Red Belt, the Tuscarora — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

’ rm AL ee RED ARROW, THE WOLF DEMON: OR, The Queen of the Kanawha. CHAPTER I. _ THE MARK ON THE TREE, Two rifle-“‘cracks’’ broke the stillness of the wilderness that etretched in one almost unbroken line from the Alleghany and Blue Ridge peaks to the Ohio river. The reports re-echoed over the broad expanse of the Kanawhaand the Ohio rivers, for the shots Were fired near the junction of the two streams—tired so nearly at the same time that the two seemed almost like one report. Then, before the smoke of the rifles had curled lazily upward in epiral rings on the air, came a crash in the tangled underbrush, and forth into a little open glade—the work of Nature’s master hand— dashed anoble buck, The red stream pouring from a wound just behind the shoulder and staining crimson the glossy brown coat of the forest lord, told plainly that he was stricken unto death. The buck gained the center of the glade, then his stride weakened; the dash through the thicket was the last despairing effort of the poor . brute to escape from the invisible foes whose death-dealing balls had pierced his side. With a moan of pain, almost human in its expression, the buck fell upon his knees, then rolled over on his side, dead. . The brute had fallen near the trunk of @large oak tree—a tree dig- ~~ tinguished from its neighbors by a blazon upon its side, whereon, in ’ rude characters, some solitary hunter had cut his name. Searcely had the death-bleat of the buck pierced the silenes “99 of the glen, when two men came dashing through the woods, each eager to be the first to secure the game. One of the two was some twenty yards in advance of the other, os and reached the body of the dead buck just as his rival emerged from . the thicket. re Placing his foot upon the buck, and rifle in hand, he prepared to 9 dispute the quarry with the second hunter, for both men—stran- ers to each other—had fired at the same deer, The hunter who stood with his foot upon the buck, in au attitude of proud detiance, had reloaded his rifle as he ran,~and was pre- pared to defend his right to the game to the bitter end. In person, the hunter was a muscular, well-built man, a some six feet in hight. Wot a clumsy, overgrown giant, hardly ‘f. thy | y comicbooks.com | . “ ~~ es