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She lay there for hours, entirely unaware of the saucy stares of several gophers who paused in their hunt for kernels and stood straight as picket-pins to watch and wonder at the little heap of pink calico under the battered sailor-hat, or whisked about her, their short legs flashing, their tails wide and bushy, their cheek-pouches so full of kernels that they smiled fatly when they looked at her, and showed four long front teeth.
She tried to catch him couldn't. Got lost and wandered all around before she got down to the waterhole and caught him. We had got to the ranch at dusk, and all the posse had turned in for the night. She came loping down the divide just after moonrise. We started as soon as we could rake up all the picket-pins and rope. Wanted Mrs. Blake to wait and come on later; but talk about grit!
As they had but a scanty allowance of clothing, they suffered much from the intense cold. Soon after midnight the savages threw themselves down around the fires and most of them were soon soundly asleep. Kit Carson then, with five of his companions, cautiously crept towards the horses, drew out the picket-pins and led them a short distance to a place of concealment nearer their own camp.
"With a plentiful supply of pine logs on the fire, and its cheerful blaze streaming far up into the sky, illuminating the valley far and near, and exhibiting the animals, with well filled bellies, standing contentedly over their picket-pins, I would sit enjoying the genial warmth, building castles in the air.
There was not a man in my troop who was not at least a few years older than myself, and as I rode in advance of them and heard the creak of the saddles and the jingle of the picket-pins and water-bottles, or turned and saw the long line stretching out behind me, I was as proud as Napoleon returning in triumph to Paris.
In a few moments he came upon two horses standing asleep, tethered by long ropes to picket-pins. One of these he released and led back to his own. Then he remounted and rode on. Again he circled wide of his destination, and this time struck into the woods that lined the river.
The ropes to which they are attached should be about forty feet long; the picket-pins, of iron, fifteen inches long, with ring and swivel at top, so that the rope shall not twist as the animal feeds around it; and the pins must be firmly driven into tenacious earth.
It was the same with almost everything the Colonel wanted to purchase; everything had to be made especially for him after his own description handcuffs, collars and belts, chains, branding irons, a block and fall, muzzles of different sizes, corkscrew picket-pins for holding the turn of a rope, and a nondescript article shaped like a huge pair of tongs, for which I feel sure there is no name in any trade, but which looked to be a handy implement for clamping the jaws of a beast.
Noiselessly he slipped on the saddles, pulled the picket-pins, and moved toward the big rocks. The place was a landmark. The erosion of the ages had played strange tricks with the sandstone. The rocks rose like huge red toadstools or like prehistoric animals of vast size. One of them was known as the Three Bears, another as the Elephant.
I've been a cowman for twenty-five years. I want to keep my range until the time comes for me to take the long trail." "It would be hard to change," agreed the engineer. "However, the point now is to find what Deep Cañon has to tell us." "You still think you can go down it?" "Yes, if I have ropes, a two-pound hammer, and some iron pins; railroad spikes and picket-pins would do."
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