"Wiry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the damp, a revolver, a hunting-knife, a cloth mackintosh, and lastly, strapped upon his back like a knapsack, a tin box containing the fetish, Little Bonsa, which was too precious to be trusted to anyone else. It was quite a sufficient load for any white man in that climate, but being very wiry, Alan did not feel its weight, at ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... Sir Henry and Good were carried into Twala's hut, where I joined them. They were both utterly exhausted by exertion and loss of blood, and, indeed, my own condition was little better. I am very wiry, and can stand more fatigue than most men, probably on account of my light weight and long training; but that night I was quite done up, and, as is always the case with me when exhausted, that old wound which the lion gave ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... against the wall. "I am glad, however, that you came. I have the water boiling back there, and was just about to make some coffee. You will drink a cup with me. And how is la belle dame? Always handsome! always healthy! always contented!" She took Edna's hand between her strong wiry fingers, holding it loosely without warmth, and executing a sort of double theme upon the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... at the ape with loathing. There was a star tattooed on one of his naked insteps. He looked no longer frail, but wiry and snakelike. The pallor behind his dark tan showed the triangles of black stain in his cheeks ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... us to a shelf, or rather slope, of rock on the right, sparsely covered with wiry brown grass from which the snow had but very recently gone, and crowned by a crest of stunted pines. Up this we wriggled, I being mainly towed up by my shikari's cummerbund, and, lying under a pine, we peered over ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... invited us to enter. He is a man of powerful frame, with a massive head, fringed round with an abundance of gray hair, with deep well-set eyes, and a quiet smile. Two sharp, bitter-looking, wiry-haired terriers began smelling, casting their sly eyes upwards, to see if we feared them or were friendly to their advances, and, after a moment or two, seemed sufficiently satisfied with the scrutiny to warrant their wagging their ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... his guest had departed. On the morrow we were sitting in our small dingy room after dinner, when a cavalcade hastened up to our inn, and a few minutes later we were surprised to hear ourselves addressed in our native tongue. Before us stood a dark-complexioned young man, and at his side a small wiry old gentleman, who proved to be a native Austrian Tyrolese, who followed the profession of an artist in Paris. He was now making his way to Erivan, in Russia, on a sight-seeing tour from Trebizond. His companion was a Greek from Salonica, who had lived for several years in London, whence ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... low chair, in which he looked settled like an Italian lady's "cousin." A third person was standing by the corner of the chimney-piece. As the shrewd doctor had suspected, the Marquise was a woman of a parched and wiry constitution. But for her regimen her complexion must have taken the ruddy tone that is produced by constant heat; but she added to the effect of her acquired pallor by the strong colors of the stuffs she hung her rooms with, or in which she dressed. Reddish-brown, marone, bistre ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... Nick's wiry strength that she leaned when she tottered forth for her first walk in the garden. She would probably have wept over her weakness if he had not made her laugh at it instead. It was a morning of soft misty sunshine in the early autumn, and ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... soldered at their bases. Sometimes the pillager meets prickles that sting him, as in the roses and briers; and if he is a little fellow he is sure to regard him with intense disgust, a bristly guard of wiry hair—hence the commonness of that kind of fortification. Against enemies of larger growth a tree or shrub will often aim sharp thorns—another piece of masquerade, for thorns are but branches checked in growth, and frowning with a barb in token of disappointment at not being ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... heavy night dews still lie glittering on the grass, when the cobwebs seem strung with pearls, and faint lines of soft fleecy mist lie in the hollows by the watercourses; long ere the hot, fiery sun has left his crimson bed behind the cold grey horizon, we are out on our favourite horse, the wiry, long-limbed syce or groom trotting along behind us. The mehter or dog-keeper is also in attendance with a couple of greyhounds in leash, and a motley pack of wicked little terriers frisking and frolicking behind ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... came in. Of medium height and a wiry build, his quick kindly smile of greeting did not conceal the fine tight lines about his mouth and between his eyes. His small trim moustache was black, but his hair already showed streaks of gray although he was not quite thirty-eight, and as he lit a cigarette his right ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... business of the firm consisted in the collection of house-rents, frequently entailing visits from tenants and questions of repairs. A certain Mr. Smith, a wiry little grey-headed man, with a keen face and a decisive manner, looked after this branch; and the gusto with which he did it was one of Henry's earliest and most instructive amazements. House-repairs were quite evidently his poetry, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... except on Sundays, grey clothes—clothes of so light a grey that they would hardly have been regarded as clerical in a district less remote. He had now reached a goodly age, being full seventy years old; but still he was wiry and active, and shewed but few symptoms of decay. His head was bald, and the few remaining locks that surrounded it were nearly white. But there was a look of energy about his mouth, and a humour in his light grey eye, which forbade those who knew him to regard him altogether as an old ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... and cast her dewy dreams over land and sea. The hour was come; the whole impulse and persistence of her nature went out in vivid life, and, filling the very stones which the winds had gathered and piled against her breast, cleft them with its sentient spell, clothed them with lean flesh and wiry sinews, shaped them after the fashion of the Desert men, and sent them out alive with intellect and will, but with hearts of flint, into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... away, and again the river echoed with his contagious laughter. She had to join in spite of herself. He laughed with boyish gayety. It danced in his eyes, and gave spring to every movement of his slender wiry body. She felt its contagion ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... and wiry in his body, as long as Old Rattler himself, but not so large around. His coat was smooth and glossy, not rough and wrinkly like Old Rattler's, and his upraised head was small and pretty—for a snake. He was the best dressed of all his kind, and he looked his finest as he faced ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... assorted pair. Maren remembered afterward how near together they had stood, the wild savage in his elk teeth and scant buckskin garments, an indiscreet band of yellow paint showing a corner above his blanket, and the dark, wiry trader with the grey eyes. Scattered, here and there among the braves were many Bois-Brules, lean Runners of the Burnt Woods, belonging she knew to the North-west Company. Also in that moment she saw the frowning face and ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... near the turn of the road, it came down, and with a wiry spring or two brought itself close to my feet, and continued to keep up with me, as I quickened my pace. It was at my left side, so close to my leg that I felt every moment as if ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... first time; he was beautifully dressed, and looked very well; he acted tolerably well, too. He has a good deal of energy and spirit, but wants feeling and refinement; his voice, unfortunately, is very unpleasant, wiry, harsh, and monotonous; of the last defect he may cure by practice. I came to the side scene just as my father was going on, to hear his reception; it was very great, a perfect thunder of applause; it made the tears start into ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... evidently had once been a fountain, though it had long since dried up. Around it squatted a group of vaqueros, all smoking cigarettes and some of them lazily twisting lariats out of horsehair. Close at hand a dozen or more wiry little mustangs stood saddled and bridled and ready for any emergency. In colour, one or two were of a peculiar cream and had silver white manes, but the rest were greys and chestnuts. It was evident that ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... light, but her furs were heavy; still, Erle was strong and wiry, and he carried her easily enough—he actually had breath to joke too—while the two dogs bounded before him barking joyously, and actually turning in at the Grange gates of their own accord—at least Pierre did, ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Orobo Rancho was an American named Grayson. He was a tall, wiry man whose education had been acquired principally in the cow camps of Texas, where, among other things one does NOT learn to love nor trust a greaser. As a result of this early training Grayson was peculiarly unfitted ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... affection for the past. He remembered his aunt Mary, though he had not seen her for years. His half brothers, Bill and Guy, had changed but little except perhaps to grow lean and rangy. Bill resembled his father, though his aspect was jocular rather than serious. Guy was smaller, wiry, and hard as rock, with snapping eyes in a brown, still face, and he had the bow-legs of a cattleman. Both had married in Arizona. Bill's wife, Kate, was a stout, comely little woman, mother of three of the children. The other wife was young, a strapping girl, red headed and freckled, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... Catawba, but spent most of his time on board the U.S. monitor Oneota, and was one of the mess-mates of that vessel. I associated with him constantly from October 6, 1865, to January 16, 1866. He was a jolly, kind, sympathetic, and intelligent associate. In height he was about six feet, and had a large, wiry frame. His hair and eyes were black; he wore a black moustache. He never gave offence to any one, but would not suffer himself to be insulted. He carried two Derringers in leather pockets buttoned to his pantaloons above the hips. He was very polite and chivalrous; woe to the ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... one of these. He was a little wiry-looking old man, who moved with a jerking motion, as if his limbs were worked by a string like a child's toy, with dun-coloured hair lying thin and soft at the back and sides of his head; his forehead was so large it seemed to overbalance ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ensued. Rangihaeata drew up his tall form, his curly black hair setting off a face of eagle sharpness, and from his eye there gleamed an angry light. Behind him stood his wife, the daughter of Rauparaha, and near them this latter chief himself, short and broad, but strong and wiry-looking, a man with a cunning face, yet much dignity of manner. When the handcuffs were produced by Mr. Thompson, Rauparaha warned him not to be so foolish. The magistrates gave the order to fix bayonets and advance; as the white men ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... rattling noise of the stones accompanied our descent, growing in volume, bewildering our minds. We had missed the indistinct beginning of the trail on the side of the ravine, and had to follow the course of the stream. A growth of wiry bushes sprang thickly between the large fragments of fallen rocks. On our right the shadows were beginning to steal into the chasm. Towering on our left the great stratified wall caught at the top of the glow of the low sun in a rich, tawny tint, right under the dark blue strip of sky, that seemed ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and spoke a few words in French. The key grated in the lock and the door creaked open. A withered, wiry little man, dressed in dark grey, stood holding a lighted candle, which flickered in the draught. His head was nearly bald; his sallow, hairless face might have been of any age from twenty to a hundred years; his eyes between their narrow red lids were glittering ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... numerous; carpels few, the stigmatic surfaces curved. Leaves: From the base, long petioled, divided into 3 somewhat fan-shaped, shining, evergreen, sharply toothed leaflets. Rootstock: Thread-like, long, bright yellow, wiry, bitter. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... the Apaches had with difficulty restrained their curiosity; and their little wiry horses were now caracoling, rearing, and plunging in close proximity to the ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... a fruitless effort to tear himself free, but Wilson's grip was the grip of unyielding withes of steel and the slim and wiry Watkins was just as muscular ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... youth, handsome, dark, smiling, offered to bet with him on the result of the races. Collie declined, but gained his point. He learned the Mexican's choice for first place, a lean, wiry buckskin with a goat head and a wicked eye, but with wonderful flanks and withers. Collie meditated. As a result he placed something like fifty dollars in bets with various ranchers, naming the Mexican horse for first place. Word went round that the Moonstone ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... astonishment on the little wiry form, as it wormed around the apartment, touching the books, and giving sudden pulls at the curtains and bed drapery. She had never seen Hannah over her threshold before, and wondered what a visit from ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... wiry-looking gentleman, was entering at the same time, and Averil found herself shaking hands with her brother's companion, and hearing him say, 'Good evening, Miss Warden; I'm glad to meet my daughter's friend. I hope you feel at home in our ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'siccos,' at the time of my visit, no less than 50,000 head of oxen and sheep and horses perished from starvation and thirst, after tearing deep out of the soil every trace of vegetation, including the wiry roots of the pampas-grass. Under such circumstances the existence of an unprotected tree is impossible. The only plants that hold their own, in addition to the indestructible thistles, grasses, and clover, are a little herbaceous ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... a strong, wiry hand seized his right ear with a grip that made him wince, while a voice with a thrill of evil satisfaction in it, exclaimed in a low, ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... it be known in a few places where it'll do the most good that the mare can't pack a hundred and fifteen pounds and win at a mile." This was Weaver speaking, a small, wiry man with a drooping moustache. "You know how talk gets around on a race track—tell the right man and you might as well rent the front page of the morning paper. As a matter of fact, Fieldmouse can't ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... times on a wiry, jerking little fellow, whom he recognized as Jean La Marche, the fiddler, a censitaire of the manor of Tilly. He was a well-known character, and had drawn a large circle of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... close of the war I have come to know Colonel Mosby personally, and somewhat intimately. He is a different man entirely from what I had supposed. He is slender, not tall, wiry, and looks as if he could endure any amount of physical exercise. He is able, and thoroughly honest and truthful. There were probably but few men in the South who could have commanded successfully a separate detachment ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... more of his mother's gentleness than of his father's bold frankness in his brown eyes. His small hand grasped mine readily enough, but seemed nerveless and lacking in vitality, a contrast to Paul Patoff's grip. The Russian was as angular as ever, and his wiry fingers seemed to discharge an electric shock as they touched mine. I realized that he was a very tall man, and that he was far from ugly. His prominent nose and high cheek-bones gave a singular eagle-like look to his face, and his cold, bright eyes added to the impression. He lacked ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... in many respects a decided contrast to Spurling. Reared on a New Hampshire farm in the shadow of the White Mountains, he was of medium build, wiry and active, a practical joker, full of life and spirit. He had red hair and the quick temper that goes with it. Though not much of a student, he had at eighteen a keen, clear business head. Like Spurling, he had been obliged to make his own way; and, like Spurling, he was abundantly ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... craftsman who sought first to obtain an accurate likeness of his subject, and then treated the same subject on the lines of numismatic art. The wax shows a lean and subtly moulded face—the face of a delicate old man, wiry and worn with years of deep experience. The hair on head and beard is singularly natural; one feels it to be characteristic of the person. Transferring this portrait to bronze necessitated a general broadening of the masses, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... is like the last but more yellowish. Their nests are made of a wiry grass compactly woven together and partially suspended to mistletoe twigs growing from cottonwood trees; nests of this type are perfectly distinct from those of the preceding, but when they are made of fibre and ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... settling her helmet more firmly upon her wiry locks. She had a closed umbrella beneath her arm, and she drew and brandished it like a saber as she ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... poker, stood upon the chair, and banged three times upon the ceiling. Three muffled taps responded from the room above. Dimsdale stepped down and began slowly to discard his coat and his waistcoat. As he did so there was a quick, active step upon the stair, and a lean, wiry-looking, middle-sized young fellow stepped into the room. With a nod of greeting he pushed the table over to one side, threw off his two upper garments, and pulled on a pair of the boxing-gloves from the corner. Dimsdale had already done the same, and was standing, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... little man, thin and wiry, with bushy brown hair and beard, and keen dark eyes. His hands, slender and with long white fingers, played nervously with a quirt which he held, apparently for no purpose than that those nervous ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... see him rave till it took ten men to hold him," he said, feeling the wiry pulse, which was now beyond ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... man with her. Willis, you must help me out." Roberts gets falteringly to his feet, and stands in helpless apprehension, while Mr. and Mrs. McIlheny bear down upon him from the door. Mr. McIlheny, a small and wiry Irishman, is a little more vivid for the refreshment he has taken. He is in his best black suit, and the silk hat which he wears at a threatening slant gives dignified impressiveness to his figure and carriage. With some dumb-show of inquiry and assurance between himself and ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... more of his time, in one way or another, with them than in the society of his tribe, which dwelt in the thick woods bordering on one of the great prairies of the interior. He was about thirty years of age; had a tall, thin, but wiry and powerful frame; and was of a mild, retiring disposition. His face wore a habitually grave expression, verging towards melancholy; induced, probably, by the vicissitudes of a wild life (in which he had seen much of the rugged side of nature in men ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... his hands, which he laid on her paternally. His straggly, wiry moustache brushed her forehead in a good-night kiss. She closed the door, and went away from it to the middle of the room before she allowed herself a tired-out sort of laugh, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... enough for his astounding advice to connect with his listener's now keenly sensitive nerve centres; then deep and clear rang out, "Barry Conant." The wiry form of Bob's old antagonist ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... shopping bag and went straight up the steep hill. She arrived at the top, at the edge of the lawn before Jane's house, with somewhat heightened color and brightened eyes, but with no quickening of the breath. Her slim, solid little body had all the qualities of endurance of those wiry ponies that come from the regions her face and walk and the careless grace of her hair so delightfully suggested. As she advanced toward the house she saw a gay company assembled on the wide veranda. Jane ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... a very different man, when he quitted his tribe, from what he was at the time we introduce him to our reader. Strong, wiry, upright, and lithe as a panther, he left his wigwam and his wife, and turned his face towards the rising sun; but the season was a severe one, and game was scarce; from the very beginning of his journey he had found it difficult to supply ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... He was of a dull coal black, without a single high light on him anywhere, as though he had been sand-papered, had prominent teeth, like those of a baboon, in a wrinkled, wizened monkey face, across which were three tattooed bands, and possessed a little, long-armed, spare figure, bent and wiry. He clambered up and down his mast, fetching things at his master's behest; leapt nonchalantly for our rail or his own spar, as the case might be, across the staggering abyss; clung so well with his toes that he might almost have been classified with ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... often to the studio of William Story, whom my father had slightly known in Salem before he became a voluntary exile from America. Mr. Story was at this time a small, wiry, nervous personage, smiling easily, but as much through nervousness as from any inner source or outward provocation of mirth, and as he smiled he would stroke his cheeks, which were covered with a short, brown beard, with the fingers and thumb of his ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... and main branches and the tufting of terminals, profusion of small branches from axillary buds, the dwarfing and narrowing of the leaflets, and the dying back of the trees resulting sometimes in the death of the trees. The principal symptom is the production during summer of bushy, wiry growth caused by the breaking into growth of lateral buds that normally would remain dormant over the winter. These buds produce shoots that again branch from lateral buds and the process may be repeated for three or four times, resulting in a tightly packed mass or bunch of small, wiry twigs ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... Persian horses are small, but very wiry and enduring. In harness they are also capable of very long journeys in light draught, as proved in the carriage service between Tehran and Kasvin. The distance is about ninety-seven miles, divided into six stages. On arriving at one of these, ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... held aloft, cast a flickering light over young soldiers in faded uniforms, men in deerskin, and women in home-made linsey. Colden, and his two lieutenants, Wilton and Carson, stood together. They were thin, and their faces brown, but they looked wiry and rugged. Colden shook Robert's hand with ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the morrow when we moved down the mountain-side with the army of the Tribes, fierce and savage-looking men. The scouts were out before us, then came the great body of their cavalry mounted on wiry horses, while to right and left and behind, the foot soldiers marched in regiments, each under the command of its ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... 'clever', because I said the things which I had previously only thought. There was a change, no doubt, yet I believe that it was mainly physical, rather than mental. My excessive fragility—or apparent fragility, for I must have been always wiry—decreased; I slept better, and therefore, grew less nervous; I ate better, and therefore put on flesh. If I preserved a delicate look—people still used to say in my presence, 'That dear child is not long for this world!'—it was ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... a very heavily built man, with a bullet-shaped head, and a square resolute jaw, partially cloaked by a short sparse beard of coarse wiry hair. His voice and his laugh were both loud and boisterous, and he usually affected an air of open, noisy good-fellowship, which was but little in keeping with his character. When he saw Imam Bakar approaching him, with the slow and solemn ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... God," said he, addressing them, and his voice, naturally thin and wiry, now became lmsky and hollow, "where was God, to suffer this? to suffer the poor to be ruined, and the rich to be made poor? Was it right for the Almighty to look on an' let the villain do it? No—no—no; ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... sometimes to the south, in the hopes of discovering the smallest puddle. At last we had to halt to rest the weary cattle, though we could find no water, and without it they showed no inclination to crop the hard, wiry grass. We therefore remained but a short time, and once more pushed forward. As evening approached we began to feel very anxious, for without water the oxen ould scarcely perform their next day's journey. The sun, verging towards the west, was shining in our eyes and prevented us from discerning ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... tracks—sharp, nervous, and wiry—have their histories also. But how rarely we see squirrels in winter! The naturalists say they are mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced depredator, the chipmunk, was not carrying buckwheat for so ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... next to Pacer, was a small, jet-black mare, with a lean head, slender legs, and a curious restless manner. She was a regular greyhound of a horse, no spare flesh, yet wiry and able to do a great deal of work. She was a wicked looking little thing, so I thought I had better keep at a safe ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... a smudge of wiry willows on the weary Kuskoquim; Now a flare of gummy pine-knots where Vancouver's scaur is grim; Now a gleam of sunny ceiba, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... about 2 P.M. at Northwest River. Thomas M'Kenzie in charge. Bully fellow, all alone, lonesome, but does not admit it. Tall, wiry, hospitable in the extreme. Not busy in winter. Traps some. Wishes he could go with us. Would pack up to-night and be ready in the morning. Can get no definite information as to our route. M'Kenzie says we are all right; can make it of course. Gave away bag ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... wrath and the vague noise of some one in a furious hurry. All at once and before Harran had a chance to knock on the door, Annixter flung it open. His face was blazing with anger, his outthrust lip more prominent than ever, his wiry, yellow hair in disarray, the tuft on the crown sticking straight into the air like the upraised hackles of an angry hound. Evidently he had been dressing himself with the most headlong rapidity; he had not yet put on his coat and vest, but carried them over his arm, while with his disengaged hand ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... out-lived the sickliness of his earlier years. The hardships and trials of his childhood and boyhood had served but to brace his young manhood, knitting the frame and strengthening the nerves. Light and small, as Carlyle describes him, he was wiry and very active, and could bear without injury an amount of intellectual work and bodily fatigue that would have killed many men of seemingly stronger build. And as what might have seemed unfortunate in his youth had helped perchance to develop his physical powers, so had it assisted to strengthen ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... "Mamie is a wiry little thing and Joe is a heavyweight, with a hand almost as big as a baseball mit. That's partly why their practical romance is so fascinating. Why, it's wonderful the stories that are playing themselves ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... foot-weary. The nerve-tearing barbs rattle their wooden holders about his back as he moves. He seems to recognise that the last part of the fight has come, for all the teasing chulos have withdrawn, and he is alone with one small, wiry man with a bright sword. The time for wild rushes is past; the bull plants himself gloomily and waits his chance. There is the faena to go through first—a series of passes with the scarlet flag. There may be a dozen or so to show, ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... dear old woman as one reads about in books. Her cheeks were all criss-crossed with little wrinkles, which made her look as if she were always smiling. Her forehead was smooth, her eyes kind and blue. She was small, thin, and wiry. Her laugh was as fresh as a young woman's. Mell loved her at once, and was sure that she should be happy to live with her and ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... private secretary went down and was admitted under the gallery on the left, to listen, with great content, while John Bright, with astonishing force, caught and shook and tossed Roebuck, as a big mastiff shakes a wiry, ill-conditioned, toothless, bad-tempered Yorkshire terrier. The private secretary felt an artistic sympathy with Roebuck, for, from time to time, by way of practice, Bright in a friendly way was apt to shake him too, and he knew how it was done. The manner counted for ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the voice of the newcomer. He snatched off a wig of black, wiry hair and stood revealed ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... among the natives collecting memoranda about their habits while the boys roamed at their leisure about the city. They saw a bull fight, a spectacle that speedily disgusted them, and witnessed the driving into the stock-yards of a huge herd of cattle rounded up by wild and savage-looking gauchos on wiry ponies. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Gallery Eve clasped her hands in sudden apprehension; and Fraide, sitting stiffly in his seat, turned and shot one swift glance at the man on whom, against prudence and precedent, he had pinned his faith. The glance was swift but very searching, and with a characteristic movement of his wiry shoulders he resumed his position and his usual grave, attentive attitude. At the same moment Loder lifted his head and ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... heels followed a wiry, sharp-eyed shaggy devil of a terrier, dogging his steps as he went slashing up and down, now with one man beside him, now with another, and now quite alone, but always at a fast rolling pace, with his head in the air, and his eyes as wide open as he could ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... trinkets from Stamboul; here are red and yellow slippers of kid and satin, some elaborately wrought in silver and gilt, and all turned up at the toes. The narrow way is crowded with white and red turbans, women with fruit in baskets upon their heads, strong and wiry Bedouins leading their horses and taking count of everything with their sharp black eyes. They are the veritable sons of the desert. Nile boatmen, Abyssinian slaves, and lazy Egyptians, with Greeks, Italians, and Maltese, make up the jostling crowd of the bazars; and amid ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... further south; but it might be said to be nearly so. A few stunted plants were to be seen in the fissures of the rocks, and a little soil had been made, seemingly by the crumbling of the stones, in which a wiry grass occasionally showed itself. As for the mountain, however, it was mostly bare; and when our party began to climb, the ascent was not only difficult, but in places dangerous. Roswell had foreseen this, and he had made a provision ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... a sortie, and was carried off to Zeeland. The States-General now appointed Jacques van der Meer, Baron of Berendrecht, to the post of honour and of danger. A noble of Flanders, always devoted to the republican cause; an experienced middle-aged officer, vigilant, energetic, nervous; a slight wiry man, with a wizened little face, large bright eyes, a meagre yellow beard, and thin sandy hair flowing down upon his well-starched ruff, the new governor soon showed himself inferior to none of his predecessors in audacity ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Servants united, and removed to Drury Lane in 1682; so that the Dorset Gardens Theatre only flourished for eleven years in all. It was subsequently let to wrestlers, fencers, and other brawny and wiry performers. The engraving on page 193, taken from Settle's "Empress of Morocco" (1678), represents the stage of the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Wren's new theatre in Dorset Gardens, an engraving of which is given on page 138, fronted the river, and had public stairs for the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... do. The man had been dumped against the wall, but he was still undaunted. With thin mud dropping from one leg of his flimsy pantaloons, he came forward again, did this chair coolie, whom I had just paid off—for it was assuredly one of the trio—leading out again one of those little wiry, shaggy ponies, and wished to do another deal. He had, however, struck a snag. We did not come to terms. I merely lifted the quadruped bodily from my path ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... man—it was only when I turned about and saw Foe's face—that the truth broke on me—and then, at first, as a wild surmise, and no more. Even when I wheeled about again and stared at the man, full belief came slowly: for this Farrell was thin, wiry, gaunt; sun-tanned, with sunken eyes and a slight stoop; wearing the clothes of a gentleman and, when at length he spoke, using the accent of a gentleman. . . . But ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and turned. Ned sprang like a panther. All the force and energy that he had been concentrating so long were in the leap. The soldier went down as if he had been struck by a cannon ball and his tray and dishes rattled upon him. But he was a wiry fellow and grasping ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sagacity and endurance. To a lover of his dogs, as every Christian man must be, each one had become almost as precious as a child to its mother. They were beautiful beasts: "Brin," the cleverest leader on the coast; "Doc," a large, gentle beast, the backbone of the team for power; "Spy," a wiry, powerful black and white dog; "Moody," a lop-eared black-and-tan, in his third season, a plodder that never looked behind him; "Watch," the youngster of the team, long-legged and speedy, with great liquid eyes and a Gordon-setter coat; "Sue," ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... of us, though I was wiry and had good staying power, and Jeff was a great sprinter and hurdler, but I can tell you those old ladies gave us cards and spades. They ran like deer, by which I mean that they ran not as if it was a performance, but as if it was their natural gait. We remembered those fleeting girls of our ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... a little man, with a spare, wiry body, iron grey hair and whiskers carefully arranged, a keen, old-fashioned face sharpened by much spiritual thinking, and eyes that looked at you from beneath shaggy eyebrows as from some other world. His face had an irresistible suggestion of a Skye ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Hannibal, it was decided that Little Sam was now ready to go to school. He was about five years old, and the months on the farm had left him wiry and lively, even if not very robust. His mother declared that he gave her more trouble than all ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a small, wiry, vigorous woman, and she had an expressive, if a vinegary, face. She rose from her seat and forgot all about ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... the rest of the party round the fire. There was Bartle Won, a faithful follower, for many years, of Uncle Jeff; but as unlike him as it was possible that any two human beings could be. Bartle was a wiry little fellow, with bow legs, broad shoulders (one rather higher than the other), and a big head, out of which shone a pair of gray eyes, keen as those of a hawk—the only point in which he resembled Uncle Jeff. He was wonderfully active and strong, notwithstanding his figure; ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... He had on a surtout coat, a blue checked shirt; the collar standing up, and kept in its place with a wisp of black neckerchief; no waistcoat; and a large pocket-handkerchief thrust into his breast, which was all broad and open. At his heels followed a wiry, sharp-eyed, shaggy devil of a terrier, dogging his steps as he went slashing up and down, now with one man beside him, now with another, and now quite alone, but always at a fast, rolling pace, with his head in the air, and his eyes as wide open as ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... partly enfolding wings and keel. Calyx tubular, 4 or 5 toothed; 10 stamens (9 and 1); 1 pistil. (Also solitary fertile flowers, lacking petals, on thread-like, creeping branches from lower axils or underground). Stem: Twining wiry brownish-hairy, to 8 ft. long. Leaves: Compounded of 3 thin leaflets, egg-shaped at base, acutely pointed at tip. Fruit: Hairy pod 1 in. long. Also 1-seeded, pale, rounded, underground peanut. Preferred Habitat - Moist thickets, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... were like the good looks of others. He looked well bred, but to look that is as common in a certain class as it is rare in another. He had the spare, wiry figure, tall and lightly built, square in the shoulders, and thin in the flank; he had the clear weather-beaten complexion, the clean, nervous, capable hand, and the self-effacing manner, which we associate ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... steadied to the touch of Weldon's hand upon her neck. It was not the first time he had guided her, unscathed, through a leaden shower. She would trust him yet once again. As he raised his rifle, her wiry legs were as steady as four iron rods. He saw another Boer fall and yet another and a third; but one khaki-colored figure lay stiffly beside him, and another was dragging itself away to a corner of the kraal, to give greater space to its unwounded comrades. And still the bullets whizzed ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... characteristic nose—it was a combative nose, and a decided pug. So was the nose on the window-pane. Plunger's hair, too, was peculiar to Plunger. It was wiry, stubborn hair, with a tuft in front which resembled the comb of a turkey-cock. The same peculiarity was seen in the head on the window. And Plunger's eyebrows had a way of mounting to his head, as though they were anxious to get ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... powerful black charger. His dress was entirely civilian, consisting of a long surtout something the worse for wear, and a round hat. Heavy spurs upon his heels, and an ample cloak, now strapped across his holsters, completed the equipment of the cura Merino, in whose hard and rigid features, and wiry person, scarcely a sign of decay or infirmity was visible after more than sixty years of life, a large portion of which had been passed amidst the fatigues and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... his well-rounded legs, adjusted his soft-roll collar, and smoothed his short, crisp, wiry, now blackish-gray mustache. His black eyes ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... personal appearance, what a contrast to his renowned opponent. Six feet and four inches high, long, lean and wiry in motion; he had a good deal of the elasticity and awkwardness which indicated the rough training of his early life; his face genial looking, with good humor lurking in every corner of its innumerable angles. Judge Douglas once said, "I regard Lincoln ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... with heavy gilt fringe, a pastel-blue carpet, and upon the opposite wall a great canopy of rich purple velvet bearing the double-headed eagle embroidered in gold. The apartment was splendidly decorated, and in the center of the parquet floor, with his back to the light, was the thin, wiry figure of an elderly man in a funereal frock-coat, in the lapel of which showed the red and yellow ribbon of the Order of Saint Anne. His hands were behind his back, and he stood purposely in such a position ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... His complexion had not the florid hues that should have accompanied that strength of body; it was pale, though not sickly; the expression grave, the lines deep, the face strongly marked. By his side trotted painfully a wiry, yellowish, footsore Scotch terrier. Beau sprang from his master's caress, cocked his handsome head on one side, and suspended in silent halt his right fore-paw. Percival cast over his left shoulder a careless glance at the intruder. The last heeded neither Beau ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mesne; and in response there arose from the shadows a wiry little Frenchman, who might have been of any age from twenty to forty-five, so sun-burnt and wrinkled, yet so active and vigorous ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... fair chance Jack had received in that thrilling moment when the wiry little Scotchman, cool and determined, had faced the huge brute whose nature, harking back to the wild, threw off the shackles of generations of suppression and training, and rose to meet his hereditary enemy—opposing fierce resentment ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... a site, however, did not mean that all difficulties were solved. Prettily situated as it was, and commanding a charming view, it was a bit of ground useless for agricultural purposes. Even the grass which grew upon it was so coarse and wiry that cattle would not eat it. But the Patel's first suggestion as to price was that Rs. 1500 would be a desirable sum, and he went away rather disheartened on being assured that his suggestion was impossible. When ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... dismount. He sat drinking in the dance-measure. Louder and louder she played the air, and, humming it over, he drove his foot home. Shaking up the reins, he cantered his mule round and round the sun-dial in front of the door. Round and round he went, still humming, while those wiry and sun-burnt wrists pounded away ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... stern and wearisome, Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing, To whom the boundless air alone were home: Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome, As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat His breast and beak against his wiry dome Till the blood tinge his plumage—so the heat Of his impeded Soul would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... define. The thing was reared half up along the hall door, inspecting its surface with these members; then suddenly it flung itself around and flashed over to the outer lock door. Three arms shot out; wiry fingers caught the three spin-locks ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... the mind undisturbed by any disquieting thought, the feeling of attainment through vigorous effort! It was a steady swing and swish, swish and swing! When Dick led I have a picture of him in my mind's eye—his wiry thin legs, one heel lifted at each step and held rigid for a single instant, a glimpse of pale blue socks above his rusty shoes and three inches of whetstone sticking from his tight hip-pocket. It was good to have him there whether ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... sound of the bungalow, except when Lady Greystoke chose to canter across the broad plain, or relieve the monotony of her loneliness by a brief hunting excursion. On such occasions Mugambi, mounted upon a wiry Arab, had ridden close at her ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Arthur, begging to have dinner at half-past three instead of four, because he foresees "a wiry evening" in store for him. Under which complication of distractions, to which a waitress with a tray at this moment adds herself, I sink, and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... regarding him for a while in silence, his one eye, as bright and as steady as that of a hawk, looking keenly from under the penthouse of its bushy brows, the while he slowly twirled and twisted his bristling wiry mustaches, as was his wont when in meditation. At last he broke the silence. "How old art ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... glad remembrance of my debt, I homeward turn. Farewell, my pet! When here again thy pilgrim comes, He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt: For men mishear thy call in spring, As 'twould accost some frivolous wing, Crying out of the hazel copse, "Phe—be!" And in winter, "Chic-a-dee-dee!" I think old Caesar must have heard In Northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... claw fashion, and caught the thing on the blanket. I felt the blanket raise and then fall again, just a little, of course, as I lifted my hand with the thing in it, and by that knew that it had claws. Yet bet I held tight. It seemed to be hard and smooth. It was a wiry, wriggling thing, somewhat like a lizard. But it was much more vigorous than any lizard. I tried to crush it, but could not. As to thickness, it seemed to be about the diameter of one of those lead pencils. It was like this I ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of the rocky wall at the upper end of the gulch, forming a little pool at the bottom of the cliff from which a small rivulet wound downward to the tunnel through which it passed to the gorge beyond. A single great tree flourished near the center of the gulch, while tufts of wiry grass were scattered here and there among the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... girls, scattered about the room, stared for a second in blank amazement at the intruders. They were certainly unlike any other visitors who had ever come to Pendlemere. The speaker was a little, short, wiry man, in a slack-fitting, brown tweed suit, with a rather obtrusive striped tie. His raggy, grey beard straggled under his chin and up to his ears; his eyes twinkled through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles; in defiance of European etiquette, he ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... with powder and with flint-lock, Learn to battle and to conquer, Learn the tactics of the army. Brigade drills, battalion musters, And an annual encampment, Took in officers and soldiers, Men of strong and wiry muscle, Men from twenty-one and upwards, To the age of five and forty. 'Twas in eighteen twenty-seven That John Jennings was commander Of the elite Light Horse Company. Captain Travis Dodd succeeded, And along the years that follow, To the Sabine Volunteers, in Eighteen ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... grain to be had for them. They had been starving for a month, for the Indians had burned the grass before us wherever we went, and here in the pine-covered hills what grass could be found was scant and wiry,—not the rich, juicy, strength-giving bunch-grass of the open country. Of my two horses, neither was in condition to do military duty when we got to Whitewood. I was adjutant of the regiment, and had to be bustling around a good deal; and so it happened that one day the colonel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... made a favourable impression on the minds of his companions, and as soon as the morning's work was over, they set about the task of mutual introduction in a far more friendly manner than was customary on these occasions. He was a wiry little chap, with bright eyes, for ever on the twinkle, and black hair pasted down upon his head, so as not to show the slightest vestige of curl, while the sharp, mischievous look on his face, and the quick, comical ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... he found in John, alone, about as much of a task as he cared to undertake. For two minutes they heaved and tugged, John's wiry frame seeming to be all around the woodsman, who was by no means clumsy, though he could not put him down. Then they broke apart and for a minute made feints at one another, each hoping to secure ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... the wind arose and shivered in the wiry leaves of the fir-trees, and there was a moaning sound as of some Ariel imprisoned in the thick branches that, tangled overhead, made a shelter for them. Either the noise or Mr. Buxton's fancy called up an echo to Maggie's voice—a pleading with her pleading—a sad tone ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... men who had been added to the Team in every corner of the world. There was Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman, the Arab jeep-driver who had joined them in Basra. There was the wiry little Greek whom everybody called Alex Unpronounceable. There was an Italian, and two Chinese, and a cashiered French Air Force officer, and a Malay, and the son of an English earl who insisted that his name was Bertie Wooster. They had sworn ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... did not consume all the provisions, he would willingly have taken possession of the whole of the talk, (that being his notion of a conversation.) When one had to dine at the same table with him, one contrived to take up a position as remote as possible from the interruption of his thin, wiry, ill-modulated voice—the false suavity of which in saying impertinent things was really so disagreeable, that one would have renounced the society of wit or beauty on the right hand, rather than have been flanked by Mr Snapley on the left, and thankfully have accepted the companionship, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... used to it, the young man lifted his cap to Claire, showing straight, wiry, rope-colored hair, brushed straight back from a rather fine forehead. "Gee, I was sorry to have to swear and holler like that, but it's all Adolph understands. Please don't think there's many of the folks around here like him. They say he's the meanest ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... having some difficulty in steering his partner through an intricate figure; he was the only person on the floor who did not keep step, and his movements became at every moment more vague and undecided. When, at last, the wiry, determined-looking "bronco-buster" sprang upon the ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... in a green lane just on the outskirts of the fair. I had seen persons in my own country who claimed to be these people, but they were as unlike the pure Rommany gipsies as races of men could be. These people were thin, wiry and keen; their features, in most instances, finely cut, and the expression of their countenances full of sharp intelligence. They had pitched a double line of tents, where the elder women were busy selling drinks, and frying cakes, which ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... my flint and blow the match into a flame to search for the fallen candle. Yet all the time I kept in my fingers this handful of light stuff; and when the flame burnt up again I held the thing against the light, and saw that it was no wisp of seaweed, but something black and wiry. For a moment, I could not gather what I had hold of, but then gave a start that nearly sent the candle out, and perhaps a cry, and let it drop as if it were red-hot iron, for I knew that it ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... along the road, he remarked that she was a small wiry active woman—dressed in bright colors, combined with a deplorable want of taste. Her aquiline nose seemed to be her most striking feature as she came nearer. It might have been fairly proportioned to the rest of her face, in her younger days, before her cheeks had lost flesh and roundness. Being ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... of brutes and reptiles. I have known a savage and vicious mare, whose stall it was dangerous to approach, even when bearing provender, welcome, nevertheless, with every appearance of pleasure, an uncouth, wiry-headed man, with a frightfully seamed face, and an iron hook supplying the place of his right hand, one whom the animal had never seen before, playfully bite his hair, and cover his face with gentle and endearing kisses; and I have ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... were grappling in a furious fight. John was smaller than Peter, but he was wiry and as lithe and powerful as a trained athlete, so that he was a match, at first, for the rugged strength of Peter. But he had had a hard day, and gradually Peter's strength wore him down, and, as they crashed to the ground together, Peter was on top, and plainly destined to be victor in the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... Cardinal, in his wiry and peculiar tone, which was broken at intervals by a hoarse and hollow cough—"had he conspired against the sovereign or against the state, my duty as a minister, and my devotion as a subject, would have compelled me on this occasion ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... note, Dwight had telephoned that Sally would be there at five. Mrs. Crothers arrived at a quarter past. She was a small alert looking woman of thirty-five, slender, almost wiry, dark, with black hair worn over her temples. Her small mouth was strong and willful, but she had nice pleasant eyes. She was wearing a pretty tan hat and grey furs that she put back on her shoulders as she smiled and held ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... pony made a shrill sound, a neigh that was almost a scream, and started up the clay bank to meet them, all the wild blood of the range breaking out in an instant. Margaret called to Eric just as he threw himself out of the saddle and caught her pony's bit. But the wiry little animal had gone mad and was kicking and biting like a devil. Her wild brothers of the range were all about her, neighing, and pawing the earth, and striking her with their fore feet and snapping at her flanks. It was the old liberty of the range ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... on so many trips across the Painted Desert was in charge of the outfit. He was a wiry, gray, old pioneer, over seventy years, hollow-cheeked and bronzed, with blue-gray eyes still keen with fire. He was no longer robust, but he was tireless and willing. When he told a story he always began: "In the early days—" His ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... campus with him to the Museum, still chatting. Norton was a tall, spare man, wiry, precisely the type one would pick to make an explorer in a tropical climate. His features were sharp, suggesting a clear and penetrating mind and a disposition to make the most of everything, no matter how slight. Indeed that had been his history, I knew. He had come to college ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... lean, wiry desert ponies were brought around. Tom and Harry mounted, riding away at ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... ordinary duties among the cattle. I knew both men and have worked with them on the round-up. Like most cowboys, they carried 44-calibre Colt revolvers, and were accustomed to and fairly expert in their use, and they were mounted on ordinary cow-ponies—quick, wiry, plucky little beasts. In one case the bear was seen from quite a distance, lounging across a broad table-land. The cowboy, by taking advantage of a winding and rather shallow coulie, got quite close to him. He then scrambled out of the coulie, put spurs to his pony, and raced up to ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt |
