Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 53 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 53: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a page of running prose from a Victorian penny dreadful titled *The Rifleman* (page 37). The text depicts an action sequence in which a boy named Tom and a skilled rifleman on horseback pursue and shoot a man in a black riding-cloak trudging through snow. Tom attempts to warn the fugitive but faints at the sight of the man being shot. The rifleman, wearing a coon-skin cap and with bandaged jaws, then revives Tom and mysteriously signals him to follow into the night. The passage combines frontier action with dramatic melodrama typical of the genre.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE RIFLEMAN 37 Side by side with the gaunt clay-bank galloped the black pony. Shoulder to shoulder with the dumb marksman, the boy. On they went like the wind — as if bound on the same quest. It was the same!—the conviction caught Tom with a shock. ‘They had ridden for some time in a feeble light. On a sudden the moon burst forth, and the shining landscape was under their eyes. There he was! Less than two hundred yards away!—a man in a black riding- cloak trudging through the snow. The rifleman pointed to the unconscious figure: he drew rein: his eyes were like an eagle’s poised to strike. Tom? He rose up in his stirrups and yelled like a Shawnee, “Watch out! Watch o-u-t!”’ The hunted man wheeled, pistol in hand, — and a bul- let passed through the coon-skin cap. The rifleman sighted between the clay-bank’s ears. He was “usen”’ to sight at a squirrel’s eye. A whiplike report, and he of the black cloak pitched forward on his face — without a groan. Tom’s warning had been useless! And there was Tom himself slipping from the saddle and lying under the pony’s heels in a dead swoon — “like any fine lady!” as he said long afterward. The head in the coon-skin wagged re- monstrance. If his bandaged jaws could have opened, the rifleman would have muttered: “Lord love hit. Hit ‘ll have er stronger stomick fer bloodshed afore this here war’s over!” Something was tugging at Tom’s neck-cloth, strong arms lifted him up. And then the whole ghastly thing came.back to him. And the boy yelled, “God knows I did n't mean to kill him!” The coon-skin wagged again, in bewilderment this time. The man turned the clay-bank’s head and signaled to Tom, and they took the back track. At the crossroads, with a wave of his hand he went plunging away through the night. As abruptly, as mysteriously as he had ap- peared, — calling on lom to follow an unguessed trail, to CORNICOOO® SS (SO) im