Beadle's New Dime Novels: The Specter Chief — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

THE PHANTOM CHIEF. 17 looker-on by the cabin, at first enjoyed the spicy dialogu® _ of the two settlers; but on the appearance of a disposition to fight, he had tightened his belt, and was about to per- suade, or, if needed, compel an abstinence from bloodshed, when a man passed, with a light spring from the ecabin- roof, over the head of the elderly personage alrealy men- tioned, and alighted near the group in the middle of the boat. With a quick, firm step he advanced to the chief actors, and showing his own knife, said, in a determined voice: **Look you, Thompson—and you, Jake! if you carry On this came, the best man will have another to fight when he gets through his first play.” The sudden diversion of thought occasioned by this in- terference, wag favorable to the success of a general inter- position of the company which followed it. Indeed the appearance of the person who had so boldly taken upon _ him the conclusion of the dispute, would, even upon a stranger, have impressed an instant conviction of the ha- zard of an encounter with him; and as his character was well known to the entire group by achievements which earned for him a prominence amongst the boldest of the Western adventurers, the influence of remonstrance was proportionally strengthened, The excitement was gradu- ally reduced, although not without expostulations and charges which more than once threatened to rekiadle the flame of discord in all its former fury. As the individual who bas thus presented himself will continue with us to the end of our story, it will be proper to furnish the reader with a brief description of him. Cele- brated as he was throughout the western territory, not only has oral tradition preserved numerous details of his exterior and habits, but his name has been perpetuated in tle written annals of the West. Butler. as he was called, had barely attained his twenty-first year; his figure, how: ever, upwards of six feet in height, had the sinewy out- Tite of a much more mature age; and the marks of stronz emotion were so deeply set in his face that they seemed the effects of more than half an ordinary life of intense ex- Fan F Comicbooks%com — —_— .