Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

An Indian Brave. 139 And so speaking, he led Cuthbert into his specia) audience chamber, where he might, with his own eyes, behold the wonderful array of curiosities he had gathered during his reign, and the clever im- plements with which he rattled or tooted an evil spirit out of a sick man’s body. That lodge was a sacred place and a fearsome abode in the eyes of all Standing Elk’s people; but the white boy strode carelessly in after his guide, with no feeling of awe, only intense curiosity. Well, it was worth observing. Cuthbert certainly believed he had never before looked upon so many things calculated to bring a cold chill down one’s back—rattlesnakes, stuffed, horned toads, Gila monsters, great staring beetles, necklaces of grizzly bear claws that betokened a great warrior, strings of odd, dried up bunches of hair, which Cuthbert guessed must be hideous me- mentoes of past battles or butcheries, scalps, in fact—these and many more similar articles formed quite a museum. It must have shaken the nerves of any brave to find himself surrounded by such a medley, and no doubt the arrant old humbug wondered much be- cause the white boy showed not the slightest symp- tom of fear. He must possess a totem or amulet that rendered him impervious to the magic influences which, from long habit, the medicine man actually believed in himself. Cuthbert had him rattle the hollow gourds and shake the string of rusty sleigh bells which he had in some way picked up. The cunning old necromancer had in truth been bewitched by a mere lad, and seemed quite ready to stand on his head, if requested. After all it was not so much a glimpse of his tools in trade Cuthbert desired, but a chance to watch Connicloe® ‘S C©