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On the instant she jerked her pony round, whirled her quirt cross-handed, and tore down the back-trail at full gallop. "Aw, hell," said Racey, looking after the fleeing damsel regretfully. "I clean forgot to ask her about the rest of Nebraska's friends." "Hope Old Man Dale is home," said Racey to himself when he saw ahead of him the grove of cottonwoods marking the location of Moccasin Spring.
The quarter-master has slipped Sharkey's pistols away from him, for it was an old joke with him to fire them cross-handed under the table and see who was the luckiest man. It was a pleasantry which had cost his boatswain his leg, so now, when the table was cleared, they would coax Sharkey's weapons away from him on the excuse of the heat, and lay them out of his reach.
He was a wonderful horseman as a boy, and when he came to the market alone he rode a big black horse of which even the head ostler stood in awe in the yard of the King's Arms. Once he had thrashed a robber who had assailed him on his way to pay his rent, and had brought him into town trotting cross-handed at his horse's tail, the captive of his loaded whip and stout right arm.
At the same moment there shot out from a little nook or bay in the rear of the barracoons, a light skiff propelled by a single oarsman, who rowed his bark in true seamen style, cross-handed, while a second party sat in the stern. The rower was Captain Ratlin, and his companion was the swarthy and fierce-looking Don Leonardo.
Always when the east grew purple I launched my dory, my little flat-bottomed skiff, and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the Middle Ledge, or perhaps beyond Egg Rock; often, too, did I anchor off Dread Ledge a spot of peril to ships unpiloted and sometimes spread an adventurous sail and tracked across the bay to South Shore, casting my lines in sight of Scituate.
The merchant fishermen at the falls acted as middlemen or factors, and passed the objects of traffic, as it were, cross-handed; trading away part of the wares received from the mountain tribes to those of the rivers and plains, and vice versa: their packages of pounded salmon entered largely into the system of barter, and being carried off in opposite directions, found their way to the savage hunting camps far in the interior, and to the casual white traders who touched upon the coast.
"Here I put myself to all manner of troubles to go out into the big world to get a real managing wife for Tom Mayberry and I might just as well have set cross-handed and waited for Susie Pike or little Bettie to grow up to the spoiling of him.
Some of these navigators rowed with a cross-handed stroke that jerked their boats along in a droll fashion, and some were propelled by one groping oar, the sculler standing at the stern as if he were trying to push his craft out of water altogether and take to the air, toward which the lifted bow pointed.
Always, when the east grew purple, I launched my dory, my little flat-bottomed skiff, and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the Middle Ledge, or, perhaps, beyond Egg Rock; often, too, did I anchor off Dread Ledge, a spot of peril to ships unpiloted; and sometimes spread an adventurous sail and tracked across the bay to South Shore, casting my lines in sight of Scituate.
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