United States or Kiribati ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Presently Bolles heard him reciting confidentially to his horse, "Twas the night after Christmas, and all in the house only we are not all in the house!" He slapped the belly of his horse Tyee, who gambolled away to the limit of his picket-rope. "Appreciating the moon, Bolles?" said he, returning at length to the fire. "What are you so gazeful about, father?"
The fellow on guard tried his best to stop us, but we were past him like the wind. He did not fire, and doubtless in the darkness saw merely a stray horse broken from the picket-rope. The other fellow took one swift shot, but it went wild, and I heard the voice of the enraged lieutenant damning in the distance.
The bull was revolving sulkily on his picket-rope, and shedding his long winter coat upon the new grass. In deference to his inborn dislike, Dallas was wearing an underskirt of blue. Though the evangelist had never seen her trudging behind the mules, he had often spoken of it pityingly.
Then Tito waited for an hour or so till the flickering fire had gone dead, and the only sound of life about the camp was the cropping of the grass by the picketed Horse. Tito crept near softly, so softly that the Horse did not see her till she was within twenty feet; then he gave a start that swung the tightened picket-rope up into the air, and snorted gently.
He took snuff, blew his nose violently, snapped his gold snuff-box, and waddled to the window, where, below, in the early dusk, torches and rush-lights burned, illuminating the cavalry horses tethered along their picket-rope, and the trooper on guard, pacing his beat, musket shining in the wavering light. "That escort will be my undoing," he muttered. "Folk will dub me a partisan now.
His feet stretched to a gallop, his broad horns lowered until his muzzle touched the grass, his tail sprang out to the level of his curly back. With the picket-rope hissing across his flanks, and with no eye for his mistress, he bore down upon the hapless Matthews. "Shoot him! Shoot " screamed Matthews. The bull was at his heels. With quick thought, he side-stepped. It gave him a brief respite.
She sprang to her feet, fired with her new ambition, and undid the pony. And remembering that it would be as well to reach the farm-house before the family could hear the second tale of trouble at the school, she hastily coiled the picket-rope, mounted, hid the magazine under the saddle-blankets, and, with the dog running stiffly in her wake, rode homeward.
From the cottonwoods, he spied Dallas at work in the corn, so he directed his steps thither. She did not see him. Her back was toward the river, and the sun was glinting on her swinging hoe. Beyond her, on a picket-rope, was Simon, the bull. He was travelling in a restless circle, and sending lonesome blasts across the deserted prairie.
The French fled precipitately, leaving behind their tents and other camp equipage, and on inspecting the ground which they had abandoned so hastily, I noticed on all sides ample evidence that not even the most ordinary precautions had been taken to secure the division from surprise, The artillery horses had not been harnessed, and many of them had been shot down at the picket-rope where they had been haltered the night before, while numbers of men were lying dead with loaves of bread or other food instead of their muskets in their hands.
Word Of The Day