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We mixed the handful of flour given to us with snow water, and, wrapping the unsalted dough around a sagebrush spike, we cooked it in the flames, and ate it from the stick, as a dog would gnaw a bone. The officers put a guard around the few little hackberry trees to keep the men from eating the berries and the bark. Not a scrap of the few buffalo we found was wasted.
Bolster, and you'll marry 'em both, we'll grant a stay o' proceedings in the matter o' the execution o' the sentence o' death until we kin be advised by the higher authorities." "I'll do anything. Mister," blubbered Hackberry. "I'll marry her this minnit. Say the words, 'Squire." "I've said I'd rather die 10 times over than marry yo', Jeff Hackberry," murmured Mrs. Bolster.
Tuggers, captured in a blue uniform, saw the ignominious fate of a spy loom up before his eyes. His face grew very white and set. He sat down on a log, looked far away, and seemed oblivious to everything around him. Jeff Hackberry and Sol Simmons were frightened into nerveless terror, and occasionally sighed and groaned audibly.
Jeff Hackberry sat up, scratched and rubbed himself, seemed to be trying to once more get a full supply of air in his lungs, and turned a one-eyed glare on his surroundings. The guerrilla whom Si had knocked down began to show signs of returning consciousness, but no one paid any attention to him.
In a few moments the camp was as quiet as a country village on Sunday, excepting the occasional howling of a hungry wolf down in the timbered recesses of the Washita, or the crackling and sputtering of the signal fires on the hilltops. In a few days afterward, we were camping on Hackberry Creek, in the Indian Territory.
The fine, delicate spray of the hop hornbeam is a fairy net whose every mesh is fringed with immaculate beauty. The little clusters of fine twigs here and there in the hackberry grow into spheres of fleecy fruit. The snow sticks to the tree trunks and makes a compass out of every one, a more accurate compass than the big radical leaves of the rosin weed in the early fall.
The guerrillas seemed rather more fearful than otherwise to see him, but met him with manners that were ranged from respectful by Jeff Hackberry to absolute servility by the others. He was a burly, black-bearded man, wearing a fairly-good uniform of a rebel Captain. His face showed that he was a bully, and a cruel one.
The saddle horses, southern bred and unacclimated, humped their backs and curled their heads to the knee, indicating, with the closing day, a falling temperature. Suddenly, and as clear as the crack of a rifle, the voice of Dell Wells was heard in the lead: "Come on, Joel; here's our hackberry! Here's where the fight is won or lost! Here's where you point them while I rush them! Come quick!"
And then, since we've claimed it, we want to make a showing of occupying the range, by scattering the cattle over it. Within a month, our cows must rest in the shade of Hackberry Grove and be watering out of those upper springs. When you take a country, the next thing is to hold it." Something to do was a relief to Joel.
But the best-laid plans are often interrupted. That evening a courier reached headquarters, bearing a message from the commission firm which read, "Have your double-wintered beeves on Saturday's market." "That's better," said Sargent, glancing over the telegram. "The wagon and remuda will start for Hackberry Grove at sun-up. Have the messenger order ten cars for Friday morning.
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