What we have most to fear, I believe, are those within our own borders who think less of country than of themselves, who are ambitious for money, for power, for land. Some of these men would subvert anything, anything at all, my dear sir, for their own profit. They would even twist the laws of their own country in their desire to acquire wealth or power.
The word was out that Royal Barnes was huntin’ Kilkenny,” somebody commented. “He was kin to the Webers, you know. Half-brother, I think.
Yet Tanneman was a man grown up to danger and trouble, knowing nothing else, and for the first time he was acting with conscious, deliberate purpose.
Where can a man get a bite to eat?” the cowhand asked. “There’s several restaurants, but if you can do with beef an’ eggs, just set down over yonder and we can fix you up. They’re fixin’ breakfast for the boss right now,” the bartender added, “and I’ll just have them put on something extry.” When the bartender saw.
To my way of thinking there was nothing finer than to top out on a lonely ridge and sit in my saddle with the wind bringing the smell of pines up from the valley below and the sun glinting off the snow of distant peaks. There was an urge to drink from all the hidden springs, catch fish in the lonely creeks, and leave my tracks on all that far, beautiful country.
Navarro lifted a deprecating shoulder and one eyebrow. His eyes had never left the big redhead’s carefully moving hands. The Mexican wore buckskin breeches, hand-tooled boots, and one ivory.
It was the kind of a country where if you worked with a man and ate his bread, you bought some of his troubles, too.
He spoke softly to the horse, and its ears twitched. It was funny about a horse – how much they would give for gentleness. There was no animal that responded so readily to good treatment, and no other animal would run itself to death for a man – except, occasionally, a dog.
We Sackett boys never killed anything we didn’t need to eat unless it was coming at us. A mountain man tries to live with the country instead of against it.
When a man picks up a gun he picks up responsibility. He has a dangerous weapon, and he’d better have coolness and discretion... He’d better have judgment. That other man who wears a gun also has a family, a home, he has hopes, dreams, ambitions. If you’re human, you must think of that. Nobody in his right mind takes a human life lightly.
My father had lived through wars and troubles, and it left him with a sense that nothing lasted but what a man made of himself.
NO MAN KNOWS the hour of his ending, nor can he choose the place or the manner of his going. To each it is given to die proudly, to die well, and this is, indeed, the final measure of the man.
There was much talk of sermons, also, and I gathered from this, as well as what Yance had told me, that sermons had much to do with shaping of thinking. There were a stiff-necked, proud folk, not easily persuaded to any course not dictated by conscience, yet conscience could be a poor guide if accompanied by lack of knowledge.
There was something her father had said. “We do not own the land, Angie. We hold it in trust for tomorrow. We take our living from it, but we must leave it rich for your son and for his sons and for all of those who shall follow.
The buzzards were neutral. No matter who won down there, they would win. They had but to wait.
I wished I had a book. It had been so long since I had read. Could a man forget how to read?
You killed Rice Wheeler,” he said, “the Panhandle gunman. “He should have stayed in the Panhandle,” I said.
He was still a boy, but there was steel in him. The eyes into which she looked now were cool, but they were eyes strangely mature. “I reckon I’ll stay, ma’am. Down where I come from, we don’t back water for no man.
Women! He thought, who could ever figure them out? No matter what a man said, he was always in the wrong. There was no logic in them.
No man is a complete ruler or dictator. He is only the mouthpiece for the wishes of his followers. As long as he expresses those wishes, he leads them.