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It bore the portrait of Benjamin Harrison, a smooth, cheerful face adorned with whiskers that radiated success. They were little short of smug with success. He would almost rather have had Benjamin Harrison on five dollars than the grim-faced Jackson on ten. Still, facts were facts. You couldn't wait as long on five dollars as you could on ten.
At the beginning it seemed incredible; then, her thoughts sweeping back over the experiences of these last twenty-four hours, her eyes having before them the picture of a sheriff, grim-faced and determined, a wounded man lying just beyond the fire, the rough, rudely arched walls and ceiling of a cave man's dwelling about her, she deemed that what Norton knew and suspected was but the thing to be expected.
In the clear, windless air of morning the Grove, set amid its lawns, looked too innocent and exquisite for ill. I had a pang of regret that a thing so fair should suffer; nay, if I had come alone, I think I might have repented. But the men were there, and the grim-faced Jobson was waiting for orders. I placed the guns, and sent beaters to the far side. I told them that every dove must be shot.
For the newcomers were, in reality, a troop of United States regulars, and with a dash and vim, exceeded nowhere in the world, and among no other fighters, this band of grim-faced men entered into action. Carbines were unslung and their short and ugly bark was added to the din. "Come on, fellows!" "Now we've got 'em!" "Over the line!" "Touchdown!"
Looking back on a sharp curve, and there were many of them on this mountain grade, Jim could see the crescent form of the coaches all alight, where the passengers were seated at their ease. Then he looked at the intent, grim-faced, young engineer who never took his eyes from the track ahead, keen and quick to act on the first sign of emergency.
There was a stir in the ranks of the grim-faced gun-fighters and their captain looked behind. Not forty feet away on the flat floor of the mesa was the shaft of the Old Juan claim and, tacked to the post that rose up from its rockpile was a new, unweathered notice. "That's the notice," said the captain, "but you stay where you are. You knock down that wall and you'll get killed!"
On that high seat, one hand grasping an iron railing at the side, sitting by grim-faced Starling Tucker in his battered hat, who drove carelessly with one hand and tugged at his long red moustache with the other, it was pleasantly appalling to reflect that he might be at any moment dashed to pieces on the road below; to remember that Starling himself, the daily associate of horses and a man of high adventure, had once fallen from this very seat and broken bones the most natural kind of accident, Starling averred, though gossip had blamed it on Pegleg McCarron's whisky.
The dining room and corridors are decorated with paintings of grim-faced Grand Masters of the past; and the gorgeous ball room contains a throne on which these same rulers sat in state surrounded by pomp and splendor.
From midday until the April sun dipped below the sharp skyline of the Omaha hills, the modest revel endured. Then silence was called by a grim-faced, hard-voiced Elder, who announced: "The Lute of the Holy Ghost will now say a word of farewell from our pioneers to those who must stay behind."
A most amazing thing was in the way of happening, a phenomenon unique in the history of tournaments, for a man was being thrust forth from one of the hotel windows, perhaps twenty-five feet above the ground a writhing, struggling, kicking man with fawn-colored spats. He was being ejected painlessly but firmly, and by a girl a grim-faced young woman of splendid proportions.