United States or Mayotte ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Judge himself drove me to the railroad by another way across the Bow Leg Mountains, and south through Balaam's Ranch and Drybone to Rock Creek. "I'll be very homesick," I told him. "Come and pull the latch-string whenever you please," he bade me. I wished that I might! No lotus land ever cast its spell upon man's heart more than Wyoming had enchanted mine. It must be a poor thing to be sick.
Indians were a source of revenue to so many people in Washington and elsewhere. But the process of catching Indians, armed with weapons sold them by friends of the Interior Department, was not entirely harmless. Therefore there came to be graves in the Drybone graveyard.
Gamblers, saloon-keepers, murderers, outlaws male and female, all were so busy with their cards, their lovers, and their bottles as to make the place seem young and vigorous; but it was second childhood which had set in. Drybone had known a wholesome adventurous youth, where manly lives and deaths were plenty. It had been an army post. It had seen horse and foot, and heard the trumpet.
For the sheriff must stop outside the line of Drybone, as shall presently be made clear. The captain's quarters were a saloon now; professional cards were going in the adjutant's office night and day; and the commissary building made a good dance-hall and hotel.
"Good-by, my little horse, my dear horse, my little, little Pedro," he said, as his tears wet the pony's neck. Then he wiped them with his hand, and got himself back to the bunk house. After breakfast he and his belongings departed to Drybone, and Pedro from his field calmly watched this departure; for horses must recognize even less than men the black corners that their destinies turn.
In the tufts of yellow, ragged grass that dotted the place plentifully were lodged many aces and queens and ten-spots, which the Drybone wind had blown wide from the doors out of which they had been thrown when a new pack was called for inside. Among the grass tufts would lie visitors who had applied for beds too late at the dance-hall, frankly sleeping their whiskey off in the morning air.
"Will some gentleman give the Lord's Prayer?" inquired the coroner. Foreheads were knotted; triad mutterings ran among them; but some one remembered a prayer book in one of the rooms in Drybone, and the notion was hailed. Four mounted, and raced to bring it. They went down the hill in a flowing knot, shirts ballooning and elbows flapping, and so returned. But the book was beyond them.
They forded Butte Creek, and, crossing the well-travelled trail which follows down to Drybone, turned their faces toward the uninhabited country that began immediately, as the ocean begins off a sandy shore.
"I can't hope you'll waste all your time on just me." Lusk rose and looked at his wife. "It'll be ten now before we get to Drybone," said he. And he went down to the stable. The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. "I know you seen me," she said, without looking at him. "Saw you when?" "I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me." She sat twisting and pressing the crumb.
And then the Four-ace Johnstons would sit card-playing with each other till the innocents should come to town again. To-night the innocents had certainly come to town, and Drybone was furnishing to them all its joys. Their many horses stood tied at every post and corner patient, experienced cow-ponies, well knowing it was an all-night affair.
Word Of The Day