Beadle's Dime Novels, No. 91: The Lost Cache — page 62: what you’re looking at

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

64) | THB LOST CACHE, - depths. He saw the. shattered pine, all bare and:* white;, as the old chief had described. -it, standing near.the hole... He. next looked for the,tall. sharp stone;and.saw it, about half an arrow’s flight from the tree. ‘Taking his stand behind the tree, he took the line of the tree and the stone, and saw where it crossed a chasm or cafion, for such he knew it tobe, although, it was distant about two hundred yards, and was concealed. ~ _ by a heavy growth of trees, vines and bushes. Going forward to the cafion, in the line that he had marked out with his eye, he found a rayine, something like a rough natural staircase, that led down to it, and he followed this, un- til he reached the bottom of the. dark. chasm, where he saw a small stream of water. “J remember this place,” he*muttered, “ fur I’ve been in it afore... Ef I had knowed thar’ was gold here, I wouldn't be in it now. The next. thing is—whar’ is the gold ?”. | As the way by which he had come. was rather crooked, he had lost. sight of the point at which the imaginary line crossed the chasm, and it was necessary to find it. Availing himself of slight projections in the cliff, and clinging to the side.of it with his fingers and. toes, he contrived to elimb up, until he could again see the sharp stone and the shattered tree, and get them in a line with his eye. . Having done so, and, having firmly fixed in his mind the point at which the line. met the rocky wall, he dropped, down on. the sand, and stood below. that point. « This. yere’s the place that Mus-to-qua oe of, fur: sartin,” said he. “'Thar’s the stream, and thar’s the bank, though it’s a mighty queer thing to cal] a bank—it looks to me like a rock, and a darned steep and high one, too, Under, that bank, as he called it, must. be the smooth round stun’ that he told me about, the stun’ that. kivers. the gold—and thar’, it .is, by gracious! It’s a small stun’, and ’tain’t like the t’other stun’s. Dye got it now, by thunder! and the Crows.may go to grass, and No Smoke may gnaw his finger-nails. Now fur it!” The. desperado knelt by the stone, removed. it from its place, and eagerly gazed down into the. hole before him, : It was empty ! It was plain. that the, hole bad been dug, forss a Saat because it was two. feet. deep, it was dug through the sand into comicbooks.com —