On the Trail of Geronimo — page 63: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ON THE TRAIL OF GERONIMO. 55 did not seem to have suffered to any extent from the rough usage their owner had received. For one so light and well trained as himself, it was an easy task to raise himself the chort distance, and he speedily found his face on a level with the ledge he was anxious to reach. All would have been well, but at this critical juncture he was startled almost out of his senses by the fierce whirr of a rattlesnake coiled at the root of the bushes. It is hardly possible to conceive the shock caused by this unexpected warning, The thought of peril from that source had never entered the mind of the youth, though he knew tha? Arizona abounds with dangerous rattlers. He felt, with the majority of mankind, an abhorrence of all species of serpents, and would rather meet a grizzly bear at any time than come in contact with the loathsome reptiles. The whirring rattle showed that the snake was almost against his hand, and was certain to strike within the next second. Dick took no time to consider, but involuntarily let go of the bushes and dropped toward the bottom of the gorge. But the good fortune which had followed him so long did not desert him now. The descent, as has been explained, was not perpendicular, but steeply CONnmicloo© S (CO