United States or Wallis and Futuna ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Now you Eastern folk walk a good bit that is when you aren't riding in street cars and in your automobiles, and I suppose that's why the cowboys call you tender-feet. You don't mind, though, do you, Teddy?" "Nope," he said. "I like it. But I'm going to learn to ride a pony." "So'm I!" exclaimed Janet. "I wants a wide, too!" cried Trouble. "Can't I wide, Uncle Frank?
Despite the fact that the Indian packers had jumped the freight from eight cents a pound to forty, they were swamped with the work, and it was plain that winter would catch the major portion of the outfits on the wrong side of the divide. Tenderest of the tender-feet was Kit. Like many hundreds of others he carried a big revolver swung on a cartridge-belt.
From the sign which we had seen that day, there was little doubt but there were in the neighborhood of five hundred Indians in the immediate vicinity of Horsehead Crossing, and we did everything we could to create the impression that we were tender-feet.
We live almost entirely out of doors, sketching all the morning, in the afternoons making expeditions either into some of the mines, or over a mountain-pass; and for "tender-feet" the name given to all new-comers, are pronounced to be good mountaineers; but our ponies and mules are so sure-footed and pleasant that we follow any trail, however narrow and uneven, with the greatest confidence.
"Gee, boys!" exclaimed the foreman, before the cowboys dispersed to their alloted tasks, "those lads are sure there when it comes to deliverin' the goods, ain't they? An' to think that once in a moment of besotted ignorance I referred to them as 'tender-feet. Why, it don't seem possible them boys can be Easterners at all. It seems like they jest must 'a' been born west o' the Rockies."
Still, that had been a scrap with "greasers," and the contemptuous attitude that most of them held toward the men south of the Rio Grande, led them to attach less value to the exploit. Then, too, when all was said and done, these visitors were "tender-feet," and as such would bear watching.
It was a bunch of tender-feet that nabbed 'em." "Have a heart," said "Buck" Evans incredulously. "Don't fill us up with anything like that." "Them newspaper fellers is awful liars," sagely commented "Chip" Bennett. "But it gives the names," persisted Pete. "They wouldn't go as far as that if it wasn't so. Let's see," he went on as his stubbed finger moved slowly over the lines.
As he sat and panted, his gaze fell upon the big revolver and the heavy cartridge-belt. "Ten pounds of junk," he sneered, as he unbuckled it. He did not bother to hang it on a tree, but flung it into the underbush. And as the steady tide of packers flowed by him, up trail and down, he noted that the other tender-feet were beginning to shed their shooting irons. His short hauls decreased.
Kink and Bill were both swift and strong. They took the soggy trail at a long, swinging gait that broke the hearts of a couple of tender-feet who tried to keep up with them. In the race from Forty Mile the partners had passed every boat, winning from the leading boat by a length in the Dawson eddy, and leaving its occupants sadly behind the moment their feet struck the trail.
Word Of The Day