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Wilson, Harry Leon, 1867-1939

"Somewhere in Red Gap"

Don't them little white-faced beauties make
the music! Honestly I'd like to have a cot out in the corral. We miss a
lot of it in here."


V
NON PLUSH ULTRA

Sunday and a driving rain had combined to keep Ma Pettengill within the
Arrowhead ranch house. Neither could have done this alone. The rain
would merely have added a slicker to her business costume of khaki
riding breeches, laced boots, and flannel shirt as she rode abroad;
while a clement Sabbath would have seen her "resting," as she would put
it, in and round the various outbuildings, feeding-pens, blacksmith
shop, harness-room, branding-chute, or what not, issuing orders to
attentive henchmen from time to time; diagnosing the gray mule's
barbed-wire cut; compounding a tonic for Adolph, the big milk-strain
Durham bull, who has been ailing; wishing to be told why in something
the water hadn't been turned into that south ditch; and, like a
competent general, disposing her forces and munitions for the campaign
of the coming week. But Sunday--and a wildly rainy Sunday--had housed
her utterly.
Being one who can idle with no grace whatever she was engaged in what
she called putting the place to rights.


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