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He jerked the freed end down to him and knotted it securely to the picket-pin, while Ashton was making the third vertical measurement. He then lowered everything except the level in loops of the line, and wrapped a strip of canvas around the line where it bent over the sharp edge of the cliff. Ashton laconically reported the measurement.
"No; I don't reckon I ever cuts the trail of this yere Wilson you mentions, once. If I does, the fact's done pulled its picket-pin an' strayed from my recollections." I had recalled the name of a former friend, one Wilson, who, sore given to liquor, had drifted to Arizona many years before and disappeared.
Upon reaching the picket-pin, he loosed it so that it could be easily withdrawn; all the time taking good care that his head should not appear above the top of the grass.
You can't bully me!" he cried shrilly. "Don't pull yore picket-pin, Bromfield," advised Lindsay. "I've elected myself boss of the rodeo. What I say goes. You'll save yorese'f a heap of worry if you make up yore mind to that right away." "What do you want? What are you trying to do? I'm not a barroom brawler like Durand. I don't intend to fight with you."
A resonant blare rang through the lanes of corn. Then came the sound of trotting. They turned, to behold Simon advancing. He had jerked up the picket-pin! Matthews saw his peril. With a curse of alarm he dropped coat and hat and made for the coulée. But to no use. The sight of that fleeing red maddened the bull.
Now, what are you doing so far away from the fort?" asked George as he picked up his picket-pin and led the horse around the station to find a good place to stake him out. "How did you come to go into the army, anyway, and what have you been doing to win those stripes?"
Now yereafter, never let your imagination pull its picket-pin that a- way, an' go to cavortin' 'round permiscus don't go romancin' off on any of them ghost round-ups you're addicted to. Thar's the whole groosome myst'ry laid b'ar; them pups merely smells things they can't locate, an' it frets 'em.
Provisions were conveyed in wagons, and beef-cattle driven along for the use of the men. These animals subsisted entirely by grazing. To secure them from straying off at night, they were driven into corrals formed of the wagons, or tethered to an iron picket-pin driven into the ground about fifteen inches. At the outset of the expedition many laughable scenes took place.
Within ten minutes of starting again we dipped into a wide-bottomed coulée and came on the place where the three had made their first night-camp a patch of dead ashes, a few half-burned sticks, and the close-cropped grass-plots where each horse had circled a picket-pin. Beyond these obvious signs, there was nothing to see.
Instantly the teacher, yearning to use his hands upon some one, descended upon them and wrested them apart. But they clinched again and, continuing to fight, managed so to misdirect their kicks that they reached, not each other, but his lanky, interfering person. And, while the battle raged, the little girl fled out of the school-house toward the pinto and pulled up the picket-pin.