Rocky Mountain Sam — page 107: what you’re looking at

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

98 ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. left-handed knife-thrust into the breast of an unhorsed savage who had tumbled at his feet. “Once again, men—let them have it!” cried out the clear voice of Lieutenant Dutton, springing to the hunter’s side, and waving his sword; and, again and again, breech-loader and revolver poured forth their leaden hail. The savages fell back; riderless ponies dashed frantically hither and thither, trampling their whilom masters under- foot; and the screams and groans of the wounded mingled with the death-shrieks of the freshly slain; the panic stricken cries of the flying, and the hoarse shouts of the hunters, while stones, sticks, and iron bars were rained aoe upon the dusky skulls from the Wind Specter over- ead. Buta fresh body of the Indians poured up in support of their fellows, while Firefoot dashed hither and thither, shouting, exhorting, and striking out, and réforming the ranks that had been broken. ‘Curse that infernal balloon!” he groaned, with a bitter oath, as one of the warriors at his side fell from his sad- dle beneath a crushing stone. Is there no way of getting rid of it?” “Tf IT once git my claws onto Rocky Mountain Sam he won’t go cavortin’ through the sky never no more,” vapored Rube Tenyck, who rode at his other hand. He had hardly spoken before he found himself jerked from his saddle and dangling over his comrades’ heads— one of the grappling irons from the balloon haying secured him by the nape of the neck. Rube bellowed like a stuck pig, and in vain endeavored to struggle free, while there was a momentary cessation of - hostilities in the general surprise and interest occasioned by his flight upward. ‘‘Reach over your head and cut yourself loose, you in- fernal fool!’ cried the renegade, narrowly escaping a kick in the head from his unfortunate henchman, as he ene this way and that, in his awkward struggles to be reed. ‘IT ¢-c-can’t, d-d-don’t you s-s-see I c-c-cant,” gasped Rube. ‘Ihe d-d-d——d th-thing has got me right by the _ b-back-bone. Oh, criminy, d-don’t d-duck me!” This last appeal was occasioned by Sam, who laughingly holding the other end of the grapnel-line, suddenly shifted Comicbooks.