United States or North Korea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Ten yards from his hiding-place, in the shade of the jacal, sat his Tonia calmly plaiting a rawhide lariat. So far she might surely escape condemnation; women have been known, from time to time, to engage in more mischievous occupations.

The sun had set and the night air was chilly, but there was no fire-wood in the dwelling. "Hin!" murmured Manstin and bravely tried the other rope. "I go for some fire-wood!" he said, following the rawhide rope which led into the forest. Soon he stumbled upon thickly strewn dry willow sticks. Eagerly with both hands he gathered the wood into his outspread blanket.

Morgan could see them plainly now, although it was too dark to trace their features. One of them dropped the noose of a rope over his head as the one who stood behind him took the flask from his lips. Morgan knew by the feel of it against his neck that it was a platted rawhide, such as the Mexicans term reata. "Granger, if you got anything to say, say it," this one directed.

The tough, slender rod which made the handle of his war axe had snapped like a pipestem under the force of his blow, and even the rawhide covering was torn loose from the head of stone, which lay, with a foot of the broken hard-wood staff still attached, upon the ground between the two antagonists.

At his back was a quiver of arrows slung from a leathern shoulder belt, another piece of loot from some vanquished black. About his waist was a belt of tiny strips of rawhide fashioned by himself as a support for the home-made scabbard in which hung his father's hunting knife. The long bow which had been Kulonga's hung over his left shoulder.

"Take that, then," and to my amazement and inexpressible relief he drew only a rawhide instead of what I expected a bludgeon or pistol. With it, as he spoke, he struck at my left ear downwards, as if to tear it off, and afterwards on the side of the head.

These Wells-Fargo parties ain't along for hold-ups, but jest 'cause they has business over yere, an' so comes by stage same as other gents. "`It all goes smooth ontil I'm rattlin' along in Rawhide Canyon not half-a-dozen miles from where we-alls is now drinkin' all free an' amiable, like life's nothin' but sunshine.

In the South it was called a lariat. The modern rope is a well-made three-quarter-inch hemp rope about thirty feet in length, with a leather or rawhide eye. The cowboy's quirt was a short heavy whip, the stock being of wood or iron covered with braided leather and carrying a lash made of two or three heavy loose thongs. The spur in the old days had a very large rowel with blunt teeth an inch long.

She was struggling with herself, with that haunting fear that was ever dogging her. The thought of the rawhide rope had set it shuddering through her nerve centres afresh in a way that bathed her in a cold perspiration. For a moment she stood battling thus. Then, in the midst of the struggle something came upon her, and her heart seemed to stand still.

"Here, quit that," muttered the cowboy, striking back at him; but when he looked up, the sorrel had already taken his bit, and while he was champing on it Hardy had slipped the headstall over his ears. There was a broad leather blind on the hacamore, which was of the best plaited rawhide with a horsehair tie rope, but the little man did not take advantage of it to subdue his mount.