picket-pin

Within ten minutes of starting again we dipped into a wide-bottomed coulée and came on the place where the three had made their first night-camp -- a patch of dead ashes, a few half-burned sticks, and the close-cropped grass-plots where each horse had circled a picket-pin.

Raw Gold A Novel Bertrand W. Sinclair 1926

"Don't pull on yore picket-pin, Gurley," observed Roberts.

Oh, You Tex! William MacLeod Raine 1912

Sometimes the free end is fastened to a stake or picket-pin driven into the ground.

Pluck on the Long Trail Boy Scouts in the Rockies 1911

I'm plumb sure that if we-all didn't take the money Molly 'ud pull out her picket-pin an' say we wasn't playin 'fair an' square with her.

Rimrock Trail 1906

For, one day, he made an unusually elaborate stalk after an unusually fine big Picket-pin, carried out all his absurd tactics, finishing with the grand, boisterous charge, and actually caught his victim; but this time it happened to be a _wooden_ picket-pin.

Wild Animals at Home Ernest Thompson Seton 1903

It has a fashion of sitting up straight on the doorway mound when it wishes to take an observation, and the more it is alarmed by the approach of an enemy the straighter it sits up, pressing its paws tight to its ribs, so that at a short distance it looks like a picket-pin of wood; hence the name.

Wild Animals at Home Ernest Thompson Seton 1903

The pony had pulled up her picket-pin and retreated to a little hollow a hundred yards away.

The Voyage of the Rattletrap Hayden Carruth 1897

Jack pulled up the pony's picket-pin, and brought her on also, while the other horses, being loose, sought the place themselves.

The Voyage of the Rattletrap Hayden Carruth 1897

The next in size is the "picket-pin", so called from his habit of sitting bolt upright on his haunches and remaining steadfast there, without the slightest movement, until danger threatens, when he whisks away so rapidly that it is quite impossible to follow his movements.

The Lake of the Sky Lake Tahoe in the High Sierras of California and Nevada, its History, Indians, Discovery by Frémont, Legendary Lore, Various Namings, Physical Characteristics, Glacial Phenomena, Geology, Single Outlet, Automobile Routes, Historic Towns, Early Mining Excitements, Steamer Ride, Mineral Springs, Mountain and Lake Resorts, Trail and Camping Out Trips, Summer Residences, Fishing, Hunting, Flowers, Birds, Animals, Trees, and Chaparral, with a Full Account of the Tahoe National Forest, the Public Use of the Water of Lake Tahoe and Much Other Interesting Matter George Wharton James 1890

No matter how long the march, how severe the fatigue, that horse was always looked after, his grazing-ground pre-empted by a deftly-thrown picket-pin and lariat which secured to him all the real estate that could be surveyed within the circle of which the pin was the centre and the lariat the radius-vector.

Starlight Ranch and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier Charles King 1888