The Prairie Detective: Secret Service Series No. 24 — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

THE PRAIRIE DETECTIVE. 161 and I knew that I could trust fully to her shrewdness and tact. ‘Well, we soon struck thesmain trail, and fol- lowed it to this point, where we overtook the rest of the gang. The chief was mighty mad when he found that we had missed what we were sent for. Indeed he was so much put out with Hatfield, who had been sent in charge of our party, that he immediately as- signed him to do additional duty in spite of the fact that the infernal coward was badly wounded, and was nearly crazy to go along with the young woman and her father. “By the way, it was I who wounded Hatfield— quite accidentally, you know—and as I was the only one in the party who knew anything about medi- cine, I also had to dress his wound two or three times aday. I bound it up in herbs regularly, but owing to some oversight one of the doses I plastered on con- tained some foreign substance which has caused his shoulder to swell so you couldn’t get it into a bushel basket. Shouldn’t wonder if he died from it,’’ con- tinued the ex-robber, with a smile of calm and su- preme satisfaction. | ‘““Well this extra duty assigned to our party was to make a wide circle to the east and north, so as to _ make pursuers think we had doubled on them; for the chief was sure we should be followed. And so we left the main party here on this rock.”’ “What become of ’em?’’ asked Ryan. “They went West.’’ “But how’s thet? The trail p’ints east’ard.”’ “T know it does, but then, you see, the horses’ shoes were reversed upon their feet.”’ “Thunder!’’ exclaimed the scout, in the greatest astonishment. | comicboo Ss.