Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

The Tenderfoot. 11 his saddle and carried away when his treacherous cayuse took a notion to stampede while the boy was examining a curious gopher village with its strange denizens in the shape of rattlesnakes, owls and prairie dogs! Regrets were useless—he must do the best possible in the circumstances. One thing he remembered in this emergency— that all wild animals, from the royal lion of the Afri- can forest down to the hyena and coyote, have more or less fear of fire, and hesitate to attack a human being who has taken refuge behind a barricade of flame. Bearing this in mind he endeavored to arrange matters so that he might have such a protector on either side, although this state of affairs promised to make sad inroads upon his limited stock of fuel. As time crept on he noticed that the signal howls seemed to come from various quarters, as though the hungry wolves had drawn a circuit around the camp. He might have taken refuge in a tree had he not doubted his ability to climb the cottonwoods with their smooth trunks, destitute of branches to quite a dizzy height. The night wind fanned the flames and sent the > smoke scurrying aloft in fantastic wreaths that added to the weird aspect of things in general. And through the darkness at intervals came that weird howl: “Yip! .¥ip! YipF’ Taken altogether it was a night never to be for- gotten by the young fellow to whom the experience came as an unwelcome guest. By degrees the prowlers around the camp grew bolder as their fear of the snapping flames became less acute, and it was not a great while before Cuthbert discovered a very savage pair of yellow orbs glowing amid the dusky CoOMmiclboo ‘S CO