United States or Lebanon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To be sure, the front upper room had had the carpets taken up since the summer company went, and the beds were down; but, la, there was room enough!" "There's the east down-stairs bedroom, and the little west-room over the sittin'-room, and there's my room! I ain't never put out!" "But you are; out of your room; and you ought not to be." "Don't care!" said Mrs. Jeffords, triumphantly.
President Grant had given him carte blanche in this matter; he was sure that he could keep his promises. But Captain Jeffords interposed an obstacle. The last thing that he wanted was to be an Indian agent. The government owed him about twenty thousand dollars and if he took the office it would prevent his collecting the claims which were then under adjudication in Washington.
"I mustn't give up so easily," he counseled himself in spite of his distress. "I have to stick this out a little while anyhow." It seemed in this first trying hour as though he were between the devil and the deep sea. He went slowly down into the yard to find Jeffords and Duncan. They were working at a car, one inside receiving lumber to be piled, the other bringing it to him.
The brick-fields, that looked so near from the farms, were really more than two miles away; and it was a constant descent, from brow to brow, over the range of uplands between the Jeffords' place and the Basin.
They kept the faith with the government, those two; and they kept the faith with each other; and the friendship which had begun that day when Jeffords rode up into Cochise's stronghold, grew closer and closer. That friendship never wavered until the day of Cochise's death. And when he knew that the end was coming he called for Jeffords, who was brought to his bedside.
This Captain Thomas Jonathan Jeffords owned a wagon outfit and not only contracted for government freighting in those times when teaming was a perilous venture, but rode as an express messenger for various military posts along the border.
"Take the cigar, at least, and smoke it as you go. My advice is good, and that it is honest you may infer from my reluctance to part with you. I will see you at the office at nine in the morning. There is some prospect of a compromise with Jeffords about the tract in Dallas, and he is to meet Wharton and myself at your law-shop to-morrow.
The last form of maverick bursts frequent into Western bloom; it's their ambition, that a-way, to deloode you into deemin' 'em as fresh from the States as one of them tomatter airtights. "Thar's old gent Jeffords; he's that sort. Old Jeffords lives for long with the Apaches; he's found among 'em when Gen'ral Crook the old 'Grey Fox' an' civilisation and gatlin' guns comes into Arizona arm in arm.
Beside Rob Merritt, Tubby and Andy, there were Hiram Nelson, a tall, lanky youth, whose hands were stained with much fussing with chemicals, for he was a wireless experimenter; Ernest Thompson, a big-eyed, serious-looking lad, whose specialty in the little regiment was that of bicycle scout, as the spoked wheel on his arm denoted; Simon Jeffords, a second-class scout, but who, under Rob's tutelage, was becoming the expert "wig-wagger" of the organization; Paul Perkins, another second-class boy, but a hard worker and a devotee of aeronautics; Martin Green, one of the smallest of the Eagle Patrol, a tenderfoot; Walter Lonsdale, also a recruit, and Joe Digby, who, as the last to join the Patrol, was the tenderest of the tenderfeet.
He has long gray ha'r an' a tangled white beard half-way down his front; an' with that old plug hat an' black coat he's a sight to frighten children or sour milk! Still, Jeffords is all right. As long as towerists an' other inquisitive people don't go pesterin' Jeffords, he shore lets 'em alone.
Word Of The Day