Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 178: what you’re looking at

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

166 Under the Waning Moon. Indians are ever suspicious, and can read signs in a manner little short of miraculous. Perhaps there may have been some peculiarity about the buckskin broncho’s hoofs that was known to one among their number. At any rate, suspicion was rampant, and it began to look as though the fugitive from Standing Elk’s lodge might be compelled to mount Buckskin and show a clean pair of heels to his pursuers. Mechanically, then, Cuthbert twisted his head and looked around to see in how many jumps he could clear the intervening space, should the necessity arrive for such action. When he turned his head again, he found that al- ready a change had taken place among the Sioux braves. Three of them—one of whom was the suspicious party—had debouched from the rest and were urg- ing their ponies straight for the spot where the white lad lay, while the balance threw a leg across their mounts and curiously awaited the result. Well, there was only one thing to do—fight or run away. Cuthbert was no Don Quixote, and had not the remotest idea of attempting to cope with a baker’s dozen of experienced braves. | Why, they would overwhelm him without much . ado, despite the repeating gun he carried, using their running ponies as shelter while they circled closer and closer around, after the usual manner of their wary species. Then it was flight. And the sooner he was off the better, since these fellows were quickly shortening the distance sepa- rating them. He got over to where Buckskin stood in “two shakes of a sheep’s tail,’ as he afterward declared, in relating the adventure. CoOnniclooOokks.€©