The Freebooters of the Wilderness by Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
page 41 of 378 (10%)
page 41 of 378 (10%)
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"None! Buy our own!" "Great Guns! And you're loyal to that kind of Service? It's bally loyal I'd be! Why, Moyese allows me the use of any bronch on his ranch; and, when there's a quick turn to be made, it's a motor car. Why don't you let me send you up a couple of Moyese's nags? You could pasture 'em here and get their use for nothing. I could do that right off my own responsibility. Need be no connection with the old man." "Bat," said the Ranger, "did you stay up here to say that to me?" "I don't know whether I did or not; but, now that I _am_ here, I say it anyway; and I say a whole lot more--don't be a bally fool and buck into a buzz-saw! Why don't you take the Senator's offer? Holy Smoke! What are you gaining stuck up here in a hole of a shack that's snowed ten feet deep all winter? What's the use of fighting the Smelter thieves, and the Timber thieves, and the Dummy homesteaders, and all that? You can't buck the combination, Dick! It isn't only Moyese! He's a mere tool himself in this game. It's the Ring you're up against, and you can chase yourself all your life round that Ring, and never get anywhere. The big dubs at Washington, the politicians, they are only spokes themselves in that wheel. If you buck into that wheel, you get yourself tangled into a pulp; and if any of those dubs down in Washington thinks he won't fit into the Ring, why he'll find himself broken and jerked out so quick he won't know what has happened till he sees the Wheel going round again with a new spoke in his place." "Bat, did you stay up here to say that to me?" |
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