Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

The Sioux Village. 115 the rush of the red raiders, their awful clamor to stampede the horses, then his being dragged over the prairie, jerked up on a pony, and after that un- consciousness. Now was the opportunity to try the mettle of the lad—would he weakly give in to despair on account of the conditions surrounding him, or rise above these distracting circumstances, facing the situation bravely as became a son of the illustrious family? At least, he was alive and his hurts trifling. Evi- dently the horse thieves did not mean to take his life, or they would not have gone to all this trouble. It puzzled him quite a little to understand why they had carried him off at all, since their object must surely have been to seize the stock, and this had evidently been accomplished. Had it been Karl, now, he might have figured out a case, for an old Sioux chief had long since taken a strange and violent fancy for the prairie lad, believ- ing he resembled a boy of his own who had been carried off with that dread scourge, smallpox. Several times had old Standing Elk endeavored to win Karl’s consent to abide with him, become an Indian and succeed him later on as ruler of the nomads. The inducement was not half strong enough to work upon the lad, and he had flatly re- fused. Now, such was the apparent infatuation of the old chief for Karl that Cuthbert would not have been very much surprised had an attempt been made to carry him off; but he knew no reason why they should want a tenderfoot. At any rate, he determined that come what would he must never show the white feather—he had yearned for adventure, and here it had descended upon him with a vengeance, so that his soul could revel in it to the queen’s taste. Conmicloooks.€©