Raymond S. Spears

“ The man, though he was a long way from her, revealed his furtive and questionable habit of thought when he so quickly quenched his thirst and returned into the dark shadows out of sight. She had not anticipated having any other humans on that far-back mountain chain slope. The gossip of the cattle range was that the Singing Birds were unoccupied by any human being. ”

“ If a woman is mean, she goes out of her way to steal the attention of men. But again—sometimes—well, she doesn’t intend to make trouble for any man in his heart. She—she probably wishes she could make everybody happy. ”

“ I have fished, smoking more than enough. I have hung up plenty of jerky and you would be surprized to see how well I have furnished my cabin for the winter. I have shaped snowshoe bows, and have stretched webbing strings many times. That, you know, is the secret of plaiting a rawhide rope so it will not stretch when it is wet. Soak the string, stretch it with a heavy weight till it is dry and then soak and stretch again. When the strings have been stretched many times, eight or ten, even if they are soaked by damp snow they will not more than spring a little under one’s weight on the webbing. ”

“ Hard men, a man-killer or two, wanderers of the cow country pastures and swagger—still they could not wholly stifle the voices out of their more or less distant pasts which the pleasant voice of the visitor had summoned like echoes reverberating in their thoughts. ”

“ Leaning out of the window whose framing had all been burst outward the several spectators along the street, which had been quiet with the coming of the day’s end, saw the head of a huge man extended on a barrel of a leather-coated body as he surveyed the ejected fellow who was rising to his feet to burst into a run. ”

“ If I was a brave man I’d ast that woman to marry me. Why, she could sit on one hand of mine, you know’t? She could. I cain’t never git her out my mind. She sticks into it, honest she does, Pretty Shells! How the Hades does a woman git herse’f into some thick skull like mine, worryin’ an’ botherin’ the life out of me, interferin’ with my projects the way she does? ”

“ Y’know, ’f a man don’t watch out, he gits so’s he don’t know how t’ act when he does hit town. I got thataway onct myself, back yonder a while. I was so blamed busy on the ranch, tending cattle, whalin’ jack-rabbits out’n the alfalfy and just putterin’ around that I didn’t get out from trailing beef out to ship one fall to the next. ”

“ Why, you know, when I come to go buy a drink I felt so blamed modest I walked clear from the plaza out to the livery stable an’ back ’fore I could git myself bullied up to go in an’ call f’r a whisky. Now, y’ know, a man hadn’t ought to stay out’n the alkali an’ sage as long as that, so he feels all het up just buying a drink, had he? ”