Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 422 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

by eel said Donald Strahm, ‘ 4 ' _ DONALD STRAHM CALLS ON SCOTT DRESDEN, | PSU Set es ~~ a y Sam, the Boy Giant of the Yell rm rm em me ee me Half-blinded and choked with blood, and suf- | ring the most intense agony, the outlaw chief | told you of the biggest surprise of the season, ed to his followers and, in terrible passion, | captain.” claimed: | ** Well, I’m prepared now to hear of ’most any ‘Man, take that fiend incarnate to the near- | kind of a surprise, my lord,” said Dresden. t boiling spring and throw him inalive! The, ‘* Well, you remember T told you all about devil shall have man broth for his breakfast!” | of the earl of soy pacers in Vangenc of his dis- ‘Ey A DIET ‘4 | appearance and my trip to America on busi- ATT | nea with Mrs. Ann corp d Then you remem- ber that I told you that Jack Prunty, the set- tler with whom Id left my child had been massacred by the Indians, that the child had been taken captive but was afterward ransomed by a party of emigrants bound for the West, and that for two years I'd searched among all the settlements of the territories for my child and that I had finally fixed upon a certain girl as being mine from her wonderful resemblance to her dead mother, ‘* Yes, yes,” replied Dresden, ‘‘ I remember all that, of course, but where does the surprise come in?” ‘* Why, sir, by accident I stumbled into the camp of an exploring-party to-day under: one Professor Dnood: and who should 1 meet there, well and alive, but my man, Jack Prunty, sail- KAGER for the fiendish work, Dresden’s fol- | lowers seized the Boy Giant and started to drag | him away to the nearest boiling spring, but be- | fere they were out of the retreat the outlaw | chief said: ‘* Hold on, men; let us wait until morning. I want the young demon to brood over his fate awhile; besides, I want to see him flop and flounder when he goes into the broth-pot.” With evident disappointment the outlaw’s menials brought the prisoner back and rebound his feet and forced him to be seated. The suffering of Dresden was fully equal to his revengeful fury, One of his eyes swelled shut In a few minutes, while his: whole face was | cut and bruised beyond recognition. The only | alleviation he could find was in constant appli- |! ing under the colors of Spokane Joe.” cation of cold water, and to obtain this he had | ‘Oh, Moses and the bullrushes! you don’t tell to go to a little meuntain-stream, over two hun- | me Old Spokane Joe’s your treasure-keeper?” lived yards from the ‘ Grotto,” as the outlaws | ‘No other, sir, no other than Jack Prunty, called their rendezvous: He took three men | but he pretended not to know me in their own with him as a bocdy-guard, and there for hours | camp, nor did I pretend to know him. I,con- he sat and bathed his face and swore, and swore | cluded my bird was already in the bush, and and bathed. that it weuld only be a question of time until it It was long after midnight when he returned)| was in hand. So I said nothing to them more to the Grotto, fecling considerably easier, but.| than to tell them I was a disgusted prospector in nowise improved in looks. To his joy he | anxious to get out-of the country, but my man, found that the number of his friends had in- | Prunty—Old Spokane—it seems, suspected all sreased during his absence, and that: Donald | was not right and followed me up; but one of Strahm, one white man, and three Indians were | my scouts discovered. the fellow, and we laid the parties joining them. for him and finally cornered him on the lake- ‘* Great hounds of Satan!” exclaimed Strahm, | shore. As I had bim foul, as I thought, I de- as Dresden entered the Grotto. ‘‘ Captain | manded my child’s whereabouts, but, sir, he Dresden, you look as though you’d been fighting | had the accursed impudence to tell me it wasw’t a wind-mill.” my child Vd left with him, and flared vp and ‘* There’s the cause of it!” hissed Dresden, | showed his teeth. So I had to call out my men, sointing toward Baby Sam. _and the old tiger shot one of them down, and ‘So I understand; but I congratulate you on | but for the fact that | wanted him alive he ais capture.” | would have been ann ‘bilated. there and then. ‘* Thanks, my Lord Fenwick,” returned the - Finally one of the boys tripped him up and the outlaw, “but if we’d succeeded in getting that’ battle seemed won; but before he could ‘be se- sunning: devil we’ve known as Big Horn, then | cured a tally bearded man, with eyes glowing Pd be aPPY, for the ends of justice would soon | lie a demon’s, bounded from the cover of some oe served. I tell you I mistrusted that rene- | un ‘\orgrowth with a long, whip-like sword in his pee all es and now to him and that big hance, and so: dexterously and so rapidly did he ummix of a boy there, we are indebted forthe | handle the flashing blade that his very head and loss of both of those girls that we have worked | shoulders seemed surrounded bya nimbus of -— ee and planned so long to capture at Mary’s | flame. I drew my revolver to shoot him, but Lake.” he divined my intention, lunged forward, and ‘* Thunder and Mars! you don't tell me, cap- | somehow-or other—I don’t know exactly how— tain?” | ‘*T do, sir; after the girls had been captured, ind that Boy Giant also, I detailed each one to <ill the other, for I wanted Big Horn out of my way as well as Big Sam, and cuss me if they over!” lidu’t turn on. us, killed Stackpole and Doyle ‘* Great mortality!” exclaimed Dresden, ‘“‘ do who were acting as seconds, and then dropped you suppose he is on a trail, too?” two more men, and the rest, of us barely,escaped | ‘* 1 can’t see for the life of me how he can be. with our lives. Then again—just to-night— | L think our meeting simply a coimcident,” Big Horn joined a payer of our red-skin friends | ‘‘ Pll be cussed if it don’t begin to look like aco- who’d still one of the girls in custedy, and | incident that is likely to bring us more trouble,” played his role of ‘big Ingin, much brave,’ and | replied Dresden; ‘‘ but what became of your the first them red-skins knew, that big hound | English swordsman?” was upon them like a hurricane: beating them ‘* Well, the fight was a drawn battle. After I lown with a club, while Big Horn shot, and | lost my revolver I leaped backward to escape kicked and cut! The result was that the. girl | the fellow’s sword, when: my folks, supposing I was rescued and run off in the night. We heard | was lighting out for dear life, turned and ran, the battle and hurried: forward to take a hand, | too; but our gallant foe did not follow us, and but were two minutes too late. You see, not) the next we saw, him and Old: Spokane, as we one of the Sioux knew of Big Horn’s treachery at the lake, and so he played it handsomely. Lord Peter! if ’'d only been there in camp when he came in, ’d: made him ‘blat.’ So. you see our campaign’s a flat failure so far as the cap- ture of the girls is concerned.” **T think 1 can tell you where one of the girls he caught my weapon on the point of his sword and twirled it out of my hand like lightning. And: that man, my dear sir, was no other than Warren Hanover, the son of the Earl of Han- hey finally: touched at the same-island where the other boat had: landed its occupants.” ‘“‘ By heavens! that, island’s got to be pulled,” declared Scott: Dresden, “for it may be: the point from whence all our trouble.is emanat- ing.’ The two villains had carried on: all this con- versation in) the hearing of Baby Sam. They regarded him as powerless to do them: further harm, but when the subject had so changed as to inelude the Boy Giant, Donald Strahm turned to the prisoner and said: “To-day; or yesterday, rather, toward even- ing, we saw a small canoe gliding across the: waters of the Yellowstone Lake, and it con-. tained two occupants, one of which was a | woman beyond a doubt. The boat touched ata ; little island: which we afterward discovered was. a floating island, “Phe dence you ‘say! exclaimed Dresden; the conduct of Big Horn, Baby Sam—in other words, what’s he up to?” ‘*He’s up to your little game;” replied Baby supposed, was ini a boat pulling out-into the lala: T ‘*Perhaps you could tell us something about: fool by any means, Seott Dresden. But I hav’n’t | ** Oh, he’s a mad fool!” Dresden snarled, “‘ but he’ll get the chance to-morrow morning to die one death, that'll atone for some of his murder- ous work, now mind ” By this time night was well advanced, end after the guards watching the approaches to the ' my troubles with one Warren Hanover, the son | grotto had been changed, Dresden and Strahm rolled themselves in blankets and laid down to rest. Bright and early the next morning they were astir. An ample supply of food that was con- cealed in the grotto was brought out, ccoked and eaten; and after their matutinal meal, which had been washed down with villainous whisky, Scott Dresden turned and shouted out: ‘* Now, men, to the Devil’s Broth Pot with that young bruiser!” Up to this moment Baby Sam had entertained a faint hope that, if die he must, he would be killed outright, and not subjected to the hellish tortures conceived by the brain of the monster, Scott Dresden. / It was not over a mile to the great geyser known among the hunters and Indians as *' The Devil’s Broth Pot,” though pointed out to tour- ists now as *‘ Old Faithful.” Its eruptions occur at intervals of about seventy minutes with all the regularity of the flow and ebb of the ocean’s tide. It lasts about twenty minutes, then ceases, and the batting ftood smks out of sight in the crater to gather new force for another outburst. It was but a short time till the outlaws and savages, with their captive, came in sight of the geyser. It was located on the summit of a large, cone-shaped knoll that for ages upon ages bad been forming frcm sediment thrown from the geyser. The sides of the cone were cut into hundreds of little channels by the rushing of the waters. In the little valley at its base was a. large) channel through which the boiling liquid escaped into the Fire Hole river that flowed hard by. Just across this channel was a gradual ascent crowned with a dense growth of bas ‘he geyser ‘was quiet when the cutlaws came in sight of it. ‘““Hadn’t we better wait here until after the ‘Pot’ boils again?” said Dresden, stopping at the edge of the pincs near the foot of the cane. ‘‘ Tt hasn’t been twenty minutes since itceesed its tumult,” responded Strahm; ‘*and it will be nearly an hour yet before there is any danger from its: spouting. In that time we can get over to the crater, dump cur game and get back here.. I say let’s push right ahead and get the job off our bands.” “All right; forward march!” commanded Dresden, leaping the channel and beginning the ascent of the cone. Four men conducted the doomed boy toward the geyser with his hands tied at his back and a revolver at his head. The Indians were all left on the safe side of the cone. Their super- stitious’ fears: would not permit of their ap- proaehing nearer to the dreaded *‘ Broth Pot.” In his fiendish desire to burl the author of his battered countenance into the great cal- dron, Dresden: hurried on and reached. the cra- ter a hundred paces in advance of those who were laboring along with.the captive. was fully six feet, and gazed down into the hot, cavernous depths fronpwhence camean ominaus ° gurgling sound. He felt the marble-like earth beneath his feet shake and quiver with internal emotion. He could see the boiling finid rising slowly in tke porcelain-lined throat of the cra- ter; and suddenly he heard and felt the roar of underground thunder that was immediately fol- lowed by the upward ruch of hissing’steam that: him to start ‘back inalarm. And this. caused in turn was succeeded by a hoarse gurgling: moan; a violent trembling of the cone; when, with the force of a mighty hurricane, a river” of boiling water six feet in thickness shot up ' into the air to tke hight of two hundred feet. The rays of the sun, which was just rising above the distant Mountain range, shone upon the mists of white steam and formed a bright rainbow above.the summit of the columm of in-~ describable splendor and: glory, while the water: bursting outward at the top.of' the column, like, a gigantie fountain, descended to earth in a pees torrent of pearls. But, grand as was.. h e sight, the situation was equally as perilous. Of! this the outlaw was fully aware, and turn-» He stood . on the very rim of the crater, whose diameter™ o ' . . -@ ‘my lord, I’m afraid our 's going to be m. ing with a shout of warning to his friends, he . chee ted all around—we've been eimen, away | ‘He is, eh? Well; what-else cam you tell:us? | dashed away to. pore falling floed of boil- a traitor.” | —do you know where those girls—Wilma Rod- | ing water, which, being undisturbed by’ the: ages a3 “Then that traitor must be Big Horn, who, | man and Sarah Marshall are?” air, fell with equal and. thundereus. force all nye while we were holding seeret masctited in your “You: impudent’ scoundrel!” the Boy Giant | around the summit of the cone, — Soon a mighty" 1. eS ie ledge in the Sioux village, overheard all by | fairly hisseds ‘if Idid know I'd die a doze | flood: was rolling: down the. slope in_ one hroad . is ; eavesdropping. JI tell you that fellow’s not a’ deaths before I'd tell you!” oo 6. }sheety and: the outlaws inchargeot: Paby Sam, — Rees te Fon 8 : a Rat's ee Le ees t eee wats a ' iis é nae y arte ome! 4 ; +