Beadle's Dime Novels No. 85: The Fugitives — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

13 THE FUGITIVES. woman, had joined the other fugitives that had taken the alarm. “ Just like Jerusha,” he soliloquized. “If she thought the baby wasin danger she wouldn’t wait a minute—Holloa !” He was now passing through a thick piece of woods, and his exclamation was caused by the sharp crack of a rifle, a few rods in advance. Not knowing exactly how to take this, he drew his horse down to a walk and cocked his rifle, to which he had persistently clung all day. While thus gazing forward he saw a man _ bareheaded, barefooted, bleeding and panting, his arms hanging down as if perfectly helpless, run wearily across the road, and glancing with a wild look of alarm behind him, plunge into the forest upon the other side. He seemed to be ready to drop from exhaustion, and it was manifest, could continue his flight but a short distance further. He did not observe “ old Gersh,”’ who pulled his horse to one side, so as not to attract attention, and calmly awaited the dénowement. , “Tf that. man’s running, there’s some one chasing, and if there’s any one chasing that poor half-dead soldier, it’s a red- skin—and if it’s a red-skin, why here’s a man that’s going to have something to say in the matter.” _ The words were yet in the mouth of the horseman, when a Delaware Indian, in his war-pafnt, and bearing both a rifle and tomahawk, bounded into the road, and with his basilisk- eyes fixed upon the spot where the fugitive had disappeared, leaped like a blood-hound after him. His indurated muacles made him apparently as. fresh and agile as ever. Like the white man he failed to observe the horseman, and had already reached the opposite side of the road, when the latter gave utterance to a peculiarly wild whoop. As quick as lightning the Delaware turned his startled glance up the road, As he did so he saw the black horse, with flashing eyes, erect ears and expanded nostrils, standing as motionless as a statue, while, rising just above his head, was visible the sallow face, long yellow hair, broad-brimmed hat and gleaming eyes of Gershom Smithson. Scarcely two inches above the horse's head and directly between his ears, rested his long rifle, point- ing straight as the finger of Fate at the head of the Indian. The latter had barely time to see his danger, when “ old comicloooks.com