"Tenderfoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bad. Reckon it'll be tough fer you," he went on, kindly. "There was a gurl tenderfoot heah two years ago an' she had a hell of a time. They all joked her, 'cept me, an' played tricks on her. An' on her side she was always puttin' her foot in it. I was ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... vest pocket metropolis of Coyote Centre, which in turn, to quote Landor himself, was "a hundred miles from nowhere," was the Mecca of every traveller whom chance drew into this wild, of every curious tenderfoot seeking a glimpse of the reverse side of the coin of life, of every desperate "one lunger," who, with gambler instinct, staked his all on prairie ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... obliged to you," said Roy. "I wonder how everyone knows I'm a tenderfoot when it comes to traveling on ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster
... 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, and probably a corruption of the French "Marcheur." Various passengers on board the Hannah ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... 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 dat ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... "An' 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 ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... that if I have to look at one more Western picture about a fool girl with her hair in a braid riding a show horse in the wilds of Clapham Junction and being rescued from a band of almost-Indians by the handsome, but despised Eastern tenderfoot, or if I see one more of those historical pictures, with the women wearing costumes that are a pass between early Egyptian and late State Street, I know I'll get hysterics and have to be carried shrieking, up the aisle. Let's walk down Main ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... 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, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... 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. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... swing the packs on 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 ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... trapper avoided the 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 their habits, to keep ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... City, ere the year was out, that Pete's apprehensions were realized. "Black" Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot at the bar, when Thornton stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, as was his custom, was lying in a corner, head on paws, watching his master's every action. Burton struck out, without warning, straight ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... 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 ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... 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 ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... all camps is the "Indian camp." It is easily and quickly 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. As you draw your hatchet you take in the whole situation at a ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... knew I had not 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 Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... green inside an' less 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
... repudiated the old libel or barbarism, lawbreaking, and bloodshed. Order reigned within her borders. 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 Briscoe's ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... 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 good turn ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... for a Colonial Experience (q.v.), a young man fresh from England, learning squatting; called in New Zealand a Cadet (q.v.). Compare the American "tenderfoot." A ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... many features Casey managed to import The most important wuz a Steenway gran' pianny-fort, An' bein' there wuz nobody could play upon the same, He telegraffed to Denver, 'nd a real perfesser came,— The last an' crownin' glory uv the Casey restauraw Wuz that tenderfoot musicianer, Perfesser Vere ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... 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 to ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... is," Trapper Jim replied. "You see, it drags on the ground and leaves such a plain trail that any tenderfoot could foller it." ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 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 dry ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... 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
... open. He did not, however, go quickly to sleep. Presently he called R.C. over and whispered: "Say, Uncle Rome, I coiled a lasso an' put it under Nielsen's bed. When he's asleep you go pull it. He's tenderfoot like Dad was. He'll think it's a rattlesnake." This trick Romer must have remembered from reading "The Last of the Plainsmen," where I related what Buffalo Jones' cowboys did to me. Once Romer got that secret off ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... the question; and fourthly, it was 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; he has had time to think the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... its 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
... 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
... the 'tenderfoot,'" observed the choreman, musingly. "You're the feller from Noo England as Jake's goin' to lick ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... I said about your being a tenderfoot. There aren't three men on the ranch who can stick on his back when he takes a notion that ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... The tenderfoot complied, and said something—he never knew just what—as the dry clods thumped dully upon the huddled figure in the old gunny sack. What he said must have been good, for those present resisted with ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... hundred cash. Menocal robbed me right at the start, selling me this place for twenty-five thousand—twenty thousand down and a mortgage for the remaining five thousand—when the place was just five thousand acres of sagebrush, with no more water than runs in this creek. I was a tenderfoot all right! The land agent at Kennard showed it to me in June when the Perro was booming, and I believed him when he said it ran that way all the year around. Look at it now! I didn't have sense enough to inquire and learn about it, being in a hurry to get into ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... Drive a few nails or—I'll tell you; kill that bear and save that tenderfoot's life." Tom pointed to a Winchester calendar on the rear wall, which bore the lithographic likeness of an enraged grizzly upon the point of ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... 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 consequences—that's ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... slightest sound. The cook and the boss, the only men up, hurried back to bed. Watson had risen so hurriedly that he had not been careful about his "tarp" and water had run into his bed. But that wouldn't disconcert anybody but a tenderfoot. I kept waiting in tense silence to hear them come back with dead or wounded, but there was not a sound. The rain had stopped. Mrs. Louderer struck a match and said it was three o'clock. Soon she was asleep. Through a rift in the clouds a star peeped out. I could smell the wet sage and the ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... 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 out ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... 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 of ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... was at the Eagle Ranch, on the Brazos, When I first found that darned contrivance that upset me in the dust. A tenderfoot had brought it, he was wheeling all the way From the sun-rise end of freedom out to San Francisco Bay. He tied up at the ranch for to get outside a meal, Never thinking we would monkey with ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... in the State o' Maine, In mild Skowhegan town, I pastured as a tenderfoot An' the clerk ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... a fine tenderfoot I was at the start!' laughed his uncle. 'When B.-P. told the townsmen they'd got to lend a hand, I was like a good few more. I thought I'd pick up what was wanted in no time. But I found that a useful man in the firing-line isn't made in ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... replied Buck; "the sight o' these places makes every tenderfoot moon a bit; and we've got a straight enough job before us. We'll have to rustle some before we've got the Professor out o' the hands o' these people who want to ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... result of the work of the Committee on Scout Oath, Scout Law, Tenderfoot, Second-class and First-class Requirements; the Committee on Badges, Awards, and Equipment; the Committee on Permanent Organization and Field Supervision, and John L. Alexander and Samuel ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... 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 had lost some adipose; social differences ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... get a rise out of you, you blessed tenderfoot! What difference does that make? He rescued you from a serious predicament; and more than that he's a fine fellow and ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... 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 ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... in the lumbering Concord coach. There was the constant fear of meeting the wily red man, who persistently hankered after the white man's hair. Then there was the playfulness of the sometimes drunken driver, who loved to upset his tenderfoot travellers in some arroya, long after the moon had sunk below ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... being, this man of the West, and you take a long time to find out whether he likes you or not. If you are a "tenderfoot" you can't do better than hold your tongue about the wonders of Europe and its cities, about your own various exploits here and there. You will learn a lot by not talking, and if you don't mind soiling your hands a little, and keeping an eye lifted to discover ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... free to admit. Among the few matters he would have otherwise he gives the first place to the tough "range" or "snow-fed" beef upon which the dwellers in this favored land must needs subsist. "I heard a story once," said he, "about a young man, a tenderfoot, who, after long wondering what made the beef so fearfully tough, at length arrived at the solution, as he thought, and that quite by accident. He was riding out with a friend, an old resident, when they chanced to come upon a bunch of cattle. The young man's attention seemed to be attracted, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... as the son of the proprietor he should make a direct inquiry. "Now, what might you be drivin' at, mister?" he asked. The Swede winked at him. It was a wink full of cunning. His fingers shook on the edge of the board. "Oh, maybe you think I have been to nowheres. Maybe you think I'm a tenderfoot?" ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... at his young, pretty wife and smiled. "You're behaving like a tenderfoot. We've plenty of gas, a good boat and perfect weather. Tomorrow morning I'll clean out our carburetors and we'll pick up speed. Meantime, we're about to enter one of the prettiest harbors in the Bahamas, throw ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... 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
... Manitoba. The river flat was dotted with clumps of russet-leaved willows, to the north of which our waggons were ranged, and soon the quickly pitched tents, fires and sizzling fry-pans filled even the tenderfoot with ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... Nick with a tolerant sneer in his voice, "the car was stolen by a boy scout, probably a tenderfoot. Maybe it was stolen ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... enough tew put Life in the dust of the sleepin' dead! The thunder kept droppin' its awful shells, One at a minute, on mountain an' rock: The pass with its stone lips thunder'd back; An' the rush an' roar an' whirlin' shock Of the runnin' herd wus fit tew bust A tenderfoot's heart hed he chanc'd along; But I jest let out of my lungs an' throat A rippin' old verse of ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... The tenderfoot in the Western town asked for coffee and rolls at the lunch counter. He was served by the waitress, and there was no saucer ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... MacGregor?" asked Howard, skating up to them at that moment. "He's not much to look at, Marjorie, if his picture's any good. He has a pug nose and wears giglamps, and I've a suspicion that he's a fearful dude. He'll be a tenderfoot, of course, but he'll get over that; but if he's a dude, we boys will make ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... individual 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 as ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... for the three lads. The companions of the bullying cowboy who had announced himself as Gus Megget were riding up, yelling to him to make the "tenderfoot dance." ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... Tenderfoot," he growled. "You'll maybe find Sourdough's reach a longer one than you reckon for, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... with 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. He called ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... countless occasions for the humor which turns upon the sudden glory of superiority. The backwoodsman is amusing to the man of the settlements, and the backwoodsman, in turn, gets his full share of amusement out of watching the "tenderfoot" in the woods. It is simply the case of the old resident versus the newcomer. The superiority need be in no sense a cruel or taunting superiority, although it often happens to be so. The humor of the pioneers is not very delicately polished. The joke of ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... day. It wasn't nearly so dull as I expected though," she ended with a little 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; ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... pair of riding gauntlets. Long John was in there, and seeing the 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 voice, ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... The tenderfoot manager of a mine in a lonesome gulch of the Black Hills has a hard time of it, but "wins out" ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... turned 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 ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... I ain't no 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 narrator, "here I am, a tenderfoot of the ocean, having marketed my ore-reducing process for a sufficient profit to give me a vacation, and also to permit of my buying a little old house ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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
... being the hardest fighter in the country. His name was William Jackson, so he was called Bill. I had met Jackson often, and we had taken kindly to each other. I admired his frank manner and sturdy physique, and he looked upon me as a good-natured tenderfoot, who might be companionable, and who would certainly stir up things in the neighborhood. I went in search of him that afternoon to discuss the line fence, a full mile of which ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... two could 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 ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... 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 for three ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... 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 of ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... sour-dough prospector wouldn't have bothered about a tent. Looks as if one of them was a tenderfoot. Qu'en pense-tu?" ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... are the early products of Field's genius. They breathe the spirit of Western life of twenty years ago. The reckless cowboy, the bucking broncho, the hardy miner, the English tenderfoot, the coquettish belle, and all the foibles and extravagances of Western social life, are depicted with a naivete and satire, tempered with sympathy and pathos, which no other ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... 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
... The tenderfoot who was weighing up consulted his guide-book. "Eight cents," he said to the Indian. Whereupon the Indians laughed scornfully and chorused, "Forty cents!" A pained expression came into his face, and he looked about him anxiously. The sympathetic ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... tree that caused the trail to turn aside and run around it. He looped the reins over his arm and placed his hands in his coat pockets. As he leaned against the tree-trunk nibbling nonchalantly at a sprig of grass, a tenderfoot would never have dreamed that his fingers were tensely held against the triggers of the revolvers hidden ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Graham presented each of his little party with an excellent revolver, quoting the remark which a cowboy once made to a tenderfoot: ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... and listened,' he answered, 'and let me tell you that only the greenest kind of tenderfoot ever takes risks on ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... pathless Southwest registers at an Eastern hotel the bell-boys will not fall over each other to do him honor as a dime-novel hero, nor the gilded clerk insure his life before politely requesting him to pay in advance. The last lingering shadow of our greatness hath departed. The tenderfoot will trample upon us, and the visiting capitalist neglect to ask us up to the bar. The fair ladies of other lands will no longer worship us as the picturesque knights of a reckless but romantic ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... oaks are seen in all their rugged majesty, when the elms display their lofty, graceful, vase-like forms, and when every other tree of the forest exhibits its peculiar beauty of trunk, and branch, and twig. Often January is a most propitious month for the tenderfoot nature-lover. Such was the year which has just passed. During the first part of the month the weather was almost springlike; so bright and balmy that a robin was seen in an apple-tree, and the brilliant plumage ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... cried the squat man. "Didn't I tell yeh? Give him a show! 'Tain't no fault of his that he's a tenderfoot. ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... people might call him that, though he knows a heap about horses. But seems to me, Peg, 'twasn't so very long ago that you yourself dropped in on us here. Since when did you climb up out of the tenderfoot class, tell me?" ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... all right," he said to himself. "This is no trail for a tenderfoot. I hope we don't run into anything worse before we get through. How are you coming?" he ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... drifted up the Sacramento valley, was lured to mount a cow-pony known to be hysterical; of how he had declared when they picked him up a moment later, "If I'd been aware of the gale I'd have lashed myself to the rigging." Then about the other trusting tenderfoot who was directed to insist at the stable in Santa Fe that they give him a "bucking broncho;" who was promptly accommodated and speedily unseated with much flourish, to the wicked glee of those who had deceived ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... more definitely about that, of course," spoke up Mary, who was now a professed Tenderfoot. "It would be rash to run into ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... say another word 'bout city folks being skeery. You ain't so bad for a tenderfoot. How'd you know enough to face them that way instead of running? If you'd run they'd trampled you all into mince meat! Steers are the ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... was the only man with the crazy nerve to try such a thing. And there were twenty men, with all kinds of money, crowding him to take them along: to beat the bunch in might mean a million dollar strike to any tenderfoot in Sleepy Cat. ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... tenderfoot, or greener or chechako, or counter-jumper, owin' to what part of the country you misfit into. We thought you wouldn't have no ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... a high-pitched nasal voice, "it ain't no use in talkin', ye kent put no tenderfoot t' boss the round-up. There's them all-fired Donoghue lot jest sent right in t' say, 'cause, I s'pose, they reckon as they're the high muck-i-muck o' this location, that that tarnation Sim Lory, thar head man, is to cap' the round-up. Why, he ain't cast a blamed foot on the prairie sence he's been ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... was shrewd 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 ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... ears, chiding him as she might a child. This made the cowboys laugh. Cowboys when subduing broncos do not ordinarily do so with anything resembling baby talk, and it was their firm conviction that this pretty young tenderfoot from the east was about to get the surprise of her life. Instead of feeling sorry for her, however, the souls of the cowboys were filled with joy at the prospect of some real fun. It was not often that they were privileged to see an innocent easterner make an exhibition ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... but I'm a tenderfoot," grunted Bud. "Why in Sam Hill didn't I think o' that myself? I reckon I'm gettin' too old fer ther cow business. I ought ter be milkin' ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Annie work 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 him white ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... pretty much of a tenderfoot," returned Pan. His regret was for the pretty audacious girl whose boldness of approach he had ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... office to another, quoting one's rates here and another's there, and slowly I dropped the fare to fifty. I had to explain to some of these men that I was not a fool, and that I knew what I was doing; that if they took me for a "tenderfoot," or a "sucker," they were mistaken. My explanations always had an effect, and down the fare tumbled. At last, about three o'clock, I had got things to a very fine point, and was working two rival offices which stood ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... worry," she replied, with a confident smile. "I can take care of myself. I grew up in Colorado. I'm no tenderfoot." ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... to the beach, Kit turned the phrase over and over. It rankled to be called tenderfoot by a ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... ranch, now the Wasson place, was carefully turning over in his mind David's participation in the escape of Judson Clark. Certain phases of it were quite clear, provided one accepted the fact that, following a heavy snowfall, an Easterner and a tenderfoot had gone into the mountains alone, under conditions which had caused the posse after Judson Clark to turn back and give him ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was 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 or sleep ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... a cariole, or dog-sled, they travelled with great speed, and seemed to enjoy the fun. But they drew the line at the saddle, and no Texas bronco could more easily rid himself of a tenderfoot than these lively animals with their enormous forequarters could send their would- be riders into the snow ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... time they reached Fort Sanders the following afternoon. "This is Mr. Davies,—Lieutenant Davies,—just graduated,—who's to go on with 'em," said he to the commanding officer of that old army post, adding for his private ear, "He's a tenderfoot and doesn't know anything but moral suasion." To this conclusion Captain Tibbetts has been impelled by what he had heard as well as by the events of the night. Mr. Davies, of whom he knew nothing except what Muffet had to say, having been told that he needn't ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... consisted mainly in a marvelous command of its slang, to which he made copious contributions, enriching its vocabulary with a wealth of uncommon phrases more remarkable for their aptness than their refinement, and which impressed the unlearned "tenderfoot" with a lively sense of the profundity of their inventor's acquirements. When not entertaining a circle of admiring auditors from San Francisco or the East he could commonly be found pursuing the comparatively obscure industry of sweeping ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... an hour's travel he pulled up, threw down his bridle reins, and studied the ground carefully. He had cut Indian sign. What he saw would have escaped the notice of a tenderfoot, and if it had been pointed out to him none but an expert trailer would have understood its significance. Yet certain facts were printed here on the desert for this boy as plainly as if they had been stenciled on ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 scathless, but he did come off victor, although he was a bloody sight ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of laughter broke out. Jacqueline had apparently uncovered a tenderfoot, and a rare one even for that absurd species. A sandy-haired cattle puncher who sat close to Jacqueline now took the cue from ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... 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 ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... to know me instinctively and approached with a graceful and swinging step; holding out his hand he greeted me in a low, soft, well-modulated voice with, "Howdy, kid; yes, I'm Big Pete and allow you are the tenderfoot dude from New York what wants to shoot big game, an' reckon you'd like to meet the wild mountain man? Well, he's a queer one, I tell you. He's got us all buffaloed out this-a-way, most of us don't care to meet him close up and ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... You! Report and be damned, sir. I was old at this work when you were a sucking babe. These men were learning the desert when you were attending a fashionable dancing school. Why, you damned lily- fingered tenderfoot, you couldn't find your way five hundred yards in this country without a guide or a compass. Now, sir, I'm running this outfit and if you have any protests against my cowardly inhumanity I advise you to smother them in your manly breast, or, by hell! I'll ship ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... talked about himself, but he was a mighty taking fellow when he laid out to please anybody. We called him Colonel because he was so straight in the back, and walked as if he were on parade. When this young English tenderfoot came out, he and the Colonel got to be as thick as thieves, and the Colonel won a good deal of money from him at cards, but that didn't make any difference in their friendship. The Colonel most always won when he played cards, and perhaps ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... comes the man. Which way he come I do not know. Only do I know he is checha-quo—what you call tenderfoot. His hands are soft, just like hers. He never do hard work. He is soft all over. At first I think maybe he is her husband. But he is too young. Also, they make two beds at night. He is maybe twenty years old. His eyes blue, his hair yellow, he has a little mustache which is yellow. ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... perhaps an opportunity to look over the Manual, will be enough to launch the organization. The selection of a patrol leader will then follow, and the scouting can begin. It is well not to attempt too much at the start. Get the boys to start work to pass the requirements for the tenderfoot. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... reference to his "training," recurred to him. He understood, now, exactly what she had meant—it had not been plain to him before. Here before him was "the man of the East," at whom he had so often scoffed, for the word "Tenderfoot" had, until now, been synonymous with contempt. But Morton felt himself to be the tenderfoot, in the present case. He replied, stiffly, to the ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... farther down the table extended the sphere of his mild influence. He asked Mr. Wainwright to tell the story of how he treed the bear so that the tenderfoot author could come and shoot it. Mr. Wainwright responded with gusto. The story was a success. He varied it by requesting young Dobel to describe the snowslide which had wiped out the Vorheimer shack the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... likely to be prospecting, he would know the ways of the red-skins and how to travel among them without ever leaving a trail or making a smoke, but even for him it would be risky work, and not many fellows would care to take the chances even if they knew the country well. But for a tenderfoot to start out on such a job would be downright foolishness. There are about six points wanted in a man for such a journey. He has got to be as hard and tough as leather, to be able to go for days without food or drink, ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... Dale?" "Hello, old Smoke!" in the heartiest of tones, made me see that my cousin was a favorite with the men grouped about the door. Jack simply nodded in reply and then presented me in due form. "My tenderfoot cousin from the effete," he said, with a flourish. I was surprised at the grace of the bows made me by these roughly-dressed, wild-looking fellows. I might have been in a London drawing-room. I was put at my ease ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... bluff in search of the animals, which, when found, were treated in no very kindly manner by the sour faced, mosquito-bitten and generally disgusted tenderfoot, whose introduction into this new world was, apparently, taking all ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... we will review them as they are pictured in poem and novel and play—we may receive, as it were out of the tail of the eye, an impression of some aspects of these western plantings of the seventeenth century. The dare-devil, the bully, the tenderfoot, the gambler, the gentleman-desperado had their counterparts in Virginia. So had the cool, indomitable sheriff and his dependable posse, the friends generally of law and order. Dale may be viewed as the picturesque sheriff of this ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... that his guests will hunt also, and actually kill game. In a mild way, this fiction sometimes is maintained for years. The owner may each year shoot two or three head of his surplus big game, and his tenderfoot guests who don't know what real hunting is may also kill something, each year. But in most of the American preserves with which I am well acquainted, the gentlemanly "sport" of "hunting big game" is almost a joke. The trouble is, usually, the owner becomes so attached to his big game, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... not mean any lighter than the necessity demands. If there is transport at hand, a man is foolish not to avail himself of it. He is always foolish if he does not make things as easy for himself as possible. The tenderfoot will not agree with this. With him there is no idea so fixed, and no idea so absurd, as that to be comfortable is to be effeminate. He believes that "roughing it" is synonymous with hardship, and in season and out of season he ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... unsuspicious. His pink-and-white prettiness, his clothes, and the baby innocence of his dimples and his long-lashed blue eyes branded him unequivocally in their eyes as the tenderest sort of tenderfoot. ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... to answer; but he's a man you want to be friends with if you stay near the settlement. Teaches farming to tenderfoot young Englishmen and Americans; finds them land and stock to start with—and makes a mighty good thing out of it. Goes to Montreal now and then, but whether it's to look up fresh suckers is more ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... and it was Hapgood who, riding with Lonesome Pete, led a stubborn animal that jerked back until both of Hapgood's arms were sore in their sockets. Lonesome Pete, the forgetful, remembered after an hour or two of quiet enjoyment to tell the tenderfoot that he could tie the rope to the buckboard instead of holding it. For the first hour Hapgood was, consequently, altogether too busy even to try to see the country about him, and Conniston, riding ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... up without either a draw at the reins or a spoken word, probably controlling his mount with pressure of the knees, and Gregg found himself facing a delicately handsome fellow. He was neither cowpuncher nor miner, Vic knew at a glance, for that face had never been haggard with labor. A tenderfoot, probably, in spite of his dress, and Vic felt that if his right arm were sound he could take that horse at the point of his gun and leave the rider thanking God that his life had been spared; but his left hand was useless on the butt of a revolver, and three minutes ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... he looked upon me as the rankest kind of a tenderfoot. I calculated the time of my torture till I might, without embarrassing explanations, partake of a much-needed repast, and went to the door; waiting was never my long suit, and I had thoughts of getting outside and taking a look around. At the second step ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... goose (Figs. 1 and 2) is not a bird but a tree. It is humorously called a goose by the woodsmen because they all make their beds of its "feathers." It is the sapin of the French-Canadians, the cho-kho-tung of the New York Indians, the balsam of the tenderfoot, the Christmas-tree of the little folk, and that particular Coniferae known by the dry-as-dust botanist as Abies. There is nothing in nature which has a wilder, more sylvan and charming perfume than the balsam, and the scout who ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... The glaciers will be opening up with all this hot weather! the crevasses'll widen and split clear down to the bowels of the earth. Wal; it's an ill wind that blows no good. This drought will make it easy for the tenderfoot to get ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... my outfit and take the trail for Penetier. This I resolved to do with as few questions as possible. I never before was troubled by sensitiveness, but the fact had dawned upon me that I did not like being taken for a tenderfoot. So, with this in mind, I entered a general ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... come to the far Southwest as a tenderfoot; but, being quick to learn, he hoped to graduate from that class after a while. Having always been fond of outdoor sports in his Kentucky home, he was, at least, no greenhorn. When he came to the new country where his father was interested with Frank's in mining ventures, Bob had brought his ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... of Texas. She would wander for days as others had, and she would die in the end of starvation and thirst. Nobody would know where to look for her, since she had told none where she was going. Only yesterday at her boarding-house she had heard a young man tell how a tenderfoot had been found dead after he had wandered round and round in intersecting circles. She sank down and ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... sent him for a present by a man who summered at the ranch an' heerd Samson say he wanted a dawg," said the girl. "He was a tenderfoot when he come, an' when he left, 'count bein' sick. Samson didn't want to kill the dawg an' didn't want to keep him, so he gave him to Dad an' me when I was ten years old. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... while on one ranch, and then pass on to another; 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. The fact ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... a tenderfoot, and you couldn't shoot," she continued eulogistically, as if it were necessary to have it all stated plainly, "but you—you are what my brother used to call 'a white man.' You couldn't shoot; but you could risk your life, and hold that coat, and look death in ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... do would be to quit the boy while he was asleep. A tenderfoot would die of thirst over there in a ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... filled with stories 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 ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... 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 ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... spoke to the judge about. He handed it to me then, didn't he?" He laughed heartily. "No? Well, you're right. A man's a fool to work for any one but himself. Where's your bag? Haven't any? How do you carry your dust? Haven't any? I forgot; you're a tenderfoot, of course." He opened his buckskin sack with his teeth, and poured back the gold from the palm of his hand. Then he searched for a moment in all his pockets, and produced a most peculiar chunk of gold metal. It was nearly as thick as it was wide, shaped roughly into an octagon, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... 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
... 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 of ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter |
