Rocky Mountain Sam — page 58: what you’re looking at

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

ane | ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. 49 gas-bag now. We've got fresh meat for a day or two any- how. What are you squintin’ at, professor?” he professor had apparently forgotten all about the game, and was absorbed in a study of the plain below, with his spy-glass to his eye. ‘< It’s them!” he at length said, drawing back. ‘It’s them as sure as @ gun.” ‘‘ Who's them?” “Why, the party from Chapman’s, starting out in pur- suit of the renegadeand his captive. Don’t you see that line of horsemen winding among the scrub-oaks on the DERE of the stream down there?” he added, pointing own. ; ‘*P’raps so; only they look more like ants than anything else.” | ) “If you would look through this telescope,” said the professor, ‘‘you would make them out plainly enough to be men on horseback. But it isno matter; we must prepare a message to drop them as we pass over.” Old Max wrote on a piece of paper in lead pencil, as follows: ‘Ty THE HEAVENS, 9 A. M. ‘We shall travel due north for one hundred miles, and hover in the vicinity of Crown Butte, Medicine River, and Grizzly Bear all day and night until we see you again. i ‘‘Wirefoot’s fastness is, without doubt, somewhere in that vicinity. “Max Army, D. B., & F. R. A. A.” © ‘‘Hirst-rate!” commented Sam, as he laboriously conned over this Ke “But what does ‘D. B.,’ mean? Not ‘dead-beat,’ surely? And what does ‘Ff. R. A. A.,’ mean?” ‘Can't you guess?” “‘Let me see. Surely not ‘Freemason of the Ringtail Associated Asses,’ eh?” ‘You are not to be condemned for the defects of your early education, my young friend,” blandly explained the professor, as he tied the missive to the end of a short, heavy stick. ‘“Those initials would be at once understood by cultivated people to mean: ‘Doctor of Ballooning, and Fel- low of the Royal Association of Aeronauts.” Now, as weare about over their heads, I shall send them this dispatch, for I see that they have already observed us.” The missive fell fluttering through the air, and fell di- rectly at the feet of the horsemen helow. ‘hey saw one of Gomichoo com |