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They wound up finally on opposite sides of the Briskow kitchen table, elbows planted, fingers interlocked, straining furiously in that muscle-racking, joint-cracking pastime of the lumber camps known as "twisting arms."
It was arm-wrenching, muscle-racking work, with that dead weight upon him, but the touch of those soft arms clinging childishly about his neck seemed to double and treble his strength, and with incredible quickness he lifted her to the top of the wall, and then, catching her by the wrists, he lowered her into the upreaching clasp of the Arab.
But this is merely to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly stretched ourselves on the bank of the nearby charco after the dipping, glad for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the earth after our muscle-racking labours.
With zestful complacency, and with secret enjoyment in being allowed to "team" this chap who looked and talked like a "nob," the youth allowed Farr to do all the work. The route took in many apartment-houses of the city. The labor was muscle-racking. In most cases there were stairs to climb. He stood, sagging under his burden, till chests were cleared by the housewives or sluggish maids.
'Twixt earth and window, with dangling legs and clutching arms, in muscle-racking pain he hung. Truly a step, and then another step. And then a very tornado of sound beat furiously upon the trembling night; with it a flash; from it the pattering of a hundred bullets. Someone had discharged a gun. As Satan was hurled, so, plumb out of the gates of Paradise, Bill fell.
But this is merely to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly stretched ourselves on the bank of the near-by charco after the dipping, glad for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the earth after our muscle-racking labors.
For the going, while much better than we had expected, was still slow. It was rare, indeed, to be able to get the horses out of a walk. And there is no more muscle-racking occupation than riding a walking horse hour after hour through a long day.
One could never hope when night came to glance back over the day and see in retrospect a finished piece of work. There was no such thing as writing finis beneath any chapter of the ponderous tome of muscle-racking labor. The farmer stopped work at twilight only because his strength was spent and daylight was gone.
Despite the numbing cold mud they knelt in, the men, stripped to shirts with rolled sleeves and open throats, streamed rivulets of sweat as they worked; for the air was close and thick and heavy, and the exertion in the cramped space was one long muscle-racking strain. Once the roof and walls caved in, and three men were imprisoned.
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