Beadle's Dime Novels No. 96: Little Moccasin — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

82 LITTLE MOCCASIN. a heap of trodden snow, coated with ice, “here the deadly struggle must have taken place—look at these bushes!—and, as I live, here is the fellow’s tomahawk; just where we should have looked for it, if we Knew it was hurled at some hidden foe coming out of the underbrush there.” “ And what are your inferences? I agree with you, thus far, and I must say, that my mind is made up,” whispered Fletcher, as he examined the edge of the tomahawk, which must haye been flung with prodigious force, to have buried itself as it had, in a charred stump, more tliat thirty yards off. “ Well, I say, in the first place, that this abominable savage was killed with a knifer and not with a rifle; and that ina hand-to-hand conflict.” 3 Agreed.” In the next place, that he had already discharged his rifle at somebody or something — i “ Clear enough, so far.” “Which somebody or something was behind that stump : and that when the rifle was discharged, that -somebody rose up—that the tomahawk was then flung at his head and buried itself in the stump—and then followed the rush, the war-whoop—and the struggle ending in the fellow’s death,’ and here Gage lifted his foot as if to spurn a dead body visi- ble only to himself Fletcher shuddered, but, after studying the signs, and ex- , amining the snow, and the broken twigs trampled ‘into it, and covered with a coating of ice, he acknowledged the soundness of Gage’s conclusions, and complimented him on his great shrewdness, “Your senses have been sharpened, my friend, by your interest in that little moccasifi,” said he; “and now, if you please, what next ?” “Do you know,” answered Gage, after musing a few minutes, “do you know that I have my suspicions of the— what shall I call him ?—not the murderer, for the circum- stances are all in his favor, thus far—but of the manslayer ; for that he was, whether in self-defense, or an avenger of blood, as it may turn out hereafter.” i And so have [—” “The Old Forester ?” comiclbooks. conn ~