Rocky Mountain Sam — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

58 ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. position to receive the coating of tar, which Rocky Moun- tain Sam, leaning cautiously over the edge, brush in hand, vigorously and artistically applied. The yells which the Indian had formerly given utterance — to were mere whispers in comparison with the unearthly screeches which he poured out as the hot and sticky sub- stance camein contact with his naked body and limbs; but an unceremonious jabbing of the smoking brush into his Cavernous meat-crusher soon changed his howls to a feeble splutter, and the artistic embellishment of his person went on without further impediment. - ) ‘‘Now, for the feathers!” cried the professor, who had been ripping up an old cushion, which he had used for his seat during many a voyage; and, leaning over the car, he shook out the contents over the well-tarred frame of the luckless savage, who was speedily transferred into a hideous, feath- ered monster, bristling and ruffling from head to foot, and looking very like an upright porcupine, a Shanghai rooster with the feathers turned the wrong way, or, in fact, like almost anything rather than a human being. “Now, Sam,” said Professor Max, ‘‘we’ll lower him down to the end of the rope, and swing him over to his fellow-spiee 1n the other tree-tops, and see what they think of him in his new clothes. ‘There ain’t much wind, but I guess I can work her along with the old propeller here.” ‘They lowered him down to the full length of the rope, where he swung to and fro, kicking and striking out, and cutting a most extraordinary figure; while the professor turned vigorously at the fan-wheel, and the balloon, under its: influence, drifted slowly to the northeast, toward the lofty perches occupied by the other lookouts. The first of these was also apparently enjoying a solitary siesta on his airy seat, when he was suddenly aroused by something swinging against him, and a voice trying to say something to him in the deepest gutteral. : He looked up just once—just long enough to catch a hor- rified glimpse of the nondescript feathery specter grinning and waving its arms at him through the leafy branches— and then, with a loud scream, fell from the tree and broke his neck. On moved the balloon, swinging its strange burden toward the third and last lookout, who happened to be awake, and (@) mn ¢om 200KS €oO