Rocky Mountain Sam — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

D2 ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. but the thin fleecy clouds, whose light vapors, pierced and shivered through and through by the sunlight, precluded the possibility of their holding so much as a pint of water. And now the chief, with his young squaw at his side, ap- peared at the door of the wigwam and began to snort and blow away at a great rate, from which it would have been evident, even to one who was unfamiliar with the lingo, that he wanted his dinner very badly, and was heartily tired of waiting for it. : His followers replied by a jargon of sounds, accom- panied by a multitude of explanatory gesticulations, and he strode out to the remains of the fire, around which they were gathered, still vociferating at each other like so many parrots and cockatoos in a cage. 7 He had barely pushed his way among them, with anger and disdain written upon his stormy face, however, before a perfect deluge of water—for the bottom of the water-cask in the car above at this moment fell ount—came splashing down, thoroughly drenching them all and playing the duse with their war-paint. They shivered and yelled, but before they could entirely recover their senses a grapnel—deftly lowered down by a cord from above—quickly descended, caught the stew-pot by one of its side handles, and jerked the contents, of water, broken meat, and wild turnips, over the entire party, and then, after setting the stew-pot upside down on the head of the astonished chieftain, after the fashion of a hel- met of the middle ages, disappeared in the air before any one could see it. The Indians now came to the conclusion, beyond a doubt, that they were bewitched, and the utmost confusion pre- ~ vailed for some moments. The young squaw, with her baby strapped upon her back, came out of the wigwam to join in the general hubbub and bewail the loss of her soup, and the whole gang, who were probably nearly all of them on the verge of starvation, set up a most lugubrious howl, and for the time being seemed incapable of any useful ac- tion. At length, however, their leader, who was the first to recover his presence of mind, prevailed upon them to renew their attempt at fire-making under the spreading branches ofa gigantic oak tree, and retired with his squaw to the interior of the wigwam, dolefully rubbing his dia- = -Ecomicbooks (Ko) m