Rocky Mountain Sam — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

66 ' ROOKY MOUNTAIN SAM. ering up all his energies fora grand cowp, the hunter struck her between the eyes with tremendous force. Thoroughly blinded, and now completely cowed, the pan- theress turned tail, and, unconscious of her whereabouts, sprang directly over the terrible geyser. In an instant the strong, thick stream. carried her up to a height of many hun- dred feet, and there she remained tossing up and down and bobbing about on the verv summit of the boiling columns— very much as a gilded ball is kept in air by a perpendicular fountain-jet in one of our public squares—at the same time giving utterance to the most unearthly yells. ‘Well, that’s the worst I ever see yet!” said Sam, breath- ing hard after his fight and looking up in astonishment at the unique position in which his whilom adversary was placed, or, rather, in which she was constantly changing in the influence of the eccentric stream that kept her buoyed to the dizzy height. ‘‘A most interesting phenomenon!” commented the pro- fessor, philosophically; while the Indian maiden held up her hands in undisguised amazement. The muddy water composing, for the greater part of the’ time, the volcanic fountain was hardly hot enough to scald the luckless animal, though evidently of sufficient warmth to occasion her serious inconvenience, judging by her con- tinuous cries; and, now and then, when heavy stones went shooting up through the mass, she received some pretty _ hard knocks. ; | At last, when she had been kept aloft for several minutes, a light wind disturbed the equipoise, and she came down, altogether limp and disabled, at the feet of her conquerors, where a single shot was sufficient to put an end to her suffer- Ings. “The cubs is beginnin’ to stir again,” said Sam, drawing his revolver preparatory to sending them after their parents, when old Max:staved his hands. | “Stop!” he cried. ‘‘I have a plan by which we can make a better use of the young panthers alive than dead.” He drew a long, stout cord from the folds of his flowing robe, and with it speedily secured and fettered the limbs of the cubs before they had fully recovered from the stunning effects of the blows they had received. ‘There! now let’s drag them off at once and fasten them to the car of the balloon,” said he, with a chuckle of comicboo Ss (elo) m