Rocky Mountain Sam — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

132 ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. ‘‘But, my dear child, it would have been shed sooner or later, whether you had been stolen or not,” said the pro- fessor, soothingly. ‘“The Blackfeet devils have been pre- paring for a war for months; and, thank Heaven! they have received a blow from which they will not recover in a hurry. More than half their fighting force was engaged in these battles, and fnlly three-fourths of those were slain or wounded. Av; but of our own party?” “Well,” was the rather rueful reply, *‘there is no denying that our gallant band suffered severely. But one thing I can say, Miss Mollie’—a little more gallantly intoned than one might have expected on the part of the philosophical hero of the Antarctic ice-barriers—‘‘should Lieutenant Dutton still meet with your favor in the future, he will fur- nish only another illustration of the truth of the old say- ing: ‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’ for a braver and more devoted young officer never lived.” Lhe fair girl blushed, but Sam saved her further con- fusion by exclaiming: “Jerk the throttle valve, professor; we’re directly over the camp.” The occupants of the camp—which had been removed from the immediate vicinity of the battle-field to a little hill that overbrowed a running brook of clear and spark- ling water—had seen the return of the balloon from afar off, and had passed many curious speculations upon the nature of the strange object dangling at the end of the car; but when they made it out unmistakably to be nothing less than a house, their surprise knew no bounds. ‘Loosen that ere grapnel,” surg out Sam, as the little edifice scraped along over the rough ground. And then, when this had been done: ‘‘Look out for the anchor below there, and be ready to land the ladies.” , Ladies! The word brought the tired hunters—especially Lieu- tenant Dutton—to their feet as if by magic. In a few minutes thereafter the air voyagers had landed, and Mollie Chapman was sobbing and weeping in her lover’s arms. ie Such a shout as swelled abroad from that hunter band at the sight of the precious prize for whom its gallant members had toiled, and suffered, and fought, and bled, -comicbooks CO mn > 7 ‘s ( ee mete