On the Trail of Geronimo — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

56 ON THE TRAIL OF GERONIMO. shelving. He shot rapidly down the rough face of the rock for an unknown distance, and then stopped so abruptly that he lay for a minute partly stunned. But he was young and strong, and quickly rallied. He found he had alighted on a ledge, varying from two to five feet in width, covered also with bushes and grass. It was these that had broken his fall and saved him from injury. The gorge down which he had taken this abrupt tumble was no more than a hundred feet wide at its broadest part; and, since the moon was not directly overhead, Dick found himself in such shadow that it was hard for him to decide precisely where he was. As nearly as he could judge, how- ever, he had descended nearly one half the way to the bottom of the prodigious ravine. The ledge on which he stood sloped downward along the face of the rocks so regularly that he was hopeful that the bottom of the gorge could be reached by that means. “Till try it, anyway,” he muttered, beginning to pick his way down the incline; “and all I ask is, that I don’t step on any of those rattlers—oogh !”’ A slight noise in front caused him to leap back Gomiciooksre a ae ee