Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; Western stories
So "Fatinitza" trumpeted on while the two on the ropes twisted, and grew
still by-and-by. Then the masked men let the band go home. The Lyceum
had scattered and fled long since, and many days passed before it
revived again to civic usefulness, nor did its members find comfort from
their men. Herr Schwartz gave a parting look at the bodies of the
lynched murderers. "My!" said he, "das Ewigweibliche haf draw them apove
sure enough."
Miss Sissons next day was walking and talking off her shock and
excitement with her lover. "And oh, Jim," she concluded, after they had
said a good many things, "you hadn't anything to do with it, had you?"
The young man did not reply, and catching a certain expression on his
face, she hastily exclaimed: "Never mind! I don't want to know--ever!"
So James Hornbrook kissed his sweetheart for saying that, and they
continued their walk among the pleasant hills.
THE GENERAL'S BLUFF
The troops this day had gone into winter-quarters, and sat down to kill
the idle time with pleasure until spring. After two hundred and forty
days it is a good thing to sit down. The season had been spent in
trailing, and sometimes catching, small bands of Indians. These had
taken the habit of relieving settlers of their cattle and the tops of
their heads. The weather-beaten troops had scouted over some two
thousand aimless, veering miles, for the savages were fleet and mostly
invisible, and knew the desert well. So, while the year turned, and the
heat came, held sway, and went, the ragged troopers on the frontier were
led an endless chase by the hostiles, who took them back and forth over
flats of lime and ridges of slate, occasionally picking off a packer or
a couple of privates, until now the sun was setting at 4.28 and it froze
at any time of day. Therefore the rest of the packers and privates were
glad to march into Boise Barracks this morning by eleven, and see a
stove.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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