Rocky Mountain Sam — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. melee 67 self-satisfaction. ‘‘We’ve already wasted too much time, and must be off.” | Lhey retraced their steps, dragging their whining captives with them, and in less than twenty minutes were high in the air, with the cubs dangling below the car, firmly secured by the scruff of the neck, but otherwise at liberty, and paw- ing and kicking at the empty air. | hey had to rise to a considerable height to get any wind, but soon caught a fair current, and, in about an hour, were waited over the. same encampment they had so much dis- turbed on the preceding evening by dropping the tarred and feathered hero and his companion in its midst. As luck would have it, the weather was very much the same as on the preceding day. ‘That is, upon approaching the earth, they found themselves becalmed in a perfectly quiet atmosphere, while below them the glimpses of the earth were frequently obscured by a thin stratum of fleecy cloud that drifted slowly underneath, impelled by a sluggish cur- rent of air in motion comparatively near the surface. | ‘Still no sign of Firefoot and his captain, or of our friends to the rescue,” muttered the White Hermit, who, with his telescope to his eye, was leaning over the car, taking advan- tage of every rift in the cloud-rack below and around them. ‘““No; but where the dog is the master can’t be far off!” eagerly exclaimed Sam, also peering over. ‘‘I’d a sworn I jist seed that mean loafer, Rube ‘Tenyck, down there a minute ago. Wait, now, till that cloud passes. Yes, by hookv! that’s him’ along with that bunch of redskins near that biggest wigwam there.” “You're right!” said the professor, directing his scrutiny below. ‘It is he.” | ‘Wait!’ said Sam. ‘‘I’ve been aching‘to get even with that rooster long enough.” Stooping to the bottom of the car he picked up a cake of mud, which had fallen into it from the volcano while they were making their ascent from the canon, about as big as a lager beer keg, and after kneeding some more water with it to make it softer, watched his opportunity from the edge of the car, and just as the intervening cloud rolled away for an instant, let 1t drop. : The reeking mass fell full upon the cranium of the de- yoted Rube, squashing and settling around it on every side, after the manner of the russet hood of an old-time friar, — ‘comicbook (ee)