Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
Two waitresses whom the guests all men called by their first names, came and went with large trays. Through the windows outside McTeague observed a great number of saddle horses tied to trees and fences. Each one of these horses had a riata on the pommel of the saddle. He sat down to the table, eating his thick hot soup, watching his neighbors covertly, listening to everything that was said.
But again that horse and rider danced temptingly before him, so close that it seemed he could not fail, and again he charged, only to find that his mad rush carried him still further from the helpless Patches. And by now, Phil had recovered his riata, and the loop was whirling in easy circles about his head.
Then he suddenly stiffened his fingers over his breviary, dropped his arms perpendicularly before him, and with a rigid step returned to the corridor and passed into the sacristy. For a moment in the half-darkness the room seemed to be empty. Tossed carelessly in the corner appeared some blankets topped by a few straggling black horsetails, like an unstranded riata.
Burt Brownlee was a big man, but he was not of great weight. Lance bound him to the saddle with his own riata, revived him with a little more whisky, and started for Conley's, who lived nearest. It was ten miles to Conleys, as riders guessed the distance.
He was taking down his riata and watching the bull, who was rumbling a sullen, deep-voiced challenge, as he spoke. "Can I help?" asked Patches anxiously, as he viewed the powerful beast, for this was the first full-grown animal needing attention that he had seen in his few days' experience. "No," returned Phil. "Just keep in the clear, that's all.
He silently examined the spur with the accusing horse-hair, and placed it in his desk. Incarnacion continued: "There is not a vacquero in the whole rancho who has a horse-hair riata. We use the braided cowhide; it is heavier and stronger; it is for the bull and not the man. The horse-hair riata comes from over the range south."
As soon as each man reached the utmost limit of his capacity, he left the table without formality, and returned to the corral, where, with riata or persuasion, as the case demanded, he selected from his individual string of horses his first mount for the day.
I still retain a vivid impression of that morning's ride; the far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against the steel-blue sky; the crisp, dry air, and the expanding track before me, animated often by the well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with jingling spurs and picturesque with flying riata. He rode a powerful native roan, wild-eyed, untiring in stride, and unbroken in nature.
From the saddle-house he brought the six-strand, rawhide riata which Manuel had bought for him and which his carelessness had left still stiff and unwieldy, and walked slowly into the orchard, examining critically each braided strand as he went. Manuel, he decided, was right; the riata was perfect.
He had been nursing since yesterday a secret hope that the blue-eyed one would teach him that wonderful trick of making a riata climb upward of its own accord as if it were a live thing. Beyond that he was genuinely distressed to see them go, and even threatened to go with them before he yielded finally to the inevitable remembering Felice, perhaps, and the emptiness of life without her.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking