Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 159: what you’re looking at

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

Taking French Leave. 147 whom the chief desired to secure. Was it his friend, his more than brother? Buckskin was forgotten. He left the corral instantly and zigzagged across the intervening space, taking advantage of several tepees on the way. All the while his heart was in his throat, so to speak, while his eyes remained ~lued upon the fig- ure riding amidst the returning braves. _ The opportunity for which he yearned came at last, and he discovered that the newcomer was not Karl after all. Cuthbert hardly knew whether joy or grief pre- dominated in his heart—although he would have been sorry to have seen his friend a captive, still he must have experienced a fierce satisfaction at being thus reunited to him, even under such peculiar con- ditions. Looking again, he recognized the newcomer as one of Kelly’s rough riders, a man of middle age, Caleb Cross by name. Somehow Cuthbert had never fancied this man. He was a good cowboy, valuable on the range, and a man who lived within himself, moody and taciturn. Perhaps this disposition was what soured the boy with Caleb—as a general thing cowboys and herders are a cheerful, social set, so that such a man makes few friends among them. | To Cuthbert he seemed a man with a history, whose melancholy thoughts had to deal with trage- dies of the past. At first his presence aroused keen hopes. Surely it indicated the presence of a friendly force somewhere in the neighborhood. | At last, after these weary weeks, Kelly’s men had struck the right trail and might soon be in substan- tial evidence. Connicloe® <) C©