Beadle's Dime Novels No. 226: The Mustang-Hunters — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

10 © THE MUSTANG-HUNTERS. horse, at a little distance behind, told that he was not deserted, and at the bow of the rich Mexican saddle, heavely mounted with silver, you might have seen a pair of handsome holsters, which contained pistols of the same make as the rifle. The young man’s face was melancholy and handsome, with large dark eyes. It was ornamented with a downy-black mustache, and framed in dark hair. “ How shall I do it ?” he murmured to himself. “If I was only a rich man, she would have me; but, how am I to get rich in a hurry, dnd how s/all I catch the black mustang?” His soliloquy was interruptec by the tramp of hurses’ feet, and presently there hove in sight an odd but picturesque figure, “common enough on the prairie. It was that of a regular old- fashioned hunter of the type of Danie] Boone and his breth- ren. The coon-skin cap on the head, with the tail falling down the wearer’s back; the hunting-shirt and leggings fringed with strips of deer-skin ; the quill-embroidered moccasins, are they not familiar to the border?’ The only particular in which this modern hunter differed from the hunters of an earlier day was in his repeating carbine, and the black holstered revol- : ver at his belt. He rode a fat little dapple-gray mustang mare. fe, The stranger came straight toward the tree where the «young man Jay. A spring, within a few feet of the youmg - _ | wayfarer, had been spied by the sharp-eyed hunter. - He rode slowly up, his keen black eyes glancing restlessly _ from side to side as he scanned the motte. He was evidently oe ‘@ man accustomed to look-out for himself in the midst of : dangers, and lived under the guardianship of keen senses. ta The young’ man gazed with interest upon his shaggy dark- =» gray hair and beard that flowed over breast and shoulders like at. ___ the mane of an old lion. He recognized the other at once. All the frontiersmen of Texas, indeed, knew him well; as _ * did also Frank Weston, who arose as his visitor approached, fe sored forward to meet him. “Why, Pete Wilkins!” he exclaimed. “Have you dropped eh; _ from heayen in the nick of time to assist me ?” pes The ott hunter looked at the young man doubtfully for eo: ee Sera gin Secce scape