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Only the other day a tall lean man came to the side door, asking after my four boys by name, and inquiring when my new book would be off the stocks, and, incidentally, showing me a patent-applied-for device called "The Fat Man's Friend." "The Friend" was a steel-wire hoop, shaped and jointed like a pair of calipers, but knobbed at its points with little metal balls.
Down this intestine, their points sticking through the slot, moved the tacks in single file to a spring-hammer close to the floor. This hammer was operated by a lever or tongue at the head of the handle, the connection between the hammer at the distal end and the lever at the proximal end being effected by means of a steel-wire spinal cord down the dorsal side of the handle.
Even the steel-wire muscles of Black Bart were weakening under the tremendous labors of that day, and as he scouted ahead his head was low and his red tongue lolled, and surest sign of all, the bushy tail drooped; yet it was time to make a new call upon both wolf-dog and horse, for the posse was racing after him as before, giving even the fresh, willing mounts the urge of spurs and quirts.
His preparations had been simple in the extreme. Four light strong grappling-irons hung downwards from the Ithuriel, two at the bow and two at the stern, by thin steel-wire rope; two similar ones hung from the starboard side of the Orion, which was on his left hand, and two from the port side of the Ariel, which was on his right hand.
A faint rustle not born of the wind stirred the sage. Still Bannister waited. A less experienced plainsman would have blazed away and exposed his own position. But not this young man with the steel-wire nerves. Silent as the coming of dusk, no breaking twig or displaced brush betrayed his self-contained presence.
She was obliged to lay out a long steel-wire hawser, and heave herself over by means of her windlass, the engines working at full speed at the same time. Hard and heavy was the heave, gaining foot by foot, with a tension on the hawser almost to breaking strain in a veritable battle against the dragon of the river.
Dark, huge, and ominous, he looked curiously out of place in the secure and familiar tranquillity of his green pasture. For a distance of perhaps fifty yards, at the back of the pasture, the range of the buffalo herd adjoined that of the moose, divided from it by that same fence of heavy steel-wire mesh, supported by iron posts, which surrounded the whole range.
It was as safe as human ingenuity could make it. By day it had only a steel-wire gate which could be opened with a key. No attendant was stationed at the door. If John wanted to get in, all he had to do was to ask the person who had the key to open it.
The real bread of life to Jimmie is the New York Stock Exchange; but being on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he brought his fine steel-wire will to bear upon his recreation with as much nervous force as he ever expended in a deal in Third Avenue or Union Pacific.
When they were ready, she filled his canteen for him and took a sip from it "for luck." Genevieve had packed an ample lunch in a gamebag, along with her husband's linked steel-wire surveyor's chain. Ten minutes after Blake's arrival, he handed the baby to its mother and swung into the saddle. Ashton had already mounted, fired by a kind glance from the girl's forget-me-not eyes.
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