He walked with that peculiar, stiff-legged gait which betrays long hours spent in the saddle, and he wore a silk handkerchief around his neck habitually and had forgotten the feel of a dress-suit.
He answered to the name "Bud" more readily than to his own, and he made practical use of the slang and colloquialisms of the plains without any mental quotation marks.
By all these signs and tokens he had learned his West, and should have taken himself back to civilization when came the frost.

He had come to get into touch with his chosen field of fiction, that he might write as one knowing whereof he spoke.

So far as he had gone, he was in touch with it; he was steeped to the eyes in local color--and there was the rub The lure of it was strong upon him, and he might not loosen its hold.

He was the son of his father; he had found himself, and knew that, like him, he loved best to travel the dim trails.
Gene Wasson came in and slammed the door emphatically shut after him.
"She's sure coming," he complained, while he pulled the icicles from his mustache and cast them into the fire.

"She's going to be a real, old howler by the signs.