The Prairie Detective: Secret Service Series No. 24 — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

THE PRAIRIE DETECTIVE. 97 She would have given ten years of her life, then and there, to have possessed the power which could break the charm that bound her. But it was impos- sible. She might as well have tried to overturn a mountain. There, helpless as an infant, yet with the full knowledge of her own strength, she half reclined, gazing into her lap with blanched faée and parted: lips. Her eyes were riveted with a stony glare upon an object which, under like conditions, would have stricken terror to the soul of the bravest person—man or woman. A huge rattlesnake was coiled there, with his bead-like eyes watching and gloating over her every attempt to move in resist- ance to his power! The flat head of the hideous reptile was slightly raised, and his forked tongue darted out like oft re- peated black flashes of lightning against a yellow background. The horror on Esther’s face deepened into the most-painful expression. Every lineament was drawn and disfigured by more than _ bodily agony. The snake raised his ugly head still more, and his wicked eyes twinkled like two pin-heads, heated to the highest point.. They glowed with veno- mous light, and lured his victim closer and closer. What words can describe the loathing in Esther’s heart at that awful moment? What pen can picture the despairing helplessness which wound about her like a black shroud of somber import? Alas, none! The air seemed full of fine black particles, which, coming together in friction, produced soft music, rendering the charm which enthralled her every faculty a thousand times harder to break. She felt a weight of depression upon her chest—a sudden chill which drove back the blood from her limbs, ‘S co comicboo