Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER V. AT THE SIOUX CAMP. The disagreeable features of range life now be- gan to manifest themselves. Cuthbert had experi- enced them to a small extent from time to time, but there were so many pleasant days sandwiched in between that he was able to take the bad phil- osophically with the good. Now came rainy nights when he was wet through, despite the yellow oilskin “sou’wester”’ known as a “slicker” on the plains, when he would ride into camp of mornings driving the saddle band of horses, and would be stiff with cold, and so exhausted that after a cup of hot coffee he threw himself upon the ground in his tent and slept like a log while his clothes dried on him. Through it all he preserved much of the good nature that seemed a part of his being. Karl, who had been toughened by long years of exposure, watched these things with no little concern. He finally decided that the erstwhile tenderfoot had all the requirements to make a first-class cow- boy in due process of time—a little more hardening, with a blizzard or two thrown in, would teach him all there was to be known in the business, though improvement was always possible. Old Sile came up occasionally to see the young- sters, in whom he seemed to be especially interested, and Cuthbert grew quite fond of the quaint herder. He had long since discovered that Silas Gregg had been a soldier in his father’s regiment during those dark days when hostile armies struggled and fought upon poor Virginia’s sacred soil, and this fact cComiclooks C©