been

If he had married her, he'd have been asking for trouble.

`` We've been looking for work, but all the ranchers have turned us down ''.

`` I've been mucking in a mine in the San Juan, but I used to work on a ranch.

Two men, together like us, we could do somethin fine out there, maybe find a place where no one's ever been.

They had been seen as soon as they left the ranch, picked out of the darkness by the weary though watchful eyes of two men posted a few hundred yards away in the windless shelter of the trees.

They greeted the news angrily, as though they had been cheated of purpose.

With every leaping stride of the horse beneath him he crossed one more patch of earth that had been his, that he would never see again.

He had been carrying an Enfield rifle and a holstered navy cap-and-ball pistol.

But the luck that had been running their way left him.

The sentry's saddled horse stood picketed nearby, having been kept handy in case of need.

His shout had been taken up and repeated.

A sizable supply of powder had been touched off.

The worst part had been the waiting ; ;

The war captain had been badly wounded and was fighting to hold his seat.

`` I'll bet that's as close as you've been to a man since you were a baby '', Wilson said.

And one had been too many.

That afternoon when they had pulled up in front of the broken-down ranch house, his hopes had been high.

The place had been cheap -- just the little he had left after Amelia's burial -- and it would serve its purpose.

I had for some time been hoping, in vain, for one of the dim figures to pass between the fan vents and myself.

Although I had been inside it I had not yet seen it functioning.

No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.

He had been worried that with Miller and Rankin added to the escape party they would be short.

He had been one of the original Night Riders, one who had escaped the trial.

We've been starving and I don't like to starve ''.

He had been the auditor for the mining syndicate, and he had stolen fifty thousand dollars of the syndicate's money.