But when Alcatraz disappeared in the horizon haze, the cowpuncher lowered his head with a sigh.
At the end of the five minutes Alcatraz was hopelessly beyond reach and the cowpunchermerely galloped to the highest hilltop to watch the runner.
She paused at this point to wonder why a stray cowpuncher should make her flush but immediately decided that he had nothing to do with it; it was the purchase of the mares that kept alive the little thrill of happiness.
Out of this maze he appeared again in a flash of straight galloping, used the impetus for a dozen jarring bucks, then reared and toppled backward to crush the cowpuncher against the earth.
Terror froze him for what seemed a long moment under the swing of the rope, in reality his side-leap was swift as the bound of the wild cat and the curse of the unlucky cowpuncher roared in his ear.
A cowpuncher rocked across the blur of her vision on his pony, halted, and swung down in front of the stable across the street.
As far as he could follow the course, that blinding speed was not abated, and the cowpuncher watched with a lump growing in his throat.
No cowpuncher with any sense goes to hoofin' it around a range steer--it ain't accordin' to the rules.
In one of his letters to her, her uncle had stated that his men often rode sixty miles in a day, and that he remembered one ride of ninety miles, which a cowpuncher had made with the same pony in twenty-two hours of straight riding.
The river attracted her, and she rode to it many times, on a slant-eyed pony that Vickers had selected for her, and which had been gentled by a young cowpuncher brought in from an outlying camp solely for that purpose by the range boss.
Any cowpuncher with a jack-knife could do a better job than they have done.
He had seen a cowpuncher ride into town with one biting his thumb in two.
There'll come a day when I'm tired and discouraged and utterly, utterly hopeless that some cowpuncher will ask me to marry him and I'll say yes.
Cowpuncher named Panhandle rode down street draggin' a bolt of red calico thet unwound an' stampeded all the hosses.
Every new sight of a snaky slim cowpuncher on a racy horse intensified this impression in Pan's mind, stamped the future more vividly on his heart.
The cowpuncher found a bunch of manicured fingers in his rough brown paw.
The cowpuncher waved a debonair hand and mounted the steps again.
The cowpuncher followed a path that took him back to the street.
Just now a suave good-humor veiled the evil of him, but the cowpuncher knew him for a wolf none the less.
The cowpuncher dramatized the situation with some native talent for mimicry.
Some one struck at the cowpuncher over the heads of those about him.
Long before the cowpuncher had finished his story of hog-tying the Swede to a hitching-post with his own hose, the mining man was sealed of the large tribe of Clay Lindsay's admirers.
Another cowpuncherdropped the loop of his lariat on the ground, gave it a little upward twist as the calf passed over it, jerked taut the riata, and caught the animal by the hind leg.
They gripped for a moment, then the cowpuncher turned away, and sat staring out over the prairie.
And the tartar is the prize that every cowpuncher wants to draw so that he may demonstrate his horsemanship.
The cowpuncher smiled a pallid, shadowy smile, and went over to his kit-bag.
But the cowpuncher was desperate and knew how to handle her.
He went on with his work steadily while the cowpunchergrunted out his impatience.
The wild cowpuncher had saddled his mare for him, and the friendliness of the act pleased him.
The frowning brows drew closer over the sightless eyes, which were focussed upon the cowpuncher with a concentration more overpowering than if their vision had been unimpaired.
Then the cowpuncher bethought him of his duty to his employer.
The cowpuncherswallowed once or twice in a dry throat and blurted out, "I got something to tell you before I go, Polly.
The cowpuncher turned to Pauline, who had come to the door and stood there.
The gaze of the cowpuncher followed her as she went down the street light and graceful as a fawn.
The cowpuncher omitted to tell her that he had baked a dozen more or less and knew all about it.
It lay limp and slack where the cowpuncher set it down.
This lean, sunbaked cowpuncher with the kind eyes and quiet efficiency of bearing had impressed himself upon her as no other man had.
The cowpuncher was a long-bodied man, smooth-muscled and lithe.
Until he saw the turkey the cowpuncher wondered what cooking she could have in mind, but while he cantered back through the sand he guessed what she meant to do.
The cowpuncher blushed at his own awkward phrasing of the situation, yet the thing had to be said and he knew no other way to say it.
But the cowpuncher had lived till his friends reached him.
It might have been merely that he did not wish to precede the cowpuncher on a trail which he did not know.
Nobody to keep you from it," said thecowpuncher without enthusiasm.
Sensitively aware of Bard, as a photographic plate is aware of light on exposures, the cowpuncher went on with the tale.
The cowpuncher was completely covered, except for his head and feet.
Over the prostrate form of the cowpuncher he leaped, and into the night, where the white face of Sally greeted him.
The cowpuncher was aware that the other stirred--not much, but as if he winced from a drop of cold water; he felt that he was close on the trail of the real reason why the Easterner wished to see Drew.
The roan greeted him with a volley from both heels that narrowly missed the head of Nash, but the cowpuncher merely smiled tolerantly.
I could conceive of no joy in a place where I could not go out to the corrals and have some brown-faced cowpuncher hoist me up on a gentle horse and let me hold the reins while the pony moved sedately about.
Behind the two a space cleared at the first words, and I noticed more than one cowpuncherhitch his gun-belt forward.
Yuh bet it's all right," the cowpuncherflung after him derisively.
He took me by the arm, and as he did so the cowpuncher who had looked down at Tupper stepped in between us, breaking the marshal's hold.
Seeing Ratty M'Gill had reminded him that the cowpuncher had once troubled Frances, and Pratt had ridden down this way to offer his escort to the old ranchman's daughter.
It was Victorino who had let Ratty drive the buckboard to the railroad station one particular day when the cowpuncher wished to meet his friend, Pete, at Cottonwood Bottom.
The reckless cowpuncher had somehow bribed the Mexican boy to let him take his place on the buckboard that forenoon.
He had no thought of the man who had held them up at the lower ford, toward Peckham's, the evening of the prairie fire; nor did he connect the cowpuncher and that ruffian in his mind.
But the ex-cowpuncher of the Bar-T ranch would not listen to that.
The ex-cowpuncher was to linger around and see what would be done about the message to the Captain; then come here and report to Pete.
The man, evidently, was a cowpuncher in the employ of his father; had probably seen him from the level of the valley and had ridden to the crest of the hill out of curiosity.
To their minds the cowpuncher who draws his forty dollars a month, year in and year out, is in some manner more dependable than the man whose imagination and love of the boundless open lead him to stake his time against millions.
Either he had mistaken some of the landmarks of Ryan's sketchy map or else the cowpuncher had forgotten the lay of the country.
A remark made by the little cowpuncher surprised his friend.
The little cowpuncherwas sitting in the lobby reading a newspaper.
Scarcely a cowpuncher but would render even his enemy help in an emergency of this kind.
Cattle on the range are used to seeing mounted men--in fact they seldom see them otherwise, and for a mounted cowpuncher it is perfectly safe to ride in front of even a wildly running mass of steers.
Dave half expected to see Pocus Pete, but he beheld the not very edifying countenance of Whitey Wasson, a tow-headed cowpuncher belonging to the Centre O outfit.
Dave, referring to the other cowpuncherwho had ridden with him.
Then the young cowpuncher gave a look at the strenuous efforts of the cowboys to move the maddened cattle.
And it ain't every cowpuncher on Bar U who could have told that.
To get to the ranch more quickly the young cowpuncher took a trail that led through a patch of rocky woodland.
And here's the old bushwhacker and cowpuncher that your father has helped out of scrapes time and time again wants to ask you a question.
Thus signals the cowpuncher to his steed to launch himself full speed ahead.
Yet you permitted that common cowpuncher to call you Miss Chuckie.
The words of a cowpuncher came back to him as he sat and regarded with unseeing eyes the Indian woman.
Only by his catlike agility and the toughness born of many clean years in the saddle did the cowpuncher weather for the time the hurricane that lashed at him.
The short fat man whom Maisie Winters had called Billie looked sharply at the cowpuncher out of shrewd gray eyes.
The cowpuncher took it without the twitching of a muscle in the brown face.
Not for a moment did she doubt that the cowpuncherhad written it.
He conceded the boyish cowpuncher a beautiful trim figure, with breadth of shoulder, grace of poise, and long, flowing muscles that rippled under the healthy skin like those of a panther in motion.
