stream of the remuda two hundred and fifty saddle horses with an unceasing thunder of hoofs. Immediately the cook-camp was deserted.
"Don't ye know that horses can't be had?" he demanded, singularly enough without an oath. "Come here." The man approached. With a single powerful blow of a starting-bar the Rough Red broke one of the bones of his tibia. "Try th' lameness yerself," said the Rough Red, grimly. He glared about through the dimness at his silent men, then stalked through the door into the cook-camp.
Word Of The Day