United States or Austria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He was still puzzling over the situation when he returned an hour later. Nye, Anse, and a couple of the other riders had some of the recently broken mounts out, showing them off to Oliveri. There was shouting, noise, and confusion around the corrals and Drew slipped past without pausing. He had finished with Shiloh and was on his way to the bunkhouse when Hunt Rennie hailed him. "Drew!"
Helen had the sensation of having run at full speed against a stone wall when Burt came toward her slowly, leading his saddle-horse through one of the corrals near the unpretentious ranch-house, which she had reached after a long drive. The amenities to which she was accustomed were not, as the phrase is, John Burt's long suit.
Ah, don't waste time trying to make up your mind up you come! Don't you want to save the house and corrals and the haystacks? We've got our work cut out, let me tell you, if we do it" He had leaned and lifted her up bodily, helped her to put her foot in the stirrup from which he had drawn his own, and he held her beside him while he sent Michael down the trail as fast as he dared.
He passed a few scattered ranch-houses where horses whistled from corrals, and men curiously watched him fly past. He saw one rancher running, and he felt intuitively that this fellow was going to join in the chase. Duane's steed pounded on, not noticeably slower, but with a lack of former smoothness, with a strained, convulsive, jerking stride which showed he was almost done.
Slingerland's sight was not clear when, as the train pulled away, he waved a last good-bye to his young friends. Now he had no hope, no prayer left unanswered, except to be again in his beloved hills. Abruptly he hurried away to the corrals where his pack-train was all in readiness to start. He did not speak to a man.
He stared after her a moment, shrugged, turned his back, and strode rapidly toward the Ranch Number Ten corrals. He had planned correctly; he had correctly measured Blenham's impulses and desires. Further, he had come in time, just in time. The light was in the ranch-house. Though but little after eleven o'clock it was dark within the bunk-house, the men long ago asleep.
Bruce groaned and cursed and prayed wildly for a glimpse of one of the devils who had done this for him. Big clouds of smoke drifted upward across the stars, shot through with flying sparks. Swiftly the lurid light spread until the white walls of the house stood out distinctly and the forms near the corrals were no longer vague.
We could not so much as see the corrals, but we knew the steers were over there, huddled together under the north bank. Our ferocious bulls, subdued enough by this time, were probably warming each other's backs. 'This'll take the bile out of 'em! Fuchs remarked gleefully. At noon that day the hens had not been heard from.
To arrive in such a place on her way to her brother, the felon in jail, made the girl's journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to the corrals. A small, bold voice hailed me. "Hello, you!" it said; and here was Billy Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with a stick, helping the men prod the steers at the chute. "Thought you were at school," said I.
The hands would start breaking out the remuda the following day. The spring work was on. "Off to a running start on another year," he said. "And sure to hold our lead." They drew aside as the remuda thundered past and on toward the corrals. "From to-day on out, you and I'll be a busy pair," he prophesied. His prediction proved true.
Word Of The Day