The Prairie Detective: Secret Service Series No. 24 — page 168: what you’re looking at

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

166 THE PRAIRIE DETECTIVE. dered involuntarily when she donned them. Her skin, like Dan’s, had been colored to a very dark hue; if anything a trifle darker than the detective’s was. : When the finishing touch had been added to her disguise, she looked very much like a plump lad of fourteen years or thereabouts, and in order to make the assumption perfect, there was only needed a Lit- tle schooling in male habits of locomotion. ‘How on earth do you make these dyes?” asked Dan, turning with an inquiring look toward Robin- ° son, in the midst of the operation which had made the change. . “It is very simple. The yellow I make by boiling walnuts, as you have seen, and then adding to the liquid a small piece of gamboge, which I allow to dissolve. For the black I use galls and black lead, such as pencils are made of. There is a mine of this latter not many miles from here. You see my list of ingredients is not very large.’’ ‘So Lobserve. But at the same time there is an elegant sufficiency. Now, then, are we all ready?” ~As Dan tossed Esther lightly upon*the saddle in the attitude appropriate to her newly donned cos- | tume, he noticed that she sat with an ease and grace which seemed to indicate that it was not the first time she had ridden horseback in that fashion. How- ever, without passing useless comments, he satisfied himself with the entirely correct reflection that girls very frequently, in the privacy of company confined to their own sex, do many strange things. When all was in readiness for the start the strange party put spurs to their horses, and were soon loping > away over the hills in a direction almost straight west. S) comicboo CY +. he °$ I~ ase o so