Rocky Mountain Sam — page 155: what you’re looking at

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

146 ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. laughing; ‘‘you’ve missed the bear-bating and the greater part of the races, but you’re in time to see the best handi- cap of the day. After those soldiers finish that scrub race they are preparing for, Mollie and I and two or three others are going to try a run for fifty dollars, on half a dozen new horses which the colonel had sent from Kentucky last fall, and which he says are the finest in the territory.” «And am I to ride Ophelia, the roan mare!” cried Mollie, with sparkling eyes, at the same time giving a switch to the train of her new and becoming riding-dress. ‘*‘You shall ride, too, if you wish, Sam.” “Thank ye, Miss Mollie, but I won’t straddle the pigskin - to-day,” said Sam, turning on his heel, after vainly casting an appealing look to Fayaway. The grand race of the day was soon on hand, and the Blue Grass thoroughbreds, upon which the colonel prided himself immensely, were curveting hither and thither, as if proud of their riders and impatient for the signal to start. Miss Chapman and Fayaway who had been permitted to take their pick from the herd, were the best mounted; Mollie backing a splendid mare, who looked as though the speed of thought were in -her limbs, and Fayaway airily sitting a long-limbed bay of apparently equal speed, while the rest of the competitors—including Dutton and three hunters—were rather inferiorly mounted, though still ably SO. ‘Now, let there be no mistake about the course,” said the old colonel, who was to act as starter. ‘‘It’s two miles, you know—that is, to and around Sugar-Loaf Peak, and return. Are you ready?” ‘‘All ready!” cried Mollie. The word was given, and away went the flyers ata tre- mendous pace, the two ladies leading almost at the outset, but closely followed by the rest. The course to be followed was such, that the spectators, from their position, could keep the horses in view to the summit of a rise in the prairie, about a mile away, when they would disappear, and not make their reappearance until they had rounded the cove agreed upon and were nearly half way on the return; but the professor had ascended in his balloon two or three hundred feet—with a line still attached to the grgonnd—from which he could see the whole course, and report below, | comicbooks (e(@)