"Tenderfoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enough to see that the more she sought to soften the wind to her Eastern tenderfoot the more surely he was to be shorn, so she gave over her effort in that direction, and turned to the old folks. To Mrs. Meeker she privately said: "Mr. Norcross ain't used to rough ways, and he's not very rugged, you ought 'o kind o' favor him for ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... necessity of a change appealed to me. I was out of everything more nourishing than hope and one slab of pay-streaked bacon, when two tenderfeet 'mushed' up the gulch, and invited themselves into my cabin to watch me pan. It's the simplest thing known to science to salt a tenderfoot, so I didn't have no trouble in selling out ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... learned what pitching was. This proved the worst horse to ride I had ever mounted in my life, but I stayed with him and the cow boys were the most surprised outfit you ever saw, as they had taken me for a tenderfoot, pure and simple. After the horse got tired and I dismounted the boss said he would give me a job and pay me $30.00 per month and more later on. He asked what my name was and I answered Nat Love, he said to the boys ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... let me take a six-shooter or a rope," said Curly. "I ain't fixed for this here tenderfoot game you-all have sprung on me. If it wasn't for that there spur, I'd have sent Doc's ball plumb over Carrizy Mountain that last carrom. You watch me when onct I get the hang ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... nobody can say that I ever butt in when a patrol is breaking in a tenderfoot. That's one thing I wouldn't do. I wouldn't even have bothered to tell you about it at all, except that it had momentous ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... sudden loud explosion. The sound came from the quarter in which the buck had just gone, and could not have been far distant. And even the tenderfoot understood what it meant. ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... outside than it has now. Faith, I never expected to see it again, nor the paymaster either. We were both bored through and through. 'Twas our good habits that saved us. Sure your predecessor was a game fighter, Mr. Barnes, if he was a tenderfoot." ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... heads to the ground and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly, resort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake off or to kill their riders; and men who amuse themselves in bar-rooms by shooting about the feet of a "tenderfoot" to make him dance, or who ride along the street and shoot at every one in sight. Just as the old plutonic fires come to the surface out there in the Rockies, and hint very strongly of the infernal regions, so a kind ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... meet him at the wooden shack which represents the railway station at Waybackville, registering great glee at the prospect of hazing a tenderfoot. We know full well that he will eventually win their respect and high regard—probably by foiling a dastardly plot on the part of a Mexican half-breed—and we are therefore in no anxiety of mind when they raise the dust around his feet with their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... then to such an isolation as Desert Valley a boon from the gods in the guise of a tenderfoot. But never tenderfoot, agreed the oldest Mexican with the youngest Texan, like this one. They sat lined in back-tilted chairs about the four walls and studied him with eyes that were at all times appreciative, often downright grave. His ignorance was astounding, his ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... the packsaddle, put on the canvas covering and throw the "diamond hitch," and then saddle your own horse—for by now you will have begun to feel some confidence and pride in doing things that the "tenderfoot" generally leaves to the guide—and soon you are climbing up the trail on your way to the rim. As soon as you are on "top," you "push on" the pack animals and "hit the trail hard" by way of Hance's Ranch, now owned by Martin Buggel, to Grand View, and over the familiar road ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... a tenderfoot and a stranger to the saloon-keeper," he said, as we struck into the sage-brush wilderness. "The fool didn't know enough to spend a few dollars at the bar. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... tenderfoot when it comes to a book, but this one was sure the corkin'est I ever met up with. I had allus thought 'at "Seventeen Buckets o' Blood; or the Mormon Widder's Revenge" was about the extreme limit in books, but this here one lays over even that. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... the crest of the east slope. They turned our team square across the way and in mock stage-robbery style called a halt. The driver threw up his hands in mock terror and begged for mercy, which was granted if he would deliver up one Philip Baronet, student and tenderfoot. But I was already down from the stage and O'mie was hugging me hard until Bud Anderson pulled him away and all the boys and girls were around me. Oh, it was good to see them all again, but best of all was it to ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... buffalo, elk and bear, you must get into sympathy with their methods of reasoning. No tenderfoot stands any show, even with the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... Goodwin. "It won't do to let the goose and gander slip through our fingers, Billy; their feathers are too valuable. Our crowd is prepared and able to step into the shoes of the government at once; but with the treasury empty we'd stay in power about as long as a tenderfoot would stick on an untamed bronco. We must play the fox on every foot of the coast to prevent their getting ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... upon the exciting experiences through which all three boys had passed that day. Zeke declared gruffly that there wasn't one of them fit to be in the canyon. "I'm tellin' you," he said, "this is no place for a kid or a tenderfoot. It's a man's job to work one's way up this gulch, let me tell you, and we ought not to have any infants along ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... head and the size of my shoes. Threw a search light on my heart and soul. Gee! It felt like the violet rays. Now, look here, friend, I ain't going to take chances on a turn-down, nor of your Mr. Bob Flick having fun all night shooting holes in the floor while this little Johnny Tenderfoot does his imitation Black Pearl dancing. Listen," he tapped the bar sharply, "when I meet the Black Pearl, it's because she requested an introduction. You take me up to that old lion tamer, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... wisdom, would have me, a tenderfoot, adjust those things that are too knotty for these men who have spent their lives ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... mir'cles sim'lar in the conduct of that maverick French which Enright an' the camp, to allay the burnin' excitement that's rendin' the outfit on account of the Laundry War, herds into her lovin' arms. Tenderfoot as he is, when we-all ups an' marries him off that time, this French already shows symptoms of becomin' one of the most abandoned sports in Arizona. Benson Annie seizes him, purifies him, an' makes ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the sort of creatures who loafed in the saloons of the little villages and amused them selves by running amuck and shooting up the town. These men, and indeed nearly all of the pioneers, held the man from the civilized East, the "tenderfoot," in scorn. They took it for granted that he was a weakling, that he had soft ideas of life and was stuck-up or affected. Now Roosevelt saw that in order to win their trust and respect, he must show himself equal to their tasks, a true comrade, who accepted their code of courage and honor. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... of the visions cherished by the men you rate the highest in California, your "Pioneers" and "Forty-Niners," as to the future of the empire they were founding on this coast. There lingered in my mind the flavor at least of an old response by a California public man to the compliment a "tenderfoot" New-Yorker, in the innocence of his heart, had intended to pay, when he said that with this splendid State, this glorious harbor, and the Pacific Ocean, you have all the elements to build up here the New ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... were on the point of again jumping up and taking flight. Father Pat gone, he brightened considerably as he discussed the departed guest. "Soldier, eh!" he exclaimed. "Wal, young feller, I'll say this preachin' gent ain't no ev'ryday, tenderfoot parson! ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Uncle Peter exclaimed, with warm approval, "the way you master this business certainly does win me. I tell you, it's a mighty good thing we got your brains to depend on. I'm all right the other side of Council Bluffs, but I'm a tenderfoot here, sure, where everybody's tryin' to get the best of you. You see, out there, everybody tries to make the best of it. But here they try to get the best of it. I told that to one of them smarties ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... every true scout, knew just how to go about starting a fire. True, the recent rain had wet pretty much all of the wood, so that a tenderfoot would have had a difficult task getting the blaze started, though after that trouble had been surmounted it would not be so bad. But Jud knew just how to split open a log, and find the dry heart that ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... so sore swinging a pan, so Daggett he kind of scrambled the dirt out after a fashion, and there at the bottom was our ounce and a half of gold! Well, I want to tell you there was some movement around there. We weren't in the same fix of a friend of mine who loaded a pan for a tenderfoot with four solid ounces, and when he slid the water around on that nice little yeller new moon in the corner of the pan, "Humph!" says the tenderfoot, "don't you get any more gold than that out ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... had just set; the moon was shining faintly: it was the moment the beasts of the jungle came to the river to drink. Anfossi, although he had spent three years in the Congo and had three years' contract still to work out, was as determined to kill something as was the tenderfoot from New York. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... alienage[obs3], alienism. foreign body, foreign substance, foreign element; alien, stranger, intruder, interloper, foreigner, novus homo[Lat], newcomer, immigrant, emigrant; creole, Africander[obs3]; outsider; Dago*, wop, mick, polak, greaser, slant, Easterner [U.S.], Dutchman, tenderfoot. Adj. extraneous, foreign, alien, ulterior; tramontane, ultramontane. excluded &c. 55; inadmissible; exceptional. Adv. in foreign parts, in foreign lands; abroad, beyond seas; over sea on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... no intention of giving way to them, the two cowboys held their course, their eyes fixed on the offending tenderfoot until finally only a ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... me because I'm a tenderfoot," she retorted with a laugh that was like music in Stane's ears; ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... personal affairs was merged with the pleasures and the novelty of the life in camp. Often he wished that he had more time to spend with these boys, who welcomed him to their fellowship, although he was not even a tenderfoot, with hearty good will and friendliness. Whatever Ralph did, work or play, he did with all his heart. He entered into the games and recreations "for all he was worth," and won the regard of ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... like the same old Bud," she laughed, "and it's a pleasure to hear it. For if there is one thing a cowboy can't do, and it's the only one, it is to pay a woman a compliment. That speech brands you a tenderfoot." ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... completed and the stage coaches began to travel over it his house was turned into a stage station and you can guess that Uncle Dick Wooten had many a stage story to relate to the "tenderfoot" who chose his house to order a meal ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... the West when we want a little fun make a tenderfoot dance while we fire our revolvers at his ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... Indians as much as possible, for, tenderfoot as he was at first, he knew well that they would harass him in every possible way, in order to drive him from a region which was their elysium. He found it an easy matter, after he became acquainted with ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... distinguished at all. We had gone so much farther than our native boy had declared we had to go that we began to fear that in the confusion of trails we had taken the wrong one and had passed the cabin. That is the tenderfoot's, or, as we say, the chechaco's, fear; it is the one thing that it may almost be said never happens. But the boy fell down completely and was frankly at a loss. All we could get out of him was: "May-be-so we catch cabin bymeby, may-be-so no." If we ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... wuz somewhat of a tenderfoot then, Hadn't jist got the lay of the land; Thar wuz a good many things in them thar parts As I couldn't quite understand. But I took a likin' to Yosemite Jim, Wuz with him on my very first trick; And from that time on I stuck to him Like a kitten ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... who ordinarily would be classed as honest. Still, they appeared to listen to Tooly's tales of prowess in the looting of emigrant trains as if they regarded such proceedings as acts of exceptional valor; exhibiting as much interest in the recital as did the "tenderfoot" emigrants—who held a different opinion ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... understand; but he does," he said. "He knows. Mr. Tenderfoot, there's a rule out here among white men in the Nation that you can't shoot a man when he's with a woman. I never knew it to be broke yet. You can't do it. You've got to get him in a gang of men or by himself. That's why. He knows it, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... laugh. As they talked she had been skilfully bandaging the swollen ankle in her best style, which was a style not to be despised by anybody. "Now," she said, as she tucked in the end and fastened it firmly with her Tenderfoot brooch, "now you will be more comfortable. But you must keep quite still. I do wish you were not so far from home; you should not ride. If you do anything foolish now you may be lame all your life; that's what the doctor told me; he was most frightfully firm about it. Your ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... a solidly braced box for the engine. The propeller and the rudders were to go in the plane crate. These were promised Sunday morning, and Norman and Roy took a part of Saturday for the selection of their personal outfits. Over this there was little delay, as the practical young men had no tenderfoot illusions to dissipate. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... especially about ventilation. I greeted the dawn with heartfelt thanksgiving, and yet I'm as keen about my vacation idea as ever. I have simply learned what to do and what not to do, and it won't matter to me in the least whether my ways are those of a tenderfoot or not. Why not be comfortable physically as well as spiritually? Think of the independence of it! To be able to sit at the feet of any view that you fancy till you are ready to move on! Doesn't that ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... go after me?" Haney asked, irritably. "I'm out of it. 'Tis like the fool tenderfoot. Don't he know I had nothing to do ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... easily imagine that he would go wabbling helplessly over the granite boulders, unable to lift himself more than a few feet in the air, while the pipit and the leucosticte, inured to the heights, would mount up to the sky and shout "Ha! ha!" in good-natured raillery at the blue tenderfoot. And would the feathered visitor feel a constriction in his chest and be compelled to gasp for breath, as the human tourists invariably do? It is even doubtful whether any eastern bird would be able to survive the changed meteorological conditions, Nature having designed ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... A Bright Future for Pugilism Absent Minded A Calm Accepting the Laramie Postoffice A Circular A Collection of Keys A Convention A Father's Advice to his Son A Father's Letter A Goat in a Frame A Great Spiritualist A Great Upheaval A Journalistic Tenderfoot A Letter of Regrets All About Menials All About Oratory Along Lake Superior A Lumber Camp A Mountain Snowstorm Anatomy Anecdotes of Justice Anecdotes of the Stage A New Autograph Album A New Play An Operatic Entertainment Answering an Invitation Answers to Correspondents A Peaceable Man A Picturesque ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... who has come so many miles to join him. The greeting is not of the exuberant character expected, and frequently the heart of the newcomer is broken by being told to go back to his mammy and spend a few years more in the nursery. A runaway tenderfoot just fresh from school is not wanted on the cattle ranch, and although Western farmers are too good-natured to resent very severely the liberty taken, they never flatter the newcomer by holding out any inducements or making any prophecies ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... "No. He's a tenderfoot, but he can ride a horse as if he was sewed to the skin, and I've an idea that he can do other things up to the same standard. If you can find two or three men who have silent tongues and strong hands, you'd better take them along. I'll pay their ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... retorted the sandy-haired man, testily. (Pedro was the only Mexican cowboy at the ranch, and even he was barely tolerated.) "But the little mistress ain't no tenderfoot girl. She don't howl at a rattlesnake nor jump at a prairie dog; and she knows how to ride, and which end ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... to beg or buy that clothesline from Reddy when we go away from here, and hang it up in our clubroom, as the most valuable asset we have. Without it what would become of us, eh? Talk about your trained nurses! That fellow is a whole hospital to the tenderfoot crowd. Call to him, please, and enlist his sympathy in the noble cause of yanking us in ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... evening they had a tenderfoot. The boy, being new in Arizona, still trusted his neighbor. Such people turned up occasionally. This one had paid for everybody's drink several times, because he felt friendly, and never noticed that nobody ever paid ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Easterner you would abandon your proposed picnic party, upon rising in the morning, for fear of rain, and, being a tenderfoot, you would be justified, for the clouds—or, more properly speaking, the high fog—give every indication of a shower. But an old Californian would tell you to take no thought of appearances, and to leave your umbrella and raincoat at home, for this is one of nature's ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... even as matters stand, I'm figurin' as Broken Feather 'll notion ter have revenge on you fer puttin' the lasso on him. He'll try ter git level with you somehow, Kiddie, sure's a steel trap. You've made him your enemy—a dangerous enemy—an' he ain't no tenderfoot in villainy. He's cunnin' as a coyote, he's unscrup'lous, an' he's clever. Real ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... snow-capped at the top. Fanny decided to wait until the fire had died down to a coal-bed. Then she banked it carefully, put on a heavy sweater and a cap, and made for the outdoors. She struck out briskly, tenderfoot that she was. In five minutes she was panting. Her heart was hammering suffocatingly. Her lungs ached. She stopped, trembling. Then she remembered. The altitude, of course. Heyl had boasted that his cabin stood at an altitude of over nine thousand feet. Well, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... long enough to try the springy boughs with her arms; then she gave him an answering smile. Even a tenderfoot can make some sort of a comfortable pallet out of evergreen boughs—ends overlapping and plumes bent—but a master woodsman can fashion a veritable cradle, soft as silk with never a hard limb to irritate the flesh, and yielding as a hair mattress. Such softness, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... was a true son of the west, and while Nort and Dick had, some time ago, passed out of the tenderfoot class, still Mr. Merkel felt that his son and his nephews needed the aid and guidance of cattlemen older than themselves. So the "outfit," as the aggregation at a ranch is called, was ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... never got beyond the big woods, the mountains, and the tangled swamps. He was educated and a gentleman, and I knew that in spite of his brown face and arms, his hard muscles and splendid health, he was three-quarters tenderfoot. But he loved ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... other scouts were having some sport at my expense while I was away, for I had overheard two of them in a conversation that morning make some remarks about Col. Elliott's tenderfoot scout. ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... "If I was to tell you some of the things that happened, you would think I was a heap sight bigger liar than I am. Seein' some of them yarns in print, folks around this country would say: 'Steve Brown's corralled some tenderfoot and loaded him to the muzzle with shin tangle and ancient history!' Things that would seem amazin' to you would never ruffle the hair of the mavericks ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... was one person his story did involve, and that was Spiker, the tinhorn, tenderfoot sport of Noches. During the absence of this young man at the gaming table, Jim and his friend, Sam Weaver, had got into his room with a skeleton key and searched it thoroughly. They had found, in a suit ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... well equipped, well formed, well led, went through without trouble—indeed, with real pleasure. Nevertheless the overwhelming testimony is on the other side. Probably this was due in large part to the irritability that always seizes the mind of the tenderfoot when he is confronted by wilderness conditions. A man who is a perfectly normal and agreeable citizen in his own environment becomes a suspicious half-lunatic when placed in circumstances uncomfortable and unaccustomed. ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... The tenderfoot on an expedition of this sort naturally expects to find himself plunged into a whirl of noise ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... Seems the stuff sells here for four bucks and sixty cents a bottle. Thinkin' I'm gittin' rooked because I'm a tenderfoot, I raise a row to oncet and start to climb the guy. Other folks mix in and things git lively right off. But after I've dropped a couple o' fellers Joey winds himself round me and begs me not to make him arrest me, and also ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... 'tenderfoot,'" observed the choreman, musingly. "You're the feller from Noo England as Jake's ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... overheard the cowboys the previous evening telling about a 'gentle broncho' that they had given a 'tenderfoot,' and how the tenderfoot was 'jolted.' I reflected that I was in Texas and might just as well establish myself at once. When a boy, I could ride anything on the farm or in the township. So ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... stand it, and are evidently so much thought of now, I'll grin and bear it, too. Though it isn't just as we are taught to treat strangers out home. At Rose Ranch if a person is a tenderfoot we try to make it particularly ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... Tenderfoot. Let's put her through an initiation, girls!" suggested Cleo. "Mary, don't forget where you left off, and we'll take a recess. Come on. First you must slide down that pole. Look out for Michael; he has a pail of water he might like to ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... made, is warm and comfortable and stands a pretty heavy rain when properly put up. This is how it is made: Let us say you are out and have slightly missed your way. The coming gloom warns you that night is shutting down. You are no tenderfoot. You know that a place of rest is essential to health and comfort through the long, cold November night. You dive down the first little hollow until you strike a rill of water, for water is a prime necessity. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... "Little Miss Tenderfoot!" he teased. "I thought you knew, goosie, that we measured oil by barrels. That well is flowing slightly over five thousand barrels a day. Altogether our wells are now yielding well over fifty thousand barrels of oil ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... a Western mining camp and the making of a man, with which a charming young lady has much to do. The tenderfoot has a hard time of it, but meets the situation, shows the stuff he is made of, ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... herself she was thinking, "I never would have believed that Bet could be such a tenderfoot. To let Kie Wicks pull the wool over her eyes like that! She ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... Tenderfoot," he growled. "You'll maybe find Sourdough's reach a longer one than you reckon ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... "You tenderfoot! Haven't you learned our brand yet?" And to the boy: "Yes, this is Apache Teju. Do you ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... came a menacing yell, which was not due to the coyote. It was the shout of a Redskin, which no Tenderfoot would confound with the cry ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... bone from the neck up. They used an old trick, and I fell into the trap like a tenderfoot. A few of them came hollering and shooting out of Flower Prairie, stampeding the boys. I figured it to be a raid on the camp, and I hollered for Blease and we ran for the tents. They played the bluff strong. Steamboat Bill got it through the head while he was running for cover—you ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... we'll level our score one day, sure. Next time Red Mask, or any other hoss thief, gits around, I'll bear a hand drivin' off the bunch. I ain't scrappin' no more fer the blind man. Look at me. Guess I ain't no more use'n yon 'tenderfoot.'" The speaker pointed scornfully at Tresler, and his audience turned and looked. "Guess I've lost quarts o' blood, an' have got a hole in my chest ye couldn't plug with a corn-sack. An' now, jest when ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Anyone who saw the tenderfoot pilgrimage to the Alaskan goldfield in '97-8 and the same crowd six months later will understand what had happened to these men. The puny had put on muscle; the city dweller had blown his lungs; the fat man ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... from his running mate, and plays a lone hand through Arizona and Nevada, up as far as Reno again, and there he stacks up against a kid—a little tenderfoot kid so new he ain't cracked the green paint off him—and skins him. And the kid, being foolish and impulsive-like, pulls out a peashooter. It was a twenty-two," said Bunt, solemnly. "Yes, the ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... of travel on the Yukon as completely changed as everything else. Even the technical expressions once used by the gold-mining fraternity were now replaced by others. Thus the "Oldtimer" had become "a Sourdough," and his antithesis, the "Tenderfoot," was now called a "Chechako." A word now frequently heard (and unknown in 1896) was "Musher," signifying a prospector who is not afraid to explore the unknown. This word is of Canadian origin, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... his dogs!" thought the tenderfoot; and he turned (with his more delicate sentiments) to caress Jan's head. But Jan abruptly lowered his head to avoid the touch; though, obedient now to Jean, the proved master, he remained where he had been told ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... pilgrims, as the immigrants were called. For miles we could see those immense, white covered prairie schooners in corral formation. Hundreds of oxen and mules were quietly grazing under the watchful eyes of their herders in saddle. It was certainly a novel sight to the tenderfoot. ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... and of whom everyone is proud. It may end in the saving of a life, or in some great heroic deed for one's country. But these things are only bigger expressions of the same feeling that makes the smallest Tenderfoot try to do at least one ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... to get a few, by and by," admitted Bob, modestly, but with a determined gleam in his eye. "I'll be just a tenderfoot to start with, you know. But I'm hoping it won't be so terribly long before I can qualify ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... do you know he ain't figurin' it this way: 'Now I'll send Dick Townsend down there to look at it. He'll say it's no good. Then I'll buy him out and unload this Cross of Gold hole and plant it on some tenderfoot and get mine back!' You cain't make me believe in any of those Wall Street fellers! They all deal from the bottom of the deck and keep shoemaker's wax on their cuff buttons to steal ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... good look, as this sport suggests, and I'm a pop-eyed tenderfoot if I didn't recognize the guy right off. I couldn't jest place him at first, but in a few seconds I remembered where I'd ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... "don't make me laugh. You mean a second-class scout. Of course there are slightly used scouts, 1915 models, but you wouldn't call them exactly second-hand. First comes the tenderfoot, then the second-class scout and then the first-class scout—and above that are the Silver Foxes in a class ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... me crossing, but I took the chance and got through it. Every step of the way to the bridge crossing the Yser Canal, shells were being planted at my heels. I can only liken my state of mind to that of the tenderfoot in the saloon of the Wild and Woolly, when Halfbreed Harvey, just for the fun of it, took a revolver in each hand and commenced sending the nuggets of lead into the floor at the unoffending feet of the ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... of his own valour, but alas! he shot straight, and rarely missed his mark, unless he was drunker than usual. It would have been delightful to tell how this unmitigated ruffian had been "held up" by some innocent tenderfoot from the East, and made to dance at the muzzle of a quite new and daintily ornamented revolver, for the loud-mouthed blowhard seemed just the man to flinch when real danger confronted him; but, sad to say, there was nothing of the white feather ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... A tenderfoot could have told now that they were "in for weather." The snow by midday was not falling, it was being shovelled down in loads. The temperature had dropped so rapidly that the flakes, as large as goose feathers, were ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the door of the eating-house, and he set my valise inside. In my tenderfoot innocence I was looking indoors for the ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... 'em's an old mountain man. Not a greenhorn or a tenderfoot among 'em. You won't catch one on 'em a whimperin', not if they die ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... felling and trimming tall slender poles for piling that would ultimately hold up bridges and wharves. The crew was a cosmopolitan lot so far as nationality went. In addition they were a tougher lot than Thompson had ever encountered. He never quite fitted in. They knew him for something of a tenderfoot, and they had not the least respect for his size—until he took on and soundly whipped two of them in turn before the bunkhouse door, with the rest of the thirty, the boss and the cook for spectators. Thompson did not come off ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... are bad Indians biding in the canyon. I've never met a man who had been over the pass between here and Kayenta. The trip's been made, so there must be a trail. But it's a dangerous trip for any man, let alone a tenderfoot. You're not even ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... To-night, however, the Missioner's deep and regular breathing as he lay on the floor was a matter of vexation to him. He wanted him awake. He wanted him up and alive, thoroughly alive, when Tavish came. "Pounding his ear like a tenderfoot," he thought, "while I, a puppy in harness, couldn't sleep if I wanted to." He was nervously alert. He filled his pipe for the third or fourth time and sat down on the edge of the bunk, listening for Tavish. He was certain, from all that had been said, that Tavish would come. ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... of any one stage must also be graded to meet the needs of that one stage. Thus the heroic may run from the twelfth to the fifteenth year, and the activities of this phase should be graded to meet the development of the phase. This is well illustrated by the Tenderfoot Second Class Scout and First Class Scout degrees of the Boy Scouts ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... Life and property were as safe there, sir, as anywhere among the corrupt cities of the effete East. Pillow-shams, churches, strawberry feasts and habeas corpus flourished. With impunity might the tenderfoot ventilate his "stovepipe" or his theories of culture. The arts and sciences received nurture and subsidy. And, therefore, it behooved the legislature of this great state to make appropriation for the purchase of Lonny ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... deals," he said, "reminds me of a poker game I once seen in Reno, Nevada. It wa'n't what you-all would call a square game. They-all was tin-horns that sat in. But they was a tenderfoot—short-horns they-all are called out there. He stands behind the dealer and sees that same dealer give hisself four aces offen the bottom of the deck. The tenderfoot is sure shocked. He slides around to the player facin' the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... me up fer no tenderfoot. When yeh tackles me yeh tackles one of deh bes' men in deh city. See? I'm a scrapper, I am. Ain't ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... one of them by drinking liquid flame— The assassinating wassail that has given him his name; Where the enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seen To hold his harvest festival upon his village-green, While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head; Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun, And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run, Lived a colony of settlers—old Missouri was the State Where they formerly ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... eh? But what's that got to do with finding a trail, or following one that's already found?" asked the latest tenderfoot. ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... me, he added: "You're young and a tenderfoot. You'd better stick to what you've begun upon. That's the way to do somethin'.—I often think it's the work chooses us, and we've just got to get ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... said Baugh, in reply, "don't allow any tenderfoot around the cattle,—at night, at least. You'd better play you're company; somebody that's come. If you're so very anxious to do something, the cook may let you rustle wood or carry water. We'll fix you up a bed after a little, ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... well-dressed, dapper little man, with his white collar and eastern complexion—not burned red by the Colorado sun, as all of ours are—he winked to the assembled company as much as to say, "See me take a rise out of the tenderfoot," sidled up to Bertie, who was a foot shorter than himself, leaned over him, and putting on his worst expression, said, in a harsh, growling ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... I noticed the town had filled up with "cow punchers." They had just had their semi-annual round up, and were in town spending their money and having a whooping big time. You probably know what that means to a cow-boy. I was a tenderfoot of the worst kind, and every one at the boarding-house and depot seemed to take particular delight in telling me of the shooting scrapes and rackets of these cow-boys, and how they delighted in making it warm for a tenderfoot. Bob Wolfe, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... and crowded under a close-fitting turban. She was exquisitely lovely, as she stood there waiting for him, and in that loveliness Kent saw there was not one thing out of place. The corduroy, the turban, the short skirt, and the high, laced boots were made for the wilderness. She was not a tenderfoot. She was a little sourdough—clear through! Gladness leaped into Kent's face. But it was not the transformation of her dress alone that amazed him. She was changed in another way. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes glowed with a strange and wonderful radiance as she looked at ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... to publish at an early date. Jeanette Scott Benton, formerly of Fort Scott, writes short stories novelettes, and stories for children. May Belleville Brown of Salina, has a very clever pen, as has, also Mrs. Lulu R. Fuhr of Meade, the author of "Tenderfoot Tales." Mrs. E. M. Adams, Mound City, writes exquisite verse and in the past, had many short stories to her credit. Mrs. C. W. Smith, Stockton, writes both prose and verse. Cara A. Thomas Hoover, ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... too late in the day to allege a boil. What was the use of your remarking that the first backing of a colt is nothing—that, in this case, it is the second step that costs? The four fellows knew as well as you did—everyone except the tenderfoot novelist knows—that in nearly every instance, a freshly backed colt is like a fish out of water; stupid, puzzled, half-sulky, half-docile. It is at the second backing that he is ready to contest the question of fitness for survival; ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy |
