Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

60 At the Sioux Camp. seemed to be a bond between them which drew their hearts together. Polly was blooming out into a perfect prairie rose, sunny-faced, cheery and a blessing to the old ranch- man’s wife. | The boys dearly loved to have her with them on a gallop, and were proud when she took Cuthbert‘s rifle and proved her accomplishments as a true Western girl by incontinently bowling over a skulk- ing coyote that had been hovering around in the hope of securing a young and tender late lamb from the sheepfold. Those were halcyon days indeed. No shadow of the trials which the future held in store for them crossed the boys’ trail. Cuthbert had seen an Indian village on the move, and learned many facts in connection with these strange people. The old medicine man aroused his keenest curi- osity, and he examined with interest the odd im- plements of his weird calling—the dried gourds into which small stones had been introduced to make a furious rattling when shaken, the rattlesnake fangs forming a necklace, the hideous mask which the old humbug donned when endeavoring to drive . away the evil spirit possessing a sick Indian by his incantations and herbs, and many other kindred arti- cles that possessed a reverence in the eyes of the simple Sioux, but excited his secret levity. _ Then there was great sport horse racing, the In- dians believing they possessed the finest animals on earth, for modesty is unknown to their crait. So the boys determined to take them down a peg or two, and laid plans accordingly. One young buck, a son of the leading chief, Afraid-of-His- Horses, was especially loud in taunting the pale- face lads, and particularly Karl, about the superior breed of animals owned by the Sioux, and their ConniclooOokks.€©