Rocky Mountain Sam — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

16 ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. into the soft east-flowing air that will take us right to my place. Old Minnetrapa and her daughter will have a capi- tal set-out for us, depend upon it. Hungry, Sam?” ‘“A little peckish, that’s all; I simply feel as if I could get away with the side of a buffalo without picking my teeth,” said Sam, cheerfully returning to subjects of such mundane significance. ‘‘By the way, how is my little Fayaway, Max?” , “Your Fayaway, you rascal! ‘That’s pretty cool for even you, Sam. Well, she’s well enough, part of the time help- ing her mother about the cabin, and, the rest of the time, ~ out in the canons, heaven knows where.” ‘‘Minnetrapa ain’t her mother,” said Sam, a little resent- fully. ‘Nor she ain’t no Blackfoot either. Her father was chief of the Shoshones, and they are gentlemen and Chris- tians compared with these blood-thirsty varmints.” ‘‘Well, she calls her mother, which is all the same thing. Her governor may have been a King of Jehoshaphat, for all I know orecare. A little south of west now, and we’reall as right as a trivet.”” And first consulting a compass which he had among other traps at the bottom of the car, he gave the crank a dozen or more whirls, which made the wings outside whirl like a flock of pigeons. ‘‘Hooray! now I feel as I felt when I swept over the unexplored regions of Africa, and was the first white man who ever gazed upon the source of the Nile! Gad! but the elephants were thick up there.. You couldn’t see the ground for ’em—thicker’n buffalo a darned sight. And then the lions, plentier’n cats on a woodshed; and the rhinoceroses and the niggers with long tails like monkeys. Oh, it was glorious. I’m the greatest man that ever lived.” Sam waited until this second fit of inspired idiocy sub- sided, and then quietly asked: 7 ‘““How’s Big Horn? Seen him lately?” ‘No, but-he’ll be in the canon some time to-day. Now, Sam, pull the throttle-valve gently.” Sam did as he was directed, and they began to descend quite rapidly, the earth having the appearance of rising up toward them, as is always the case. ‘‘Hasy, there, easy, or we shall be a-foul of some of these peaks,” cried the aeronaut. ‘‘We're ten miles beyond the Hermitage, and must drift slowly till we’re just above it. then we'll settle down between the ridges, where there ain’t (e(@) comicbooks m ;