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The next day as Thure and Bud were sitting in the shade of the cool side of the gulch, a little apart from the others, eating their lunch and discussing the great find they expected to make when they turned the water of the little stream into the new channel, Thure, whose eyes happened to be looking down the gulch at that moment, suddenly exclaimed: "Hello, look who's coming!" and he pointed down the gulch to where a man could be seen walking slowly toward them, a pick and shovel and gold-pan slung across his broad shoulders, a Mexican sombrero on his head and the rest of his body clothed in a blue flannel shirt and linen trousers that had once been white, protected by deerskin leggings and thrust into the tops of knee-boots.
Suddenly, a being with a red shirt, with loose prairie kind of hat, knee-boots, having metal clamps, strikes out from the shore, running on the tops of the moving logs till he reaches the jam.
The red-nosed proprietor was loading cots into a wagon, his large wife, in a striped kimono with red ruffles at the sleeves and a large V of bare bosom showing, standing in the door of the office-tent directing his labors in a voice which suggested a mustache and knee-boots.
Perceiving a lean, lantern-jawed young man, with straight, lank black hair, in a caped riding-coat of brown cloth, and yellow buckskin breeches, his knee-boots splashed with mud, the scowl upon that august visage deepened until it brought together the thick black eyebrows above the great hooked nose. "You announce yourself as a lawyer of Gavrillac with an important communication," he growled.
He advanced with a swagger that was the unconvincing mask of diffidence assumed by an undersized, lean young man, in the chauffeur's doubtful-weather panoply of black waterproof jacket, breeches merging into knee-boots, the whole crowned with a portentous peaked cap, with absurd brass ventilators, and powdered with many thicknesses and shades of dust. His hair was dusty.
Torn over-alls and old knee-boots lay amidst the axes and big saws in one corner, the dust was heavy everywhere, and rifles and salmon-spears hung upon the walls. There was no sign of taste or comfort. Everything suggested grim utility, and the house was very still. The girl, who was tired, sat down with a little gesture of dismay. "This is worse and worse," she said.
Koreff, the Lord Marshal, wore what was probably the standard costume of Durendal, a fairly long jerkin with short sleeves, and knee-boots, and his dress dagger looked as though it had been designed for use. Lord Koreff looked as though he would be quite willing and able to use it; he was fleshy and full-faced, with hard muscles under the flesh.
They were low-browed, sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around their waists, some with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, and some with the heavy spiked boots of the river-driver. None appeared to carry any weapon that would shoot, yet in their belts was the sheath- knife, the invariable equipment of their class.
The day promised to be hot, and for the first time, Presley had put on a new khaki riding suit, very English-looking, though in place of the regulation top-boots, he wore his laced knee-boots, with a great spur on the left heel. Harran joined him at breakfast, in his working clothes of blue canvas. He was bound for the irrigating ditch to see how the work was getting on there.
Knee-boots are not adapted for walking long distances, but the only other ones that Nasmyth possessed were so dilapidated that he had left them behind. He went up for several hours through withered fern and matted undergrowth, and over horrible tangles of fallen tree-trunks, some of which were raised high above the snow on giant splintered branches.
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