Rocky Mountain Sam — page 201: what you’re looking at

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

192 ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. ‘Hold the keer at all odds, mates, while I go. fur the gal!” he yelled. . The next instant he was in the midst of the dusky com- batants, butting, hewing, slashing, and kicking his way toward the lodge, the Indians going down before him like ripe grain before the reaper’s scythe. At length thesavages, terrified at Big Horn’s mode of con- flict, gave way to his passage on either side. Only one gigantic warrior essayed one final attempt to bar his way to the door of the lodge, and sprang before him with uplifted tomahawk. The great chieftain evaded its stroke by a lightning-like movement to one side, and then rushing forward with head lowered, after the manner of an infuriated bull, he drove the spike with which his cap was crowned, directly through the stomach of his foe, pinning him to the door-post, in which position he squirmed around like a tomato-worm on a bodkin, until upon being released he fell upon the ground in the death-agonies. The next instant Big Horn had entered the lodge, and from the savage uproar that followed his entrance, his com- rades were enabled to conjecture that the captives were sur- rounded by a strong and determined guard. But they had little time to think of his individual fortunes, since his dis- appearance was asignal for a simultaneous assault upon the car by all the Indians, to the number of fifty or sixty. The balloonists fought hke demons; for now it would not do to rise out of reach of the foe, as that would be a deser- tion of Big Horn. While Mewanee, completely terror- stricken, crouched at the bottom of the car, to be as much out of danger as possible, Sam, Teddy, and the brave old professor, armed with pistols, knives, hatchets, and crow- bars, fought back the dusky swarm with grim determina- tion, while the redoubtable Chawer, who had followed Sam in his retreat, kept furiously at work, tooth and nail, as many a bleeding and lacerated redskin could attest. But human and canine nature combined could not long hold out against such odds, At length there was but one thing to do—to cut loose. . “Cut the anchor-line, Teddy, and chuck over some bal- last!’ yelled Max. ‘Quick! or we’ll all be massacred!’ ‘What! and leave Big Horn to his fate? Never!’ cried Sam, at the same time plunging his knife into an Indian’s (e(@) comicbooks