On the Trail of Geronimo — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

ON THE TRAIL OF GERONIMO. 13 the old stage route to El Paso, which, as every one knows, is in the extreme western part of Texas. If the reader therefore chooses to trace the course of Lieutenant Whitcomb, he can readily do so. He had been hoping all along that he would be able to time his journey so as to travel most of it as the escort of Miss Fanny Harland. He did not dare propose such an arrangement, but he had managed to learn, without exciting her suspicion, the date on which she expected to start for her father’s ranch. So what more annoying discovery can be imagined for one in his situation than the one made at Gila City, where he ascertained that she had gone through just two days before, in a stage in which there were only two other passengers! No person who has made that stage journey through Southern Arizona, during the hot season, can ever forget it. The roads wind over streams, through mountains, across flaming alkali plains, which in some places are the very types of utter desolation, so that the actual distance is almost doubled. The stage scarcely halted, only long enough for meals or to change horses, which took place every twenty-five miles. They traveled night and day, the seats were uncomfortable as CoOnniclooo (CO)