United States or United States Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Pardon me," he said, "but in case you should wish to fire the weapon, you must have some priming. Let me pour a quantity of this gunpowder into your hand." "Thank you," she said, veiling her eyes, to hide their hatred. He raised the tiny hand to his lips, without opposition, and then into her satin palm, from his powderhorn, he poured a little heap of the black grains.
But in a while, espying the woman coming thitherwards, I rose and tramped on again with no thought but to save myself from her companionship. So came I at last to my habitation in Skeleton Cove and chancing to espy my great powderhorn where it hung, I reached it down and going without the cave, scattered its contents broadcast, this being all the powder I had brought hither.
He hung his powderhorn behind the door, and stepped upon a stool to put his gun on its rack above the fireplace. The fire showed his round figure, short but well muscled, and the boyish petulance of his shaven lip. The sun shone hot upon the Sault of an August noon, but morning and night were cool, and a blaze was usually kept in the chimney.
At almost their first meeting with the whites, they obtained flints and steels, and learned how to use them. In ancient times, in the days of fire sticks and even later, within the memory of men now living, fire used to be carried from place to place in a "fire horn." This was a buffalo horn slung by a string over the shoulder like a powderhorn.
There's only one way out for him, and that is over Powderhorn Pass. Word has just reached us that MacQueen is moving in that direction. He is evidently figuring to slip out over the hills during the night. I've arranged for us to be met at Barker's Tank by a couple of the boys, with horses.
But as they rode, without stopping, through what he knew must be Powderhorn Pass, as the men about him quietly grouped themselves so as to cut off any escape he might attempt, as they dropped farther and farther into the meshes of that forest-crowned net which he knew to be the Roaring Fork country, he did not need to be told he was in the power of MacQueen's gang.
Away off under the northwestern horizon rolled the silent billows of the Farnese Oberland, their snowy crests glinting softly in the subdued lights of distance; in the north rose the giant form of the Wobblehorn, draped from peak to shoulder in sable thunder-clouds; beyond him, to the right, stretched the grand processional summits of the Cisalpine Cordillera, drowned in a sensuous haze; to the east loomed the colossal masses of the Yodelhorn, the Fuddelhorn, and the Dinnerhorn, their cloudless summits flashing white and cold in the sun; beyond them shimmered the faint far line of the Ghauts of Jubbelpore and the Aiguilles des Alleghenies; in the south towered the smoking peak of Popocatapetl and the unapproachable altitudes of the peerless Scrabblehorn; in the west-south the stately range of the Himalayas lay dreaming in a purple gloom; and thence all around the curving horizon the eye roved over a troubled sea of sun-kissed Alps, and noted, here and there, the noble proportions and the soaring domes of the Bottlehorn, and the Saddlehorn, and the Shovelhorn, and the Powderhorn, all bathed in the glory of noon and mottled with softly gliding blots, the shadows flung from drifting clouds.
He looked to the priming of his gun and laid it upon the rock beside him, together with his powderhorn and pouch of bullets. Raising himself to his knees he gazed long and intently into the forest below. There was no sign of danger. On the checkered ground beneath two mighty oaks squirrels were playing together like frolicsome kittens, and through the clear air came the tapping of a woodpecker.
At an earlier day, many of the settlers in the island of Hispaniola, or Hayti, made their living by hunting cattle and preserving the meat by the boucan process. These hunters used to form parties of five or six in number, and arming themselves with musket, bullet bag, powderhorn and knife, they took their way on foot through the tangled forests of the country.
"Their whole dress is very singular, and not very materially different from that of the Indians; being a hunting shirt, somewhat resembling a waggoner's frock, ornamented with a great many fringes, tied round the middle with a broad belt, much decorated also, in which is fastened a tomahawk, an instrument that serves every purpose of defence and convenience; being a hammer at one side and a sharp hatchet at the other; the shot bag and powderhorn, carved with a variety of whimsical figures and devices, hang from their necks over one shoulder; and on their heads a flapped hat, of a reddish hue, proceeding from the intensely hot beams of the sun.
Word Of The Day