We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
'"""pRiGGERLESs" Jim had met me at
I Paradise Station, and had slung my duffle, bags, and patent folding cook-stove into his wagon, with half concealed contempt. I had engaged the old fellow as my guide for a month 's vacation ; there were rumors of bighorn in the Kootenai fastnesses, which had brought the trigger itch to my fingers again, and had harked me on from the far-away city.
We made the first day's journey across a broken, sun-baked farming country; Triggerless, silent as a Blackfoot, intent on snapping the flies from his horses' necks, in the bottoms.
At last, as the red furnace of the sinking sun cast its molten coals and ashen shadows across Mission Valley, the team broke into a trot, and we descended the last rise in search of quarters for the night.
Triggerless swerved from the interminable wire fence of the road and made for a ranch house, which, to me, displayed in the dusk no signs of waiting hospitality. In fact, on nearing it, we found it to be quite deserted, its sod roof caving in, and its windows and doors rotted away, giving it the
81
appearance of a worn-out and sightless beggar.
"I alius stop here," said Triggerless, breaking his long day of taciturnity.
I answered nothing as he set about unhitching the horses, tho he was not too unobserving to see that I was plainly disappointed with the cheerless surroundings.
Presently he came out from the shadow-filled lean-to kitchen, with a frying-pan and a battered coffee pot, and proceeded with the simple preparations of a supper in the open.
"Make yuh feel skittish?" he inquired, as the fresh smoke from his fire threw waving shadows along the building's front.
"No; not skittish," I said, turning my back to the worn logs, "just lonely. If there's anything sadder than a deserted ranch house away out in the open, at night, I dont care to get acquainted with it."
"Yes, there's things sadder," he answered, slowly, blowing his coffee.
I knew that Triggerless was a character in the country, that he had earned his name in the open range days with his ability to shoot from the