Rocky Mountain Sam — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

134 ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. stay with me now that I have got you. Surely, Charles, they can’t hunt buffalo in a balloon?” «Well I don’t know about that,” replied the young officer, langhing; ‘‘I’ve seen so many wonderful performances with that old balloon I would not be prepared to deny its capacity of doing anything extraordinary or strange. I know at any rate, that Rocky Mountain Sam has already caught deer, grizzlies and panthers with it, so why not a lordly bison as well? But let us follow the rest of them to the summit of yon hummock, and view what takes place. We shall wit- ness some rare sport, depend upon it.” When they reached the top of the hnmmock upon which the greater part of the party had already congregated, the balloon was already in the air, and careering toward the feeding herd, with the basket swinging about twenty feet from the ground, Sam getting ready his rifle and lariats, while the professor was working away at the fan-wheel; for the ground-wind was not exactly favorable to the sport. Lhe buffalo were feeding in immense numbers. ‘The leader of the herd, an enormous bull, seemingly twice as big as a yoke of ordinary oxen, raised his head and sniffed the air a little suspiciously at the approach of the balloon; but as he had never encountered danger or treachery in such a disguise before, he went on cropping the grass, apparently unapprehensive of danger, until the car was rushing directly over the backs of the herd. , Then ashot from Sam’s rifle, bringing down a fine half- grown calf at his very side, seriously changed the tenor of his ruminations, and the whole herd wasat oncein tumult, the animals galloping off at the top of their speed, the earth trembling at their tread, and their humps rising and falling like the billows of an angry sea. | Sam, who had had his eyeupon the great bull from the first, hurled his lariat, but missing the prime object of his cast, only succeeded in tripping up a fine cow, which he easily dispatched by a few pistol balls behind the shoulder, but had to cut loose his lariat in order to be freed from the dead weight of the carcass. The pursuit had now led them about three miles from the spectators; but as the balloon flew much faster than the game, 1t soon succeeded in heading them off and send- ing them whirling back in the opposite dizection—that is, toward the crowded hummock; and the balloon, now cComicbooks C (o}