The Prairie Detective: Secret Service Series No. 24 — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

THE PRAIRIE DETECTIVE. 95 —. And the sun took pity upon her. He cast his warmest rays upon her cold and motionless form, - encircling her in an embrace that would have wooed a marble statue into life. He surrounded her with his loving arms; he bathed her damp temples with stimulating nectar; he passed his tender fingers through her ebony locks and drew the stagnant blood from her heart into the veins and arteries of her body and limbs. His touch was lighter than that of a nurse, warmer than the pressure of a lover. He breathed into her nostrils, and her chest ex- panded tremulously. He kissed her lips, and they , parted in a gentie smile. She was coming back to life. Her eyelids trembled lghtly for an instant, and then opened slowly and listlessly. A faint, unsteady “sigh escaped her lips. Gradually a consciousness of what had passed came back to her. ‘She remem- bered that she had been overcome by fatigue, and had fallen upon the softly tufted bed of moss which surrounded her. But it.did not occur to her that she had fainted. — That was something to which she had never become “used, even in the remotest way. She scarcely knew the meaning of the word. To strong natures like hers the possibility of being overcome by fatigue, to such an extent as to lose consciousness, never pre- sents itself. She imagined that she had merely been asleep. She saw at a glance that it was long past her usual hour for rising. “T must have overslept,’’ she murmured to herself. “T will get up at once, and make the best of my way ~ back to Fort Hays.”’ a She attempted to rise. It was a failure, for she Eomicbooks.co